Fridays are one of my favourite days of the week. Most weeks, I try to finish up early so I can spend my afternoon planning and prepping for next week. Sometimes, I’ll work out of the house in the morning before returning home to plan. Can you tell that I love (and live) to plan? Here’s a closer look at my Friday planning routine.
DIGITAL DECLUTTER
This is where I move all my photos to my external hard drive as well as downloads/documents from my laptop. By doing this every week, it frees up so much space on my phone and laptop. You wouldn’t believe how much rubbish you screenshot and download. However, I save my massive external hard drive organisation routine for my monthly reset.
INBOX ZERO
Think about it, coming to an organised inbox on Monday morning and only having to deal with emails from the weekend. Bliss, right? Get into the habit of sorting out your emails every evening and having a proper sort-out on a Friday afternoon. I cannot deal with a disorganised inbox, my folders look so pretty in the sidebar!
WEEKLY REVIEW
Before I start thinking about next week, I like to quickly review the week. It’s not something I spend hours on, it literally just takes me 15 minutes max! All I do is jot down my wins for the week, any challenges I faced, and my goals for next week. Sometimes, I’ll also jot down any habits that I want to focus on for next week.
WRITE NEXT WEEK’S TO-DO LIST
Before sitting down to plan my week, I like to have a bit of a brainstorm. Usually, I just make a list of general tasks I need and then want to get done. I’ll try to think of every category (blog, business, clients, health/fitness, appointments, fun, entertainment, etc) and just write everything in a long list!
PLAN NEXT WEEK
Firstly, I’ll assign those above tasks a day before inputting them into Asana. I love that I can set myself a deadline and see everything in one place (and colour-coded). Then, I time block the week on Google Calendar. Some tasks will already be in there, such as my resets/routines, appointments, meetings, sports fixtures, and social plans. Usually, I time block Monday to Friday but currently, I’m trialling a few different ways of time blocking until I find the right one for me.
CHECK BUDGET
One thing I’m big on keeping up-to-date is my personal finances. I track every penny that comes in and goes out of my accounts so updating it weekly has become part of my routine. I sort my spending into categories too so I can see where I’m under- or overspending. Seriously, if you’re crap with money, look at what you’re spending every single day and track it in a spreadsheet.
CONTENT PLANNING
This is a new introduction to my Friday planning routine. I open up my content calendar in Notion and start drafting/scheduling next week’s blog posts and social media posts. Sometimes, I’ve already got things scheduled two weeks in advance. Other times, I have a week’s worth of content to get started over the weekend. I’m not saying I can get multiple posts churned out in a couple of hours but as long as I get started, I’m happy with that.
MEAL PLAN + SHOPPING LIST
We go food shopping on a Saturday morning so on a Friday, I like to create my meal plan before writing up my shopping list. I meal plan first so I can use mostly what we have already in the house. Meal planning after I’ve planned my week means I can see if I’m eating out or if I have more time on one day to cook a larger meal and have leftovers the day after. My shopping list is similar week on week but it’s nice still to jot everything down!
BULLET JOURNALLING
When all of my digital planning is done, I sit down to fill out my bullet journal. I’ll track any habits I wanted to, fill out my entertainment trackers, and make my planning a little prettier! I’m not massively creative so my bullet journal is VERY minimalistic. It’s also a nice task to finish off, ready for the weekend!
As you can see, there are numerous steps to my Friday planning routine. However, it’s really not that complicated and it’s something I’ve worked on since last year. I love doing it all in one go before closing the door to my home office for the weekend! You could tie it into your weekly reset instead though.
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