Sunday evening arrives and the dread sets in. Tomorrow is Monday. The week’s work looms. You should probably do some planning.
So you open your task manager. You review the backlog. You estimate, categorize, and prioritize. You create a plan for the week. An hour passes. Maybe two.
By the time you’re done, you’re exhausted - and you haven’t actually done anything yet.
There’s a better way.
The Five-Minute Version
Open Kanman. Look at your project list. Drag the most important thing to the top. Maybe drag two or three more things into rough order.
Close Kanman.
Done.
That’s the weekly reset. No templates. No frameworks. No time-blocking. No sprint planning. Just a quick look at what’s in progress and a gut-check on priority order.
Why This Works
The weekly reset works because prioritization doesn’t actually require ceremony.
You already know what matters. You know which project is urgent, which is important, and which has been sitting untouched for too long. The knowledge exists in your head.
The tool’s job is to capture that knowledge quickly, not to extract it through elaborate rituals. Drag-and-drop ordering takes seconds, not hours. The interface gets out of the way so your intuition can work.
Most planning overhead comes from tools that demand more information than you actually have. Estimates for tasks you haven’t started. Categories for work that doesn’t fit categories. Dependencies for projects that will change next week anyway.
Skip all of it. Look at the list. Order it by gut feeling. Move on.
Replacing Sunday Dread
The traditional weekly review creates dread because it’s work about work. You’re not shipping anything. You’re not making progress. You’re maintaining a system that’s supposed to help you make progress - someday.
The five-minute reset replaces dread with action. You spend less time planning and more time doing. The planning that matters happens in the doing.
This doesn’t mean you never plan. It means you plan lightweight. When a project needs detailed steps, write them as tasks. When priorities shift, drag projects around. When something new arrives, add it and decide where it goes.
None of this requires a dedicated planning session. It happens as you work.
What Gets Dropped
The five-minute reset intentionally drops several practices that traditional planning demands:
Time estimates. You don’t estimate how long things will take. You’ll find out when you do them. Estimates are usually wrong anyway.
Capacity planning. You don’t calculate how many “points” you can fit this week. You work on what’s most important until you can’t, then you rest.
Calendar blocking. You don’t assign projects to specific days. Reality will reshuffle your week regardless of what you put on the calendar.
Detailed next actions. You don’t break everything into tiny steps in advance. You break things down when you start working on them, when you understand what they actually require.
These practices feel productive. They’re often just procrastination that looks like work.
The Ritual Details
If five minutes feels too vague, here’s a slightly more structured version:
Step 1: Open your project list. See everything you’ve started. Notice what’s stalled, what’s active, what’s waiting.
Step 2: Identify the top priority. Ask yourself: “If I could only finish one thing this week, what would it be?” Drag it to the top.
Step 3: Quick-order the next few. Don’t overthink. Gut feeling is fine. You can reorder mid-week if priorities shift.
Step 4: Close the app. Resist the urge to tinker. The plan is good enough. Go do something else.
That’s it. Sunday evening reclaimed.
When More Planning Makes Sense
The five-minute reset doesn’t replace all planning. Some situations need more:
Large project kickoffs. When starting something substantial, spend time understanding scope and breaking it into phases. This is project work, not weekly maintenance.
Team coordination. When multiple people work on shared projects, alignment discussions matter. But these are conversations, not dashboard ceremonies.
Stuck projects. When something has stalled for weeks, ask why. Maybe it needs re-scoping. Maybe it’s not actually important. This is problem-solving, not planning.
The five-minute reset handles the routine. Save deeper thinking for when it’s actually needed.
The Anti-Ceremony
Productivity culture loves ceremonies. Morning routines. Weekly reviews. Monthly retrospectives. Quarterly planning. Annual goal-setting.
Each ceremony adds overhead. Each one takes time from actual work. Each one promises to improve productivity while consuming it.
The five-minute reset is an anti-ceremony. It’s the minimum viable planning - just enough structure to stay oriented, not enough to become its own job.
Try it this week. Open your projects, drag a few things around, close the app. See how much of your planning overhead was actually necessary.
Ready for simpler planning? Supports the five-minute reset with drag-and-drop prioritization and nothing else. No templates, no frameworks, no ceremony. Kanman - annual workspace subscriptions. €4 / month for individuals, €10 per seat / month.
Marco Kerwitz
Founder of kanman.de