A new work week is in your face again whether you like it or not. As for me, in recent weeks, I have been trying to juggle up some couple of tasks with the focus of doing them all well without burning out because the journey is still far. So, I am in the roll of maximising each seconds and not miss out on my priorities. I shared this with a dear friend and she connected me to a virtual group of women who are focused on living life fully and balanced without leaving any priority behind. The insights I gleaned from this group made me realise that tasks can be grouped into urgent and important tasks, not urgent but important tasks, urgent but not important, not urgent and not important. The tip here is to manage urgent and important, focus on not urgent and important, avoid urgent but not important and limit not urgent not important. Here are some further tips that helps you to maximise the week, enjoy!

1) Map out your week: There is a need to intentionally schedule your priorities into weekly calendar. Don’t be too busy not to plan your activities because focusing on just living each day as it comes will make you burn out easily. For better productivity of your time and attention, shift from day-to-day planning to having your entire week mapped out. It saves you from confusion or that feeling that you have not done enough. No matter what your current situation may be, I’m sure that you can figure out a weekly framework that works well with your lifestyle. You actually do hope everything will fall into place, yes I am with you on hoping too but it’s time to do more than hoping or wishing, start by deliberately making the choice of how you spend your time. So, in order to maximise your week you’ll create a list of all the broad activity categories you envision for your perfect week (without ignoring the categories that are actually necessary). Prioritize this list according to what is most meaningful to you all the way down to what’s the least important in the grand scheme of things.

2) Prioritise your Priorities : Create space for the things that are important not necessarily urgent before you add anything else to your week’s plan. The only way to make room for the most meaningful things is to acknowledge their importance by planning time for them first. Your time is a finite resource so you have to spend it on paper before you spend it in reality. You can’t work harder to get more of it. You’re given exactly 168 hours per week, and it’s up to you to decide how you’ll spend those hours.
Budget your time for the activities that matter the most first, this doesn’t mean you have to spend majority of your time solely devoted to them. It does, however, mean that you need to spend the right amount of time with them. The amount of time that keeps you feeling happy, content, peaceful, and energized.

3) Be disciplined: Be discipline enough not to compromise your must-do activities. You might need to reconfigure the activities that don’t energize you or reduce the time you allocate to some less important things like idle chatting. More so, do you have to always bring work home every evening? It’s your call but being discipline will enhance your time sanity.

4) Thematised each day of the week : To enhance clarity, have a primary focus on what you mainly want to achieve each day of the week. It’s helpful to name a theme for each day of the week. That way you can have one primary focus each day, and fill in the remainder of your day with smaller or secondary tasks.

5) Be flexible: As much as it is good to map out your ideal week, endeavor to be flexible as you follow through with your plans. I am sure you know that the saying that ‘Life happens’ is true. However, don’t let circumstances control you always, maximise the choice of taking charge.