Improving Life One Week at a Time
Here's how to improve your life one week at a time, set daily goals, and make consistent and noticeable improvements to your life over 4-6 weeks.
I’ll be honest with you: the last few months have been incredibly difficult for me. What I saw through some of those days and what it took to stay sane and continue doing the work I did almost killed a part of me. And it has taken all I have to build myself back up.
Currently, life is good. When I think of where I was just a couple of months ago and where I am now, it brings me a smile to know that I pulled myself through one of the most challenging days of my life. Not only am I doing okay, but I’ve also managed to build healthy habits and also stayed highly consistent through these couple of months.
What happened through these last few months is a long story and perhaps a topic for a longer post someday, but in this edition, I want to tell you about how structuring my life into weekly segments helped me improve my life.
If you want to improve your life, take it one week at a time. Here’s how you can structure your weeks and take it one day at a time to slowly build healthy habits:
1️⃣ Set Small Weekly Goals
As I always stress in my writing here, start small. Habit formation and life improvement require true long-term thinking, and this requires patience and consistency. Performing small actions will not change your life overnight, but staying consistent certainly changes your life over a few weeks and months.
Don’t confuse yourself with too many goals. Start with one or two weekly goals, and give them all you have. I started with these goals: work out five days this week, and get 7 hours of sleep at least four days this week. As I started making progress on these goals, it built momentum and increased my self-confidence.
Slowly, I increased my ambition and the number of these goals.
This week, I have three goals each under the Health, Wellness, Create, Learn, and Work categories.
Start with small goals and a tiny number of them. Make progress consistently before increasing their size and number. Most importantly, stay patient. There were weeks when I couldn’t reach my goals, but I set the goal again and tried again. It will take time and several attempts, but remember that we’re playing the long game. The journey will be frustrating and disappointing at times, but what you learn about reaching goals and about yourself through this difficult phase will be invaluable for the rest of your life.
2️⃣ Set Three Daily Goals
Once you have your weekly goals, make sure that you have clear and actionable daily goals. For instance, if your weekly goal is to work out at least five days that week, you know that you cannot miss more than two days that week. Set a daily goal to work out for at least 20 minutes every day at a specific time.
Without a regular workout habit, I knew that setting a workout goal in the morning would be unrealistic for me. Because I was struggling with sleep, working out in the morning would mean that I would have to achieve another goal of waking up early enough for it. So I started with a goal of working out in the evening when it was easier to clear my schedule and make time for it. A few weeks after reaching this goal, it became easier for me to get my sleep cycle in order. I quickly started working out in the morning instead and replaced my evening workout slot with walks instead.
Set small but realistic daily goals, and make time and space for them. My daily goals today are still the same as the ones I started with: workout every day, read a book every day, and get at least 7 hours of sleep.
3️⃣ Weekly Review System
The most crucial factor that made all the difference for me was having a weekly review system. Every Sunday for the last two months, I’ve performed a weekly review to reflect upon my previous week and plan for the upcoming one.
The Weekly Review always gives me a chance to think about how I performed on my goals that week- what was very difficult? What was I proud of? When did I push myself more than I thought I could? Based on these answers, I decide on the following week’s goals which are often modifications of the previous week’s goals.
Regular weekly reviews are complete game-changers in your productivity system. It was the missing piece of my productivity puzzle that I now realize I never gave enough importance to. Because they happen once a week and require consistency over many weeks to see their results, it is easy to overlook them and fall off track. But stick to them for six weeks, and you will see your life transform powerfully!
Here’s my Weekly Review template in Notion:
⬇️ Click here to download it for free and incorporate it into your life.
I look forward to hearing from you in six weeks about your experience using it.
Did you use my Half-Yearly Review Workbook yet? Let me know what you thought about the template; I’d love to get your feedback!
These have been my three highlights from the productivity and personal growth space this week. If you liked what you read, connect with me on Twitter and let me know. If someone forwarded this newsletter to you, subscribe to GrowPro Labs here to receive it in your inbox every Monday.
I'm on a mission to make Mondays great, and this newsletter is a part of my efforts in helping you achieve mindful productivity, personal growth, and living your Ikigai.