Utility of Regular Planning Sessions
We all have goals that we hope to achieve but doesn’t it feel like there is never any time to get to them? Wouldn’t it be great or even life-changing to achieve even one of those goals? Regular planning sessions are the keys to achieving your goals!
What are planning sessions?
A planning session is a dedicated “thinking time“; it is a time of focusing your thoughts and ideas, planning how to go about them and also a time for reflection.
As I alluded to in the last post, I use regular planning sessions with Google Calendar. I was inspired by Ali Abdaal’s video on productivity and have been using planning sessions since November 2020. They help keep me oriented and free up my mind to think about what I am currently doing.
I have my planning sessions every week, usually on one of the weekends (depending on my work schedule) and they usually last between 1-1.5 hours. However, you can plan how often your planning sessions will be, but the key is to be routine.
What happens during a planning session?
I find a quiet place in my house and open up Google Calendar on my laptop. My weekly planning session (WPS) consists of 3 stages:
Scheduling
Planning and clarifying
Reflection and free thought
Stage 1: Scheduling
The start of my WPS is inputting the mandatory time-blocks items first, which are my work shifts for the next two weeks. Everything else will revolve around the spare time remaining.
I next schedule the next few WPS into my calendar. I do this so that I don’t forget to schedule my next WPS after putting all my ideas into my calendar.
I then look at the current month and the next month on my calendar to see if there are any important things/deadlines that may be creeping up. I take note and readjust as necessary.
I then open Google Keep, which is where I dump all my thoughts, ideas and other notes that I have accumulated throughout the week. I then go through each of the items and schedule them into my calendar.
Throughout the week, I record any interesting ideas, important or nagging items that suddenly come up on my notes app. I immediately dump all my thoughts and worries into it so that my mind is free knowing that I will review and schedule them later during the upcoming WPS. This allows me to be completely focused on the thing I’m currently doing instead of thinking about them at inappropriate times.
Back to scheduling, I also put in dates for important things into my calendar. Things like expiry dates for my driver’s license, car, passport etc. non-urgent but important things that may come up in the future that I may forget about. I also set reminders a week or a few weeks prior to each of these so that I have ample time to act.
I also set times where I can relax and do some of my hobbies. This lets me know that I have something to look forward since I have already scheduled in relaxation time into my schedule.
Stage 2: Planning and clarifying
I then think about how I will go about each scheduled item so that they can be done. In essence, I am converting vague intangible ideas into clear tangible goals. Doing this allows me to have clear steps to achieving my goals so I know whether I am making progress or not.
Stage 3: Reflection and free thought
Afterwards, I reflect on the week, see what wasn’t done and decide whether to reschedule or delete them. I also think and plan for the future, what I want to achieve six months from now or even longer and plan what I need to do now to begin making progress.
Lastly, I just have a “free thought“ session where I allow my mind to wander, think about any interesting ideas or anything like that. If anything is particularly interesting, I go back to stage 1 and repeat. That’s it!
Why bother with planning sessions?
As I mentioned earlier, planning sessions allow you to have control over your time and hence makes your life easier. Yes, it takes time and effort to maintain regular planning sessions but it’s worth it to live a better life. I initially had trouble bringing myself to have WPS but over time, I got used it and now I look forward to them, because it gives me a chance to take control over my time. Think about it: You invest one block of time doing critical, meticulous thinking to better yourself and make life easier instead of randomly thinking about “ought to get start“ on something, without making much progress.
At the end of a WPS, I can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that things have been accounted for and I can calmly go about my week. The analogy I think of is that I am “strolling“ through my day, appreciating the things I’m doing at a leisurely pace rather than “sprinting“ through my day, just trying to meet deadlines.
Sure, you may miss a planning session because life gets in the way, I get it, but the consolation is that your previous planning session has got you covered since you’ve accounted for the most important things in your schedule. So you aren’t losing out on much and it’s still probably something minor that can be easily rescheduled to another WPS.
Final thoughts
Thanks for making it this far. I know that this was a long post but productivity is a topic that is very near and dear to me (as you can tell by the long post). I hope this post was helpful to you and inspires you to be more proactive about your time. They’ll be more posts on productivity and other stuff coming out in the near future.
Until then, kuwa salama na kukuona karibuni hivi! (be safe and see you soon!)
