How to build a simple weekly planning system

There's a specific kind of tiredness that comes from a busy week where nothing important moved. You worked constantly. You answered everything. And on Friday you couldn't say what you'd actually achieved.

That's almost always a planning problem rather than an effort problem. Here's a weekly rhythm simple enough that you'll still be doing it in three months.

Pick three priorities. Only three.

Not three categories. Three specific, finishable things. 'Work on the website' is not a priority. 'Publish the pricing page' is.

Three is the number because it's small enough to hold in your head and large enough to feel like a real week. When everything is a priority, you're just writing a to-do list with a fancier name.

If you wouldn't be happy with a week where only these three things happened, you've picked the wrong three.

Plan on Sunday or Monday. Twenty minutes, no more.

Long planning sessions are the enemy of consistent planning. Twenty minutes is enough to:

• Look at what's actually due this week
• Choose your three priorities
• Block time for them before anything else fills the calendar
• Note anything you're waiting on from someone else

That last one catches more problems than the rest combined. Most stalled work is stalled because someone hasn't replied and nobody noticed.

Do the Friday review, especially when the week went badly

The review is the part everyone drops, and it's the part that makes the system work. Ten minutes, four questions:

1. 1.Did the three priorities happen? If not, why not — genuinely?
2. 2.What's carrying over to next week?
3. 3.What's still waiting on someone else?
4. 4.What one thing would make next week easier?

Let it survive interruption

You will miss weeks. Something will blow up, you'll get ill, or you'll simply forget. A system that only works when you're consistent isn't a system — it's a streak, and streaks break permanently.

Build in the assumption that you'll fall off. When you come back, don't try to reconstruct the missed weeks. Just plan the next one.

Twenty minutes on a Sunday and ten on a Friday. That's the whole system. The simplicity is the point.