Do you desperately want to win your workdays instead of asking yourself where the time went at the end of the week? Say goodbye to frustration, because in this post I share the best tips on how to have a productive week and make time for your priorities AND yourself!
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How To Have A Productive Week
We all have been there, honey: long to-do lists for the week that can hardly be completed by Friday evening.
Is there a magical way to shoot up productivity instead of feeling overwhelmed and procrastinating?
How can you tick off more stuff on your to-do lists to finally feel that you are making the most out of your week?
There are some tips that can help you accomplish your goals, but we first need to know what really counts as being productive (*spoiler alert*: No, it’s not working harder).
What Counts As Being Productive?
Productivity is not limited to the sphere of work; in fact, being productive means also making time for self-care, personal growth, family and friends, and fun things to avoid burnout and keep your energy levels high.
So, if someone ever tells you that having their schedule full of work-related tasks is what really counts, think it twice before adopting that lifestyle!
What’s key here is making time to do things that make you feel fulfilled and happy and never being harsh on yourself if you don’t get to accomplish all your goals.
As a human, you’ll have good days and bad days and it’s ok to take a step back, evaluate your progress, and make changes to your systems if necessary.
How Can I Make My Days More Productive?
Increasing your productivity is a matter of working smarter, not harder.
Here are my best tips to organize your week in a way that you can achieve your goals and help your productivity in the long term:
- Untangle your mind with a brain dump
- Plan & schedule your tasks
- Cultivate your morning routine
- Don’t neglect meal prepping
- Avoid any kind of distractions
- Utilise productivity tools
- Avoid perfectionism
- Forget about multitasking
- Do a weekly reset
Untangle Your Mind With A Brain Dump
Ok, as a first step, I like to have a brain dump on Sunday afternoons to know exactly what to do on Mondays and take the guesswork out of the beginning of the week.
Take a piece of paper and a pen and write down all the stuff that’s in your head: office work, food to buy at the grocery store, night-outs with friends, medical appointments…everything.
You can even include things you don’t want to do really.
The goal is to clear your mind and see it all visually.
Then you can start planning and scheduling each task; you can even eliminate certain activities from your agenda altogether.
Plan & Schedule Your Tasks
Now it’s time to neatly put all your tasks in your physical or digital agenda.
Decide what’s important and what’s not and don’t include anything that’s not going to enhance your life.
Schedule everything and give extra time for each task because sometimes we get too optimistic about the time allocated to each activity.
Additionally, define and schedule your daily non-negotiables, like your morning routine (more on that in the next step), family time, exercise, and a good night’s sleep.
Lastly, when planning your week, make sure to include the habits and activities that would be beneficial to your ‘Future You’, that is, things that will help you achieve your dreams and desires in the long term while having a good work-life balance in the present.
Cultivate Your Morning Routine
I cannot stress this enough.
Make time for your morning rituals!
The reason behind my obsession with morning routines is that they allow you to make better use of the first hours of the day instead of heading straight to the computer and feeling all stressed out, sleepy, and way too overwhelmed by the work ahead.
No, you don’t want to start your morning that way.
Instead, use these precious hours to make and cultivate the best morning routine to start off your day feeling productive and refreshed, ready for anything 💪
Skincare, meditation, reading…These are just a few of the activities that can go into the rituals of the early hours of the day.
If you want to cultivate these habits, make sure to check my blog post on how to make the most productive morning routine, summer edition.
Don’t Neglect Meal Prepping
We all need to eat and make time for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
In fact, the mere thought of me having to prepare food used to stress me out because I KNEW that I was going to spend lots of hours in the kitchen.
This, in turn, would affect my daily productivity.
So, imagine my anger.
I thought: ‘No one is paying me to cook!! Why do I have to spend so much time here??’
Pathetic.
But, girl, meal prepping was a total game-changer!
You spend only a few hours buying all the ingredients and cooking and then you have all the meals prepped for the rest of the week!
Imagine that’s lunchtime and all you have to do is head to the fridge, take the food out of it and eat it right from the container if too hungry LOL.
This is the magic of meal prepping for the week.
Check my best tips on how to meal prep to save time, money, and energy here.
So, yeah, I would definitely include meal prepping in my weekly tasks if I were you.
Avoid Any Kind Of Distractions
If you want to get things done, you don’t want anything or anyone to distract you.
Checking your phone for notifications, replying to WhatsApp messages, and scrolling through social media is just a way for your brain to increase dopamine and make you feel good.
Unfortunately, this boils down to just one thing: procrastination.
You can even fall into the trap of ‘productive procrastination‘, which is working and feeling busy but knowing that you are just postponing valuable tasks.
I’ve been a victim of productive procrastination so many times; in fact, when I have to work on something important, I procrastinate by doing a short cleaning session or replying to emails.
So the lesson is the following: turn off notifications, block websites or apps that distract you, and tackle your biggest priority first.
Additionally, don’t forget to declutter your desk AND the whole office, because the physical chaos won’t let you focus for long either.
Utilise Productivity Tools
I love to use productivity tools because I can’t depend on my mind to remember all the stuff I have to do or my off-the-cuff ideas.
If you have goals, projects, meetings, habits you want to track and the like, you definitely need tools to help you stay organized and accountable.
My favorite productivity tools are Notion, Canva, Google Calendar, and Hybrid Stopwatch & Timer.
I use it to set my goals, make to-do lists, track my habits, track my progress, and write down notes and ideas. Check Notion here.
- Canva
I use it to design mood boards and Pinterest pins. You can use it to do any piece of digital design with its convenient ready-made templates (they have templates for PPT presentations, to-do lists, grocery shopping lists, social media posts, and pretty much anything you can think of).
- Google Calendar
Here I time-block my priorities and schedule my weekly activities and appointments.
- Hybrid Stopwatch & Timer
I use it to work in bursts and feel the pressure of completing a task within a given deadline. That way, I commit to it 100% and earn my well-deserved break after completing it. In fact, tasks take longer to be completed if I don’t use a timer! There are thousands of timers to choose from out there but this is the simplest one. The simpler, the better.
Avoid Perfectionism
‘Perfectionism is the art of never being satisfied‘.
This is an old saying that has helped me accomplish more of my weekly goals instead of trying to complete my tasks with no flaws.
Let’s be real: you could tweak and make adjustments to your projects forever!
But this only causes us to get stuck, which in turn hinders our progress and harms our productivity.
It’s ok to strive to be excellent, but, if the desire of doing things perfectly will end up in procrastination, you need to forget about it and keep going.
It happens the same with dreams and projects you haven’t started yet.
If you wait for the perfect moment to start working on them, you’ll never do it.
So, accept that perfection does not exist, forget about fussing over every single detail, and complete your tasks as soon as possible to get real results.
Forget About Multitasking
Multitasking makes you feel busy.
It feels great.
Surprisingly, it’s one of the worst ways of tackling your weekly tasks.
Why?
Because it makes your brain struggle and split your attention while switching between tasks.
Instead, tackle one task at a time with laser-sharp focus.
This will help you concentrate, complete work faster, and ultimately boost your overall performance.
So, the next time you feel the urge to make one hundred things at the same time, remember that multitasking is a productivity killer that slows you down!
Do A Weekly Reset
At the end of the week, take some paper and a pen and write down how your week went.
How many goals have you accomplished?
Are your systems in place effective?
What can be improved?
Doing a short weekly reset allows you to reflect and make a self-assessment to evaluate your progress and make improvements to your systems and habits.
It will also help you become aware of the things that are not working to change them or eliminate them altogether.
Add this habit to your life and you’ll see how you become more and more efficient each week.
How Can I Motivate Myself For The Week?
Engrave this in your mind: MOTIVATION SUCKS.
Some days you’ll feel motivated and other days you won’t.
What you need is to develop your discipline to do things even when you don’t feel like it.
That’s how you make progress while others feel sluggish and procrastinate.
Now, there’re certain things you can do to prepare for the week and feel more energetic.
This highly depends on your personality and preferences, but, for starters, you can:
- Write down the exciting things you’ll do and accomplish in the upcoming week.
- Get enough sleep.
- Plan personal growth activities you’ll do during the week.
- Give yourself time to have fun and take breaks to replenish your energy.
- Treat yourself.
- Imagine the reward of completing all your weekly tasks and the progress you’ll make.
- Build a positive mindset with affirmations.
- Meditate to clear your mind and reduce anxiety.
Final Thoughts On How To Have A Productive Week
Did you like these tips on how to have a productive week?
There’re thousand of recommendations to boost your weekly productivity, but what’s important here is to decide what works best for you and implement new habits and systems into your life.
Now it’s time to take action!
Strive to focus on one priority at a time, with no distractions, and make adjustments to your weekly schedule and tasks to better suit your lifestyle.
Being flexible with your daily tasks will help you avoid burnout and being too harsh on yourself if you don’t get to do all the things on your to-do list.
And remember: your level of productivity does not define your self-worth.
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