Weeksheet 101
Hey there! Sam here from Hello Emerson. You just downloaded The Premium Weeksheet. Neat!
About eight years ago, I started designing it to help me juggle my day job while making music with my band, Hello Emerson. It’s very cute, a little bit weird, and it folds up all nice and neat to fit in a shirt pocket or wallet. It has a to-do list, a little calendar, and a habit tracker.
It’s not the only way or the best way, but it’s what works for me! And it might work for you too — if you know how to use it right. Here’s how!
STEP ONE: The Mind Sweep
Let’s get your Weeksheet cooking!
Consider the big question: what’s on your mind? It can be hard to tease that apart when it all flying around up in your noggin. So, let’s do a bit of sweeping and start to put all those to-do items that are floating around onto paper.
We don’t need to capture everything on the first go-around, just start with what you can gather up in five minutes. Do you have to do laundry? Go to the grocery? Sports practice? Presentation? The gutters! Stuff you’re dreading, stuff you’re looking forward to? Anything and everything!
Set a five-minute timer on your phone and put it out of reach. You’re not allowed to touch it until the timer goes off. Listen to the silence, and see what’s floating around in your brain, then trap it on the paper.
After it’s trapped on the paper, we can sort out the mess! For The Weeksheet, I have four categories to sort things into.
Urgent and super important
Urgent but not super important
Super important but not urgent
Not urgent or super important
Go through your Mind Sweep and do your best to mark each item with a 1, 2, 3, or 4.
Now, I can’t tell you what is important to you. And I don’t want to. We probably have different jobs, passions, hobbies, families, and more. Do you know what’s important to you? If not, you’ll have to figure out that too, but for the time being, don’t worry about getting the “wrong” answer here! Just focus on your gut.
After labeling all of our things, we can put those into the corresponding lists on the column to the left of The Lookahead. You can handwrite them, or type them into the google doc template.
One last thing… notice the “weekly focus” at the top of the columns. If your week had a chapter title, what would it be? Are there any questions you’re considering or things you’re noticing right now?
And keep in mind that things can change – maybe something feels super important one week, but then you don’t get around to doing it and realize it wasn’t that important to begin with. Just focus on your gut for now.
STEP TWO: The Two-Week Lookahead
One toxic habit that I have is over-scheduling my life. Big shocker, yeah? I overfill my to-do list, put too much on my plate, get exhausted, overwhelmed, and then burn out and get nothing at all done – and feel guilty about it on top of everything else! So, I need to be realistic about the time and energy I actually have to spend.
So let’s look at The Lookahead. Each square represents about two hours in the day, but it’s a bit wiggly on purpose. I tend to note the actual times in the corners if it’s necessary, but you could think of these as “energy blocks” if it’s more helpful.
Let’s break this down in three parts.
Part One: Block off the time you spend at work and/or school. Your time is already booked, so we can’t schedule more tasks in there (but hey, you do you). You can draw lines in a thick pen, fill it in with color, or merge the cells on the google doc template. I’m not your boss – do what feels makes sense to you.
Part Two: Do you have any other responsibilities or fun things scheduled? Plug those in next. If it’s helpful, mark the times in the blocks as well.
Part Three: Now, you might have a few boxes empty if you’re lucky. Let’s start to fill in those boxes with items from our list of tasks to the left! You may feel like don’t have time to do everything – and you’re right! Let’s accept our limitations at the beginning instead of learning the hard way over and over again. Don’t overdo it. As they say, slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.
Of course, everyone has different obligations week to week. For example, I am not in a caretaking role for my parents (yet), but I do spend a lot of time on my band outside of my full time job at the library. If I need to take care of my parents in the future, I’ll likely reduce the time I spend on my art. And that’s not a bad thing — it’s being human and accepting that we have limitations. Stepping up to spend our time on the people most important to us is critical for a good life (for me).
I tend to have maybe 2 bonus blocks per day outside of my full time job. In this time, I exercise, do chores, work on stuff for the band, read a book, listen to music, or just have a nice meal with a friend. The list goes on. These are ALL important, but I know that I am looking for some kind of balance — and I know that I tend to not LET myself have much fun or downtime unless I schedule it.
If you get something done, cross it off! If you don’t get something done, no biggie! Just circle it or highlight it. You can move it down into another block the next day or next week (and you might even discover that it wasn’t that urgent or important in the first place).
STEP THREE: The Habit Helper (and the rest!)
What is a small thing that you do that makes your day a little bit better? Listening to a song? Doing a little dance? Going for a jog? Calling a trusted friend?
Choose a few and write those the blank spots on the left column of the chart. Then, you can track how many days you do that every week by filling in the boxes under the day of the week. You can also track your general mood at the end of each day, or at the beginning of the next day.
We don’t do this for “points” or anything like that — and I find it helpful to think about moods as more like the weather. I don’t have much control over the rain, but I can at least remember to grab a jacket before I head off to work instead of allowing myself to get soaked. Either way, I don’t need to get angry at the rain!
To be more clear… I’ve got a depression diagnosis — and I’ve found that running in the morning, journaling, getting enough sleep, and reading can help me stay on the level, maintain my focus, and sustain my energy. So I try!
Does it work every day? Nope. Do I do all this every day? Definitely not! Will my ability to do those things change over time? Of course! Regardless, I try to make them a habit — even if what I do changes over time.
This is all about keeping an eye on your life as a real human being. I don’t care about getting everything done – I DO care about having a healthy relationship with who I am now, who I’d like to grow into, and what I’d like to make along the way.
At the end of the week, I make sure to cut out my habit tracker and paste it into my journal. One of my personal habits is spending 17 minutes in the morning journaling. You don’t have to do that, but I really recommending journaling at least one day a week. It’s so important to reflect on how things went this week – checking in with how things have been going, especially if you didn’t get some important things done!
I like to journal as if a trusted friend asked me, “How are you doing, really?” Noticing how we’re feeling and responding with compassion is more important than pretty much anything on our to-do list.
On the backside by the mind sweep, there is an unmarked section. You can use this as you like. Maybe you have a big project with many little tasks. Maybe you need more space for more items on your list. A list of repairs? Potential purchases? Albums to listen to? The world is your oyster.
I like to use some of that space for things at my day job – that way I can refer to it and use it while I’m there, and it doesn’t muddy up the other side. Whatever works for you!
Great job trying something new! Even if it’s ultimately not for you, I hope it nudges you in a good direction.
Sam & Hello Emerson
I made The Weeksheet as a way to preserve time, space, and energy to make art while working a day job. I hope it helps you do what you’re passionate about!
Stream my music here — it’s indie-folk in the vein of Andy Shauf, Jason Isbell, The Mountain Goats, and Andrew Bird. Bob Boilen of NPR Music even called it “very beautiful!”