Daily Planning - start from the night before
There are so many unplanned things happening every day, every hour. How to proactively manage your day instead of just getting by?
The goal is to have your day to fit in the larger picture of your life - we will discuss more about that in other posts.
Assuming we already have a system for collecting items/tasks/thoughts happened during the day. We only need to spend around 10-15 minutes at the end of the day to plan for the following day.
I am a big believer that the day starts from the night before. Working mom’s morning is never easy so by having the daily planning part the night before really helps me to enter the day more easily and calmly.
When first start this, it will take a bit longer - may be 20-30 minutes. But gradually you can do it within 10 minutes. Some days I have to skip but it is so helpful for my following day, nowadays I rarely skip it at all.
The following are the simple things you need to do - you can adjust the details to fit your lifestyle.
Organize the items you collect during the day - as mentioned in other posts, we should have a system to collect thoughts/ideas/tasks during the day and take it everywhere we go (it can be reminder app, it can be google key, or simple note taking tool (a pen and a book).
Process these items - you might need to assign a date to them, move them to calendar, or assign them to projects, sometimes you might need to do more then create tasks for that and assign a target date.
Review your calendar - look at tomorrow’s calendar to see whether it is a
busy day or quiet day. If tomorrow has back to back meetings/classes, be realistic about what you can do. Also brief glance what is coming up in the week to see whether there is important deadline coming so you can adjust the tasks for tomorrow.
Go through active projects -look at your projects when the deadline is coming up and what task will be the most important thing that needs to be done to move projects forward and see whether you have time to do those tomorrow.
Identify two to three objectives need to be done tomorrow - ideally it is aligned with your overall life goals.
Schedule in your focus time - get one hour free each day as your focus time to work on big things that will move you forward. Could be first thing in the morning or last thing at night - make sure to focus on the two or three objectives during that time.
