How to plan your day so that you can do everything – TOP 5 tips

The best way to never reach your goal is to move forward without a plan. After all, for random actions, random results come. But how do you plan your day? And how to follow the daily routine for months and years until the goals are achieved? Let's talk about this further.

How to effectively plan your day and not get tired

Let's deal with the goals: what benefit do you want to get from the plan? Surely the following: perform as many tasks as possible; steadily, and not in mood, move towards goals; not to fall down at the end of the day, but to feel like a winner – as if you had accomplished a feat. Exactly? Let's go through each of these points so that you understand how to plan your day well.

The first hour after waking up – do useful things

Have you noticed sometimes that in the morning you don't want to get out of bed, but as soon as we have accelerated by the end of the day, you don’t want to go to bed in that very bed: “I wish I could do something else interesting." I would like to "live".

In order to “wake up” this feeling faster, do something useful from the very beginning of the day. Get out of bed abruptly, and do not lie down when you have already opened your eyes. In an hour, you'll be thankful for forcing yourself to do it.
Here is an example of what you can do next: get up, do some exercises, quickly run to the bathroom, do all your chores and sit down to read an educational article, book, watch a video or podcast on important topics.

Do useful tasks for an hour – no social networks, checking mail, funny YouTube videos or TV shows. Morning sets the whole day. Therefore, it is better to do useful things. By doing this, connect to the inner flow – you will be full of energy all day.

Set your most important tasks early in the day

Performing important tasks is often painful, difficult, and stressful. That is why we immediately take them. It’s usually scary and difficult until the moment you get down to business. When you have joined the process, there is no fear and difficulties. All that remains is the thought: “What step should I take next?”. It's like eating in a school canteen: first we eat everything tasteless, and then tasty.

Keep a balance of mental and physical activity

Every day, the schedule should include tasks that require physical activity and tasks that involve thinking. What for? Here is an example: if you spend 8 hours in the office, then you work productively from 2 to 6 hours. Simply because it is impossible to force yourself to do the same type of tasks for longer. How to do it right?

Alternate things: scheduled 2 hours of work at the computer (use the head), and then, for example, 30 minutes of cleaning the room (use the body). Not without reason, after all, at school, the lessons lasted 45 minutes – it is simply impossible to stay 100% focused for a long time.

If you work in an office, then work focused for 2 hours, and then wander aimlessly around the building with some documents for 30 minutes. The main thing is to complete the same number of tasks as before so that you do not get fired. Both you and the employer will benefit from this: their business will not lose profit because of you, and you will remain energetic.

How to do 100% of what you have planned – every day

Planning things for the day is usually not a problem. Difficulties arise when you need to complete tasks every day. How do you plan your day to get everything done? Here are some tips to help you stay effective after a week, month, or even a year.

Consider the human factor

People are of two types:

• Those who work easily in any mood.
• Those who definitely need a good mood – otherwise, well, you can’t force yourself to do something.

There are advantages to both. People from the first group can consistently move towards goals, no matter what. People from the second – sometimes they can mess around, but if they are "rushing" – then they do several times more than usual.

In order for things to be done, you need to understand what type you are. Test it: live a strict plan for a few days, and then make plans for a few days according to your mood.

Do not underestimate the fact that we are all different. If you can't work in the morning, but just burst with energy in the evening, use this. If you like working on Sundays when everyone is off, go ahead. The main thing is that the expected results for the week ahead coincide with the real ones.

Use graphic elements

One fun way to motivate yourself to get things done is to add a graphic (circle, square, triangle, whatever you like) next to your to-do list. And as soon as the task is completed, paint over or shade part of the drawing. For example, they made 10% of the plan – they painted over 10% of the drawing.

This circle or square is usually very eyesore and does not allow to sit idle. Especially when there is a small part left that needs to be painted over, and conscience does not allow it to be done just like that. This works best – on perfectionists.

How to increase the number of hours in a day

You understood why you need a routine, how to learn how to plan your day and complete all the tasks. But you can go even further – increase the number of hours in a day.

Of course, we will not break the laws of physics or whatever – just learn to be efficient. Let's make it so that the work takes much less time than it takes now. At the same time, without compromising the quantity and quality of the tasks performed.

speed up

There is a rule – "Parkinson's Law", which says that the task eats up as much time as is allocated to it.

If you give yourself a lot of time for small tasks, completing them will become so problematic that it will take all this time. If you shorten the period by 2 times, you can also do it, but it will become much easier.

Start doing things 2 times faster. Everyone is capable of it. But there is one clarification here: complete tasks 2 times faster, but at the same time do not increase their number. They did everything in 4 hours instead of 8 – excellent. You don’t need to work in such a frantic mode for 8 hours a day – this is inefficient in the long run (do not stretch out like this for a month, and even more so for a year). Do something else with your spare time. Work should not eat up half a day.

Turn off your phone.

In order to focus – we need 10-15 minutes. And if every time we get distracted when we want to look at messages on social networks or answer a call, then we won’t even work effectively for 1 hour. Let's spend 90% of the time "tuning" ourselves.

Do you want more time to appear out of nowhere and tasks to complete faster by themselves? Move your phone as far away as possible. Forget about it while you work. When you stop interrupting the “flow”, you will start doing everything several times faster, and spending less psychological and emotional effort.

Everyone is able to live according to a schedule

The last thing I would like to say is that everyone is able to live according to a schedule. If you find it difficult to stick to the plan, then you are doing something wrong. You don’t need to torture yourself, you don’t have to work 12 hours a day to do everything – just re-read the article again and follow all the recommendations.