Daily Planning — Prepare for the Next Day

3 min readAug 2, 2017

Everyone struggles with having too much to do in too little time. The best way to tackle that is by adding two simple processes to two of your daily ceremonies: your night ritual and your morning ritual. By doing these extra steps, you get a lot more out of your day. The core idea of this practice is to organize your work while planning as little as possible.

Note: The daily planning technique is most effective when you also have a weekly planning process.

Most people have a night ritual that may consist of brushing teeth, writing a journal, reading a novel, and getting into bed. By adding five minutes of planning to your night ritual, you move all activities from your mind to your schedule, which clears your head and decreases stress, allowing you better rest at night. This guide is as simple as possible because nobody likes a long planning session when they are feeling tired.

This guide assumes that you will also follow Get Ready for the Current Day the next morning.

1) Check your agenda

Review what is on your list for tomorrow. Not only because you don’t want to be unpleasantly surprised but also because an indication of tomorrow’s scheduled activities will help you decide how much time is available for other tasks.

2) Note tomorrow’s individual tasks

Make a note of everything that you want to do tomorrow. Don’t keep things in your head; write them down. If you keep a weekly backlog of things-to-do, pick some of them and assign them to tomorrow. And don’t spend time filtering or prioritizing; you only collect the options now.

If possible, mention the why or the outcome for each activity. For example, instead of writing “send email to stakeholders”, you can write “keep stakeholders happy by sending an update”. This allows you to change the task at the last moment when you realize there is a better way to achieve the same outcome.

Note: You can use a journal, agenda, notebook, to-do list app, or anything else that you prefer to keep track of activities. But be consistent: use one tool for all planning work.

3) Note tomorrow’s repeatable tasks

Decide which of your long-term projects you want to work on tomorrow. Whether it is a marketing campaign, a development project, or an e-learning course, some activities take a lot more than one day to complete. Turn such projects into a small manageable portion per day with repeatable tasks. Anyone can eat an elephant, one bite at a time.

Note: In journals, agendas, and notebooks, you can make a separate list of such ongoing projects. To-do list apps usually have built-in repeatable task features.

4) Imagine a successful day

Based on your intended activities, imagine what a successful day would be for you. You probably won’t be able to do everything you added to your list. So think about what would be the minimal accomplishments that would make you a happy person. Mark those activities.

5) Go ahead, sleep!

You now have goal for tomorrow, and you have a list of activities to choose from. You deserve a good night’s sleep!

Next Guide

Daily Planning — Get Ready for the Current Day

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