Quiet Your Inner Critic with Weekly Plan

I recently wrote about the Activia inner voice video and how 80% of the time the thing holding women back from achieving their potential? (I believe a word is missing here?) was themselves. This statistic really stuck with me. You can check out the Inner Voice Interview here. I have been struggling myself with how to get past my inner critic and find ways to visual remind myself to focus on what is important in my life.

In addition, I have been looking for ways to make my busy life more meaningful and help me achieve my goals.

I knew I wanted to try to find a way accomplish this myself and help you achieve your goals and simplify your life too!

I have found that I often get overwhelmed with the huge amount of items I want to achieve both in my personal life and with this website. I know that sometimes that I don’t focus on the most important things and I sometimes try to take on too much. I have been reading lots of articles on planning and achieving your goals and I took some of those ideas to create a weekly planner printable. You can download it for free too! I would love it if you would join me.

The planner has two columns. One for a daily plan and one to keep track of tasks and habits. In the daily side, there is room to put in your dinner plan for each night of the week. I cannot tell you how much stress and money you will save yourself my making a meal plan for the week. I usually go grocery shopping on Saturdays so I added plan meals for the week on my Friday task list. If you plan your meals, you can limit the number of times you need to go to the grocery store and get take out. This can really help you eat healthier too. Take the 15 minutes to plan your meals and save yourself from the What’s For Dinner issue every day. You will be amazed by how this can reduce your stress.

For each day, there are just 3 numbers. I call these the big three. (Shout out to my favorite  show This is Us for the name) Pick your must dos and put them here. It is easy for your inner critic to beat you up when you have a list of 20 things and don’t complete them. When I completed, my weekly plan I filled in some items for each day but left some open to add in the night before. My stress level decreased just be seeing how I much I could accomplish in a week by focusing on 3 things a day.

In this column, there is also a spot each day for “The Good”. This is a place for you to jot down one good thing that happened that day. There are tons of studies that show just focusing on the positive can help make you happier with your life. This is an easy way to remind yourself of the good in each day.

On the right-hand side, there are three sections. The first is “get it done quick.” Put tasks that take 10 minutes or less here and when you have just a little time in your day you can quickly get one done. I added things here like send an email or fill out a form or check on something simple. Once these are on paper, they are not taking up space in your brain anymore and you can quickly finish them when you have time.

The next section is “The Rest”. This is your brain dump spot. I added ideas for website posts and items I want to do around my home. If I get all three items done quickly one day, I can tackle one of these items if I want. Also, I check this when on filling out my big three for the day. I can add one of these if they are now a priority.

The last spot is for habits. I filled mine in with drinking enough water, 10,000 steps, and German lessons. These are items I want to concentrate on this month. I love being able to cross off the circle for the day when I meet my goal. You can put whatever habits you want in here. Maybe it is exercise or reading. The beauty is you choose what is important to you.