Hustle Sanely
If you constantly feel spread too thin, your mind is always running through what needs to get done next, and you’re running on fumes by the time you get to the people you love...you're in the right place!
Welcome to Hustle Sanely — a podcast about slowing down, letting go of the pressure to do it all, and making more room for what matters most. We're breaking up with hustle culture and building peacefully productive lives so we can pursue our goals without sacrificing our well-being.
I’m Jess Massey, a recovering workaholic who spent most of my 20s neglecting rest, hobbies, friendships, and other important parts of life in the name of achieving my goals. Hustle culture told me that was the way to succeed, and it eventually left me burned out with a life that looked good on paper but left me feeling unfulfilled (and rly, rly exhausted, lol).
What started as my own journey out of burnout became a calling to help women steward their time and energy well, build routines that reflect their actual priorities, and create a life that feels as good as it looks.
Around here, we talk about:
🕊️ Peaceful productivity + intentional living: Practical tips for planning your time, honoring your capacity, creating sustainable routines, and making progress without running yourself into the ground
🧸 Mindful motherhood: Honest conversations about motherhood, family rhythms, being present, and creating a home life that reflects what matters most to you
đź“– Books, life, and whatever else is on my mind: Because personal growth doesn't have to be so serious and I always want to leave room for good conversations, curiosity, and the occasional tangent
New episodes air every other Tuesday, so grab your coffee, settle in, and let's figure out how to build a life that supports the things we actually care about.
Hustle Sanely
321: My 5-Step Weekly Planning Meeting 🗓️ (in action - plan with me!)
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If your weeks feel like an overflowing suitcase you have to sit on to zip, you’re not alone. Most of us try to cram way too much into seven days, and end up feeling drained before Wednesday.
We all know that you can’t create more time, but you can create more space by pruning what doesn’t matter and planning with intention. I’ve been using the same 5 steps to plan my weeks for over 6 years now and this rhythm has supported me in all different seasons of life: when I was a new entrepreneur, when I was pregnant, when I was postpartum on maternity leave, and now as a working toddler mom.
Even though what fills my weeks has ebbed and flowed throughout these different seasons, the 5-step weekly planning meeting has always stayed the same.
In this episode, we cover:
- My 5-step weekly planning meeting to help you plan peacefully productive weeks
- How I put these steps into action (yes, I'm showing you inside my planner and Google cal!)
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I've used this analogy before, but it is just too good to not use again. If your weeks right now feel like an overflowing suitcase that you have to sit on to zip up, you're not alone. Okay. Most of us try to cram way too much into seven days, and we end up feeling drained by Wednesday, right? We all know that you cannot create more time, but you can create more space by pruning what doesn't matter and planning with attention. I've been using the same five steps to plan my weeks for over six years now. And this rhythm has supported me in all different seasons of life. When I was a new entrepreneur, just starting my business, when I was pregnant and still an entrepreneur, when I was postpartum on maternity leave, and now as a working toddler mom, even though what fills my weeks has kind of ebbed and flowed and changed throughout these different seasons, the five-step weekly planning meeting has always stayed the same. I'm sure that you've heard the beginning of this well-known quote by Annie Dillard, but I want to read you the entire thing because honestly, y'all, I hadn't heard the whole thing until I was preparing for this episode. So here's the quote. And again, you've probably heard the beginning, but stick with me, okay? How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand in labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order, willed, faked, and so brought into being. It is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time. It is a lifeboat on which you find yourself decades later still living. Amen Annie. Welcome or welcome back to the Hustle Stanley Podcast. I am so glad that you're here and I hope you're taking care of yourself. This is your digital classroom for learning how to break up with burnout and build a peacefully productive life. If you are tired of feeling like you're running on E and stretched so thin, grab your notebook and let's get to class. The bell has rung, so let's learn today's lesson together. It is that time of the year where I drop a new how to plan a week episode. I like to do a little reminder/slash refresh of this every year, right before our new planners drop, because my weekly planning method works seamlessly with how our planners are designed, obviously, right? Anyway, back to weekly prep meetings. So my weekly prep meetings take me around 15 minutes, and it is the best investment of my time because it winds up saving me so much time and energy throughout the week since I already have a game plan and I'm not winging it every single day. Now, before I tell you the five steps to plan a peacefully productive week, I think it's important for you to do your weekly prep meeting the same day every week so that it becomes a habit, right? I personally do mine on Thursdays in this season because Thursday is my last workday of the week. So when I sit down in my office at 10 o'clock in the morning to start my workday, it's the first thing that I do. I pull out my planner, I pull up my Google Calendar, and I spend 10 to 15 minutes planning the following week. I also want to remind you, say it with me now. Our schedules and routines are tools, not chains. Okay. The goal here isn't to expect everything to go perfectly according to your plan, but to be as intentional with your time as possible so that you're proud of how you're showing up. It is so much easier to pivot from a plan than it is to figure everything out from scratch every single day. So those are the things that I want you to keep in mind before we kind of go into the five steps. Also, even though I am going to be showing you these five steps in my planner, the Peacefully Productive Planner, you don't need a hustle standing planner in order to follow this method, okay? Does it make it easier? Yes, absolutely, because it's all laid out in front of you. But you can still follow these five steps even without a peacefully productive planner. So don't feel like you have to go and buy one of our planners in order to successfully have a weekly planning meeting. You don't need one. It makes it easier, but you don't need one. So let's get into the five steps that I follow for my weekly prep meetings. And I thought we would mix it up a bit this year. Instead of me just sitting here and telling you the five steps, I'm gonna tell you each step and then show you exactly how I do it in my planner. Okay, because I know we love a concrete example. So let's move over to my desk and get to planning besties. I saved next week's weekly planning meeting to do with you. Step one is to plug in your time-bound responsibilities for the week. So I'm talking things like work, classes, appointments, church meetings, kids' practices, all of those kinds of things. Now I like to highlight all of my work stuff in one color and all of my personal stuff in another color. So the things that are going in are planners for this step. A lot of them might look the same week to week. Like for example, my work hours are the same week to week, but some things are different. So a certain, if you have like a hair appointment or you have a doctor's appointment, or you have a parent-teacher conference, like those are one-off events. We're including any and all time-bound events in this step, whether they're recurring or one off. Step two is plug in your non-negotiable priorities and habits. So I'm talking things like journaling, workouts, tidying, family walks, stuff like that. So for this step, I personally like to fill out my habit tracker and all of my daily movement, daily tidying, and then some of my kind thing for myself and kind thing for someone else habits, which these three pieces, the tidying, daily movement, and the kind thing for someone else slash yourself, these are all part of Hustle Sanely Five. These are five habits that we do every day to help us live a peacefully productive life. There is a whole entire podcast episode dedicated to using Hustle Stanley Five to help you live a peacefully productive life. Like I said, it's five habits that we do every day in the Hustle Stanley community, and our planners are kind of built around them. So I will link that podcast episode for you down in the description box slash show notes if you have not listened to it, or maybe you just need a little bit of a refresher. So I will have that linked for you wherever you're listening or watching. And then that brings us into step three of my weekly planning meeting, which is determine and schedule your top three tasks for the week, aka your three most important to-dos for that specific week. Mine are usually a mix of personal and professional tasks. It just depends on what that week has going on. I figure out what my top three tasks are first, and then I schedule them to certain days of the week using the daily focus three section of my planner. Part of the Hustle Stanley Planning System is having a monthly focus goal. And so I use my monthly focus goal to help me come up with my top three tasks for the week. Other examples, maybe if there is a deadline for work, or maybe there's a deadline for something that I need to do in my personal life, I will use those things as a part of my weekly top three as well. Like I said, it varies just depending on what is going on that week. Step four for our weekly planning meeting is plan your weekly rest because we do not earn our rest, we operate from a place of rest. So I like to decide what I'm doing. And when I'm doing it, I schedule my rest like an appointment because that is what holds me accountable to actually resting. To me, rest is whatever refreshes you and that looks different week to week. So, for example, if I have a week that is full of a lot of people-filled events, I am an introvert. I know that I am going to need some solo downtime. So maybe I'll plan for a part of my self-care Friday to go to the bookstore by myself or lay out in our backyard and read my book or something like that. If I know that I already am gonna have a lot of alone time scheduled in that week, maybe my rest is something like grabbing coffee with a friend or meeting someone for lunch, something like that. So again, it looks different week to week. If you didn't know, there's actually seven, I believe, different types of rest. We have a whole podcast episode on this as well, which I will also link down in the description box and/or the show notes for you. But the kind of rest that I'm needing is depending on what my week looks like and also where I'm at in my cycle. Okay. So this is why I like to take a look at my whole week, see how things look, and then plan my rest accordingly. So that brings us to the final step of our weekly planning meeting, and that is step number five, determine and schedule other tasks that need to be done, carving out space for margin and transition. So we've already scheduled our top three tasks for the week, right? Like we know what they are, they're set apart so that our brains know, like, hey, these are the most important. So this step is all about brain dumping any other tasks that need to get done that week. So if I know what day I'm doing a task, I'll just write it under that day's focus three if there's space. Otherwise, I will just jot it down in the other tasks, weekly task lists of my planner. So people, you've been seeing me this whole time kind of look at my Google Calendar and translate things over into my paper planner. People ask me a lot why I use Google Calendar and a paper planner, and it's just what works best for my brain. Honestly, the best system is the one that you're actually gonna use. So I use Google Calendar as a placeholder for scheduled events and recurring tasks, both for my work life and my personal life. So kind of like digital sticky notes in a way. And then I use my weekly planner to create a game plan for each specific week that makes sure I'm prioritizing my mental health and relationships as I pursue my goals. It's kind of like my working plan, if you will. I am a recovering workaholic and it's really easy for me to skip things like my healthy habits, my rest, how I'm showing up for other people. Like those kinds of things take a lot of intention for me. And that's why I love my paper planner because I get to sit down every week and plan those things out. That way I know that I'm actually gonna show up for them. So my paper planner just kind of helps hold me accountable to hustling sanely, right? So I actually released a Google Calendar Masterclass in April where I walk you through the exact Google Calendar system that I use to organize my personal and professional tasks and events all in one place. Over 150 people have taken the class, and I'll let some of the reviews speak for themselves. I will pop them up on the screen for y'all. And I'll also link the Google Calendar masterclass in the show notes and/or description box below. That wraps up today's lesson. But what good is learning something if you don't apply it to your life? You know what I'm saying? We are all about taking action and implementation here in the Hustle Singley classroom. It is time for me to assign your homework for the week so you can actually create a peacefully productive life. This week's homework, aka what I want you to do before our next class, you already know, but I'll tell you anyway. Schedule a weekly prep meeting to plan next week, okay? Make it a vibe so that you're excited to show up for it. Light a candle, make a fun drink. May I recommend a Shirley Temple Poppy or iced salted honey latte? Those are my favorites, and put on a playlist that you love or an ambiance video to set the mood. Now, if you're new to weekly prep meetings, I would recommend carving out like 30 to 45 minutes to follow these five steps. After doing this for many years, it now, like I said, only takes me around 10 to 15 minutes. But at first, you might need a little bit more time to like get the swing of things and just get into the rhythm of it. Okay, class is officially dismissed. It is time for some extra credit, aka me filling you in on all the things happening in the Hustle Salem community right now. First and foremost, peacefully productive planner updates. I shared these in our last episode, and I know I've been talking about the planner kind of throughout this whole episode, but it's planner season, y'all. Our 2026 weekly planners are marked down to $25, which is over half off. You still have four solid months: September, October, November, December left in 2026. So if you've been wanting to try out the Hustle Stanley Planning System, I feel like this is the perfect opportunity to do that. You can grab one of our planners for 25 bucks. And then, of course, speaking of planners, our 2027 collection is launching in September. We actually have a brand new horizontal weekly spread launching with the 2027 collection. I was blown away over y'all's responses on Instagram. I am very nervous that this one is going to sell out so quick because I only ordered 350 of them. Because I didn't know if you guys were gonna want to switch from vertical to horizontal. So I think they're gonna go quick. So here's a peek at that new horizontal weekly spread. Spaces for everything that we covered in this weekly planning meeting built right into this spread. So you can see there is a spot for you to write your top three tasks for the week, to brain dump any other tasks that you have going on, an area to plan your rest. Then there, this is new to our weekly spread. We don't have space for this on our vertical version. So this is specific just to the horizontal version. We have a spot for you to customize something for the week. Maybe you want to use it to plan out the dinners that you're having every day that week, or maybe you're gonna use it to track something like the amount of pages that you read every day that week. You get to customize that. So that is, like I said, a new addition. And then, of course, there is a habit tracker for you to track your healthy habits. And then for each day, there is a blank space for you to write out whatever you want. Maybe that is your time-bound tasks and appointments. And then for each day, there's also that space to track your HS5 habits. So your focus three, your move for 30 minutes, your tidy for 15 minutes, your kind thing for yourself, and your kind thing for someone else. And then I know that you girls are gonna be so excited about this all the way over to the right hand side. There is a whole notes section for you to use however you so please. We all love more room to write in our planners, right? If you want to be the first to know when the collection drops, you absolutely need to be on our email list. Gals in Hustle Stanley study hall will be shopping early. And then after they do their early shopping, the collection is going to open to everybody on my email list. Which, speaking of email list, we do send out a weekly email every Saturday called Slow Down Saturday with some peaceful productivity inspiration. And we also fill you in on all the things happening in the Hustle Stanley community. The link to get Hustle Stanley emails, if you don't already get them, will be in the show notes andor description box. Thank y'all so much for coming to class with me today. I will talk to y'all in the next episode, and of course, I hope you have the best day ever.