Days habit missed: Hardly any

Ease of doing daily: Easy

Equipment required: Template, OneNote (or your preferred, easily accessible electronic format)

Is it something I’ll continue? Yes

 

In my eternal quest to get organised and have more time to spend on the fun stuff in life (or any time to spend on the fun stuff in life), I started completing a weekly plan late last year, that has really become my bible for making sure I know what needs to happen when.

Over the year the info I put into the plan has changed slightly (Pops has her own column now she’s at school so I know what activities she has on when!), but overall I’m pretty religious about filling this in on a weekly basis. I don’t necessarily sit down on a Thursday evening (the week starts on Friday from a planning perspective for long and boring reasons) and fill it all out for the week ahead, it’s more a question of updating it as I go along. For example, the night I do my (now weekly) food shop, I’ll go through and plan all the meals for the upcoming week. As the girls get a party invite, in it goes.

My aim was to look at the plan every evening so that I could see what’s coming up tomorrow and get necessary equipment ready/food out of the freezer etc. The reality is I actually look at it several times in an average day – I’m not a slave to it, but it is a useful aide memoir and does at least help me feel in control.

If you’re going to do something similar I’d say keep it simple – although I have a lot of info on it, the format is pretty easy. Be prepared to be flexible and look at it often. Finally, have it somewhere accessible – if you can only get to it on one machine, or it’s in a notepad you don’t carry round with you, it’ll be much less useful.

So that’s the last of my healthy habits reviewed, I’ll do a round up at the end of the month as to my experiences of this personal project and what’s next.