How to plan your day for maximum productivity
Planning your day in advance gives you better control over your activities.
Think Ahead. Plan for tomorrow, before it arrives.
In today’s fast-paced world, everybody has a lot of plates spinning. Planning your day in advance gives you better control over your day-to-day activities. A daily plan enables you to focus on your most important task while keeping the distractions to a minimum.
Next time you sit to plan your day, remember the following points:
1. Pick a Planning tool
a) Digital: If you prefer a digital system, do some research on to-do list apps and digital calendars. You will surely land on a reasonable app from App Store/ Play Store.
My personal recommendation is Microsoft To Do(Simple and free).
b) Pen and Paper: If you like going old-schools, get a notebook. A simple notebook will do the trick. However, some specialized notebooks (e.g. bullet journals) are also available in the market.
If your schedule already has a lot of screen time and you want to wind down on some of it, a physical notebook is your friend.
c) Hybrid: If you want to harness the benefits of both the above-mentioned systems, a hybrid system is the viable solution.
2. Prioritize
Prioritize your activities in the order of their importance. Schedule your most important tasks first, then do the second most important one, and so on.
The most common technique to prioritize is to write down the three most important things that you want to accomplish by the end of the day.
Another way is to write the one most important task which you must complete on that day. Start the remaining tasks once you complete this task.
3. Task Batching
Task batching is a planning technique to combine similar activities. Simply put tasks that are similar can be scheduled together, like texting a friend, emailing a client, or replying to social media comments, which can all be planned to be held, say from 12:30 to 1:30.
Without Batching technique, you would be spreading them throughout the day (say texting a friend at 10:30, emailing the client at 12:00, and replying to social media comments at 2:00). This way of planning doesn’t look so bad on the surface, but remember that switching between tasks offers considerable friction and therefore wastes your energy and time.
4. Use Mornings for Difficult Tasks
Morning is the most productive time of the day. You are naturally most active, energized, and focused at the start of the day. This means, your ability to learn and process new information is maximum during this time. So, it is best if you start the most difficult tasks in the morning.
For example, for me, writing an article is a much more difficult task than sorting out icons on my desktop. Therefore, I will prefer to write the article in the morning.
You may have heard the expression Eat the frog, which simply means you should start the most difficult task first.
5. Use Afternoons for Simple Tasks
The afternoon is the time when your energy is depleting hence, it’s best to schedule simple and managing-type tasks in the afternoon.
A quote I read somewhere:
Use morning for making, and the afternoon for managing
Tasks like editing your selfies or reading social media comments don’t require much energy and therefore, can be scheduled for the afternoon.
6. Keep your Schedule Flexible
When we sit to plan, we generally underestimate the amount of time certain tasks will take. That’s why it is important that you don’t fill each second of your day.
Keeping it flexible allows you to carter for uncertainties, like a traffic jam, slow internet connection, etc.
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