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Resources from this episode:

Birds and Bees (code WORKANDPLAY for 20% off)
Ideal Week Planning Worksheet
Episode 168 - Theme Days
Episode 173 - How We Sabbath

Show Notes:

Today, I am so excited to share with you one of my very favorite things to do. I know this is really nerdy of me, but I love writing out my ideal week. This is something that I do at least twice a year, sometimes three times a year, because there are different times in my year that just look different. An ideal week looks different, and today I'm gonna walk you through my process of how to create an ideal week so that you can be living the life that you want in and week out with a lot of joy.

For the full episode, hit play above or read through below.

Okay, let's talk about why you want to create an ideal week in the first place. I think it's really important every once in a while to simply stop and assess your life. Is this really the life that I wanna be living? Is this the schedule that I want to be maintaining? Life is forever changing, and I know as seasons change and as kids grow up, you have to do this time and time again to get to where you wanna be.

When you have a little baby, let me just say this, if you have a little baby, you can just forget this ideal week. Your ideal week with like a newborn baby is to snuggle your newborn baby and survive. Okay? So that's gonna look a lot different than when you have kids who are in school and you have a schedule that you're going on.

So just keep that in mind and I want you to apply this to your life. So I actually did this this morning. I woke up early and instead of working out like I normally do, I just took the time to write out an ideal week because as my kids are starting back at school. For the first time ever, I'll have two kids in school and then two kids in preschool, and I'm gonna have a little bit of time to myself and I'm like, okay, well how do I want my weeks to look? What is this actually gonna look like? And I have a whole process. I've done this so many times. I'm so excited to share it with you.

But one thing that I wanna say before we start is that writing out your ideal week is a great exercise in dreaming and creating the life that you want. But it's equally important to realize that there's never ever going to be a week of your life that actually looks like this. And if you know that starting out, then you're gonna be totally fine and joyful and flexible when those life curveballs are thrown at.

Know that your ideal week is there—you’re kind of putting down two tracks to run on. You want to know where you're headed so that you don't miss the important stuff, but you also need to know it's called an ideal week for a reason. Maybe once in a blue moon you'll actually have an ideal week and it'll be amazing. But for the most part, your ideal week is just a track to run on and you're gonna know that a kid is gonna get sick or something's gonna be canceled, or you're gonna be taking a trip or you know it'll be fall break and your whole ideal week is not going to happen. And that's good, that's life. The good stuff in life happens when we go off of our schedule, but it's really important to kind of have a framework to work in.

Okay, so with that said, let's get into what it looks like to actually create an ideal week. And I have something for you. If you go to nancyray.com/idealweek, you can download your very own ideal week worksheet that you can fill out for you.

So the first thing that you're going to want to do before even getting that worksheet out, before even writing down your ideal week, is to just write a list of things that light your heart on fire. Write down a list of all the things in life that bring you a lot of joy. You know, this is the Work and Play podcast, and I want you to be thinking a lot about the playful things in your life, the relationships in your life. What does it look like to have a healthy soul and a fulfilling life? Write down everything big or small.

Like, do you like having a candle lit in the morning? Do you like taking hot bubble baths? Do you like finishing a half marathon? Do you like reading a good book? Do you like working out? Do you like—whatever the things are that are simple things in life that just really bring you a lot of joy? Going out with friends for like dinner, girls night, weekly date nights with your husband, reading scripture, worshiping, singing at the top of your lungs in church, whatever are those moments in life that just make you think, yes, this is what I want to be doing.

Maybe it's hiking with your kids or playing games with them. Write down all that stuff. Just take some time, a page in your journal, blank sheet of paper and just write all that good stuff down because we can get so caught up in work that we forget this playful side of life that is all about how we can really enjoy life.

That's where I want you to start. That should only take you about five minutes max. Then I want you to think about your week in theme days. Now I have a whole podcast episode about creating your week with theme days, and that is changing for me. Again, I'm like rearranging which days are which. But it's so helpful when you're laying out your week to go ahead and establish, okay, what is Monday dedicated to? What's my focus for Tuesday? What's my focus on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, just thinking through your week so that you know before the ideal week, before you're writing in all the details, you know exactly what your theme days are.

So first you're gonna write that list of things that just light your heart on fire get you so excited about life. Second, you're gonna kind of jot out your theme days, outline those, and then third, you're gonna actually create your ideal week. And this, this is how I like to do it. You're gonna look at the seven days in a week and you're gonna kinda start to fill in your schedule and that's totally great, totally fine. That's life. We have to fill in our schedule where we have to be when we have to be there.

But there's a couple of things that I want you to think about. First, your morning routine. If you can block off like an hour every morning to wake up and do something that makes you so excited about your day, what would that be for you? Think about your evening routine, too. So when I'm writing up my ideal week, I like to start with the theme days and then I kind of block off my morning routine and my evening routine.

What are the things that you like to do? What are the things that you have to do during those times and making that kind of a consistent thing throughout your week, especially your weekdays. Then I want you to think about Sabbath. What day does your family rest? What day does your family just kind of take off, enjoy one another and not work, but just really focus on playing and think through your Sabbath. Think through what that looks like.

I also have a podcast episode. I'll leave both of those episodes in the show notes all about how we practice Sabbath if you wanna get ideas, but you can practice it on Saturday, Sunday. But I just really encourage you, if you don't have a day set aside for rest and worship and play, it makes all the difference. So make sure that you write in your Sabbath day in your ideal week as well.

Okay, let's think. Next, you're just gonna keep going in, filling out your schedule. So any appointments, school drop-offs, pickups, you know your work times, whatever it is for you. Put those in if you wanna have. Ideally, if you would like to go on a date every week with your husband, put that on Thursday nights or Tuesday nights. If you have Bible study one night, put that in there. Whatever your week looks like, fill it in. And I like to kind of block it, like do time blocks and then kind of color code it if I want to, if I'm feeling real fancy.

And then I want you to go back to that list again. Go back to the list of things that make you so excited about just living life and help you enjoy life. And read through it one more time and see if there's anything else that you can put in your ideal week that would make it even more ideal for you.

Here's a couple of examples for me. So I did this this morning, I went through, did everything up until this point, and then I went back and I read that first list. I know some of these things are kind of geeky, but I'm gonna tell you anyway. But here's some of the things that I added to my ideal week.

I added Prayer Walk Mondays. So every Monday I wanna just like walk around my neighborhood or around my house and just take like a five minute prayer walk. I don't want it to be super long. I mean, I'm fine to just put my kids in front of a show so that I can have my quick prayer walk time every Monday. I feel like that is something that makes life really fulfilling for my relationship with the Lord, and it just gives me purpose and I just wanna pray over my family more consistently. That's something that lights my heart on fire and gets me really excited every week.

Similarly, I put down Declaring Truth Wednesdays. And I have found recently that memorizing scripture and speaking it out loud and speaking God's truth out loud over my life and God's plans for me and my family and just what He has for us and just taking hold of his promises and saying them out loud makes a huge difference in my mentality feeling. I don't know, I've just, I've had these seasons recently where I've just been been really confused and really discouraged and, like, I don't know what is going on and I don't know what direction I should be going in or what I should be doing with work or life. I just have felt really stuck if I'm honest.

But the one thing that really helps me, I think the enemy just loves for us to stay confused. It helps me to just take scripture and memorize it and then say it out loud and declare it. And so I'm getting off on a tangent here, but Declaring Truth Wednesdays is something that I went back and wrote in. I'm just gonna choose one truth and make sure that I'm speaking it out loud all day on Wednesdays.

I wrote in Money Date Fridays where I'm gonna sit down and have a money date with myself and look over all of my work finances and then all of our household finances and make sure that I am staying on track with the goals that we have set and that I know what's going on because I'm the kind of person that I can easily just ignore that and just keep living life. And then I really, you know, you regret it. If you don't give your money a plan and tell it where to go, then it's just gonna do whatever it wants. So you need to make time for that.

And I wrote down one of the things that lights my heart on fire, makes me so excited, is stewarding money well and giving money away and making sure that we have a plan for our money and that we're following that plan. And I needed to write that in as like a weekly check-in for myself, Money Date Fridays.

Another thing that I went back and wrote in is making sure that we have outdoor play on Fridays. So taking time with my kids and making sure we just get outside for an extended amount of time. And so I blocked it off that Friday morning. I get up, I have my morning routine, and then we get outside with the kids first thing and come back, maybe have lunch and then that afternoon during rest time is my money date time where I'm checking in on finances.

So don't forget to take the time to make that list of things that really get you excited about life and what does a fulfilling life and a healthy soul look like for you, and making sure that you are incorporating those things into your ideal week.

I love this quote by Steven Covey. He said “The key is not to prioritize what is on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”

And I think it's so easy to get so caught up in work and working well and our schedules and life and just going from one thing to the next without stopping to think, am I really loving my life? Am I really enjoying this? Am I really loving the people in my life like I should be? Am I creating great memories with my kids and fostering relationships there? Are we going on dates, like is my husband and I, are we really focusing on our marriage every single week?

It's easy to get swept up in just the work of life, especially where I am in this like middle part of life where we have a lot of young kids and life is just busy. And that's why I love creating my ideal week because I can stop and say even in the thick of it, I need to pause and I need to schedule my priorities, not just prioritize my schedule.

So I hope this is encouraging to you. I hope that whether you download this thing that I've created, the ideal week printable that you can use, or whether you just block it off in your journal, write it down on a sheet of paper. If you have paper and pen, you can do this. I really hope that you pause and create your ideal week and start implementing it because those little things add up so much over time and really cause you to have a healthy soul and a fulfilling life when you are prioritizing what is important.

I'm gonna close with a quote by Dale Carnegie who said,