Weekly Planning for Fractionals

Evan Hammer founded Covoy to help fractionals and founders achieve meaningful goals across their lives. He's been a fractional product leader, OKR coach, Head of Product at Focusmate, and Techstars All-star Mentor.

On Jan 25th and 26th 2025, Covoy is offering an annual goal-setting workshop. You can sign up here.

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In my fractional work as a product leader, I often overcommit to client work and then neglect my own business's growth. My fear of disappointing clients can take control of my priorities.

This leads to days where the amount I "need" to get done isn't possible and weeks where I'm disheartened by my lack of progress. I start doubting that I'll ever have time for lead gen, like sending that outbound email campaign or writing a new blog post. (like this one!)

The solution? Being honest about my limits, deciding my own priorities, and accepting the disappointment of what I can't do. That's why I rely on weekly planning.

In this post, I’ll walk you through how I plan my week—a system I’ve refined and now share through Covoy—to help you use weekly planning to achieve your most important goals

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The Weekly Planning Overview

On any given day, a million things pull on my attention—writing product specs, interviewing users or candidates, reviewing OKRs, Slack conversations with multiple existing clients, and several email threads with different potential clients.

Even with dedicated focus blocks, I’ve often found that I don't have the headspace to consider my long-term goals and make smart prioritization decisions.

To break this cycle, I set aside time each week to intentionally plan and align my work with long-term goals. This enables me to achieve strategic goals for my business—outcomes that drive growth, strengthen operations, or create new opportunities.

Here's how I plan my week.

1. Review the past week
2. Check in on long-term goals
3. Plan the upcoming week
4. Acknowledge the sacrifices

This process has been a game-changer for me, but it took time to refine. If you want a simple structure to start your own weekly planning, download the Covoy Weekly Planning Guide here.

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Review the Past Week

Reviewing my week helps me spot mistakes I keep on making and course correct. If I've repeatedly avoided asking for client referrals, I can decide to prioritize it for the upcoming week.

It also gets me excited. I'm often struck by how much got done and how much I enjoyed the work as I did it.

My review is a journalling exercise, 5-10 minutes. Here are my go-to prompts:

• How do I feel about the past week?
• Which goals did I struggle with? Why?
• Which goals went well? Why?
• If I were setting out on this week again, what would I do differently? What would I keep the same?
• Besides my goals, what are other things I accomplished during the week?

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Check In On Long-term Goals

Reconnecting to my long-term goals helps me prioritize them over urgent, often externally requested, tasks. If I haven't recently thought about how anxious I am in between engagements, how can I possibly prioritize the grind of lead generation over an urgent Slack request from a client?

The other essential ingredient in making progress on strategic goals is having an actionable next step. "Close one deal" isn't an action I can take. "Email 40 leads" is. For each long-term goal, I have an action plan, a list of actions I'll take to reach that goal.

During my weekly planning, I evaluate each long-term goal (and action plan) through another journalling exercise:

• What progress have I made?
• Is this goal still important to me? Why?
• What is and isn’t working about my plan?
• What is the next step that could be completed within a week?

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Plan the Upcoming Week

I'm finally ready to plan my week by setting 1-3 strategic goals across all my competing priorities.

Strategic goals are high-impact outcomes that meaningfully advance my business, strengthen client relationships, or improve my personal life. I won't include a routine client deliverable, but I often focus on reaching a key milestone within an engagement.

I start by writing down the next step for each long-term goal. Then I review my calendar and todo lists--covering each client, my business, and personal life--to add other potential strategic weekly goals. I usually end up with about 10.

Now it's time to decide what matters most. I ask myself: if I could only complete one goal this week and had to ignore the rest, which would I choose?

The power of the question is that by rejecting everything but one goal, what matters most becomes clear. I repeat this twice more to set my 3 strategic goals for the week.

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Acknowledge the Sacrifices

Choosing what to focus on is only half the battle. The other half is staying committed to my plan throughout the week.

That's why I take the time to acknowledge the tradeoffs I'm making. I write out what I'm losing, missed opportunities, and tough conversations ahead. By accepting these downsides at the beginning of the week, I'll feel less encumbered by them as I work, and I'm more likely to accomplish my goals.

My final set of journalling prompts:

• What are the upsides of only completing these 3 goals?
• What are the downsides of not completing the other goals?
• Am I truly committed to doing this work first?

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I don't always pick what's most important, nor do I always prioritize long-term over short-term, and I still have a tendency to take on too much.

But this ritual gives me time to wrestle with what's important. It encourages me to choose my business's growth as a top priority, rather than leaving it on the todo list week after week.

Weekly planning safeguards time for what matters, helps my business grow faster, and makes my days more enlivening.

If you’re tired of finishing the week feeling overcommitted or stuck, start building a more intentional workflow. Download the Covoy Weekly Planning Guide or join our annual goal-setting workshop to create lasting change.

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