A weekly to do list is a short plan for the next five to seven days: the three results that matter most, the tasks that get you there, and a day for each one. It sits between your calendar, which holds commitments, and your daily list, which holds today. Most weekly lists fail for two reasons: they hold projects instead of tasks, and nobody reviews them. This guide gives you a weekly to do list template you can copy in a minute, shows how to build it in Google Tasks so it syncs to your phone and Google Calendar, and explains how to see the whole week on one board with TasksBoard.
In short:
- Plan outcomes first. Pick three results for the week before you touch the task list.
- One list per day, plus a parking list. In Google Tasks, each list becomes a column on a board, so Monday to Friday stay visible side by side.
- Give every task a date. Dated tasks show up in Google Calendar, and anything you miss rolls forward instead of disappearing.
- Review on Friday. Fifteen minutes to move leftovers and set the next Top 3 is what keeps the list alive.
The Weekly To Do List Template (Copy It)
The template below works on paper, in a spreadsheet or in any task app. It has six parts, and each one answers a different question you ask yourself during the week.
| Section | What goes in it | Example (fictional) |
|---|---|---|
| Top 3 this week | The three outcomes you would defend in a Friday review | ”Send the Q4 proposal to Northwind” |
| Monday to Friday | Tasks that take one sitting, placed on the day you will do them | ”Draft proposal outline” on Monday |
| Routines | Repeating tasks that come back every week | ”Weekly report, Friday 3 pm” |
| Waiting on | Tasks blocked by someone else, with the name and the date you asked | ”Pricing sign-off from Dana, asked Nov 10” |
| Next week | Good ideas that would overload this week | ”Refresh the onboarding deck” |
| Done | Completed tasks, kept visible until the review | Filled in as you check boxes |
Two rules make the template work. First, write tasks, not projects. Stanford’s Center for Teaching and Learning puts it well in its guide to keeping to-do lists: a task is something you can finish in one sitting, ideally in 30 minutes or less, while “do research for the paper” is really another project in disguise. Second, cap each day. Four to six tasks per weekday is plenty once meetings are counted. If Wednesday has eight, something moves to Thursday or to next week before the week even starts.
Weekly To Do List vs Daily List: You Need Both
A weekly list and a daily list are not competitors. Stanford’s study-skills guide recommends making a list of everything due in the coming week, then reviewing it every morning, or the night before, to pull that day’s tasks onto a separate daily list. It also suggests picking a fixed time each week for the weekly list, such as Friday afternoon or Sunday evening, so the habit survives busy weeks.
| Weekly to do list | Daily to do list | Calendar | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Answers | What matters this week? | What do I do today? | When exactly? |
| Made | Once, at a fixed time each week | Each morning, from the weekly list | As commitments arrive |
| Holds | 15-25 tasks and a Top 3 | 3-6 tasks | Meetings and time blocks |
| Fails when | Nobody reviews it | It is written from memory | Every small task becomes an event |
Google Tasks happens to fit this split well. Lists give you the weekly structure, the date field feeds Google Calendar, and a board view turns the morning review into a glance.
How to Build a Weekly To Do List in Google Tasks
Google Tasks comes with every Google account and lives in the side panel of Gmail, Calendar, Drive and Docs, so there is nothing to install. Here is the setup, step by step.
- Create one list per day, plus the parking lists. In the side panel, open the list menu at the top, choose Create a new list and name it. Make “Top 3”, “Mon” through “Fri”, “Routines”, “Waiting on” and “Next week”. Google’s add or edit a task help page notes that you can keep up to 100,000 tasks across all lists and 20,000 uncompleted tasks in any single list, so nine lists will not run into any limit.
- Give every task a date. Open a task, click Date/time and pick the day. The same help page states that tasks with a date also appear on your calendar, which is what turns a list into a plan you can see next to your meetings. If the Tasks calendar is hidden, our guide on how to use Google Calendar tasks shows where to switch it on.
- Make routines repeat. For the weekly report or Monday planning, open the task, click Date/time, then Repeat. Google’s page on repeating tasks lists the options: repeat every day, week, month or year, and end never, on a date, or after a number of occurrences. When you complete one instance, the next appears on its scheduled date.
- Sort by date, and let misses roll forward. The organize your tasks page describes the sort options, including Date, Deadline and Starred recently, plus My order for manual drag and drop. In the Tasks view inside Calendar, uncompleted tasks from the past 365 days are carried onto the current day under Past, so a task you skipped on Tuesday is still waiting on Wednesday.
- Capture from Gmail instead of retyping. Open an email and click Add to Tasks at the top, or drag the message into the Tasks side panel. The task keeps a link back to the email.
See the Whole Week on One Board With TasksBoard
The side panel shows one list at a time, which is fine for Tuesday morning and useless for Friday planning. TasksBoard opens the same Google Tasks data as a full-screen board where every list is a column, so “Mon” to “Fri” sit next to each other and you can drag a task from Wednesday to Thursday with the mouse. If you have not used a Google Tasks kanban board before, the idea is simple: columns are lists, cards are tasks, and moving a card moves the task.
According to the TasksBoard weekly planner page, due dates set on the board sync to Google Calendar, columns show how full each day already is before you add more, incomplete tasks with a past due date are flagged automatically, and leftovers can be rescheduled to next week in one action during a Friday review. Because TasksBoard reads and writes Google Tasks in real time, the same tasks still appear in the Gmail side panel and in the Google Tasks apps on your phone.
The free plan covers a weekly list well: unlimited tasks and subtasks, the full-screen board, sync with Google Tasks, Gmail and Calendar, the Chrome extension and up to five shared lists. The Pro plan, which starts with a free week, adds repeating tasks with due times and reminders, a calendar view, custom labels, list and board templates, and printing a whole board, according to the plan comparison on the TasksBoard site.
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A 15-Minute Weekly Planning Routine
The template only pays off if you reset it every week. Block the same slot each week, Friday at 4 pm or Sunday evening, and run this sequence.
- Clear the board (2 minutes). Check off anything finished that you forgot to mark. Open the Completed section of each day list so you can see what the week actually produced.
- Read the overdue (3 minutes). Every task still sitting on a past day gets one of three fates: do it now if it takes two minutes, move it to a specific day next week, or delete it. Do not let it drift to “Next week” without a decision.
- Choose the Top 3 (3 minutes). Look at the calendar for the coming week first. A week with two offsite days supports a smaller Top 3 than an empty one.
- Fill the days (5 minutes). Drag tasks from “Next week” and “Waiting on” onto the weekday lists, heaviest tasks on the days with the fewest meetings. Stop at four to six per day.
- Date the stragglers (2 minutes). Any task without a date will not reach Google Calendar. Sort each list by date to spot them.
If you want more habits that make the list stick, from starring to subtasks, our roundup of how to use Google Tasks effectively covers the small features that most people never switch on.
Printable Weekly To Do List: Two Ways to Print It
Some people plan on paper and track on screen, and a printed sheet works well in a notebook or on a wall. You have two options, one built in and one free from TasksBoard.
Print one list from Google Tasks
Google’s print your tasks page explains the steps: open the Tasks side panel in Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Drive or a Docs file, pick the list from the drop-down at the top, open List options next to Add a task and click Print list. Ctrl + P on Windows and ChromeOS, or Cmd + P on a Mac, does the same. To include finished tasks, expand Completed at the bottom first. The limitation is that this prints a single list, so a Monday-to-Friday plan means five print jobs.
Print every list on one page with the free export tool
TasksBoard’s Google Tasks export tool connects with read-only access, lets you tick the lists you want, and prints them as one clean checklist grouped by list, with checkboxes, due dates and notes. The same screen downloads CSV, Excel, JSON or Markdown, or copies the tasks for pasting into Google Sheets, and the print dialog’s Save as PDF option gives you a snapshot of the week. The tool runs in your browser and does not send your tasks to TasksBoard’s servers. If you would rather not sign in at all, it accepts the Tasks.json file from Google Takeout instead. Pro subscribers can also print a whole board from inside TasksBoard.
FAQ
Conclusion
A weekly to do list works when it is short, dated and reviewed. Copy the template, build it as nine lists in Google Tasks, give every task a day so it reaches Google Calendar, and set your routines to repeat. Then open the lists in TasksBoard so Monday to Friday sit side by side, and spend fifteen minutes every Friday clearing, moving and choosing the next Top 3. Start with the free plan of TasksBoard and your first weekly board will be ready before the coffee cools.
