There are those of us who love daily planners, and there are those of us who love weekly planners, and then there are those of us who are a little nuts and love having several planners simultaneously, because each of them unlocks a unique kind of value as we go through our lives. Here at The Lucubrators, the latter kind of love reigns supreme: daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and one-off planners are used all at the same time. It’s pretty great. However, the daily planner has been getting a little more love than the rest recently, and thus, it’s time to balance it out with a new and improved weekly!
This weekly planner template worksheet breaks tradition a little bit by focusing on what you don’t do. It’s a normalizer of not being quite productive. Because it’s human to put things off and take longer than we think to get things done (have you heard of the planning fallacy? Thanks as always, Kahneman & Tversky for your cheeky thoughts!), and it’s about time we stopped beating ourselves up for it.
Here’s how it works: at the beginning of the week, write down all the tasks you’d like to accomplish. Then, instead of bubbling in when you do get that task done in the corresponding day of the week, bubble in when you don’t work on it. Make heavy marks to visually represent when you aren’t able to get something done.
Why would you want to do that? For one, you’ll start to notice right away what kinds of tasks you procrastinate on more than others. This insight empowers you to dig in deeper with those types of tasks, and potentially give yourself more time to complete them. In addition, you’ll have a more realistic understanding of how long it takes you to get things done, so you can both communicate more realistic expectations to other people who are counting on you, and also stop assuming that there’s something wrong with you when it happens. And finally, maybe, hopefully, you’ll get used to the idea that we’re not meant to be productivity machines immediately jumping on every task on our list. Things take time. It’s ok. They’re meant to.
And, of course, this planner has all the usual stuff as well—day-of-week spaces for writing down events and deadlines, space for notes, a way to focus in on a theme and what you’re looking forward to, and clean clean lines to calm your mind.
A note on printing: for your convenience, this download is available in two sizes—letter (8.5″×11″) and legal (8.5″×14″). If you have access to a printer that can print on legal-sized paper, that file will give you a little more room to write in. It also has space for more tasks (24, compared to 18 in the letter-sized version).
The worksheet is available for free, although a small contribution to help cover the time we spend designing and developing these materials would be very appreciated!
- Please select an option below to download.
- If you choose the free option, our download manager will ask you to add the item to a cart, but don’t worry! You will not be charged to download it.
- If you choose to contribute, you will be directed to payment through PayPal, to an account that ends with @2lch.com—please don’t worry that it doesn’t say @thelucubrators.com, 2LCH is the design and development company that sponsors these worksheets!
- If you download the worksheet for free, and end up really liking it, feel free to come back again to re-download it with a contribution.