It’s amazing to be living in an age when we have so many options available to us. Everything from clothes to education to toothpaste presents us with hundreds, if not thousands, of options.
But when you’re trying to lead a God-honoring life, optionality can be paralyzing.
Even when it comes to what to do today, often, the possibilities are dizzying. You may have your to-do list, your calendar, and your projects all neat and organized, but what should you do first?
This is where I have been greatly helped by keeping a weekly schedule. I’ve mentioned this in passing in two recent videos, but I thought I’d explain a little more about how it works for you here.
Now, by weekly schedule, I’m not talking about a list of appointments; that’s what my calendar is for. I mean a general plan for how I plan to divide up my time and attention on a normal week.
Here’s what my weekly schedule looks like:
That may be hard to read, but here are a couple points of interest:
- Every day has a theme (e.g., Tuesday, I write this newsletter, Wednesday, I record and edit videos)
- I’m giving time to every domain of stewardship (that’s what the color coding is indicating, time for family, work, health, etc.)
- I have a bedtime (If you’ve never seen your sleep schedule on paper, you may not realize how inconsistent it is)
Obviously, every week doesn’t go as planned. But having a definition of a “normal week” prevents you from coming to those paralyzing moments where you look at all you could be doing and ask yourself, “What should I do next?”
Just follow the schedule.
One of the nice features of the little Google sheet I made for this is that you can categorize how you spend your time, and it will automatically tally it up and give you a nice pie graph.
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The point of this isn’t to get you to make the pie perfectly even but to give you some visibility on where you might be spending too much or too little time.
If you’re interested, you can duplicate a blank version of my template here (it will prompt you to make a copy to your own Google Drive).
And if you want to go deeper on weekly planning and Christian productivity, check out Redeeming Productivity Academy.
