Planning twice is twice as nice

Longtime readers know that I like to plan my upcoming weeks on Fridays. On Friday — or sometimes Thursday if I want to get ahead of the game — I look at my upcoming Monday to Sunday week. I figure out what needs to happen and what I’d like to see happen.

Now if you do the math, you’ll see that this means that I’m planning the weekend that is after the upcoming one. That is, I’m planning the one that is 8-9 days in the future.

As you can imagine, this needs to be a loose plan. The weather can change. Most people — especially teenaged people — do not make their social plans that far ahead of time (I have experienced confused looks asking for playdates for the Sunday after next).

But if there are any big anchor events, or adventures to plan, or logistics that are complicated, all this can be worked out far ahead of time.

Then, after looking 8-9 days ahead, I take a few minutes to look at the weekend that’s coming up soon — that is, the one that is a day or two in the future. Now the weather forecast is known and the contours of the weekend are more clear. I can make a more detailed plan based on the loose plan I made a week prior. I can see what space is open, and slot in fun things if I’d like.

A planning two-step

I’d been doing this planning two-step for a while before I realized that planning weekends twice was actually a smart idea. It’s a total quirk of when I plan. This wouldn’t happen if I planned on Sunday nights or Mondays.

But I actually think it is a good quirk for a few reasons. In many cases, weekends become an afterthought. People are so tired from the week that they get to the weekend and want to do nothing. But it’s impossible to do nothing. You’ll do something, but it might not be nearly as rejuvenating as if you thought a bit about it.

Or sometimes weekends become a forced march of chores and children’s activities. You just deal with what urgently has to be done and don’t think about what you’d like to do. That can make the weekend feel like not much fun.

Planning 8-9 days ahead lets you get the lay of the land and make plans for any bigger things. It’s going to be hard to do a big day trip, or find a sitter, or get a reservation at that hot place, or tickets for an in-demand show, if you don’t think about your weekend until Friday afternoon. And you might not do anything Friday evening because you won’t have managed your energy to that possibility.

So you get a rough plan a week ahead — and then you get to refine it close to the event itself. You can tweak based on weather and other things that come up. You’ve been thinking about the weekend at least to a degree during the week — because you have a rough plan — and so you may come up with more ideas or ways of doing things better.

Leisure time is precious

In general, when we plan things twice we wind up taking them more seriously, and spending the time better, than if we only do one last minute plan. A last minute plan is definitely better than nothing. But I take my weekends very seriously. I think in a busy life, leisure time is too precious to be totally leisurely about leisure. Planning weekends twice means making the most of whatever time we have.

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