Plan your day

Hey there, planning is one the most important activities to make your own. The act of it involves thinking about your values, how you want to live them in the future and how to structure your time based on that.

Each evening sit down and take out a white sheet of paper that you can carry around during the following day.

Divide the page into two columns and put down the headings of to do and to remember. Now collect a list of things you want to do and write them down on a separate sheet of paper.

Prioritise:

• Collect to dos
• Prioritise them based on importance and urgency
• Define a goal you want to reach
• Block time

Plan:

• Think about with which strategy you will engage your activity. - What is the best way I know how to do this?
• Think about how you want to feel while engaging in you activity - How do I want to feel when doing this?
• Make your work meaningful - What purpose do I see in this?

A few other guidelines:

• spend no more than 10 minutes on planning
• Make your plans/strategies and what you write down:
  • actionable
  • simple
  • visible
  • effective
  • flexible

What helped me is to acknowledge that I do not have to plan. I want to plan because it gives me clarity. I‘ve noticed that when I don‘t plan I feel like I am enveloped in a mist of uncertainty.

Lastly, I‘d like to give you two more tips:

• Hang the process of planning on a sheet of paper next to your desk so you can look at it.
• Find a process that works for you. Maybe you know a lot about planning, maybe you‘ve never done it consistently. At some point you‘ll know what you need when you listen to what you experience and integrate that with what you know about the science on how to do xyz.

If you are interested you can learn about how to plan/strategise in the following books:

• Solving the procastination puzzle by Timothy Pychyl
• Feel good productivity by Ali Abdaal
• Deep work by Cal Newport

Have a nice day