Twenty minutes on Sunday, and the week holds together

The “Sunday planning session” you see people talk about — three hours, colour-coding, a big board — isn’t just long: it’s fragile. A plan that detailed doesn’t survive the first hiccup, and the feeling of failure sets in by Tuesday.

A useful weekly check-in takes twenty minutes and answers five questions.

1. What’s coming up this week?

Look at the days, not the tasks. Appointments, journeys, evenings already spoken for, the day you get home late. That’s the skeleton of the week, and it shapes everything else: a week with three evenings booked doesn’t have the same capacity as an empty one.

2. What has a real deadline?

A bill, a registration, a gift that needs ordering in time for delivery. These get a date straight away, and a reminder if the timing matters. They’re the ones that hurt when you discover them too late.

3. What’s been sitting there for three weeks?

Reread the lines that never move and decide, for each one: either you break it down into a doable first step and give it a day, or you delete it. The third option — leaving it another week — is the one that damages the list, because it fills it with dead things.

4. What am I not going to do?

The most useful question, and the one asked least often. Deciding in advance what won’t happen this week is far more comfortable than finding out on Friday evening. It’s also what lets you tell other people in time.

5. Is there any room left?

Roughly add up the time everything you’ve scheduled will take, and compare it with the time you actually have. The week never fits on the first try. Cutting things now is a decision; cutting them on Wednesday evening is giving up.

The trap: doing instead of looking

The check-in always overruns for the same reason — you start dealing with tasks instead of looking at them. An email you “quickly” write, a form you fill in, and twenty minutes becomes two hours.

Keep a strict rule: during the check-in, don’t do anything that takes more than two minutes. Everything else gets written down, and gets done during the week — in its own place.

Common questions