How to plan your day

How to plan your day: 3 ways

Effective recommendations how to plan your day. Keep them in mind!

My dear reader, I’m happy to welcome you on the pages of our useful website “Motivational tips”! 😉

I’m sure that you’ve repeatedly said or heard such phrases from your acquaintances: “I don’t have time to finish that task!”, “I wish there were more than 24 hours in a day”, or “The day is already over, and I haven’t done anything useful!”

Many people think that all their problems consist in excessive business.

However, problems with time management occur when a person doesn’t know how to plan his/her day in order to accomplish everything without making too much effort.

How to plan your day: what do you need to know?

Do you know the dictionary definition of “time”?

Time is duration of human existence, which is measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. Thus, time is a measure of duration of every finished action.

At first glance everything seems quite simple: 1 hour consists of 60 minutes, 1 week consists of 7 days, etc. However, in reality time is often perceived differently.

Try and remember how much time does a class with a boring professor last? I think it seems to last more than actually 80 minutes.

On the contrary, when you are reading an interesting book, you can spend 3 hours without even noticing how fast time flies by!

Usually we don’t manage to accomplish many tasks in time not because of our silliness or excessive business, but due to our inability to plan our day in the most effective way.

It is always easier said than done.

First of all, you should be persistent, organized and have some money in order to purchase necessary materials.

How to plan your day: preparation

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

If you are always late, fail to keep your promises, get snowed under with work or don’t fulfill your boss’s orders, you suffer not only yourself, but make other people suffer as well.

In this case your friends or parents may understand your behavior (though their patience also has its limits), but your boss is unlikely to admire such employee, and thus, you’ll never make a successful career.

However, what soldier would refuse to become a general?

Do you know a person who would like to spend all his/her life working as a secretary or a courier?

When you learn how to plan your day, you’ll increase your efficiency and make first steps to a successful career.

How to plan your day: what can help you?

You may be surprised, but there are actually many factors that cause sluggishness and idleness, due to which you end up with less accomplished tasks than you’ve initially planned.

Work organization may be improved by:

Impeccable order at your working place.

You have to put away all unnecessary stuff from your table, leaving only those things which you really need for work.

You may store away the rest of the stuff in boxes.

Your home should be clean and comfortable.

If you work at home or don’t work at all, this is not the reason for making chaos and mess around.

You have to want to look at it as much as possible.

No matter whether you have to go work or not, you shouldn’t spend half of the day in bed.

Make a habit of waking up early at the same time every morning, and it will give you enough time to get prepared or to correct your to-do list.

Keep a healthy diet and get enough sleep.

A person who lacks sufficient amount of vitamins and doesn’t get enough sleep, cannot be expected to work effectively.

These recommendations are meant not only for teaching you how to plan your day properly, but also for protecting you for small trifles which you rarely notice, but often fall victim to their influence.

How to plan your day: scheme!

When we aren’t willing to do something, we often come up with lame excuses instead of actual reasons. These “reasons” seem very valid at first sight; however, they simply mask our unwillingness to work.

When we say “I don’t have time for this”, we mean that we have more important things to do.

Every person has a right to proclaim suffering from lack of time. However, in this case he/she has to decide what is really important for him/her. Actually, most people do not encounter with a problem of lacking free time, they simply prefer to spend their time on more important tasks.

I’d like to offer you 3 ways how to plan your day properly and manage to accomplish more tasks every day.

You can choose one of these ways or create your own by combining some of these ways below:

Always make a to-do list.

Diary with a list of tasks should become an essential weapon in your struggle against lack of organization.

Every evening you should devote some time for making a to-do list for the next day, grouping all tasks by the level of their importance.

You have to review this list in the morning and to correct it if necessary.

During the day open your diary from time to time and cross out the accomplished tasks.

Do you remember my friend Yana from one of the previous articles, who has overcome her habit of being always late with the help of the diary?

Make use of every single minute.

Sometimes life “presents” us with unpleasant surprises: we may get stuck in the elevator or traffic jam, the lights can go off unexpectedly, or our laptop may hang, etc.

You should accept these situations as inevitability and avoid panicking!

Switch to another task. Simply read a useful book or subscribe to my informative articles emailing in order to nourish your brain with new and interesting information every day.

You can also relax and listen to pleasant music in order to help your organism recover and work more effectively later.

Make real plans and avoid false promises.

Some people don’t manage to accomplish many tasks in time because they try to do more than they really can.

As a result, they are snowed under with a pile of unfinished tasks!

Estimate your abilities and arrange your tasks according to their importance. Some of them will have to be finished first, while others may be postponed for later.

Don’t be afraid of telling your boss that your article about refugees needs more data, that’s why you’ll finish your report on the municipal sewerage tomorrow in the morning, etc.

However, the best way to learn how to plan your day is to keep strict self-discipline!

If you try to follow steady daily routine, go to bed and get up at the same time every day, avoid such weaknesses as “I’d rather stay in bed today”, plan every single minute and follow your to-do list, you’ll notice the increase of your efficiency sooner than you can imagine!

How to Plan Your Day

Knowing how to plan your day makes a massive difference to what you achieve and how you feel about it.

It’s the difference between time invested developing your roles or goals, and time wasted reacting to the distractions, disruptions and deceptions that bombard you.

If you want to make the most of your day, planning it properly is essential.

But how do you do that?

Here are some ideas on how to plan your day at work, at home or when you’re out and about, so that you get to spend more of it doing what matters most.

Know what time you’ve got

Before you can plan it, you need to know what time you have available.

When planning each day, you need to work around any regular or scheduled activities you have on (events, appointments, meetings etc.)

For example, let’s say you’re at work for eight hours. If you know that five of those hours are accounted for, that leaves you with three hours, right?

Some scheduled events will overrun (more on that below). You also have to factor in food and bathroom breaks (perhaps not at the same time though. One of the best time management strategies is to batch tasks, but that may be taking it too far.

Anyway, these account for, say, another 30 minutes. Now you only have two and a half hours to work on unscheduled tasks and projects.

How do you know what to do?

This is the point at which you really benefit from knowing how to plan your day.

Plan your day before the day itself

Many time management experts advise planning the night before, but I’ve found this way of operating to be partially flawed. You’re relying on your ability to sit down and remember everything that you want to do at a point in the day when you’re probably most tired.

Instead, try this system:

Whenever you get given something to do that doesn’t genuinely merit a same day response, put it on your list for the next day that you think you’ll have some time.

But what happens when you know Tuesday will be no good because you’ll have no unscheduled time?

Simple. shunt it to Wednesday, or the next available day you’ll have some time.

Not every day is the same.

Many scheduled tasks and events tend to be organized on a seven day basis, so use a weekly planner to help you decide what to do when.

Organize your tasks into your available time

Earlier, I said ‘partially’ because planning the night before does have its uses. Once you know what you have to do, taking a few minutes to organize what to do, when to do it, and for how long, is an essential exercise for knowing how to plan your day.

Using the example above, let’s say you have a list of 11 things to do in your 2.5 hours.

Try time boxing each one of those things. Give each one a chunk of time according to the urgency it warrants (everything matters, otherwise you wouldn’t have written it down). The point is to do something about everything on your list, because it’s all important.

This takes practice and a degree of self-discipline, particularly when you start a task and get into the flow with it.

If you want to keep going with it, you have to decide whether or not it’s worth the cost of the knock-on effect of not doing the other things that have to be done. Sure, they can be shunted over to the next available day; but you’ll end up with less time and more pressure.

Schedule time for your roles, goals and projects

Most days, you get things to do. Organizing when to do something is fairly simple: Do it tomorrow, or on the next available day you can.

But what about those things in your life that won’t get done this week?

It makes sense to schedule your roles, goals and projects in the same way.

Do something about them each day you have some unscheduled time. If you’ve consistently got too many, you won’t give them the attention they deserve; this probably means you need to cut some less important commitments.

If you’re not prepared to do that, you’ll have to schedule them (probably on a weekly basis) if you want to actually do them.

What you’ve done now is identify everything on your radar. You now know what needs to be done.

Build in some buffer time

If you want to know how to plan your day, this is one the most important time management strategies you can learn.

Whatever time you have available to get things done, plan to leave a percentage of it as ‘open’ time for the inevitable disruptions that will interrupt your day.

It takes time, trial and error before you get to the point at which you allow the optimum amount of buffer time. Too much means wasted time; too little creates stress and pressure.

When scheduled events overrun

What happens when a meeting or appointment goes on longer than anticipated?

This sort of thing happens all the time. When it does, you have two options:

How to plan your day

Whether you’re seeking to tame an overwhelming workload, build a new habit or create more time for fun, understanding how to plan your day out is key to taking control and getting where you want to go. Here are the top eight ways to plan your day so you can improve your productivity and achieve your dreams.

Your productive day starts with Tony’s powerful priming exercise

How to plan your day out

Learning how to plan your day means harnessing your skills and time to make the most of your resources.

1. Think ahead

Human beings have limited willpower. When you attempt to plan your day out in the morning, you deplete your supply of willpower first thing. Why do that to yourself, when you can just as easily plan your day out the night before? By giving yourself a heads up on what tomorrow will look like, you’re mentally prepared the moment you wake up – no need to waste time and energy when your day’s strategy is ready and waiting.

This doesn’t necessarily mean scheduling out every minute of your day. It also means using the power of routine to take some things off your plate. There’s a reason Steve Jobs and Barack Obama wore the same thing every day. These types of routines save your brain’s energy for what really matters – making tough decisions and focusing on your goals.

2. Embrace rituals

L ike any new habit, managing your schedule takes consistency to make it second-nature. Build new habits into your schedule so you’re reminded to follow through on them on a consistent basis. By making new habits ritualistic, you’re able to build patterns that align with your values and priorities.

3. Slow down

As helpful as technology can be, mastering how to plan your day is a great time to go analog. Before you turn on any technology, get out a piece of paper and write down what end results would make for a successful day. Next, write down the steps needed to get there.

From those steps, select the ones you can realistically get done in a day. By taking a few minutes’ break from the rush of digital information, you’re able to focus calmly on today’s plan of action. Make this a part of your morning routine to get your mind in the right place before you start your day.

4. Find tools that work for you

You get all the tools you need to get organized and pursue what you truly want out of life right at your fingertips. You get an achievable blueprint for not only how to plan your day but also how to strategize and meet larger life goals. This approach saves you from the busywork of unfocused activity. You get real progress – forward movement toward your passions.

5. Use chunking

By using the chunking technique, you’re able to set realistic and achievable goals with the resources you have without exhausting yourself. To practice chunking, group similar activities and information into bite-sized pieces. Chunking is one of the best ways to plan your day – you’ll notice everything from planning your work day to enjoying your days off becomes more natural.

6. Set boundaries

When you’re planning your workday, give yourself a realistic window of time for each item and cut yourself off at that window. Setting boundaries with your time enables you to focus and rely on the scheduling parameters you set for yourself.

7. Take massive action

8. Prioritize yourself

Exercise and eating right give you the energy and vitality you need for your day. Positive habits like meditation or yoga center your mind and body. Self-care gives you time to relax and regroup. Prioritizing yourself isn’t being lazy – all of these things are ultimately essential to your productivity and creativity.

Is Time Management Sabotaging Your Life?

Take control and make a plan to manage your life, not just your time. Learn how to accomplish more with the Rapid Planning Method.

How to Plan Your Day: A 7-Minute Habit

Home » Organizing Habits » How to Plan Your Day: A 7-Minute Habit

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Have you ever heard someone say, “You can get money back with time, but you can’t get time back with money,” or anything that relays a similar message?

Basically, this is saying that if you lose money, you will have a chance to earn it back. However, if you lose an hour, you can’t replace it.

Your time is valuable, which is probably evidenced at the end of those days when you reflect on the last 14 hours and realize you didn’t really get anything accomplished. However, the day is over, and you can’t get it back, so you have to hope to do better tomorrow.

The key to doing better is to develop a time management skill that helps you focus on what’s important in your life.

Having good time management skills will help you improve the quality of your work, your ability to practice self-discipline, your decision-making abilities, and increase the number of things you can get accomplished in one day. Knowing how to effectively manage your time can create a cycle that can improve all aspects of your life.

If I don’t take the time to plan out my day and I just try to “wing it,” I always find myself wasting time, whether it’s by getting too caught up in a task that isn’t important or realizing I don’t know where to start, so I try to do too many things at once.

And let me tell you, there are few things as aggravating than feeling like you’re busy running around all day but realizing you’ve actually been completely unproductive.

I have learned that by taking 7 minutes to plan my day, I end up saving so much time in the end–and I reduce the amount of stress and pressure I feel throughout the day to get things finished.

Planning my day also helps me prioritize, as I can easily recognize the tasks I have on deck that actually aren’t that important and won’t end up making it into my schedule. I can prioritize my time so that only the things that really matter can get my attention throughout the day.

In this article, I will help you understand the importance of managing your time, as everyone can benefit from using the finite resource of time more effectively.

I’ll give you a simple, step-by-step plan that you can use to schedule your day to create a balance in your life and find the best use for every minute that you have. By being aware of how you’re using your time, you will leave more of it open to spend on the things that you want to spend it on.

Let’s look at how you can effectively plan your day in just 7 minutes or less…

What You Will Learn

Step One: Pick Your Tools

Time Required: You only have to do this once, but it may require some trial and error. This step doesn’t count toward the time it will take to perform the daily habit of planning your day.

Before we start talking about how to plan your day, it’s important to mention that you need to have the tools that will make planning the easiest for you. Everyone is different here, so something that you find helpful might not be the right fit for the person across the hall from you in the office. Whatever you find works best for you, you will use this tool to keep track of your scheduled appointments, tasks, goals, important dates, etc.

Depending on which you find to be more helpful and accessible, you can use a digital or physical planner. Some prefer a plain notebook, while others use more elaborate tools.

One tool that I have found to be incredibly useful in helping me manage my tasks is the Todoist app. I’ve found this to be especially helpful because it allows me to collaborate with other members of my team and create step-by-step lists for projects that I am working on in any area of my life.

Personally, I prefer to keep my planning all digital, but some really crave that tangible planner to keep their schedules in order. (Here’s our Todoist tutorial to help you get started.) Some also use time management worksheets to make sure you stay on track.

No matter what you find works for you, it will make planning your day a lot easier.

Step Two: List Your Fixed Tasks

Time Required: 1 minute

Before you can add anything to your schedule, you need to block off times for things you can’t change. This includes work, doctor’s appointments, meetings, etc.

When you’re putting these things into your plan for the day, make sure that you account for travel time and any possible buffer time that you may need. If you are going to see that one doctor who is always running an hour late, take that into account.

You also want to list your tasks by priority. Is there a work deadline coming up that you need to meet? Make a list of the most important things you have that need to be done. Doing so helps you prioritize and can also help clear your mind since you won’t have to remember everything you are supposed to do. More on this below.

RELATED: Habits that Stick!

Want to build a new habit that will stick for the rest of your lifetime? In this video, you will discover a simple 9-step process about building habits that you can immediately implement.

Step Three: Identify Your Three Most Important Tasks (MITs)

Time Required: 1 minute

Whether you want to make progress on a project or complete a task, put the three things you absolutely want to accomplish in writing. Then give each goal an estimated time it will take you to complete it.

Trying to set any more than three goals for yourself each day can actually be de-motivating because it will seem overwhelming at the beginning of the day. Pick your top three goals based on the actions that will have the biggest benefit to your long-term goals.

You want to get your most important tasks completed at the beginning of the day, so even if the rest of your day is unproductive, you were still able to do the most important things that day.

Keep in mind that people tend to write long lists of goals because they are scared of forgetting something important. But, since you never know what else will come up throughout the day or how your priorities could change, it’s best to start the day with a limited list of prioritized tasks.

It may also help to plan at the same time each day. This helps you create a daily habit, and this kind of good habit can help keep you on track. Many prefer to do their planning in the morning with their coffee, while others may find themselves more functional the night before.

Step Four: Consider Your Self-Care Activities

Time Required: 1 minute

Do you want to reserve some time for going to the gym tomorrow or maybe having lunch with a friend? Do you like to start (or finish) your day with some quiet meditation? Don’t forget your own needs when planning your day.

Make sure to plan activities that will help you take care of yourself. Without taking proper care of yourself, your work in every other area of your life will suffer.

After finishing this step, you will have identified everything on your radar for the day. You just need to figure out your timing for completing each task.

Step Five: Putting the Puzzle Together

Time Required: 3 minutes

Put your fixed tasks into the time slots that they are already assigned so you can see what times of the day you have a bit more flexibility. You will likely notice that you have some flexibility in the early morning, which is a great time to be productive.

As you progress through the day and your energy is depleted, your motivation follows suit. Try to schedule your most important tasks for the very beginning of the day.

Before planning any task for your day, you have to come up with a rough estimate of how much time it will take. Even if you’re off, you’ll start to get some practice on how to properly manage your time. Once you do this regularly, it will get easier to predict what you can actually accomplish in any specified amount of time.

Aside from setting aside time for self-care every day, you also need to schedule time to spend with your loved ones. It can be easy to let family time fall down on your list of priorities because you probably assume that spending time with your family is something that can always wait until the weekend.

However, weekends quickly come and go and are often filled with various activities outside of the home, which may leave you wondering on Sunday night where all of your “free time” went.

Because family time can easily slip away from you, make sure to spend at least some time with your loved ones every day. This can be as simple as eating dinner together as a family or taking the time to play a board game before bed.

Step Six: Fill in the Gaps

Time Required: 1 minute

If you notice you have a free ten minutes here or an empty half-hour there, fill this space with tasks that need to get done but always end up getting pushed to the side. These are things that aren’t helping you reach an ultimate goal but still need to get completed.

For example, get your oil changed in your car or write a long overdue thank you note. During these small gaps of time, you can actually fit things in that plague you for weeks until you work up the motivation to follow through with them. If you have these things down in writing, you’re more likely to get them over and done with.

There are some tips to keep in mind when planning your day as well.

First, be realistic about the amount of time you have and the number of tasks you’re trying to plan. If you try to do too much, you may either get burnt out or feel a sense of disappointment when you’re not able to cross everything off of your to-do list.

Second, if some of your top three goals are pretty time-consuming, see if you can break them up into smaller tasks. For example, if one of your goals is to clean out the garage, break it down into manageable sections so you can tackle just a bit of it each day. This way, you don’t have to wait for a day; you have three free hours in a row to accomplish this goal.

Additionally, you want to plan in some buffer time to avoid feeling rushed all day. However much time you have to accomplish things on your list, leave a fraction of it as free time for any unexpected disruptions that will come up throughout the day.

And while you will have that buffer time to account for a meeting that is running way past schedule, sometimes you will have to execute your own assertion in ending meetings or appointments that are overflowing into time that you have already scheduled for something else (however, use your discretion to determine when doing this is appropriate).

Finally, keep in mind that sometimes you will have to give yourself a little bit less time than you had probably hoped to get something done that is a time-sensitive priority.

However, keep in mind that if you know ahead of time that you only have two hours to complete a task that you think will take two and a half hours, you can think back to Parkinson’s Law to give you a boost of confidence that you can get anything accomplished when you give yourself healthy time restraints.

Other Tips on How to Plan Your Day

In addition to the list of how to plan your day in 7 minutes, we have a few other tips to keep in mind. When following any of our tips, be sure to take advantage of other tools at your disposal, such as a digital calendar, daily planner app, or daily schedule book.

Brainstorm

It never hurts to brainstorm a few things when making your list. This can be especially helpful for those times we discussed above when you have gaps you need to fill in your day. You should also jot down tasks you had the previous day that you just didn’t have the time to get to. You can also write down everything you want to do, could do, and should do.

Divide Tasks

Finding that work-life balance is important when planning your day. Don’t let your tasks become so overwhelming that it causes you to shut down. Make a list of your work life and your home life.

This allows you to see what needs to be done on your to do list in each area and helps you keep your times and dates straight in your daily schedule. A daily planner app can work wonders helping you keep everything organized and encouraging productivity.

Time Blocking

Time blocking is a technique you can use to better understand how long it may take to actually complete each task on your daily schedule. This helps with future scheduling and when you find yourself making commitments.

When time blocking during any daily planning session, block off chunks of time each day or week when there are certain activities you want to accomplish. To use time blocking more effectively, prioritize your tasks as we described above and use the process to encourage more efficient time management.

A time block listed with your most essential tasks or even a recurring task each day or week allows maximum productivity and may even allow you to squeeze a few more things in since you have a better idea of how long each specific task will take.

Look at Your Week as a Whole

Finally, when planning your daily schedule, it may help to look at your week as a whole. Maybe your daily morning routine includes a 30 minute exercise each day while you only have a Zoom meeting every other day.

Some of our goals benefit a daily action, while working on others throughout the week can help us keep our momentum and personal productivity up. So, during each daily planning session, see what your week as a whole looks like.

Final Thoughts on How to Plan Your Day

Planning each day will not only help you make the best use of your time, but it will also allow you to modify your goals and priorities as new things arise. (Check out our post on how to create SMART goals for time management.)

It is much easier to predict what is going to happen in three hours than what is going to happen in three days, so breaking down your planning into daily chunks will ensure you that you won’t have to go back and erase several days and start over because something in your life suddenly changed.

I recommend creating your daily plan for the next day at night before going to sleep rather than first thing in the morning. This way, you will know exactly what you need to do as soon as you wake up in the morning, preventing you from having a chunk of time that could go to waste as you’re slowly getting up to create your schedule.

The key to having a productive day is being prepared. Making sure that your priorities are clear every day is the best way to make sure that you are having a successful day. Soon enough, you will begin to see that you do have enough hours in your day to do everything that needs to get accomplished.

Connie Mathers is a professional editor and freelance writer. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and a Master’s Degree in Social Work. When she is not writing, Connie is either spending time with her daughter and two dogs, running, or working at her full-time job as a social worker in Richmond, VA.

How to Plan Your Day: Taking Control of Your Time (With Examples)

Here’s a skill that nobody taught you in school or work: how to plan your day.

And so you do the best you can with what you know. You run around trying to complete everything on your to-do list. Your days spin out of control.

So you try to catch up.

You crank up the speed and try to work as fast as you can. So now you’re spinning out of control twice as fast trying to complete all your tasks.

Not planning your days is setting yourself for failure.

But making lists of things to do, and trying desperately to finish them isn’t enough. It doesn’t give your days structure or routine. To-do lists don’t help you focus.

You need to bring in an important element: time.

Tasks need to be associated with time. You have to figure out when a task will get done, and how long it’s going to take.

It sounds simple, and it is. But it’s also powerful. Imagine knowing exactly what tasks you will finish today? Add to that, handling emails, errands, a social life, and better health.

Well, that’s what happens when you learn how to plan your day.

“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”

And to do that, you must implement a daily planning routine.

Table of Contents

What is Time Blocking?

Time blocking is a method of combining task management and your calendar. You create ‘blocks’ of time in your days and give them tasks to focus on. Every task fits into its own time block, without interrupting anything else.

With time blocking, your schedule is completely filled. Work tasks, social events, and rest are all planned and prioritized.

Instead of just working on long lists of tasks, time blocking lets you plan what you are going to achieve in a day. It forces you to figure out how to spend your time.

This is more powerful and way more productive than endless to-do lists.

Because it’s proactive. You take control of tasks, instead of reacting to external demands. It forces prioritization. And it creates organization.

Does it sound intimidating? Well, it’s actually pretty common, and super easy.

How to Plan Your Day Manually: The Notebook Method

The simplest way to get started with time blocking is with the Notebook method.

To get started, the only thing you will need is a Lined Notebook.

Step 1: Prepare Your Notebook

Open your notebook on a new page and put the date of the day you are scheduling.

Each page should correspond to a single daily plan.

Then on the left, mark every other line with an hour of your workday. This means that all 1-hour blocks have 2 lines of height.

Step 2: Assign Tasks to Every Minute of Your Day

To assign a task to a specific hour, create a block in that interval. Name that block as the task you’ll be working on.

You should schedule everything, including periods to rest and think. Account for every minute of your workday.

Pro tip: When you need to do a lot of smaller tasks, use a productivity technique called batching. Group the tasks under one time block. This makes your schedule easier to understand.

Step 3: Add Notes to Your Blocks

On the right of each block, leave notes on what exactly you want to do during that time. The more descriptive, the better.

Instead of only naming a block “Review model”, you should add specific objectives as notes. In this case, it makes sense to divide the review between captions.

Doing this ensures that you do not forget any task. Additionally, breaking down your project into smaller and more manageable tasks will help you to manage your time better.

Manual Daily Plan Example

How to Plan Your Day Digitally: The Txt File

If you prefer a digital plan, the txt file method is a great alternative. Instead of multiple notebooks, you will plan your days in a single txt file.

To edit a txt file, Windows users have Notepad and Mac users have TextEdit for free. Both are enough for this digital schedule.

The steps to planning your day are very similar to the paper method.

Step 1: Prepare Your Txt File

Once you are ready to plan the next day, open your txt file and put the date at the bottom.

Then, divide the day into time blocks. Try to keep their size consistent.

As a rule of thumb, use one-hour blocks.

Step 2: Assign Tasks to Every Minute of Your Day

Give a set of tasks to each block.

Once again, you should not have a period of time unaccounted for. Don’t forget to also add breaks to your schedule.

Step 3: Add Notes to Your Blocks

As in the paper method, you should add information about each task.

It will be much easier to shift around tasks if you know exactly what you want to accomplish.

(Extra Step) Give Context to Your Time Blocks

A great habit to pick up is to add context to each block as you go through your day.

When you have a meeting, add the names of the participants and the key takeaways in your schedule.

Similarly, take notes of problems with your projects and how you solved them.

Then, using search, you can go through every comment and find exactly what you want in seconds.

Digital Daily Plan Example

When Should You Plan Your Day?

When you plan your workday is also an important question to cover. Going through every project and commitment you have takes time and you cannot rush it.

The easiest way is to develop your planning habits around your routine.

The 3 best times to plan your day are:

1. End of Your Workday

Your energy is low but you are still in work mode at the end of the workday. This makes it easier to make the switch to planning without losing time. On top of that, you will not need to think about work until the next morning.

The major problem with this timeframe is after-work commitments. It will be difficult to make a good daily plan if you run on a tight schedule after work.

Also, you might need to revise your schedule if something comes up during the evening or the morning.

Personally, I prefer to plan my days in this timeframe. I prefer to close all the loops and get everything organized before ending my workday.

Pros

Cons

2. At Night

You need time to construct good daily plans and, for many people, that time is only available at night.

Furthermore, you don’t always have the information to make your schedule at the end of the workday. When this happens, the best strategy is to wait and plan the next day at night.

However, this will push your shutdown into the evening. If you cannot switch off from work easily, this timeframe might not be for you.

Pros

Cons

3. When You Arrive at the Office

This timeframe is best for jobs with an uncertain schedule. If you only know your priorities in the mornings, this is the timeframe for you.

For others, this tends to not work as well. It creates an unnecessary expenditure of energy at the beginning of each day.

Additionally, it takes time away from productive hours of your day. And that’s time that you could be using to complete Deep Work.

All-in-all, most people are better off with one of the other timeframes.

Pros

Cons

Why Most People Give Up on Daily Planning (And How to Fix It)

If you are new to daily planning and time blocking, the transition to these methods won’t be easy.

Like any other skill, planning your day takes time to learn.

Here are the most common problems you’ll have when planning your days:

To have success with daily planning, you will have to deal with these problems before they come up.

1. Wrong Estimations

How to solve:

One of the biggest challenges of daily planning is estimating the time for each task. People tend to underestimate the time needed. This leads to unnecessary stress caused by their schedule.

One easy solution is to add extra time to each task—what is called “Buffer” time.

If you feel that an article will take one hour to write, plan it into a 90-minute block.

You will probably need some of the extra time to finish the project. If not, take the time to relax or deal with minor problems until your next time block.

Another technique is using “Conditional Blocks”.

They occupy a time slot like other blocks, but they have a split purpose.

You can plan a regular 1-hour block to write the article and add a 30-minute conditional block afterward. The block will either be for writing or catching up with email.

You can take the extra time to finish the article if needed. If you finish in less than one hour, you already have a function assigned to the block.

2. Uncertain Responsibilities Disrupt Your Schedule

How to solve:

Uncertainty is guaranteed in most jobs. You cannot foresee everything you need to do on a given day.

But instead of reacting to uncertainty, try scheduling it. Create time blocks to react to problems throughout the day.

You know that problems usually occur in the mornings when updating databases. Rather than using those hours for projects, leave them blocked to deal with problems.

Planning a flexible time gives you more flexibility. If you feel constrained by your daily plans, schedule more reactive time blocks.

The second tactic is to reschedule your day as many times as needed. Whenever a problem comes up that ruins your current schedule, do not enter into autopilot.

Instead, take the next available moment to reschedule the rest of the day. Go over all your tasks and which ones you can drop. Then, fit the remaining tasks into new blocks according to your time constraints.

The goal of daily planning is to focus your efforts on what is important. Rescheduling in the middle of the day makes sure you do not lose sight of this.

3. Keeping Track of the Time

How to Solve:

Feeling lost during a given day is normal. Like any other habit, following a daily plan takes time to adjust.

But if you lose track of your schedule on a daily basis, you might be doing two things wrong.

First, you chose the wrong method for you.

You might like the txt file method, but you need access to your computer at all times. If that is impossible for you, consider switching to the notebook method.

Likewise, if you forget your notebook at home every day, the digital method might be the answer.

Second, your schedules have too many time blocks.

As you add time blocks, it becomes more difficult to follow your daily plan. Instead of creating a block for each small task, try grouping them up into a large block.

Group up your smaller tasks in a 2-hour Administrative block. Use this time to answer emails, file paperwork, and update spreadsheets.

What Happens at the End of the Day?

You can extract value from your daily plans, even after the workday is complete. Your schedules contain lots of data on how you worked. Take their insights and improve your work routines.

You can start by implementing daily reviews.

Do not put away your plan after the day is over. Take 5 extra minutes to look for scheduling mistakes that happened that day.

Keeping track of these will make you aware of planning problems. Take some of the solutions laid out before and improve the following plans.

Additionally, take your daily plans and analyze them in a weekly review.

Going over each day of the week is crucial to find out where your time is going.

Use this knowledge to craft weekly goals that better reflect how you work.