An experiment in planning

I’ve been experimenting with doing some more structured planning of my working week recently.

For quite a while now I’ve been rather a fan of not bothering with planning, or to-do lists (apart from my one-thing to-do list), but recently the amount of work I’m doing, in terms of the projects I have on the go, has begun to feel a little overwhelming and I’ve been wondering if some more structured planning might be a help.

Inspired by a friend

I was inspired to try planning a little more by a good friend, someone who also struggles with limited energy, who has had a lot of success with planning her weeks in advance.

My friend told me that she makes a list of everything she needs and wants to do in the week and then separates them across the week. She doesn’t just include work, but also socialising and the day-to-day chores that she needs to get done to keep life ticking over.

My own love/hate relationship with planning

I’ve tried to plan my days in the past. I always enjoy the feeling of being in control that seeing a written out plan gives me, but find that I tend to over-estimate how much I can do and so end up not able to keep up or overdo things to try and keep up. This time I’ve been trying to curb that tendency by combining my planning with my one-thing to-do list.

My experiment

My plan then, runs form Monday to Friday (I take weekends off!) and is based around the I things plan to do each week for Sustainably Creative. Each day has one “project” and I focus on that and only that (I do also include some other daily things like checking email, recording the One Thing Today Podcast and chatting a little on Twitter but try to keep these contained as much as possible each day).

• Mondays are for writing blog posts.
• Tuesdays and Thursdays are for working on my current project (that’s the Get Sustainably Creative for 2012 course at the moment)
• Wednesdays are for working on my A Sustainable Life digital postcard
• and Fridays are for writing either my Sustaining My Creativity letter or The Important Work Letter (these come out on alternative weeks)

Scheduling work in advance

What I do like about the plan is that it allows for a lot of work to be written and scheduled ahead of time (if I can stick to the plan!).

It does feel wonderful to have a couple of blog posts written and scheduled to be published, or a Sustaining My Creativity letter to be written and waiting to go out to members. The work load is no different, but it feels very different from writing something up to a deadline and then immediately sending it out.

There is a lot more room for feeling satisfaction at something achieved when it’s finished ahead of time! I like that feeling.

A work in progress

This is very much a work in progress. I shall be talking about how things are going in the One Thing Today Podcast and will post more here too. Wish me luck!