3 Tips to Help Plan Your Day
Welcome back to Week 5 of the Feel Less Busy Series.
Last week, I shared with you my tips for setting goals. This week, let’s talk about how to plan your day.
If you’d like to revisit posts in the Feel Less Busy series, click here to explore ideas and tricks to make the most of your precious and plentiful time. I’m sure you’ll find something that you can try!
Do you ever dream of being off the clock? You know what I mean. No errands to run. No tasks to check off the list. No car pooling, dinner to cook, homework to check. Why is it, that busyness seems to be a badge of honor?
Well my friends, I’m here to help.
Making enough time in my day is something I love to do. I secretly get a buzz when people wonder how I live the life of an executive, with three kids, travel the world, and still take vacation and do what I love (reading and writing).
I believe that you can have the life you want. Feel calm. Get more done. Achieve time freedom.
Week 5: Plan Your Day
In my opinion, a joyful life involves making the most of every minute of your day. Knowing what you want to do and grabbing the proverbial bull by the horns. Living life to the fullest. But how is this possible, when every day is just so darn busy? The answer: planning and organization.
Now I realize this doesn’t sound particularly glamorous. It might even seem a little boring. But believe me when I tell you that if you plan your day to tackle the most important things, and be careful not to fill precious hours with what doesn’t feel like the best use of that time, you’ll find your day opens up to amazing possibilities and experiences.
It’s what you say no to that is as important as what you say yes to. And actually, sometimes doing nothing is a better choice than doing something. So let’s jump right in and talk about how to plan your day. If you remember back to Week 1 of the Feel Less Busy Series, I talked about creating a calendar with white space. This is a great first step. Tracking your time and using time blocking to carve out chunks of time where you can be super productive.
Let’s now talk about how to actually plan your day. And I’ll share an example from my day, so you can see how I do it.
Step 1: Imagine Your Day
Step 1 (which takes about 5 minutes) involves grabbing my notebook and writing down what a “good day” and a “fantastic day” would look like. This is linked to the way I set goals (see last week’s Feel Less Busy post to see how I set goals). It sets the tone for the day.
Next, I look at my calendar and set the most challenging and most important thing to do. I’m an early bird. I like getting up at 5 am and am the most productive early in the day. And here’s the thing. If I can’t fit everything I need to do into my calendar, I just re-prioritize it. Yes, I tell people I can’t meet with them. Yes, I reschedule meetings if I have an urgent project or priority. I would rather be present and focused, than absent and distracted, if I’m thinking about something else I have to do.
And believe me, I’ve done this before. Sat in meetings and the entire time, was thinking about something else. I did a disservice to myself and those who had given their time to me. But not now.
Now, I decide where and when I will do something. And I do it.
Step 2: Check In Every Hour
The second step is to take a little time every hour or so to check in. It’s a great habit to look at my list and calendar. Decide whether I’ve achieved what I aimed to achieve. And if not, quickly re-focus. Sometimes re-focusing involves deciding whether I have time to finish the task or if it will have to get pushed to another day. I’ve also discovered that this check in is a good way to evaluate whether the time I’ve allocated to get the work done, is enough.
My work as an executive involves reading and reviewing a lot of documents. I’ve invested in myself to improve my speed reading and retention skills, which means I can complete this pretty quickly, which opens up time for other things. Maybe you might want to think about investing in yourself to improve your skills, too.
Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft) is a voracious reader. Bill says he reads 50 books a year and some people estimate he reads 350 words a minute, which is four times faster than the average reader. He has four rules when reading: (1) make notes in the margins, (2) finish what you start, (3) find a medium that you’re comfortable with (print or digital), and (4) block out at least an hour for reading.
Although these tips seem pretty logical, how about trying them out and seeing if they work for you?
Step 3: Execute
And the third step to plan your day is to actually execute. I’m agnostic to the type of planning tool I use (it’s a combination of Outlook Calendar for work, Google Calendar for the family, and notebooks for lists). You’ll probably be the best judge of what works for you.
So, that’s it for Week 5 of the Feel Less Busy series. I hope you found it helpful! This week we talked about how to plan your day by focusing on three steps. Set the most challenging and important tasks first. Check in every hour to see how you’re doing. Execute on your plan.
I’d love to hear what you do to feel less busy in the comments. Remember that time is both precious and plentiful. So enjoy its abundance and joy.
