It’s one thing to make daily planning a habit. Another thing to consider is if your strategy is genuinely moving you closer to your larger objectives. Make sure your daily responsibilities are aligned with your long-term goals during your daily planning session. To go there, follow these steps:
Step one: Choose your biggest goals
Divide your objectives into daily chores. You can’t put “Get in Shape” on your daily to-do list, but you can put “spend 20 minutes on my treadmill” or “take a midnight stroll” on it. When you sit down to organize your day, think about your personal and professional goals, and add things that will help you achieve both.
Step two: Take a look over your entire week
Considering your week as a whole is the first step in planning your day. You probably have several objectives, a variety of possible tasks to achieve them, and only so many hours in the day. That’s OK. While everyday action is beneficial for some objectives, working on them a few times a week might help you gain momentum.
Perhaps you work out on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. On other days, you might wish to task batch and concentrate just on tasks connected to a single professional aim. You might also stack up your personal goal chores over the weekend. Zoom out and gently sketch your week on Sunday evening or Monday morning so you know which goals you’ll focus on and on which days.
Step three: Add your to-do list.
When most individuals organize their days, they begin with this step. They start with their scheduled appointments, necessary meetings, and pressing deadlines, then try to squeeze goal-oriented chores in between. Consider deferring this step until the conclusion. You’ll be forced to fit your must-do duties around your goal tasks rather than the other way around.
In an ideal world, we would only concentrate on everyday chores that help us achieve our long-term objectives. In fact, we have responsibilities and commitments to meet, some of which have no bearing on our personal or professional development. As much as feasible, reduce your commitments and duties. It’s OK, though, to have items on your to-do list that are urgent. Just make sure they don’t take up too much of your time and attention.