The Simple Secret to Achieving Your Goals: Weekly and Daily Planning

If you want to achieve your goals and live your ideal future life, nothing is more powerful than establishing two simple routines: Weekly Planning and Daily Planning. These short sessions of just minutes a day, ensure that every day and every week, you are making progress on what matters most.

Weekly Planning: Your Jet Engine for Progress

Most people live each day in reactive mode; they spend their days playing Whack-A-Mole, dealing with the endless onslaught of trivial things to take care of. You need Weekly Planning to get out of this reactive mode and to start making progress each week on your big goals.

Set aside just 15 minutes each weekend (between Friday noon and Sunday evening) for this powerful routine:

1. Review Your Calendar
   Look at upcoming meetings, appointments, and deadlines so you can be prepared.

2. Identify Your MVPs (Most Vital Priorities)
   Choose just 3-7 key actions that will move you closer to your quarterly or annual goals. Exclude routine tasks. MVPs are only about forward progress.

3. Update Your Weekly Plan
   Add these 3-7 new MVPs to your Weekly Plan, check off those you completed last week, and remove those from 2 weeks ago. For any MVP that will take longer than 30 minutes, break it into smaller steps of under 30 minutes each. This ensures you have time to make some progress even on packed days, and prevents procrastination.

4. Print Your Tools
   Print your Weekly Plan, Ideal Day Checklist, and seven copies of your Happiful Planner. Printing keeps your plan visible and tangible, without the digital distractions that sabotage focus.

5. Benefit from Accountability
   If you have an Accountability Partner, send them your new Weekly Plan each week.

“Weekly planning is the key to deliberate living.” – Cal Newport, Deep Work

Daily Planning: Plan tomorrow, today

Done in just 10 minutes at the end of your workday, it ensures you hit the ground running every morning instead of getting stuck in reactive mode.

Here’s what to do:

1. Plan at the End of the Day
   Before you log off, write tomorrow’s plan. This clears mental “open loops,” reduces stress, and improves sleep.

2. Focus on just a Handful of MVPs
   Identify 3-5 of the most impactful actions you can take the next day and commit to completing them. Look at your Weekly Plan when making up your Daily Plan. If you have sufficient unstructured work time remaining, add some non-MVPs to your Plan as well.  But keep the list short –  just the actions you are committed to completing. Knocking out a short, high-impact list beats struggling with a 25-item to-do list and ensures you are focused on what matters most.

3. Handwrite Your Plan
   Writing it down helps you stay focused and avoid screen-based distractions. Use the Happiful Planner or a notebook; what matters is putting pen to paper.

4. Number by Importance
   Number your planned actions in order of importance (not urgency) so you always work on the most important thing at all times. This saves you from decision fatigue (which may lead you to waste time on social media or other distractions) and ensures that if you don’t get everything done, at least you got the most important things done. 

5. Unplug
   After you’ve made your plan, turn off your computer and silence your phone. Give yourself a clean break to recharge.

“It takes only 10–12 minutes to plan your day, but you gain back two hours of productivity.” – Brian Tracy

Why It Works

When you combine Weekly Planning and Daily Planning, you always know what to focus on next. Instead of reacting to whatever grabs your attention, you’re proactive, intentional, and aligned with your biggest goals.

If you want to see dramatic improvements in your productivity and peace of mind, commit to these two routines. They’re short, simple, and, when done consistently, truly life-changing.

This week, set a recurring calendar reminder: 15 minutes for Weekly Planning on the weekend, and 15 minutes of Daily Planning at the end of each workday. Do this for 30 days, and you’ll be amazed at the difference.

“If you have no plan, expect no progress.” – Few Will Hunt Podcast