September 1st, 2021
David Peachment
Being productive and achieving your dreams always starts with each individual day. How your day goes will define how you can get good work done. Success begins with the choices we make each and every day and how we start our mornings. The first step to accomplishing your goals is to properly organize your whole day. A good daily routine can make or break your productivity. Taking the time and effort to plan out your day and what you hope to accomplish will set you on the path towards great success! Let’s dive into some tips I’ve found that greatly contribute to daily success!
Plan the Night Before
The first thing to do is to fully plan out your day the night before. Take about 15 minutes and write down everything you want to accomplish the next day. What you write down should reflect your overall goals and be pushing you to complete those. Figure out what you want to complete at work and also what you wish to do outside of work. Plan out some of your recreational activities as well. Planning out what to do when you’re not working will help keep yourself on track and not lose focus on what you want to get done. The trick is to orient your day around achieving your ultimate goals and work through finishing them bit by bit.
The Time Block Method
I have been able to use the method to great success! I do fully understand it might not be for everyone, but I encourage you to at least give it a try. Take a standard lined piece of paper; this is what you will be using for your schedule. Down the left-hand side of the page, mark every other line with an hour of the day. Divide the workday hours into blocks and assign activities to the blocks. Draw a box that covers the line corresponding to these hours. The minimum length of a box should be 30 minutes. The boxes will show the work activities you want to complete within that select time period. For example, I might draw a box that encompasses 10 am to 12 pm, and inside it, I’ll jot down “Write a blog post.” This lets me know that I’m only supposed to be writing for the blog during those hours. Also, make sure to batch smaller items together. If you have a bunch of little activities, throw them together in one time block. Instead of responding to emails throughout the day, devote a half-hour block to emails.
Be thoughtful with your time. Don’t give yourself extra time when you know you don’t need it. And if you are unsure about how long an activity will take, block some extra time for overflow. If your schedule gets disrupted by an unexpected occurrence, quickly revise your schedule for the rest of the day. And also have alternate activities you can do with you finish your primary ones faster than you thought you would. Experiment with your blocks and see what activities work at different times. Figure out how long certain work will take and adjust your blocks accordingly.
Review
The final step is to do a nightly and weekly review. At the end of your day, before planning out tomorrow, look over what you did during the day. Did you accomplish what you set out to do? Did you procrastinate in certain areas? Do you have some weaknesses in how you work that you could improve on? Take some time to go through the wins and losses of the day. Ask yourself questions on what you could do better. Figure out the areas of your life you need some work on. And, with that information figured out, you can use it when designing the next day. For example, if you know that when you watch more than one episode of your favourite TV show, you go on a watching binge, you can set a limit for how much you can watch the next day. This will keep you accountable and help you discover where you could improve your day.
Do the exact same process, but for the whole week as well. Before you start your workweek, whenever that day is for you, reflect on the past week. For example, if you start work on a Monday morning, take some extra time Sunday night to look back on your past week. Ask yourself the same questions from the daily review but broaden them to the whole week. Did you get everything done this past week that you wanted to? Are there certain days where you are more productive than others that you can save your important work for? Think about how the last week went and consider how what you learned can improve the next week.
It doesn’t have to be that hard to plan out an awesome day! Take some time to figure out your day ahead of time, devise a time block schedule for it, and review your progress daily and weekly. Pretty soon, you’ll see some tremendous strides in productivity and general growth. You’ll be super excited to begin each and every day!
Until next time,
David Peachment