Weekly Planning

It's been some 25 years since I first read Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  The type of goal setting that he described came fairly naturally to me, though my lists were too long and not categorized well enough.  One piece of advice that permanently changed was time perspectives.  While I always had what I should do today and what I need to do this semester and what am I pursuing toward graduation, my planning had always been day to day.  His guidance changed the perspective to a week.  So now I have a semi-annual list of projects in categories compiled every June and December.  But instead of the Franklin Planner approach of day to day, the perspective has been to incorporate parts of six months into each week.  I think that is a much better goal breakdown.  Seven day blocks have been the norm since Biblical times, probably for a reason.  Each Sunday morning, excepted only for yontiff, I look at the six month projects and determine what I should be able to do this week.  Activities for the week that are part of that six month effort get a colored highlight.  Each night I take the weekly list and select a daily array of stuff that I need to select from, as the list always exceeds what I can do, but urgencies get done and non-urgent priorities get pursued. 

So this week I should be able to complete my third day trip, either to New York or the Harley Factory in plain old York.  There is a meeting with my financial advisor who helped me computerize my assets.  I need to review my Medicare Part D program.  Clearing my upstairs study has not gone as well as some of the other initiatives because the weekly projects seem to lack the task specificity of the others.  My weight has gone nowhere though I have done reasonably well on the intermediate steps to lose those ten pounds.  I keep weekly records and while I have not lost any, my weight and waist circumference have remained static for two years. 

Come next week, we return to December, that semiannual review of what has gone well, what fell short, what merits continuation, and what directions should get revised.  But overall, it's been a useful system.