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Set your week up for success! Do these 7 things on a Sunday evening and have your most productive week EVER!
Instead of blearily opening one eye on a Monday morning and groaning at the thought of that mammoth to do list, overflowing inbox and messy desk, imagine starting the week ready and raring to go!
It’s often said that failing to plan is planning to fail. And one of the big reasons why we dread the start of the week, and end up being a whole lot less productive than we’d hoped, is because we don’t create a fool proof game plan to set ourselves up right for the week.
But the good news is, this is something that is really easyto fix! By spending just a short amount of time on a Sunday evening preppingfor the week ahead, you can totally transform your week: wake up bright eyedand bushy tailed on Monday morning, hit the ground running when you first sitdown at your desk and have a much more productive week as a result.
Sound good? Here’s what to do on Sunday evening to make yourweek WAY more productive!
1. Clear your inbox
If there’s one thing that is guaranteed to set your week upfor success and greater productivity it is getting on top of your emails. Anoverflowing, daunting inbox is a serious productivity zapper.
Better still, if you’ve dealt with your emails on a Sunday night, you are much less likely to be tempted to touch them on a Monday morning (NEVER EVER start the day by checking your emails – or you may never get anything else done that day!)
If you’ve got a really badly overflowing inbox, then I suggest the first course of action would be to read this post on how to sort out your overflowing inbox for good!
Once your inbox is basically under control, this Sundayevening slot is simply to ensure you keep on top of it and it never gets tothat totally awful stage again. Here’s what to do:
Delete
First, whizz through your emails and delete anything that canbe deleted without even reading it.
File
Second, file anything that can be filed without reading it. (Not got a great filing system? Read my post on how to sort out your overflowing inbox for good for tips on how to set one up.)
Action
Now whizz through the remaining emails and decide what to dowith them. Anything with an action that takes less than 3 minutes should beactioned then and there, then filed or deleted. Anything that has an actionthat will take longer than 3 minutes should be added to your to do list orcalendar.
Mark
Anything that absolutely HAS to stay in your inbox should beclearly marked so you know why it’s there. I use a combination of colour codingand flags in my inbox. I colour code anything that needs reading (to read whenI’ve got more time) blue, any videos to watch are colour coded yellow, andanything that can’t be actioned yet because I’m waiting for something is colouredorange. Anything that needs to be dealt with this week gets a flag (and alsogets written on my to do list or calendar).
READ MORE >>> 10 good email habits for greater productivity
2. Check your calendar
Make a habit of checking your calendar every Sunday evening so you know what is coming up and there are no sudden surprises. This will also help you plan your week better. There is no point in planning 5 activities to do on your blog on Thursday if it turns out you’ll be helping out on a school trip all day!
READ MORE >>> 24 Google Calendar hacks to boost your productivity
3. Plan your week
Next it’s time to plan your week. The golden rule here is onlyplan as much as you can actually fit into one week. It’s time to getruthless with your to do list!
If you are like most people, you will have a long andseemingly never-ending to do list. This is not a tool which is likely to helpyour productivity. In fact, it’s usually a document that increases your stresslevels and makes you less productive!
When faced with a long list of scary tasks, most people’sdefault reaction is to do only the things that are either super urgent or most enjoyable.As a result, most of the activities that will genuinely move your businessforward will be left languishing on the never-ending to do list, week in weekout.
A much more effective way of working is to write weekly anddaily to do lists…
Weekly to do list
Write your weekly to do list first. Look at that long never-ending list of tasks you have and choose only the tasks that absolutely have to be done this week (or the sky will fall in) and the tasks that will make the most impact on your blog/business.
Then decide when to do each task. Write next to each task MON, TUE, WED, THU or FRI. This is a great trick that really helps focus the mind. You can quickly see if you are expecting too much of yourself. Are you trying to plan too much into one week or one day? If so, what can you take out? What could be moved to next week?
By writing a weekly to do list, you will have a clear picture of what you plan to achieve in your week and what you don’t need to do this week. Better still, you will know what you have planned is achievable. Just doing this one small activity can, at a stroke, remove a great deal of stress AND guarantee a super productive week. But we can go one better…
Daily to do list
Now, using that weekly to do list, write a to do list forMonday. The important thing here is to only write what you’d like to achieve onMonday… and nothing more! Go through your list and make sure it’s achievable.If you have written down more activities than you have time for, allocate someactivities to another day in the week. A daily to do list should always beSHORT and ACHIEVABLE.
But writing a short, achievable to do list is not enough,you should also write down in what order you plan to do each activity. Thismeans you can hit the ground running on Monday. You won’t even have to think(and crucially, you won’t waste valuable time on Monday dithering anddeliberating over what to do next). Just turn to your to do list and dowhatever it says is number 1, then 2 and so on.
And when you number your to do list, decide on the order basedon what is most important. Make number 1 your most important task,followed by number 2 as your second most important task and so on. That way evenif you don’t complete everything on your to do list by the end of the day, youwill still have achieved the most important things.
At the end of Monday, write your to do list for Tuesday andso on.
READ MORE >>> How to write an effective to do list
READ MORE >>> Daily, weekly and monthly blogging to do lists
4. Do ONE TASK RIGHT NOW that will make a big difference
Want to get ahead of yourself BEFORE the week has even started? Look at your weekly to do list and pick one activity to do RIGHT NOW! Pick something you know will make a big difference. Maybe it’s something that has been niggling at you for ages, but you just haven’t got round to it. Maybe it’s something that you are likely to procrastinate about. Maybe it’s just the first task you planned to do on Monday morning. Whatever will make a BIG impact on your week, do it NOW!
5. Do life admin
One thing that always seems to derail our efforts to be moreproductive is LIFE ADMIN – be that doing the weekly online shop, ironing, fillingin a school form or sorting out your insurance.
Make it a habit to get a few of these small but importantlife admin jobs out of the way on a Sunday evening and it will make a bigdifference to the week ahead.
Make sure that any life admin jobs that can’t be done onSunday evening are added to one of your to do lists – either your weekly to dolist (if it needs to be done this week – and make sure you allocate it to aspecific day too) or your general to do list (if it doesn’t need to be done yet).
6. Tidy your work area
Whether you have a dedicated office, a desk in the corner ofyour bedroom or you work on the kitchen table… left unchecked your work area willstart to get messy. And the messier your desk, the less organised andproductive you will be. Spend a few minutes each Sunday evening tidying up abit.
Treat it a little like your emails: throw away anything thatis no longer needed, file anything that needs to be kept and action anythingthat will take 3 minutes or less to do. Make sure everything else is added to oneof your to do lists.
And just like email, you may find the first time you dothis, it takes a little longer as you have A LOT of clutter to get through, butonce you are in the habit of doing this every week, it should be a 5 minutejob.
7. Go to bed early
Anoldie but a goodie! Getting a good night’s sleep on Sunday night will make youmassively more productive on Monday morning.
Andby doing the previous 6 habits you should actually sleep BETTER! Imagine howwell you’d sleep on Sunday night, knowing your inbox was clean and tidy, youhad a bullet proof plan for the next week, you were on top of your life adminand you had a clean and tidy desk!
7 things to do on Sunday evening to make your week way moreproductive
I think you can appreciate that – doing these 7 things on aSunday evening, will make a dramatic impact to the rest of your week. The trickis to get into a regular habit of always doing those things… which is easiersaid than done! But hopefully, after you have experienced the incredible effectof getting on top of things on a Sunday evening, that will be motivationenough!
If you do struggle to motivate yourself to do this (I appreciate SEVEN things can seem a bit daunting), try instead to do at least one. Tell yourself you are just going to do one of these activities and see what happens. The most likely scenario is once you are at your desk and you’ve done one of these activities, you’ll be able to convince yourself to do a second one… maybe even a third. And hey, even if you only do one of these things on a Sunday evening, it’s still going to make a BIG difference to your week!
Of course, it doesn’t have to be a Sunday evening if thatdoesn’t fit into your schedule. It could be Friday evening, Saturday morning orSunday afternoon – whatever works for you (well, apart from going to bed early –that really only works well if it’s done on Sunday evening!).
Over to you!
I’d love to know how you get on if you try this… how much ofan impact did it have on your week?
Or are you already doing this… do you have any extra tips? I’dlove to hear them.
Let me know in the comments below!
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- 24 Google Calendar hacks to boost your productivity
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