“The weeks are melting by!” I’ve heard and used this phrase countless times. It’s an odd feeling to look at the calendar and realize it’s already June! Generally speaking, I’ve found that when I feel this way, it’s because I’m unsure of what I’ve accomplished in the past while. Sometimes we are so caught up in our day-to-day activities that when we take a step back and reflect, we start to question why we’re doing what we’re doing in the first place.

In this article, I’m going to focus on how you can work on things that are important to you and how weekly planning will create a richer life experience.

Find Your Why

Find your why

Before jumping into your week, you should take some time to think about your long term plan (10 years, 25 years). The farther in the future you think the better. Having a bird’s eye view of your life goals and setting your vision will help you determine on a daily basis what’s important and what’s not important in your life.

The Beautiful Details

Breaking it Down

After setting your broader life goals, you should have an idea of what you would like to accomplish this year. Working backwards and breaking down the yearly objective into monthly tasks can be taken a step further to determine your weekly goals.

Figure 1 – Breaking down yearly goals into Weekly Goals

Figure 2 – How weekly goals fit into your yearly goals

As you can see in Figure 1 and figure 2, attempting to attack the goal of the year head on will be overwhelming and there’s a high chance of not achieving your goal. Instead by breaking it down into smaller pieces, you will be able to attack it on a daily basis and by the end of the year, you’ll be surprised by how much you’ve accomplished!

Consider this example:

John wants to run a marathon (~26 miles) by the end of the year. John understands that even though he’s physically fit, he’s never ran a marathon before and it would be extremely difficult to try run it without practice. What does John do?

John starts off by running 1 mile a day for the first week. He realizes that he can incrementally work towards running a marathon. So John drafts up the plan below:

Table 1 – John’s plan to run a marathon

As you can see from the table above, John has created a simple, easy to follow plan for him to gradually increase his fitness to the point where he can run a marathon. This method of chiseling down larger goals into smaller objectives will give you a greater sense of accomplishment when you achieve them. Happy chiseling!