Stage 5: Daily Practice | Weekly Planner

The week is where life design actually happens. Monthly goals set direction, but the week is the unit where you can see patterns, adjust course, and make meaningful progress on things that take longer than a day.

This planner gives you a simple weekly structure: set your intention, map your priorities against your energy, check in on your experiments, and reflect at the end. The whole point is to keep your daily actions connected to the bigger picture you're building.

-HOW TO PLAN

The weekly review

David Allen's "Getting Things Done" introduced the weekly review as a core practice. Allen's version takes 30 to 60 minutes and involves clearing your inbox, reviewing your active projects, and deciding what matters next week. You don't need his full system to benefit from the underlying principle: a weekly pause to look up from the daily grind and ask, "am I working on the right things?"

The review has two jobs. First, close out the current week (what happened, what didn't, what needs to carry forward). Second, set up the next one. Do both, and you start Monday already knowing where your energy should go.

Energy-based scheduling

Most people plan their week around time slots. It works better to plan around energy instead. Tony Schwartz, whose Human Performance Institute has worked extensively with high performers, argued in "The Power of Full Engagement" that managing energy, not time, is the real lever for sustained performance. This is applied consulting insight built from working with real organisations, not a controlled academic study, so treat it as a well-tested practical framework rather than a lab-proven fact. Either way, people who match the difficulty of a task to their actual energy level get more out of the same hours than people who just fill slots on a calendar.

You already mapped your energy patterns back in Stage 1. Use that data here. If your sharpest hours are 9 to 11am, that's when your hardest experiment work should happen. Routine tasks (email, admin, errands) go in your low-energy windows.

Implementation intentions

Peter Gollwitzer introduced implementation intentions, and the effect has since been confirmed at scale: he found a medium-to-large effect on goal attainment for people who specified exactly when, where, and how they'd act, compared with people who just held the intention.

It's a simple format: "When [situation], I will [action]." For example: "When I sit down at my desk on Monday morning, I will spend the first 90 minutes on my experiment prototype."

Your weekly planner is the perfect place to set these. For each priority, write a specific implementation intention. Specific ones stick, reliably enough that this is one of the best-evidenced findings in the whole Method.

The Sunday reset

Pick a consistent time each week for your planning session. Sunday evening works for most people, since it lets you start the week with clarity, but any consistent time works. The consistency matters more than the specific day. Spend 20 to 30 minutes reviewing last week, then mapping the week ahead.

-THE WEEKLY PLANNER

Complete this at the start of each week. Refer back to your monthly planner for context.

Week overview

• Week of:

• This week's intention: what would make this week feel well-spent?

• Connected to monthly priority: Which of your 3 monthly priorities does this serve?

Top 3 priorities this week

These are the 3 things that, if you accomplish nothing else, would still make the week a success. Be specific. For each, write a specific implementation intention: "When [situation], I will [action]." This is the single most evidence-backed line on this page, don't skip it.

This week you're honouring (optional)

Skip this if you're working with one clear direction. If you carry several life visions, name them here and give each one line, not a new priority, just a way to see whether it's getting any of your attention this week and a rough share of your energy.

Experiment check-in

What are you actively testing this week, from your experiments section? What's the one thing you'll do to move each experiment forward?

Energy mapping

Rate your expected energy for each day (1-5) and mark your protected deep work block. Pull this straight from the energy map you built in Stage 1. This takes two minutes and saves hours of fighting your own biology.

AI companion (optional)

How to use: Share your monthly priorities, your active experiments from Stage 4, and your energy patterns from Stage 1. The AI will help you build a specific, energy-matched weekly plan. Best done during your Sunday reset. 15 to 20 minutes.

Copy and paste the prompt below into Claude, ChatGPT, or any AI assistant:
You are a weekly planning coach helping me design an intentional week. I'll share my monthly priorities, active experiments, and energy patterns. Your job:
(1) Help me identify the 3 most important things I should focus on this week, based on my monthly goals and where I am in my experiments. Push back if I'm trying to do too much. Three is the max.
(2) For each priority, help me write a specific implementation intention: when exactly will I do it, where, and what's the first physical action? Vague plans don't work.
(3) Look at my energy patterns and help me map tasks to the right time slots. Hard, creative work goes in high-energy windows. Admin and routine work goes in low-energy ones.
(4) Ask me what derailed last week. Help me identify one specific thing I can do differently this week to prevent the same pattern.
(5) Check whether my week includes real buffer. If every hour is scheduled, the plan will fail by Wednesday, the planning fallacy guarantees something will take longer than I think. Help me find genuine unscheduled space, not by hitting a fixed percentage, but by asking what's likely to overrun and giving it room.
One question at a time. Be practical and specific. If my plans are vague ("work on my project"), push for concrete next actions ("write the first 500 words of the landing page").

My monthly priorities: [INSERT HERE]

My active experiments: [INSERT HERE]

My energy patterns: [INSERT HERE]

Collaborations