How to Use a Weekly Planner
A week seems like a very sensible chunk of time to plan out. Trying to plan out every day might be a bit much, unless you’re very busy, and months are a bit awkwardly squishy, changing length, and moving around to different days all the time. A week is long enough to get plenty done, and short enough to feel pretty close and manageable.
Do you need a weekly planner?
If you live in the woods and forage for your food, probably not. Actually, that sounds kind of appealing right now. For the rest of us, we probably have things we need to get done, places we need to be, and appointments to remember. And a simple planner with a week at a glance could be a big help.
Should it be on paper, or on your phone?
That’s debatable, and both have their advantages. Your phone is probably always with you. It can share a calendar with other people, for work or family planning. And it probably syncs the calendar to your computer too. So we’re really not knocking the idea. If you do go for paper, you may well want to keep using the calendar in your phone or computer too.
But a paper planner does have some advantages.
- Working with pen or pencil on paper is more freeform, you’re not limited to text (and emoji) entries, and you can add connections between things.
- It can be easier to see the whole week at once on paper, there’s no scrolling, which can hide things just out of view.
- If you love your pens and pencils (you’re in the right place!) it’s a nice excuse to use them regularly.
- There have been studies that have shown we retain information better when we’ve handwritten it on paper.
- There’s no temptation to leave the planning for now and play a bit of your favourite game. Your planner is one of the few mobile devices that can’t run Stardew Valley. But it can keep your notes on what you need to grow next season to fix up the Community Centre.
- You don’t have to worry about draining the battery while you sit and think.
- Your paper planner won’t interrupt you with a steady stream of notifications when you’re trying to think for a moment.
How should you use a weekly planner?
Well, part of the appeal of a paper-based planner is that you can use it however you want to, in a way that works for you. But some good ideas include:
- Set up each week at the end of the week before, copying any major appointments over from your phone/computer calendar.
- Update it during the week, but keep it handy for easy checking as you work.
- Check each morning to see what the day holds.
- At the end of each day, add any notes for tomorrow that you don’t want to forget.
- If you have a fairly long to-do list, you probably don’t want to duplicate that onto each day, but consider adding one to three items you really are going to get done on that day.
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As part of a ’Traveler’s Notebook’ based Bullet Journal system. While Ryder Carroll mainly recommends using monthly and daily logs, and skipping weekly planning, he does also mention it as an option for those it makes more sense to. A pre-printed, either dated or undated, weekly planner could form part of your bullet journal setup. It’s probably most practical if it’s alongside at least one other notebook in a cover, saving you some time in drawing out weekly layouts, and maybe keeping your daily logs in another separate book to avoid too much rewriting.
The important thing is to do what works for you. One of the main advantages of paper-based planners is that you’re not constrained by what someone else thought you might need, you’re free to use it in whatever way you choose.
What sort of weekly planner should you use?
Again, it’s very much up to you, but consider how you want to use it, and how you want to carry it too. A planner that’s too big to take with you will be of limited use.
- If you’re not sure you’ll want to use a planner every week, an undated planner can be a great idea - the weekly layouts are done for you, so you can just add dates when you need to use them, and you’re not worrying about wasting pages when you don’t need them.
- On the other hand, if you are going to use it every week, having the actual dates already marked in for you will save you time setting it up.
- If you need a bit of freeform space too, there are planners with a week marked out on one page, and just space for notes on the facing page.
- If you’re likely to use more freeform space than one page a week, though, you might want to keep a separate notebook alongside the planner. A matching size and style might be nice, but it’s also worth considering Traveler’s Notebooks, where you can have more than one notebook in a nice leather cover.
- In terms of size, you probably want your planner to be as big as it can be, but small enough that you can take it with you wherever you might want it. The luxury of lots of space is great, but not if it’s on your desk at home just when you need to add a note or check an appointment. And you can probably get away with a smaller planner if you’re keeping a separate to-do list, and still using a computer/phone-based calendar too.
Pen or Pencil?
There’s a lot to be said for using a pencil in a planner, as it can be easily erased when you need to, but is very permanent if you don’t erase it. But if you enjoy using a particular pen or pencil, go for it. Using a tool you enjoy will make you more likely to want to actually use your planner, which is important.
You can always, of course, use both - pencil-in things that aren’t certain, use pen for things that you know won’t change, or for recording things when they’re done.