Transition to Your Weekend Better Using Weekly Wrap-ups
As you focus on Becoming the CEO of You it is important to embrace The Freeing Power of Routines to help you reduce stress, decision fatigue, and improve your productivity. Yesterday we focused on Creating Powerful Mornings and tomorrow will drive into nightly routines. Today, it is all about weekly wrap-ups. Weekly wrap-ups are a great way to bring your workweek to a close in a way that clears your mind and sets you up for success for your next week.
Now that many of us are working remotely we are finding that we feel like we are living at work. We are also finding that we are experiencing higher degrees of stress, lack of focus, and increased distraction. Our current reality is also increasing our feelings of loneliness and isolation. Developing routines that help mitigate these feelings isn’t a nice to have, it is critical for your mental health. 20% of people who are working remotely have said their biggest struggle is loneliness and another 20% said concerns about communication and collaboration.
Below is what I do during my weekly wrap-up which takes me about an hour and a half to do as I also include time to learn in my wrap up. While you might be tempted to cut learning from the list, I would recommend protecting this time as it will serve you far better than some of the other tasks. I also have embedded opportunities to reach out and connect with others. Pre-COVID this typically included going to get coffee or grabbing lunch with someone.
Here are some ideas to get you started on creating your weekly wrap up:
Recognize colleagues who’ve achieved goals or did a good job. I am a firm believer that recognition benefits the giver as much as the receiver if not more.
Clean up email. Some people are believers in “inbox zero” where you have a 100% clean inbox before starting the next week. I personally don’t do this as I have my emails set up so that they automatically go into folders and get color-coded. By adopting a system that is a hybrid of Getting Things Done and others, my clean up at the end of the week is looking at anything new that has come in that day as well as flagged or follow-ups that I’ve set. Remember, you do you — focus on what you need to feel at peace.
Review your to-do list for the week and flag items that are outstanding. I do this after my email clean up as it gives me the ability to add any email to-dos into my weekly to-do list.
Review your goals. This is a great time to reflect on your goals asking yourself:
- How well did I do at moving my goals forward?
- Were there days that I didn’t work on my goals?
- Were there barriers that prevented me from making progress?
- What am I proud of that I did this week?
- Are there any adjustments that I need to make? For example, adding new tasks, adjusting dates, removing items that are no longer serving me or my goals.
Perform a brain dump. By this time, my mind is running with all the other items that I need and/or want to do. I take my bullet journal, open to a new page, and spend 10 minutes writing down everything that comes to mind, no matter how big or small. This further clears your head.
Review your schedule for the coming week. Some weeks are more intense or require more prep than others. Looking ahead to the following week enables to answer questions like:
- Are there any big events next week?
- How much time am I going to have to cook meals?
- Do I need to adjust when we have dinner due to sports or other events?
- Are there cards that I need to send out for birthdays, anniversaries, etc.?
- Are there appointments that need to be adjusted?
- Do those appointments have travel time built-in?
Set your intentions for the following week. Remember, you are working on becoming the CEO of you. Don’t for one second let the endless list of to-do items get in the way of your dreams. Identify what your priority actions are for the following week and then revisit next week’s schedule again. Are there items that you can take off the list to help you focus on your goals? Is there someone that can assist you or that you can delegate tasks to that would help you and build their skills?
Take time to learn. During a workweek, we are all learning so much. Take the time to reflect on what you learned — what aligns with your thinking, what will you change as a result of what you learned, and what do you have questions about. I take a bit of time to try and answer those questions, schedule an email to go out to someone I trust with my questions, or setup time with someone to discuss further.
Throughout the week, I also receive a number of industry newsletters, invites to calls, or recommendations from colleagues for books or articles to read. I typically take 30 minutes to go through newsletters and articles and for ones that I’ve found helpful and think would benefit someone else, I write a quick email and then schedule the email to be sent sometime the following week.
Clean your physical workspace. This is my last task of the week and a great way to transition to the weekend. As I typically clean my desk up at the end of every day, at the end of the week I focus on doing a more thorough cleaning. I am lucky enough to have a dedicated office space so I can clean up the space and then not touch it for the weekend. I wipe down flat surfaces, spray off my keyboard, clean monitor screens, go through papers, empty trash and recycle, and then vacuum the space. If you don’t have a dedicated office space, organize your items into a bag, container or storage container that you can easily move out of the way and then bring back out when you need it.
Install updates and close down your computer. With remote working has come increased security risks and issues. Make sure to take the time to install any updates needed before closing down your computer.
Say hello to the weekend. As I said in Creating Powerful Mornings, it is important to me that my routines also include rituals as these are actions I am taking every day. The last step of my weekly wrap-up is to write down at least 2–3 things that I am thankful for.
If you’re new here…
We are on a journey to helping you Become the CEO of You so that you can become the best version of yourself. Over the course of the month, we’ll cover knowing yourself, creating goals, adopting mindsets, embracing habits, and practicing self-care. You can find all the posts in our publication Living to Learn. You can also find my random musings on my personal page here.
