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How to Plan Your Day: The Complete Guide to Everyday Productivity
Choosing your planning tool
Now that you've decided on the productivity approach, it's time to pick your tools:
- A to-do list app: A digital task manager is great for those who are tech-savvy.
- A digital list is useful if you're not into a task-manager but still want a digital solution, such as a word processing app or Google sheets.
- A digital calendar: Many people opt for a daily planning tool, like Apple Calendar or Google Calendar.
- A paper planner can take several forms, including notebooks, agendas, or specialized planners.
- A digital and paper hybrid: You might enjoy a paper first, digital second option where you transfer your to-dos from a paper onto a digital task manager for easy reference.
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The weekly review
It’s dedicated time to think about the past week, reflect on what went well and what didn’t, and plan for the week ahead.
It’s a chance to get aligned with your goals and ensure ...
The 3 parts of a weekly review
- Get Clear: process all your loose-ends.
- Get Current: make sure all your items are up to date.
- Get Creative: come up with new ideas to improve how you live and work.
Benefits of weekly reviews
- You gain an objective view of the week: a weekly review forces you to practice intention by taking time to pause and reflect as you consider what you did versus what you planned to do.
- You become proactive in planning: a weekly review isn’t only a retrospective, but a prospective too. It lets you run through the upcoming Monday to Friday proactively.
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Accepting that you can't do everything
The antidote to chronic overwhelm is accepting that you cannot do it all.
Prioritizing means embracing the limits of your time and your energy, and taking back control of y...
Things worth prioritizing in life
There are some general areas that all of us should prioritize in order to function well and generally make life worthwhile. These areas are:
- Health and fitness. Bad health and fitness habits add up over time and have a knock-on effect in other areas of our lives.
- Sleep and rest. Inadequate sleep leads to unstable emotions, impaired learning, imbalanced hormones and a compromised cardiovascular system.
- Friends, family, and relationships. It's hard to mend relationships once they've been frayed. Be proactive about being the connector and decide beforehand what you won't miss out on.
- Productive work. Instead of working harder, we should work smarter (more strategically.)
Things to deprioritize
Intentionally take your focus away from distracting areas in your life.
- Social media and entertainment. While they can add fun to our days, it's worth reducing how much time we spend on apps.
- Busy work. These are tasks we do regularly but that fail to move us forward. These tasks should be delegated, automated, limited, or deleted.
- Negativity. When we focus on the negative, we are prevented from seeing reality clearly. It is then important to be aware of your inner thoughts. Maintain a running record of positive things people say about you.
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Key Ideas
Become more organized
In order to be successful and reach your goals, you need to be organized.
One first step in this direction refers to starting your day planning: choosing the agenda that wo...
Practice a lot
Acquiring organizational skills, as in getting better at planning, can take a while. While finding the appropriate agenda is essential, making a habit out of using it is just as important.
Plan important moments monthly
When preparing your schedule on a monthly basis, make sure to add not only the daily tasks and objectives, but also the big moments.
For instance, integrating your friends' birthdays can prove both useful and time saving for the future.