Plan Your Week in Ten Minutes Without Abandoning It by Tuesday

It's Tuesday, ten to four, and the meeting that should have finished at two has only now let you go. The school has rung about a temperature, and your boss wants the thing by four.

In another tab sits Sunday night's plan. Every block is colour-coded, and none of it is happening.

Why isn't the plan happening? Because that plan was built from a list of tasks, and your week was never a list of tasks.

AI earns its place here in two ways. AI asks the questions you skip, and AI holds the whole week in its head while you argue with it.

Sunday evening. Let the AI ask first

If your calendar is connected to the AI, the AI can see the fixed things. Either way, start with a few questions.

Help me plan next week. Ask me six questions, one at a time. Ask what's fixed, what has a deadline, what keeps getting pushed to next week, what needs real concentration, what's happening outside work, and what I'm quietly dreading. Then ask me the one thing I'd be glad to have done by Friday whatever else happens.

Answer the last two questions honestly. Usually the thing you're dreading and the thing you'd be glad to have done by Friday are the same thing, so build the plan around that thing.

Everything else is furniture.

Still Sunday. The draft, with a quarter left empty

When you're ready for the draft, ask for the week, with one rule that keeps the plan honest.

Build me the week. Put the one Friday thing in first, in a slot when I've actually got energy, and protect it. Group the small jobs into one or two batches rather than scattering them. Leave at least a quarter of every day empty for the things that will come up, because they will. Keep evenings and the weekend out of it unless I said otherwise. Then tell me what you left out and why.

A plan with every hour filled breaks at the first surprise, while a plan with gaps bends. The empty quarter is how the plan survives Tuesday.

Read what the AI left out. Expect the AI to cheerfully squeeze a week that needs 60 hours into 40, and that list of left-out things is where you catch it.

If something you care about is on that list, then you've got more week than week, and it's better to find out on Sunday.

Before bed. Argue with the plan

First versions are never right, because nothing told the AI you're useless before ten, or that Thursday afternoons always get eaten. So tell it.

"I can't think after 3pm, move the hard thing." "Wednesday's batch is too big, split it."

"You've put the dreaded thing on Friday afternoon. That's exactly where I'd never do it."

After two or three rounds, the plan looks like a week you'd actually live. I think the arguing is the whole value, because reacting to a draft is faster and more honest than inventing a week from a blank calendar.

And when the plan says Tuesday 10am and your gut says no, your gut wins, because your gut knows things the AI doesn't.

Monday morning. Into the calendar

If your calendar is connected, the AI can create the events. But ask the AI to show you the list first, and say yes before it adds anything.

If your calendar isn't connected, ask for the week as a simple list, then put in the three or four blocks that matter yourself.

Friday. Five minutes looking back

Here's what actually happened this week compared with the plan. [a few lines]. What did I underestimate, what did I protect well, and what should next week's plan do differently?

Nobody does this bit, but the Friday look back is why the second week's plan beats the first. After a month, the AI knows your Mondays are a write-off and your best hours are Tuesday morning, and then the plans start to fit.

Give it three weeks before you judge it.

Some Fridays the answer is harder. A plan doesn't create energy. Maybe you dread the thing because you don't want to do it, and if so, a 9am slot won't fix that.

Maybe the honest answer is "stop pretending I'm going to do this". What deserves a slot, and what gets dropped, was always your call. The AI holds the week while you decide.

A quarter of next Tuesday left empty, ready for the call from school.