How to Plan Your Week

“You have a choice in life. You can either live on-purpose, according to a plan you’ve set. Or you can live by accident, reacting to the demands of others.” ~ Michael Hyatt

One of the things I love about cyclical living is the inherent variety of the different rhythms I can play with.

Some cycles, like my menstrual cycle or the seasons, have a biological driver. I can relax into a structure held in nature. Other cycles are entirely constructed and I get to shape them in exactly the way I choose.

Like the rhythm of my week.

The 7-day week has no roots in the natural world. A year marks one revolution of our planet around the Sun; the months (at least roughly) track the moon. How did we end up with a 7-day week?

It turns out we can thank the Babylonians who, 4000 years ago, believed there were seven planets in the solar system. The number seven was so significant that they planned their days around it. This planetary week spread to Egypt, Greece and to Rome, where it met the Jewish seven-day week (there is some speculation that the Jews adopted this after their exile in Babylon in the sixth century BCE). The Western calendar had fully embraced a seven-day week roughly 250BCE.

In the 19th century, as the industrial era took hold, a seven-day working week was common. A New England Mill was the first American factory to offer a five-day working week as late as 1908 and it quickly spread. And so the five-day work-week became the fundamental organising concept behind when work is done.

My Week

I still love having a weekend. Even though I no longer have a "job", it makes sense for me to take time off when many others do and I appreciate having two consecutive days out of "work mode". It allows me to drop into a deeper place of rest.

My week feels a little like this in terms of energy and focus.

To support that, I like to have an on-ramp and an off-ramp to my week - my own Spring and Autumn transitions - on Monday and Friday. Both days are meeting free to give me time to work on what's important to me and so I can transition between being and doing with a little more grace. Monday is my Content Day and Friday is dedicated to learning, mirroring the energies of Spring and Autumn. Tuesday-Thursday are my client-facing days; I'm in outwards, Summer, doing mode.

This is a rhythm that works for me. It's not the only option.

Alternative weekly rhythms

You might prefer to have a mid-week "self-care" day on a Wednesday to reset and recharge if you notice that you're crawling into the weekend; when I was doing my Masters degree, I used to take a mid-week day off after a long day of lectures and I would work a half-day on a Saturday instead. Maybe your work requires you to work over the traditional weekend and you take time off elsewhere in the week.

Principles

If this is the first time you are considering an intentional weekly rhythm, here are a few principles that might help guide you.

• Figure out the poles of rest and action - the Winter and Summer of your week. The seasons may feature more than once (like having a rest mid-week as well as at the weekend). From here, you can identify the transitions between them in your Spring and Autumn.

• Carve out some time every week away from calls and external demands. This is so useful for Quadrant Two activities.

• Consider grouping tasks for specific days.

• If you have a job or a life that doesn't give you as much flexibility as you'd like, start with your ideal week. How would you love your week to look? Now, what's 1% of that? Where can you make small changes that bring you a little bit closer to that ideal?

• Keep experimenting. There is no right answer and there will inevitably be weeks when your beautifully crafted plans go straight out the window. Notice how this feels; tune into your body as much as allowing your brain to pick the logical approach. Let's say you decide to experiment with something like Content Day on a Monday and you find yourself dreading Mondays in a whole new way, please listen to your own experience and play with another approach.

Let me know how this resonates for you. Do you have a rhythm to your week? Has anything about this idea inspired you to take action?