# Daily & Weekly Planning Reference

Deep reference for daily planning, weekly reviews, monthly reconciliation, and goal setting. Loaded by PLAN, REVIEW, and GOAL modes.

---

## Daily Planning

### The Top 3 Method

Each day has three outcomes that define success. Everything else is bonus.

**Selection criteria**:
- "If only these 3 things got done, would today feel successful?"
- At least one Top 3 item should advance a weekly or quarterly goal (because otherwise the urgent crowds out the important every single day)
- Maximum one reactive/maintenance item in the Top 3

**Format**:
```
Today's Top 3:
1. [Most important outcome] — [time estimate] — [scheduled block]
2. [Second outcome] — [time estimate] — [scheduled block]
3. [Third outcome] — [time estimate] — [scheduled block]
```

### Energy Mapping

Match task difficulty to energy state. Most knowledge workers have predictable energy patterns.

| Energy Level | Typical Window | Best Task Types | Protect This Time |
|-------------|---------------|-----------------|-------------------|
| **Peak** | First 2-3 hours after starting | Creative work, complex analysis, writing, architecture decisions | Yes — this is your highest-value production window |
| **Sustained** | Mid-morning to early afternoon | Collaborative work, reviews, structured tasks | Partially — meetings here are acceptable |
| **Recovery** | Post-lunch, late afternoon | Email, admin, routine tasks, planning tomorrow | No — use this for low-stakes batch processing |
| **Second wind** | Some people get one; 60-90 min late afternoon | Varies by person | If present, use for a focused sprint on one task |

**Personalization**: Ask about the person's actual patterns. Default to the table above as a starting point, then adjust. Someone who works 6am-2pm has a different map than someone who works 10am-6pm.

### Time-Blocking Template

```
[Pre-work ritual]     05 min  Review Top 3, check calendar
[Deep work block 1]   90 min  Top 3 item #1
[Buffer]              15 min
[Deep work block 2]   90 min  Top 3 item #2
[Lunch]               30-60 min
[Meeting block]       As scheduled
[Reactive batch]      30 min  Email, Slack, reviews
[Deep work block 3]   60 min  Top 3 item #3
[Admin batch]         30 min  Expense reports, scheduling, misc
[End-of-day wrap]     10 min  Review progress, plan tomorrow's Top 3
```

**Adaptation rules**:
- If calendar has meetings before 11am, move deep work block 1 to the earliest available slot. Flag the fragmentation cost.
- If more than 3 hours of meetings, only 2 Top 3 items are realistic. Acknowledge this explicitly.
- Buffer time is not optional — unplanned work always appears. Plans without buffers fail by noon.

### Planning Failure Modes with Corrections

| Failure Mode | What Goes Wrong | Do Instead |
|-------------|----------------|------------|
| Planning 8 productive hours | Unplanned work, energy dips, and transition costs consume 20-40% | Plan for 5-6 hours of focused output. Leave the rest as buffer. |
| No deep work blocks | Day becomes entirely reactive — lots of activity, few outcomes | Schedule at least one 90-min uninterrupted block before checking email or Slack |
| Top 5 (or 7, or 10) priorities | With more than 3, everything feels equally important and nothing gets the focus it needs | Limit to 3. If a 4th is truly critical, one of the original 3 was not actually Top 3. |
| Planning without checking calendar | Plan calls for 4 hours of deep work but calendar has 5 hours of meetings | Build the plan around the calendar, not despite it |
| Same plan every day regardless of energy | Monday morning energy is different from Friday afternoon energy | Adjust ambition to energy. Monday: tackle the hardest thing. Friday: review, plan, tie up loose ends. |
| Skipping the end-of-day review | Tomorrow starts cold with no momentum | 10-min wrap-up: what finished, what carries over, what is tomorrow's #1 |

---

## Weekly Review

### The 5-Step Process

Run weekly (Friday afternoon or Monday morning). Takes 30-60 minutes. This is the most important productivity habit — it is the feedback loop that makes everything else work.

#### Step 1: Collect

Gather all open loops into one place:
- Inbox (email, chat, notifications)
- Meeting notes from the week
- Sticky notes, scraps, mental to-dos
- Commitments made to others
- Ideas that surfaced during the week

**Goal**: Empty your head. Every "I should..." becomes a written item.

#### Step 2: Process

For each collected item, make one decision:

| Decision | Criteria | Action |
|----------|----------|--------|
| **Do** | < 2 minutes | Do it now during the review |
| **Defer** | Takes longer, you are the right person | Add to task list with time estimate |
| **Delegate** | Someone else is better positioned | Send to them with clear ask and deadline |
| **Drop** | Not important enough to act on | Delete. If it matters, it will come back. |

#### Step 3: Organize

- Update task list: remove completed items, add new ones, update priorities
- Review calendar for next week: identify preparation needed for meetings
- Check goals: is this week's planned work moving the quarterly needle?

#### Step 4: Review

Compare planned vs actual for the past week:

| Metric | What It Shows |
|--------|--------------|
| **Completion rate** | % of planned tasks completed. Target: 70-80%. Below 60% = over-planning. Above 90% = under-challenging. |
| **Carryover count** | Tasks that rolled from last week. More than 3 chronic carryovers = task is either too big, not important, or blocked. |
| **Unplanned ratio** | % of work that was not on the plan. Above 40% = either poor planning or a reactive role that needs different planning strategies. |
| **Deep work hours** | Hours spent in uninterrupted focused work. Target: 15+ hours/week for individual contributors. |
| **Meeting load** | Hours in meetings. Above 50% of work hours = meeting problem, not productivity problem. |

#### Step 5: Decide

Based on the review data, make 1-3 adjustments:
- Adjustments must be specific and testable ("Block Tuesday and Thursday 9-11am as no-meeting time" not "do more deep work")
- Try one adjustment for 2 weeks before adding another (because stacking changes obscures which one helped)
- If the same issue appears 3 weeks in a row with no improvement, the adjustment is not working — try a different approach

### Weekly Review Checklist

```
[ ] Inboxes at zero (email, chat, notifications processed)
[ ] All commitments to others tracked with deadlines
[ ] Task list reflects reality (no stale items, no missing items)
[ ] Next week's calendar reviewed, prep tasks identified
[ ] Top 3 outcomes identified for next week
[ ] One adjustment from this week's review data
```

---

## Monthly/Quarterly Goal Reconciliation

### Monthly Check-In (30 minutes)

1. **Progress scan**: For each quarterly goal, assess Red/Yellow/Green:

   | Status | Meaning | Action |
   |--------|---------|--------|
   | **Green** | On track for quarterly target | Continue current approach |
   | **Yellow** | Behind pace, but recoverable | Identify the specific bottleneck. Adjust weekly plans to allocate more time. |
   | **Red** | Significantly behind, at risk | Decide: double down (and what gets cut?), reduce scope, or abandon with reason |

2. **Goal relevance check**: Has anything changed that makes a goal irrelevant? Strategy shifts, role changes, new information. Dropping a goal because circumstances changed is good judgment. Dropping a goal because it is hard is avoidance — distinguish the two.

3. **Next month's themes**: What 2-3 themes should dominate next month's weekly plans to move goals forward?

### Quarterly Review (60-90 minutes)

1. **Score each goal**: Met / Partially Met / Missed
2. **Analyze misses**: Why? Categories:

   | Miss Reason | Pattern | Correction |
   |-------------|---------|------------|
   | Too ambitious | Goal was a 30% confidence bet, not 70% | Calibrate goal difficulty. 70% confidence = good stretch. |
   | Crowded out | Urgent work consumed the time | Build goal work into the weekly plan as non-negotiable blocks |
   | Wrong goal | Goal did not align with what actually mattered | Improve goal-setting process. Involve stakeholders earlier. |
   | Dependencies failed | Blocked by others | Identify dependencies at goal-setting time. Build relationships to unblock. |

3. **Set next quarter**: 2-3 objectives, each with 2-4 measurable key results. The objectives should feel uncomfortable but achievable (70% confidence). If everything feels easy, you are sandbagging. If everything feels impossible, you are dreaming.

---

## Goal-Setting Methodology

### The Outcome Hierarchy

| Level | Timeframe | Format | Test |
|-------|-----------|--------|------|
| **Vision** | 1-3 years | Narrative description of desired state | "Would I recognize this if I saw it?" |
| **Objective** | Quarter | Qualitative outcome statement | "Is this an outcome, not an output?" |
| **Key Result** | Quarter | Measurable milestone | "Can I unambiguously determine if this is met?" |
| **Initiative** | Weeks | Concrete project or workstream | "Does this directly move a Key Result?" |
| **Task** | Hours-days | Single action with completion condition | "Can this be done in one sitting?" |

### Writing Good Key Results

| Quality | Example | Problem |
|---------|---------|---------|
| **Good** | "Reduce average API response time from 450ms to 200ms" | Clear baseline, clear target, measurable |
| **Good** | "Ship 3 customer-requested integrations selected by quarterly survey results" | Countable, traceable to customer input |
| **Weak** | "Improve API performance" | No baseline, no target, not measurable |
| **Weak** | "Launch new integrations" | How many? Which ones? How do we know we are done? |
| **Bad** | "Make the API fast" | Subjective, unmeasurable, no completion condition |

### Goal Conflict Resolution

When goals pull in different directions:

1. Name the conflict explicitly: "Shipping faster conflicts with improving test coverage"
2. Decide which wins this quarter (because trying to optimize for both means optimizing for neither)
3. Set a constraint on the losing side: "Ship faster, but test coverage does not drop below 70%"
4. Revisit next quarter — the losing priority becomes next quarter's focus if the constraint is holding

---

## Day-of-Week Patterns

Different days have different energy and context. Use this as a starting template, then adjust to the person.

| Day | Energy Pattern | Good For | Caution |
|-----|---------------|----------|---------|
| **Monday** | High starting energy, fresh from weekend | Hardest creative work, biggest decisions, week planning | Avoid filling with catch-up meetings — protect the energy |
| **Tuesday-Wednesday** | Peak productivity days for most | Deep work, key deliverables, important collaborations | These are your most valuable days. Guard them. |
| **Thursday** | Steady but starting to wind down | Reviews, feedback, collaborative refinement, decisions | Good day for closing loops started earlier in the week |
| **Friday** | Lower energy, end-of-week fatigue | Weekly review, loose ends, planning next week, learning | Do not start new complex work on Friday — finish things |
