One of the most important life skills is planning. And it is crucial to accomplishing nearly everything that cannot be done on its own. Spontaneity and excitement should also be a part of everyday life, but they must be balanced by the capacity to plan the things that must be planned. As a result, some people who hold positions of responsibility need to become experts at planning. To a reasonable extent, everyone should have learned it as planning is a skill that is necessary for many aspects of life, including everyone’s.
So, setting aside the project managers and business strategists that really need to have their planning game on point, what makes for a good day-in-day-out approach to planning, just to get through the rigors of modern life? As it happens, there are many tips that can help you plan out an average day, whether that be at work, for study, on private projects, or even for leisure time.
Indeed, even time off will go a bit better if it is planned. Next Level Daily, producers of a unique ADHD daily planner, say that for some people, daily planning can even be a health necessity.
Starting to Plan
If you are new to day planning, or if your life has recently changed and you now need to plan out your days, it can be a bit tricky to get started. There are some obvious tips, such as “make lists” and “plan in advance” and “manage your time properly” but, for each of these, you might find yourself asking “how?”
If you find yourself in this position, then it is clear that you might need some expert planning advice, if only to get started in an effective way. Planning takes time to learn if you are not used to it, but you will see the benefit immediately after you start. For those who need to plan out a working day, the stakes can be much higher. Save yourself the stress and learn how to plan.
Top Strategies for Planning
So, here follows some strategies for beginning to plan out your daily life:
Plan Your Planning
Specifically, this means allotting time every morning (fifteen minutes is a good duration) for planning out the day in the morning. This does not mean that you begin the day’s plan that day, but that you adapt the plan every morning. Many tasks can come along with only a day’s notice (or less), and you cannot predict every commitment you will have on a particular day when you are planning it in advance. Accordingly, some planning time every day is an incredibly wise move.
Break Your Week into Focus Areas
Weekly planning is probably the one you’ll engage in most frequently, as this is short term enough for you to be able to plan most of the things that you’re likely to do on a given day, but it’s long term enough not to involve the rigors of daily planning (which is sometimes necessary). You should allot the toughest tasks for Tuesday through Wednesday, allowing yourself Mondays to “come to”, as it were, and Fridays to begin to take things down a gear.
Incorporate Long Term Goals
For example, buying a house or a car, or moving to a new job. These are impossible to plan in much detail, but it is obvious what things you should be doing regularly to get there. Accordingly, you can work this into your daily planning, specifically with that long term goal in mind.
Daily planning can, without exaggeration, genuinely revolutionize your life – and bring you much
