How a ten-minute planning ritual will save you hours each week

In the knowledge economy, productivity is not about putting in the hours and getting more work done, but about accomplishing our goals.

Implementation intentions are amongst the most well-researched and effective planning approaches to do precisely that. They work exceptionally well to accomplish complicated and ambiguous tasks, which are usually the most challenging to make time for – especially when we’re busy with meetings and other collaborative work.

If we merely plan each day as it arrives, we seldomly manage to put in the focused, deep work required to complete complicated and ambiguous tasks. Conversely, using implementation intentions – deciding in advance on what we’re going to focus on, and when we’re going to do so – allows us to be more deliberate with our limited energy, attention and time.

Having a weekly planning ritual is the first step toward doing that. Spending ten minutes planning out our week not only helps us accomplish our goals. It also lets us do so with significantly less stress and time.

Why? It provides us with a bird’s eye view of the week, which has three major advantages. First, we get an overview of our essential collaborative tasks (notably meetings) and the time needed for preparing them. Second, it lets us set aside sufficient focused time for working on things that take longer than a day to accomplish. Third, if need be, it enables us to opt out of non-essential collaborative tasks (again, notably meetings) at the week's outset.

To create such a ritual, block ten minutes around the start of your week. I usually do so either on Sunday evening or first thing on Monday morning. During your planning ritual, go through the following three steps. 

First, mentally fast-forward to the end of your week, and come up with three things that you want to have accomplished by then. Our brains are wired to think in threes, so that number is easy to keep in mind. As a result, you’ll be able to effortlessly come back to these goals – even during busy weeks.

Second, after writing down the three things you want to accomplish, estimate how much focused time you will need to get there. Then, based on that estimation, look at your calendar and develop a plan for including sufficient focused time during the upcoming days.

Third, consider canceling or rescheduling some of the non-essential collaborative tasks that week to make time for accomplishing your three goals. Also, schedule 10 minutes at the beginning of each morning for systematically reconciling focused and collaborative work in your daily planning. I’ll turn to that in next week’s post.

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Until next week,Christian