Weekly Planning On The Go

Most of us have learned over the years that weekly planning is a key to successful time management. But doing it is another thing, especially when you travel a lot. I've found that I could use my Pocket PC when traveling to help me do my weekly planning. Sometimes I've even been able to almost complete a weekly planning session while on a Friday flight back home. When I didn't finish the session, I scheduled an appointment with myself to finish it up (typically for the following Monday morning).

Using a checklist is very helpful in conducting a weekly review and planning session with your Pocket PC. This is especially true when you're on the road and have a thousand thoughts on your mind: a checklist helps bring focus to the task at hand. Below is a screenshot of a ListPro checklist that I use:

While it's generally not practical to review your physical inboxes while you're on the road, you can pretty much do everything else that's on the checklist. Of course your Pocket PC will have your appointments, and you can also carry Word documents or spreadsheets for your Roles (the documents can also specify your Goals for each Role). And, your Projects and Someday and Maybe items can easily be kept in your Tasks list. I go into a good bit of detail on this on the Managing Tasks portion of my website.

Hopefully this gives you some ideas on how you can do your own weekly review and planning session when you travel a lot. However, when you can, I do recommend doing the review in the peace and quiet of your office, where you have access to all the files you may need and where you can open up your mind to consider possibilities for the following week that you might not think of in a noisy or pressure-cooker environment.