My Sunday Night is what makes my whole life work. I’ve had a routine that has been slowly evolving for over a year that seriously is the core of my self-care + productivity. I’ve slowly tweaked it until it’s now really what I need.
Every Sunday evening, I put my youngest to bed, my husband handles bedtime for my oldest, and I spend about 2 hours at my desk at home, doing a specific list of tasks to prepare for a successful week for myself, my family, and my team. I follow this list every week. This is a key for me – that I don’t forget anything, that I know can put certain tasks off till Sunday, get them out of my brain and know I have a set time during which I’ll get them done.
One key to my system is the Sunday Basket system that I learned from a podcast by Organize 365. This is a file box on my kitchen counter with 4 files – one for each person in our family. Throughout the week, I put any paperwork (mail, bills, kid school stuff etc) that doesn’t need to be handled before Sunday, in those files. On Sunday I sort through it all, give the stuff to my husband that he needs to handle, and take all of the things I need to handle down to my desk.
Then I start this list:
- Have a brief meeting with my husband to review our calendar for the upcoming week. We look for any conflicts, figure out who has the kids when, which events we’re going to, and figure out where we need support. This is a key to peace in our marriage. This brief meeting prevents many issues later where one of us thought the other was picking up a kid, etc. I also look ahead a few weeks on our calendar to see where we might need to schedule a babysitter or prepare ahead for something. We use Google calendar on our phones, where we can each see the other’s calendar – incredibly important for us so that I can see what he has going on before I schedule something.
- Then I settle in to my desk for a few hours. I try to make this enjoyable for myself and often have wine or tea. I find something to watch or listen to – a webinar from my field, a podcast, or sometimes just rewatching a favorite TV show.
- Empty the file folder from upstairs – pay bills, file paperwork, add things to my calendar or to-do list
- Clean out my purse and laptop bag, handle any paperwork I find
- Schedule my must-do’s for the week. I pay myself first with my time. What are the essential things I need to do to keep myself nourished, happy, healthy and productive? These are my important self-care routines that I won’t do unless I schedule them. Exercise, horseback riding, yoga, white space, walks, dates with my husband, dates with my kids.
- I spend a minute thinking about how do I want to feel at the end of each day and week. What do I need to do to make that happen? What’s the one biggest thing that will do that? I write these in my weekly planner. I try to have 1-3 big rocks each week that I want to focus on.
- Look at my to-do list in my weekly planner – review the last week, make a new Mon-Sun spread for the upcoming week, write down new to-do list items. I keep in mind these things from Kate Northrup’s book, Do Less: Does it need to be done? Does it need to be done by me? Does it need to be done right now? This helps me to limit my tasks to what’s most important.
- Email zero. Here’s where I tackle my ridiculous email inbox. Handle what needs to be handled, snooze emails to the date I will need them, etc. Because I do this every Sunday, I often snooze emails to Sunday evening that I know are best handled by me then. This is only manageable because I’m faithful at doing it every week.
- Business tasks – I review & reply to Slack messages from my team, review scheduled social media, prep my weekly newsletter, and update Quickbooks.
There was a recent episode on Real Food Whole Life podcast on this – she has a similar system and it’s a great listen! The one thing I do every Sunday: a peek inside my self-care & productivity routine.
This gives me a tremendous sense of peace and calm as I go into Monday. I hope some of this is useful to you. Let me know what your weekly routines are!
