You will produce a full plan for next week with outcomes, blocks and a buffer.
You've planned a week's outcomes, a single day, and a time-blocked calendar, each as a separate step. This exercise puts them together into one plan for next week, and then asks you to check it against what really happened. Allow 30 minutes for the plan now, and ten minutes on Friday for the comparison.
You need three things from earlier lessons: your three priorities from lesson 1.3, your weekly time map from lesson 1.4, and your calendar for next week.
Open your three priorities and your time map side by side. The priorities tell you where the week should go. The time map tells you where weeks like this actually go, and how much room you really have.
Look at two numbers on the time map. How many hours went on urgent but not important work, and how many hours served your priorities? If last week had 10 hours of priority work out of 45, planning 25 hours of priority work next week is not a plan. A realistic first step is a few more hours than last time, plus the one task you chose in lesson 1.4 to cut or batch, which frees some of the room.
Write two to four outcomes for the week, each linked to a priority, as you did in lesson 3.1. Next to each, estimate the hours it needs, then add a margin for the planning fallacy from lesson 3.2. If you have done something like it before, use how long that took as your guide.
Now put those outcomes onto the calendar before anything else. Find the best slots, usually mornings or whichever hours your time map showed were least interrupted, and block them as focus time with a clear label. A two-hour outcome might be one block. A six-hour outcome should be spread over two or three days.
Blocking outcomes first is the whole point of this step. If you add them after meetings and admin, they end up in the leftover gaps, which is how important work got squeezed out in the first place.
Next, add everything else. Meetings already booked, with prep and travel time. One or two message and admin blocks a day, as in lesson 3.3. At least one buffer block a day. Personal commitments that affect your energy or time, such as a late dinner or an early appointment.
If the calendar overflows at this stage, something has to give. Move an outcome to the following week, decline or shorten a meeting, or ask your manager which of two things matters more. Make that choice now, while you can still see the whole week, instead of discovering on Thursday night that it doesn't fit.
Here is Marcus's plan, the operations team lead. The hours are an example. His week has about 45 working hours, and his time map showed driver issues filling 7 to 9am every day, so he treats that as a fixed block.
His outcomes: Siti runs the roster once with him watching (team stability, about 3 hours over two sessions); last month's late deliveries listed by cause with one fix agreed with the warehouse supervisor (on-time delivery, about 4 hours plus a 1-hour meeting); appraisal comments for Lina drafted (team, about 1.5 hours).
He blocks the roster sessions on Tuesday and Thursday at 10am, the late-delivery analysis on Monday and Wednesday from 10am to noon, the meeting with the warehouse supervisor on Thursday at 3pm, and Lina's comments on Friday at 10am. Then he adds his 7 to 9am driver block every day, a message block at 1.30pm and 5pm, a buffer from 3.30 to 4.30pm on most days, and his existing meetings.
His outcomes need 9.5 hours of blocks in total, against the 3 hours his time map showed he spent on priorities the week before. That is still ambitious. He keeps it because the cut he chose in lesson 1.4, moving the volume report to the simpler format, frees about 3 hours.
At the end of the week, take ten minutes and write five lines comparing the plan with what happened. A simple pattern works:
Which outcomes were done, partly done or not started. Which blocks held and which were taken over, and by what. How long the outcomes really took against your estimates. What the buffer was used for. One change you will make in next week's plan.
Marcus's comparison showed that the roster outcome was done, the late-delivery analysis was half done because a customer escalation took Wednesday, and every buffer block was used. His change for the next week: two buffers on days with a warehouse audit.
A finished plan has your weekly outcomes written at the top with their priorities, a calendar for Monday to Friday where those outcomes have blocks, meetings and admin are blocked, and every day has a buffer. On Friday it gains five lines of comparison. That comparison is the start of the weekly review you'll build in module 8.
Now plan your own week, starting with the outcomes, and put a ten-minute reminder on Friday afternoon for the comparison.
Complete the weekly plan template with outcomes and time blocks, then write a five-line comparison of plan versus reality at the end of the week.
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