Themed Days Explained: Plan Your Week as a Business Owner

As bloggers and content creators, most of us struggle with productivity, motivation, discipline… the usual.

We might start the month or year strong, but then it all goes down.

Maybe life happens. Maybe you get distracted, forget about your main strategy and start working on something completely different.

I’m quite guilty of that.

And that’s why I’m always looking for new, fun and creative ways to create structure in my life and business.

What I’m doing now is theming my week.

What Are Themed Days?

That means dividing your week into themes, and assigning a topic/theme/direction for each day.

This can lead to getting more done, increasing focus, making sure no aspect of your business is neglected, and – ultimately – growing your revenue.

You also simplify your life as you don’t need to wonder what to work on every day, and knowing what to expect each day reduces mental clutter.

You can do any version that works for you, of course. That can be themed months, for example.

Time Blocking vs Themed Days

This concept is also close to time blocking, which means you schedule your day in chunks of time and assign each chunk to a specific task. For example, 9–11 am can be for writing, 11–12 for emails, 1–3 for meetings, etc. It’s like giving every task an appointment on your calendar.

Themed days make this easier as you assign a whole day to one type of activity or aspect of your business. And it might just work wonders for you.

Time blocking might help you manage your daily schedule hour by hour, but themed days offer freedom and yet help you take control of your whole week.

You can also combine both if you want to be extra productive.

CEOs who theme their days

Let me give you a few examples that might just inspire you to give this a try.

Jack Dorsey (ex-CEO of both Twitter and Square) does this.

When he last shared his weekly routine, it looked like this:

Monday: Management
Tuesday: Product
Wednesday: Marketing/communications and growth
Thursday: Developers and partnerships
Friday: Culture and recruiting

Elon Musk, on the other hand, splits his workweek by company.

He works at SpaceX on Monday and Tuesday, then at Tesla on Wednesday and Thursday, returning to SpaceX on Friday.

Now let me share how I do it.

How I Theme My Days

I just started doing this, and my main motivation was to focus more on income-generating activities and make sure I don’t neglect important aspects of my blogging business (such as digital products, for example).

It’s easy for me to get excited about something new I’m doing now and totally leave behind something else that’s actually more important.

Social media content and Pinterest activities can often get in the way, while I forget about affiliate marketing.

I’m also in the middle of a big content audit and that excites me, but it shouldn’t mean leaving the rest of the things behind. This project can take months and is not urgent at all, so I should just have a dedicated day of the week for it.

So the need for some structure and boundaries inspired me to create my themed week. Here’s how it currently looks:

Monday – Email & Admin
Tuesday – Sponsors & Affiliates
Wednesday – Blog Growth
Thursday – Content & Visibility
Friday – Product Creation
Saturday & Sunday (optional) – Creative projects/socials

For this, I created a quick PDF in Canva and printed it out so I can see it in front of me every day while I work. It’s a reminder to stay on track, and to really invest time in all these categories of my business.

I will test this for a few weeks and it might take time till I turn it into a habit, but that’s fine.

Also, I might feel like a theme is better suited for another day of the week, so then I can change that.

Of course, I’m not too strict with myself and don’t want to get in the way of creative freedom. So if I really feel like working on something specific, then so be it.

Also, either on Sundays or first thing on Mondays, I want to plan my week a bit and see what specific tasks should get done during each workday (based on its theme).

That then becomes my to-do list and I will never wonder what to work on when I’m not feeling motivated.

How to Get Started with Themed Days

If you too are feeling like not much gets done in your business and you need more structure, here’s how to theme your week.

1. The themes.

Start by writing down the categories. List all the activities you do in your business and organize them by category.

It it’s too many, keep doing it until you have a few clear ones.

That will vary based on your business, but here are some ideas:

Content
Client Work/Meetings/Calls
Planning/CEO tasks
Admin/Finance
Marketing/Branding/Networking/Partnerships

If you’re a YouTuber and it’s not just your main platform, but literally what you do all day and where your income comes from, then your main activities have to do with:

Creating videos;
Editing videos;
Uploading them on YouTube + adding all the necessary details (final touches, description, thumbnail, links, etc.);
Tracking your metrics and finding ways to increase engagement;
Promoting the video;
Brainstorming new content ideas;
Etc.

Depending on how many videos you want to complete in a week, and whether or not you outsource some of the work, you can have 2 days of the week for recording videos.

Then another day for editing them. This means you won’t multitask but will focus on one activity only – editing. That usually leads to getting it done faster, and not having to even think about that the rest of the days.

Another one can be Marketing.

Little things like emails and posting on your main social platform can be done daily, as it requires consistency and showing up all the time.

But if you’re creating a digital product, want to set up a sales funnel or grow your email list, then have a dedicated day of the week only for this.

2. Assign each one a day.

Once you have a few themes, it’s time to give each a day of the week.

How you structure your week is, of course, based on what works for you, plus your lifestyle and preferences.

Maybe you work just 3-4 days a week and spend time with family the rest of it, or like working on weekends, or are currently focused on growing one aspect of your business so you might want to dedicate 3 days to just that.

Whatever it is, create your weekly schedule now. It doesn’t need to be permanent, it’s just the first version of it. Test it out and improve as needed.

3. Stick to it, at least to some extent.

Like anything else, this will take time to get used to and to actually see the benefits.

You might want to resist it at first. Your brain is probably used to multitasking (even though it’s not wired for that), skipping some tasks and moving onto what feels good. But remember, this hasn’t worked out so well in terms of productivity and you’re here to try something different.

When new tasks pop up, drop them into the day they belong to. Don’t let random stuff leak into the wrong day as it can mess the whole week and you can easily go back to the old way of doing things.

Notice that I’m not even saying how many hours I work or how long you need to work. This is based on the actual input, the work that gets done and how satisfied you are with it.

Plus, everyone operates differently, and every business requires a different level of dedication. The specifics are up to you.

Some people get a lot done in 3 hours a day, and others need 5 hours just for their social media content, for example.

Final words

Themed days give me a lot of freedom and that’s why I love them. I still get to choose exactly what to work on – it just has to be related to one category. And I’m still flexible in terms of the hours – when to start and finish work, how long to do it, how to spread those hours throughout the day, etc.

What do you think? Can themed days work for you too? If so, what themes will you include in your week and how will you organize them?