By Joy Onovo

“Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

Sundays are usually my days of rest after a refreshing service in our local church. As a Christian, Sundays are our days of worship, just as Fridays are worship days for Muslims.

Sunday worship services usually take between 2 – 3 hours depending on the activities in church, and usually this happens in the early mornings.

Personally, I love attending the first Sunday service which takes time between 6:30 am to 8:30 am. This is because I want to make good use of the rest of the day for the activities that will set me up for efficiency and productivity during the week.

So, asides attending service, Sundays are my days of rest and also my days for planning my week. I know this sounds contradictory, but hear me out!

For most people, Sundays indicate or represents a pause in the week, a pause from all the busyness and chaos the week brings and optimally a time to rest, refill and refresh.

For others, it’s a time to catch up with all the fun things they missed out during the week, partying and clubbing, which inevitably setting themselves up for a chaotic week.

Depending on what your work schedule is, you will agree with me that Mondays are a start of a new work week, and it is expedient to start it with so much clarity of mind and purpose.

Your activities on Sundays are what sets you up for a productive week.

I see Sundays as a start of a new chapter, or an opportunity to rewrite whatever mistake has been done in the previous week.

So, apart from the rest and refilling you get to have on Sundays, you should seize the opportunity to also prepare for the week ahead, taking into account what you learnt from the previous week and how you can use the knowledge and experience to adapt to the new week.

In this article, using my experience as a busy work from home mum, I will outline and elaborate Sunday activities that will help you prepare for the week ahead and how it can help you stay on course and achieve the best productivity possible.

I’m sharing my experience and I am in no way implying that this is a must do or must follow lifestyle.

You can of course do what works for you, as far as the end goal is to have an effective week filled with clarity, purpose and sanity.

Depending on how your week dynamic is, Sundays for me can be a Thursday for you, and for another, it can even be a Saturday.

Just find a day of the week where you sit down to reflect and plan for the rest of the week. This will set you up for maximum productivity and an all-round efficacy and efficiency during the week.

The following activities are what has worked for me, and with proper implementation I believe it can work for anyone irrespective of your location and work dynamics if well adapted.

SUNDAY ROUTINE FOR AN EFFECTIVE WEEK

1. MEAL PLANNING AND PREPPING

This definitely is a constant for most people especially moms. This is because food is one thing we cannot do without.

Due to it’s importance, it is pertinent to plan and prepare the food for the week.

In my kitchen, I have a weekly time table of food for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

This gives me at a glance meal idea which I can adapt to create the weekly food menu

(I can tell you for a fact that this traditional method of food time table in the kitchen is seen in a good number of a typical Nigerian home).

It is a traditional method of meal planning that has worked for our mothers and is still working till date.

When doing your meal planning, make sure to include drinks and necessary beverages you will need.

After you might have done this, you can go ahead and place an order for all you need to make this activity easy and seamless.

In meal prepping, you can prepare things that will make your cooking experience easy and reduce overall cooking time during the week.

Personally, I prepare things like marinades, starter sauces like tomatoes and pepper blends for stews and jollof. I sometimes create my spices.

This helps reduce the daily meal prep time by half and saves me a whole lot of time when cooking.

2. LAY OUT ALL THE OUTFITS FOR THE WEEK

This is one activity that excites me a lot. I get to do this with my girls and it gives me ample time to bond with them.

When you prepare your outfits for the week, it saves you the time you take to decide every morning on what outfit to wear.

If you are like me, making up my mind on what outfit to wear can linger on for longer than expected.

To help tackle this problem of indecision, it is better to pick a day of the week and plan for your outfits. Sunday does it for me, and I get to have fun with my kids while doing it.

Plan out your outfits and also your kids’ outfits taking into consideration under wears, school uniforms, accessories like shoes, scarfs, jewelries etc.

Because I spend most of my time at home working, this activity doesn’t take so much of my time as I tend to dress down for comfort when at home.

3. BUDGET FOR WEEKLY SPENDINGS

I cannot stress enough how good budgeting for the week is. For someone who wants to take personal finance seriously, budgeting is a must do simply because it helps you see how and where your money is being spent without taking you unaware.

On Sundays, I budget my weekly spendings for the home, my personal needs and business.

Because I work from home, I tend to do my business budgeting for the week at the same time I do the household budget.

I find the cash stuffing method of budgeting very useful and easy to track spendings.

I also take into consideration uncertainties that may come up during the week and I allocate money to this.

Budgeting for the week has a way of keeping your unnecessary spendings in check.

You can do this digitally with the help of budgeting apps, or you can do it manually.

Choose which method works best for you.

What is more important is that you get to allocate your finance to various needs and track unnecessary spendings.

4. WRITE OUT WEEKLY GOALS AND YOUR TO DO LIST

In my personal opinion, I think to-do lists and goal setting goes hand in hand.

To-do lists are simply daily activities with a time frame. When you break down your goals, you create a to-do list to help you spread out activities that will ultimately lead to your goals.

Writing out your weekly goals and all that you plan to achieve for the week gives you a birds-eye-view of individual activities for the week.

After outlining your goals, write down your to-do list for each day that will build up to your weekly goals.

I wrote a comprehensive post on how to set goals and achieve them with practicable examples. Check it out here.

Your to-do list at this point is not the final list as you will have need to add or subtract activities a night prior to the day as emergencies and appointments comes up.

The to do list you write down on Sundays is just to nudge you in the right direction and set you up for an effective week. It must not be as comprehensive and detailed. Just something to start on the right foot.

5. REST

Yes! Rest!

I actually said that out loud with a dramatic exhale!

When is the most appropriate time to have quality rest if not on Sundays. Rest should never be underrated.

 

After all the hustling and bustling of the previous week, it is crucial to rest and refill that lost energy.

There are so many ways you can schedule in rest into your Sunday.

You can do this by taking a nap, relaxing in your balcony over a chill drink or warm drink depending on your weather condition.

Basically, do what helps you feel calm and well rested.

When you are planning for a busy but productive week ahead, one of the beneficial physical activities to do is to take adequate rest in preparation for the week.

 

6. SCHEDULE APPOINTMENT AND MEETINGS ON YOUR CALENDAR

For most working adults and entrepreneurs, appointments and meetings make up a reasonable percentage of our working hours.

Without proper scheduling and planning, meet ups can creep up on us and this can cause chaos and interrupt the flow of our daily activities.

When your appointments are appropriately taken into consideration, it helps organize your weekly work flow and sets you up for a sane day filled with clarity and effectiveness.

Some of the appointments can be doctors’ appointments, meetings with clients or staff meetings, your kids school activities, birthdays and anniversary, date appointments, interviews, deadlines etc.

Don’t forget to mark them on your calendar and set early reminders so that nothing takes you unawares.

One of the worst things that can dampen your mood during the week is missing important appointments or deadlines.

Imagine missing a job interview or your stakeholder’s deadline simply because you omitted this one activity. Doesn’t sound like a good place to be right!

7. SELF CARE ACTIVITIES

Of course, I had to throw that in!

How do I live up to my recent self-acclaimed title of “Self-care queen” if I don’t include this activity. In Nigerian colloquial language, we say “wetin I gain”. Simply put, of what use are the other activities if self-care is not involved.

One of the ways to revitalize and refill is to practice self-care, and Sundays for me are the best days to practice self-care.

This doesn’t have to take too much of your time as you will need to practice self-care in other days.

With 5 – 10 minutes, you can do something to pamper yourself and give yourself the best of treatment

Here I wrote down a list of self-care ideas for busy adults. Do well to check it out.

8. DE-CLUTTER

De-cluttering goes beyond your physical space and your immediate environment.

This can also be your digital space and social media. Because of how tedious the week can be, there is a huge possibility of your spaces cluttering up.

Find time on Sundays to do a quick de-clutter.

Also clean up your emails and social media inboxes.

Other physical spaces we tend to overlook are our refrigerators, drawers, handbags and cars as well as our makeup boxes.

Don’t forget to clean up these spaces and replace necessary items with what you will need for the week.

9. SPEND QUALITY TIME WITH FAMILY

On Sundays, you would have observed that most members of your family are always around. Because of this you can seize this availability to spend ample time with one another.

Away from all the craziness going on in the world, family is who or the people we always come back to.

Sundays can be a time to create special relationship with one another and create good memories that will outlive you.

Emphasis on ‘QUALITY’ because we tend to mistake presence for quality time.

Quality time in this case means undivided attention and presence.

Our phones and other technological gadgets tends to take a good amount of our time because we are either working with it or splurging on social media.

You can deliberately map out time on Sunday where you give your family that undivided attention and care.

This can initiate family rituals and good family values that can last for generations.

In my case, I use one stone to kill two birds. I spend time with the kids by doing some of the Sunday activity together and making it fun to enjoy as well.

Indirectly, I’ve created out time to spend with them and bond without much effort.

In the evenings on most Sundays, I and my family just sit and enjoy a movie over some finger foods.

Lately, I observe that one of my girls loves painting and I intend to bring in fun painting activities we can do when spending time together on Sundays.

 

In conclusion, create a steady Sunday routine that will make your week productive, filled with clarity and helps you go about your days seamlessly and effortlessly.

I hope this article was helpful! Comment down below in the comment section if you think I missed out on anything

 

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