Want to Be More Productive? 3 Tools to Unleash Your Productivity

Have you ever experienced a chaotic Monday where nothing goes according to plan? Did you ever have a plan? You look at your upcoming week with frustration and confusion and realize that you have no specific priorities and/or goals but a really long to-do list. As a busy mom, your goals always seem to go behind everyone else’s. “I’ll get to that later,” you convince yourself. Kids first, spouse first, house first, laundry first, dinner first. You don’t prioritize yourself and your time is always at the mercy of someone else’s ask. And people ask for a lot, especially to moms. So how do you strategically plan your goals, but make sure the mundane tasks are also completed?

You feel deep down that your week(s) could be much more productive. You want to prioritize and achieve your goals but you are unsure of how to even start.

Here are three ways to unleash your most productive week yet.

1: Sunday Planning

I have talked a lot about this; plan your upcoming week on Sundays. You will thank me later. If don’t have kids at home, you have the benefit of getting ahead of your week and waking up on Monday ready to take on the world.

If, however, you have children at home, one of the benefits of planning your week ahead of time is that you are clear on who is responsible for what and when. Breakfasts, lunches, drop-offs, pick-ups, after-school activities, dinners, events, and travel are all discussed and allocated ahead of time. Sunday Planning is for all parents (married or single) who work full-time, part-time or stay at home. The week’s workload is discussed on Sunday so it does not put the onus on just one person. You tackle responsibilities as a team.

This is extremely helpful with tedious tasks and gets a glimpse of how busy the upcoming week is going to be. We are all guilty of not asking for help and sometimes end up begging for last-minute favors from family, friends, neighbors, or babysitters who would have appreciated a heads-up. Sunday planning is a win for everyone, including the kids.

2: A Weekly Dashboard

Do you wish you just had a quick overview of the week ahead? One that you could glance at any time? Would it help to see your weekly highlights, important projects, and top priorities and be able to track your habits? A dashboard is a way of displaying various types of information in one place. Usually, a dashboard is intended to convey different, but related information in an easy-to-digest form.

A weekly dashboard is your key to achieving goals! It helps you step back from your busy life to see what is important. It takes the long, unorganized “to-do” list and prioritizes your appointments, goals, habits, and tasks. Planning your week ahead of time with a dashboard helps you take a pause and prepare for the week ahead. Upgrade your to-do list with a weekly dashboard to increase your productivity and be more goal-focused instead of task-focused.

3: A Daily Plan

The third way to unleash your productivity is to have a plan for your day (from when you wake up to when you go to sleep). A daily planner is the ultimate tool in helping you stay on track and accomplish your goals. Scheduling your day (ahead of time if possible) will make sure you block off time to achieve and not procrastinate.

When you are working on projects, it helps to time block and allocate time intentionally for both work and personal tasks. You will be way more productive and able to balance your days even if it gets busy. If you do not schedule time, you will stall, hesitate, and get easily distracted.

If you work from home or are an entrepreneur, this is especially important. You can either schedule time on your calendar phone or on a paper or digital planner. Regardless, a daily plan will help you balance work and life and make sure you do not allocate too much time to one thing over the other.

Ideally, a productive week should optimize your time, prioritize your tasks, set goals, reduce stress, and improve your work-life balance. That's not to say, you will not have emergencies that steer you off course, but it's important to review your week again and make adjustments. Your plan is a working document, hopefully working for you.

Get All 3 Digital Plan Downloads

If you are searching for all 3 PDFs that I designed and use for my planning (Sunday Planning, Weekly Dashboard, and Daily Planner), see below. You can download it instantly!