Weekly planner: free printable template and how to use it

The printable weekly planner template

This weekly planner is designed to fit on one US Letter (8.5 × 11 in) or A4 page in a 10- or 11-point monospaced font. Paste it into a document and print it, or copy it by hand into a notebook.

WEEK OF ___/___ TO ___/___

MY 3 PRIORITIES               WHEN?           DONE
1. ________________________   ____________    [ ]
2. ________________________   ____________    [ ]
3. ________________________   ____________    [ ]

MONDAY ___/___
  Appointments : _______________________________
  Tasks        : [ ] ___________ [ ] ___________
  Meals        : lunch _________  dinner _________
  Spent        : $ __________

TUESDAY ___/___
  Appointments : _______________________________
  Tasks        : [ ] ___________ [ ] ___________
  Meals        : lunch _________  dinner _________
  Spent        : $ __________

WEDNESDAY ___/___   (same layout)
THURSDAY ___/___    (same layout)
FRIDAY ___/___      (same layout)
SATURDAY ___/___    (same layout)

SUNDAY ___/___
  Appointments : _______________________________
  Weekly review (15 min)  [ ]
  Plan next week (20 min)  [ ]

THIS WEEK'S BUDGET
  Planned: $ ______   Spent: $ ______   Left: $ ______

DON'T FORGET
  [ ] __________________________________________
  [ ] __________________________________________

Two filling rules: no more than two tasks a day on top of appointments, and a meal written in every slot, even roughly (“pasta”, “leftovers”, “out”). An overloaded weekly schedule gets abandoned by Wednesday.

Add-on: the meal plan and shopping list

If you run a household, print this on the back. It turns the week’s menu into a shopping list.

MEALS THIS WEEK              LUNCH             DINNER
Monday                       ______________    ______________
Tuesday                      ______________    ______________
Wednesday                    ______________    ______________
Thursday                     ______________    ______________
Friday                       ______________    ______________
Saturday                     ______________    ______________
Sunday                       ______________    ______________

SHOPPING LIST
Fresh: ______________________________________________
Pantry: _____________________________________________
Household: __________________________________________
Grocery budget: $ ________

Planning meals is about more than convenience. In the French NutriNet-Santé study of 40,554 adults, 57% said they planned meals at least occasionally, and they had more varied diets that were closer to nutrition guidelines; both women and men who planned were less likely to be obese (Ducrot et al., 2017). That’s an association, not proof of cause and effect. Food waste is the other reason: UK households threw away 6 million tonnes of food in 2022, 4.4 million of it edible, costing an average household of four about £1,000 a year, according to the charity WRAP.

How to print it or rebuild it in Word, Google Docs or Sheets

In Word. Paste the template, select everything and switch to a monospaced font (Courier New or Consolas) at 10 points so the columns line up. For a table version, go to Layout > Orientation > Landscape, then Insert > Table with 8 columns (one per day plus a label column) and 5 rows (Appointments, Tasks, Meals, Spent, Notes).

In Google Docs. Same idea: paste the text and set it in Courier New. For a table, open File > Page setup, make sure the document uses pages rather than the pageless format (orientation isn’t available in pageless documents), and choose Landscape. Then add the grid with Insert > Table.

In Google Sheets or Excel. This is the best weekly calendar format if you want your spending added up for you:

1. In row 1, type: Day, Appointments, Tasks, Meals, Spent ($).
2. In rows 2 to 8, the seven days of the week.
3. In cell E9, type =SUM(E2:E8) to total the week’s spending automatically.
4. To print: File > Print, choose Landscape, then set the scale to fit the page width.

Duplicate the tab every Sunday and rename it with the date, and you’ll keep a history of your weeks.

On paper. One sheet folded in half or a two-page notebook spread is enough. Draw seven boxes and write your three priorities at the top. If you use a binder, file past weeks behind the current one.

Fill in your week in 20 minutes

Step 3 matters most. Psychologists call it an “implementation intention”: deciding in advance when, where and how you’ll act. A meta-analysis by Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran (2006), pooling 94 independent tests, found a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals (d = 0.65). “Do my taxes” is a wish; “Tuesday 8 pm, at the kitchen table, with last year’s return open” is a plan.

Step 5 guards against the planning fallacy, our habit of underestimating how long things take. In a study by Roger Buehler and colleagues (1994), students expected to finish their thesis in 33.9 days on average and took 55.5. To choose your three priorities, the Eisenhower matrix helps separate urgent from important.

The budget line: a worked example

Writing down each day’s spending takes seconds, and it shows you where money leaks. Here is Maria’s weekly budget in Columbus, Ohio: $250 for a household of two, excluding rent and fixed bills.

If you don’t have a monthly budget yet, our guide on how to make a monthly budget shows how to set that starting number.

Three weekly planners, filled in

A family with two kids (Ohio). Priorities: book summer camp, send the insurance claim, dinner with the grandparents on Saturday. Appointments include soccer practice and piano; every dinner is planned, with Thursday as “leftovers night”. The weekly planner lives on the fridge so everyone can see it.

A freelance copywriter (Bristol). Priorities: deliver client A’s web copy by Wednesday, send two quotes, chase one unpaid invoice. Mornings are blocked for writing; admin is batched on Friday afternoon. The budget line doubles as a record of business expenses, in pounds, to copy into the books later. If invoices eat your Fridays, see quotes and invoices from your phone.

A university student (Nairobi). Priorities: revise for the statistics exam, hand in the group presentation, do the month’s shopping. Revision goes into 25-minute sessions (see the Pomodoro technique) between lectures. The weekly budget is in Kenyan shillings: KSh 2,000 for food, KSh 700 for transport and KSh 300 for extras, KSh 3,000 in total.

Paper or digital: what the research actually says

You’ll often read that writing by hand “wires things into your brain”. The evidence is more modest than that.

• The famous study. In 2014, Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer found that students who took lecture notes on laptops did worse on conceptual questions, apparently because they transcribed word for word.
• The replication. In 2021, Heather Urry’s team repeated the experiment with 142 students. Laptop notes were longer and more verbatim, but quiz scores were no different.
• The meta-analysis. Abraham Flanigan and colleagues (2024) pooled 24 studies and found a small advantage for handwritten notes on achievement (g = 0.25), larger when students reviewed their notes (g = 0.42).
• Planners specifically. A Japanese study (Umejima et al., 2021) compared 48 young adults who wrote appointments in a paper notebook, on a tablet or on a phone. The paper group wrote them down faster, answered the easier recall questions more accurately and showed stronger brain activation when remembering. But people weren’t randomly assigned (they used their usual tool), and overall scores were similar.

The honest conclusion: paper gives a small edge for remembering, especially if you reread it. Digital wins for anything that has to alert you at the right time, be shared, or be added up. Many people use both: a paper weekly planner to think through the week, and phone reminders for anything with a specific time.

The weekly review: 15 minutes to close the week

Without a review, the planner fills up but never improves. David Allen puts the weekly review at the heart of Getting Things Done. Here’s a short version to print on the back of your planner.

WEEKLY REVIEW, WEEK OF ___/___

1. My 3 priorities: done? ____ / 3
   What got in the way: ________________________
2. What slipped (move it or drop it):
   ____________________________________________
3. Budget: planned $ _____  spent $ _____  gap $ _____
4. What worked well this week:
   ____________________________________________
5. One thing I'll change next week:
   ____________________________________________

If the same priority slips two weeks in a row, ask yourself honestly: is it too big (break it down), badly placed (move the time), or no longer important (cross it out)?

Frequently asked questions

What should a weekly planner include?

At minimum: your three priorities with a time slot for each, fixed appointments, one or two tasks a day and a place for notes. Adding meals and a spending line turns it into a household planner as well as a time planner.

What’s the difference between a weekly planner and a weekly calendar?

A calendar records commitments. A weekly planner decides how you’ll use the week: it adds priorities, tasks, meals and money on one page. Many people use both, the calendar for dates and the planner for choices.

Should I plan my week on Sunday or Monday?

Consistency matters more than the day. Sunday evening lets you start Monday with a clear head; Monday morning accounts for whatever happened at the weekend. Pick a fixed slot and set a recurring reminder.

Is a paper planner better than an app?

Paper helps a little with memory and thinking things through; an app reminds you at the right moment and can be shared. Try paper for the overview and your phone for reminders for three weeks, then decide.

In short

An effective weekly planner fits on one page: three priorities with their time slots, appointments, no more than two tasks a day, meals and a spending line, followed by a 15-minute review to close the week. Your first step: print the template tonight and fill in only your three priorities, with a day and time for each.

Sources

• Pauline Ducrot et al., “Meal planning is associated with food variety, diet quality and body weight status in a large sample of French adults”, International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 14, 12, 2017: doi.org/10.1186/s12966-017-0461-7.
• WRAP, “Household food waste levels threaten UK’s carbon reduction ambitions”, press release, 2 July 2025, and Household Food and Drink Waste in the UK 2022: wrap.ngo.
• Peter M. Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran, “Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta-analysis of Effects and Processes”, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119, 2006: doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1.
• Roger Buehler, Dale Griffin and Michael Ross, “Exploring the ‘planning fallacy’”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(3), 1994.
• Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer, “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking”, Psychological Science, 25(6), 1159–1168, 2014: doi.org/10.1177/0956797614524581.
• Heather L. Urry et al., “Don’t Ditch the Laptop Just Yet: A Direct Replication of Mueller and Oppenheimer’s (2014) Study 1 Plus Mini Meta-Analyses Across Similar Studies”, Psychological Science, 32(3), 326–339, 2021: doi.org/10.1177/0956797620965541.
• Abraham E. Flanigan, Jordan Wheeler, Tiphaine Colliot, Junrong Lu and Kenneth A. Kiewra, “Typed Versus Handwritten Lecture Notes and College Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis”, Educational Psychology Review, 36, 78, 2024: doi.org/10.1007/s10648-024-09914-w.
• Keita Umejima, Takuya Ibaraki, Takahiro Yamazaki and Kuniyoshi L. Sakai, “Paper Notebooks vs. Mobile Devices: Brain Activation Differences During Memory Retrieval”, Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 15, 634158, 2021: doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2021.634158.
• David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, 2001.
• Google Docs Editors Help, “Change page settings on Google Docs” and “Print from Google Sheets”: support.google.com/docs.

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