Maintaining a Weekly Planning Ritual is the Highest Form of Self-Care
A planning ritual does not sound like a form of self-care. It’s not exactly bubble baths and meditation. The idea of planning and organizing can feel constricting. Or it can feel like a chore. If the sound of routines and rituals isn’t music to your ears, you’re not alone.
I happen to live for my weekly planning ritual-not because I’m super Type A but because, at some point in my life, I found chaos unbearable to navigate.
For years, I would power through the days and weeks, overcommitted, trapped in multitasking madness. I never felt further ahead. Instead, I felt scattered, depleted and eventually burned out.
My approach to the day made life harder than it had to be. Something had to give. A weekly planning ritual saved me.
I started mapping out my week every Sunday. At first, the idea was simply to get all of my to-dos out of my head and onto paper so I could make sense of how I was allocating my time, what I needed to scale back on, and ultimately what I needed to say no to.
But my planning sessions grew into a well-practiced ritual of tuning inward that has become my most treasured self-care habit.
In his article “ How Are Habits Formed? The Psychology of Behavioral Change,” board-certified…
