Plan Your Day for Maximum Results
“Lack of clarity is the number one time-waster. Always be asking, what am I trying to do? How am I trying to do it?“
–Brian Tracy
Perhaps the greatest single problem that people have today is Time Poverty. Working people have too much to do and too little for their personal lives. Time is our most precious resource. It is the most valuable thing we have. It is perishable, it is irreplaceable, and it cannot be saved. It can only be reallocated from one task to another.
Why Time Management?
Time management is the core skill that elevates the quality of life. It makes work efficient and effective. And yet, many people suffer from lack of time. Some don’t care to learn and use this skill.
Brian Tracy said, “every minute spent in planning, will save 10 minutes in execution.” So, spending 12 minutes in planning saves you 120minutes/2 hours of execution time. From my personal experience, I can’t say it is not true.
Now that I know how to be productive, it is hard for me to be unproductive, I feel bad if I stay unproductive because now I know the key to getting things done fast. You will feel the same once you learn this skill and realise how easy it is to be productive.
How to plan your day?
Planning one’s day is probably the first and most powerful time management skill one must-have. The best practice is to do it the night before you go to bed. Doing this will allow you to get into the goal-oriented mindset from the moment you wake up.
Make a checklist:
Prefer making a checklist. A checklist is where you write down your tasks in the order of priority. The most important task should be done first, followed by decreasing priority tasks. When you complete one task, strike it off the list. It gives a sense of accomplishment. It is satisfying. Like the saying, “little drops of water make a mighty ocean,” similarly completing small tasks get you closer to your goals.
Do the hard thing first:
Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, You can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long. Now, before you get disgusted, allow me to tell you that the frog here is the metaphor for your biggest and most important task. The title of Brian Tracy’s best selling book “Eat That Frog” is inspired by this quote. I suggest you read this book to achieve optimum time management.
Set a deadline:
To Maximise the impact and to truly eliminate procrastination, set a deadline besides every task. The task should be completed before this time. Doing this will not allow you to procrastinate until the later time of the day and regret having no time to complete the tasks.
How much time it will take to plan your day?
For me, the entire process of planning my day takes less than 5 minutes. And that is the beauty of this. Strategising for 5 minutes allows you to be productive for an entire day.
Why this method is powerful?
This method seems simple enough, but it incorporates powerful concepts like Robot-Manager Modes, Parkinson’s Law, Pareto Principle, Pomodoro Technique, Time Blocking and Habit Management together. I have covered the Pomodoro Technique and Parkinson’s Law. Other concepts will be discussed in future articles. Knowing these concepts, you will be consciously able to incorporate them.
Why you will hesitate to use this method?
The single main reason I think people hesitate to plan is because of fear. What if some of the tasks are incomplete. It seems like we failed at completing the tasks. But, I say this should not be a reason for concern. You will be better off completing 60% of the tasks than not planing at all. And the incomplete tasks can be rescheduled on the next day. Making sure that the tasks will be completed and never forgotten. “What gets scheduled gets done.”
And the best part is, the days you complete all the given tasks of that day you will feel invincible. I am saying from my personal experience. Look at this with a perspective of a gamer. It will be much more fun and exciting to schedule and accomplish the tasks.
Nobody ever builds a house without a blueprint. Why not build your life with a blueprint?
Check out the above sample picture of a checklist. Planning on paper is my personal preference. You may use a paper or an app. And do not hold back on experimenting by changing things up and see what works for you the best.
Take away
- Plan your day. Preferably a night before.
- Make a checklist.
- Write them in the order of priority.
- Add the deadline.
- Check off the task as soon as you finish it.
- 60% completion of tasks is better than not scheduling at all.
Please share and comment to let me know what you think. It will help me to keep writing.
Thank you. 🙂