Daniel's Notes

How to Plan for a Productive Week | Christian Productivity

15 min read

Description

A guide to planning your week so you can better honor God with your productivity.

Download the ⁠ideal week Google sheet⁠. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pnlYElFiACbM1gCO7QqN3b8T9Qkz1V1cX7TQnCWDYjk/edit#gid=350339756

Download the ⁠morning routine planner⁠ https://redeemingproductivity.com/morning

Get the ⁠Optimize Your Week⁠ course. Get 38% off using the code “IDEALWEEK” at checkout. https://redeemingproductivity.com/product/optimize-your-week/

Join the ⁠⁠⁠Redeeming Productivity Academy⁠: https://redeemingproductivity.com/academy/

My Notes

Core Philosophy

  • Time management is actually “time stewardship” - viewing time as God’s gift
  • Christian productivity should incorporate prayer and supernatural elements
  • Having planners/tools alone won’t create change - proper implementation is key

Weekly Planning Process

1. pray for your week

  • 01:00

  • “If I woke up tomorrow morning and found that all that the Bible teaches concerning prayer and the Holy Spirit were removed what difference would it make in practice from the way we are functioning today?… The simple tragic fact is that in much of the Church… there would be no difference whatsoever. We function as though the supernatural were not there.” - Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality

  • Begin planning by asking for God’s help and wisdom

  • Focus on glorifying God and serving others

  • Keep prayer simple and direct, like a child asking for help

  • 02:21: Commit your plans to the LORD: Prov 16.3

    • Ask the LORD to help you pray

2. Define an Ideal Week

  • 02:51:
  • ⭐ If you don’t give yourself a schedule, then no one will.
  • Create template blocks for different activities:
    • Writing time
    • Priority projects
    • Administrative tasks
  • Assign themes to different days
  • Take responsibility for structuring your time
  • 04:24: Design the ideal week schedule.
    • This answers the question What should I be doing right now.
    • What are the Daily Themes for each day?
    • What are the Work Blocks for that day?

3. Schedule Priorities

  • 04:49
  • Distinguish between being busy and being productive
    • between hard work and productivity
  • Observation: A lot of times we feel Man, this was a really hard week.
    • This typically happens because you did a lot of things, but very few things that you should have done1
  • Map specific priority tasks to your predefined time blocks
  • Treat scheduled items as real appointments
  • View keeping commitments to yourself as a matter of integrity
    • Matt 5.37 But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ be ‘No.’ Whatever is more than these is of the evil one.
    • follow through on scheduled commitments

4. Implement Weekly Shutdown

  • 07:18:
  • ⭐: How you end your week is as important as how start it, and it sets you up for success.
  • Stop project work early on the last workday (around lunch)
    • Spend the rest of the day finishing this week and preparing for the next week.
  • 08:40 Shutdown routine includes:
    • Wrap up or properly pause ongoing projects
    • Leave clear “breadcrumbs” for unfinished work
    • Clean and organize workspace
    • Review upcoming week’s commitments
    • Give thanks to God for the completed week
      • Thank the LORD for your accomplishments and that you get to be alive another week.
      • Repent of your sins and shortcomings.
    • Close everything completely to enter weekend with clear mind
      • Say I’m done for the day

Practical Resources Mentioned

  • Ideal week planner (Google Sheet)
  • Morning routine planner guide
  • “Optimize Your Week” course
  • Redeeming Productivity Academy membership

Key Mindset Shifts

  • Freedom in scheduling can be paralyzing without structure
  • Advanced careers require more self-directed time management
  • Your integrity includes keeping commitments to yourself
  • Proper weekly shutdown enables true rest and renewal

Transcript

maybe you’ve come to a point in your life where you realize hey my life is out of whack my schedule is crazy and so what do you do you go and buy yourself a planner and you go through this cycle of buying planners using them for a week and then forgetting about them for the rest of the year well it doesn’t have to be that way I’m going to show you the exact process I use to plan my week to maximize my productivity and more importantly to make sure I’m stewarding my time well hey my name is Reagan Rose I talk about personal productivity from a Christian perspective and one of the most important parts of productivity is time management or as I prefer to call it time stewardship because after all it is not my time it’s God’s time so I just want to make sure I am using it well and while there are plenty of tools and planners and apps that you can use to manage your time what’s really most important is how you use them or at least that you use them and just buying a planner or downloading an app or a template that is not going to change your life so what I want to do here is show you exactly how I do this how I plan my week for maximum productivity pray for your week recently I was reading this book it’s called true spirituality and it’s by Francis schaer and there was a quote right at the end of the book that really really struck me he says this if I woke up tomorrow morning and found that all that the Bible teaches concerning prayer and the Holy Spirit were removed what difference would it make in practice from the way that I’m functioning today the simple tragic fact is that in much of the church there would be no difference whatsoever we function as though the supernatural were not there oh man that hit me like a ton of bricks there’s so many Christians out there who we’re trying to learn how do I get more done how do I maximize my time how do I be more productive but we’re learning it from secular sources and the tips and tricks they they’re helpful you know keeping a planner that’s great all these different ways to manage your time is wonderful but if we forget about the super natural power supply that we have we’re not truly planning like Christians we’re not doing productivity like Christians and I think very often we address our planning our time management even scheduling our week as though we don’t believe in the power of prayer and so if your goal is to glorify God with your week then your plan planning needs to begin with asking for his help in prayer commit your plans to the Lord and it doesn’t have to be fancy either just like a child asking his father for help you just start the week with Lord I want to please you this week I want to serve others uh in your name please just give me the wisdom give me the power give me the focus to glorify you this week Define an ideal week so do you remember back in school when your schedule was sort of set for you you didn’t have to think about when to go to class or when to do your homework or when to practice your sports it was just set for you you just have to show up and your parents kind of breathing down your neck say did you finish that yet did you do this you didn’t really need to manage your time and this happens even early in our careers too you have a boss you you punch in you kind of have someone watching over you all the time and so scheduling planning your week it’s not that important but as you get older your schedule sort of Falls more and more into your own power right in college there’s nobody breathing down your neck to remind you to study and as you advance in your career there’s fewer and fewer people telling you what to do and when this is why planning becomes necessary and this sounds really nice oh I have freedom in my schedule but Freedom can be paralyzing sometimes it’s a matter though of just recognizing if I don’t set the schedule no one else will it’s taking responsibility and a big part of leading a god-honoring life is taking responsibility for it you know being a good Steward of this life means having some agency you know to order your life in such a way that the right things get done when they need to get done you have to take responsibility for the week ahead how am I going to invest this time and one way I have found really helpful to stewarded my weeks better is to design an ideal week schedule an ideal week schedule simply tells me the following what are the themes for each day what are like the main thing I’m going to work on my work blocks right so I have a block for writing a block set aside for my priority projects and a block for administration admin to-do lists uh all that kind of stuff and having this document simply answers the question for me what should I be doing right now schedule your priorities there is a difference between hard work and productivity right it’s not the same thing you can work really really hard on something but not actually ever get something important done and if you’ve ever had this experience where you come away from a really hard week of work and you think to yourself man I am exhausted but I have no idea what I actually did this week well then you know what I mean and typically the reason you feel this way is because you know even though you did a lot you didn’t do what was most important you may have a huge stack of accomplished tasks but none of them were the stuff you should have been doing none of them really mattered they weren’t the priority and if you want to work on your priorities you have to plan for when you’re going to work on them so this is where you sort of put that ideal week schedule into action when you’re planning your week what you’re doing is you’re picking what are the priorities for this week and you’re just plugging them into the corresponding block of time you set for yourself this is my priority project I’m going to work on this on Monday from this time to this time but mapping your Tas asks to a set schedule you enable yourself to get the most important stuff done now and I know the objections to this is a lot of people say yeah I’m going to create this schedule I’m going to say I’m going to do this on that date but then I’m not actually going to do it well let me try to help you with some mindset here you have to treat your schedule like an appointment as if there were someone else there you don’t just ghost someone for coffee when you had an appointment to do it why are you ghosting yourself and it was Jesus who said let your yes be yes and your no be no and he was making the point there about not making OES right like I swear I will do this instead he was saying be a person of your word don’t make an oath because you’re somebody who simply does what they say they’re going to do you have integrity even with commitments that I’ve made to myself I want to be the kind of person that when I say I’m working on this on Wednesday at this time I am actually going to do it I want to see keeping appointments with myself S as an issue of Integrity as an issue of being a person of my word if you think about it that way it adds weight to it it it it lets you know hey I don’t have the option of just wiggling out of this stuff and changing it because it’s just me because it’s not just you I don’t want to train myself to be a person who doesn’t follow through on what I said I was going to do even if the only person I said it to was myself the weekly shutdown how you end your week is as important as how you begin it and it sets you up for the success in the next week as well so I used to work right up to the buzzer on Friday afternoons I would try to squeeze in the last little bit of productivity right before the Clock Struck 5 and whatever I didn’t finish well I’ll deal with that next week and so what happened was I’d be stopping in the middle of projects stopping in the middle of tasks and just leave a mess for myself the next week and when I would roll in to look at what I had left off the next week or sometimes weeks later I would have no idea where to pick it up because I didn’t shut it down I didn’t close out what I was doing and I had a bunch of just half finished half done things and I couldn’t remember where I started or what I should do next on them what I’ve learned to do instead is practice a weekly shutdown or some people call this a weekly review and here’s all you do you just stop working early on the last day of the week now if you work in an office I’m not saying just walk out and say see you boss it’s a half day for me Reagan told me to now what I mean by stopping early is you cut off working on your projects or whatever your main work stuff is at about lunchtime and that way you can spend the rest of the day the afternoon working on shutting down preparing for the week to come so what do you do well you wrap up undone projects if you can’t finish them you leave yourself some breadcrumbs right leave yourself at a good spot where you can pick up on it next time you need to work on that without being confused about where you left things tidy up right clean up if you work in an office clean up your desk or clean up your home whatever it is tidy up get things ready so that it’s not a huge mess you’re bringing with you into the weekend look ahead at the coming week anticipate what are the priorities going to be what are the limits on my time right appointments meetings um things I have to do with my family all of that stuff look ahead and be cognizant of that so you can plan accordingly give thanks for another week right just as at the beginning of the week we prayed for the week ahead now it’s the end of the week we thank the Lord for the week that just passed thank him for what you’re able to accomplish repent of the places where you fell short and just praise God that you get to be alive and you get to serve him and Steward your life and when it’s all done you turn everything off you close it all out and you say I’m done for the day and what this does is in addition to helping you stay productive the weekly shutdown also lets you enter the weekend with your mind sort of like like a clean slate you weren’t carrying all those open Loops you had of undone work or half finished projects you don’t have those all in your head for the weekend and then you can actually use the weekend to you know rest well I hope those tips have been helpful for you as you are seeking to Steward your week well for God’s glory I have linked to a couple of free resources in the description there is my ideal week planner which is like a Google sheet you can download and also my morning routine planner guide which you might find useful as well I also have a course called optimize your week that you can check out that helps you go super deep into this process of planning a weekly routine for yourself you can get that there’s a link in the description or it’s also available if you become a member of our redeeming productivity Academy where you can also get all my other courses hang out with me on office hours calls and much more and by doing that you also help support the channel so check those things out it’s all in the description and if you want more productivity from a Christian worldview go ahead and subscribe and Lord willing I will see you next week

Footnotes

Footnotes

  1. few of your priorities ↩

Graph View

Backlinks