How much time do you spend getting ready for your day… before starting it?
Planning your day is one of the most important things you can do before heading out the door.
In fact, spending just 30 minutes in advance, can save you hours later in your day.
Get Ready for Your Day
Running out the door in the morning without a plan usually leads to stress, problems, and extra work. In fact, most bad days begin without a plan.
If you have ever left for work, only to have to turn around for a forgotten item, then you know what I am talking about. (Ever leave your phone or laptop at home?)
As well, heading into your day without knowing your tasks and appointments, leads to last-minute urgencies and interruptions.
The best tactic is to spend 20-30 minutes each morning planning your day before it begins. (If you have kids, doing your planning before the little ones awake can make all the difference in your day.)
“The best time to plan your day is before it begins.”
Investing even a few minutes before you start your day can result in less stress and more productivity.
Here are 5 Ways that Advance Planning Will Save You Time in Your Day:
- Know Your Priorities – Review your todo list so that you not only know what you need to do, but also which tasks are the most important. Knowing your priorities ensure you spend time on the most important things in your life.
- Be Aware of Your Obligations – What’s on your calendar? Make sure you know your appointments and where you need to be. Confirm any meetings for which you think the other party may have forgotten. Being aware of your obligations gets you where you need to be, and allows you to know how much time you still have left in your day.
- Prevent Surprises – Advance planning prevents life’s little surprises that derail your day. (And the big ones…) Catch forgotten deadlines that are sneaking up on you. Prevent less important tasks from becoming sudden interruptions or urgencies. Many of these can be prevented if caught beforehand.
- Get the Little Things Done – During your 30 minutes of planning, complete some of the little tasks immediately. Go ahead and do the tasks that only take a few minutes to complete. This builds productivity momentum early, and keeps smaller tasks from getting lost in the hustle of your day.
- Reduce Mistakes & Rework – Planning your day will help you reduce or eliminate the small errors that waste time. Avoid that “extra trip to the store.” Remember the document you needed to bring to work today. Reduce or eliminate rework on simple tasks by getting ahead of the game.
Plan Before You Start
Take 30 minutes to plan… before you head into your day.
Know the most important things you need to get done.
Make sure the little things don’t slip by you.
And be aware of where you need to be and when.
This simple planning habit can add hours back to your day, each and every day.
Question: How do you save time in your day by advance planning? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
Nice work “Take 30 minutes to plan… before you head into your day.” Everyone should read this post (twice).
These are some great, useful tips. Now I just need to figure out how to incorporate them, while dealing with the extreme fatigue from two chronic illnesses. It’s hard to take 20-30 minutes to plan your day before it begins, when you have to spend that amount of time summoning the willpower just to sit up in bed.
do it in your before bed routine. You don’t have to do it in one fell swoop, you can break it up into 5-10 min bits Just make a list and check it off as you go. http://www.flylady.com
People aren’t that good at creating their to-do list at a single shot. It definitely improves by practice and experience over. Overstuffing, might work against ourselves and directly conflict with the goals. Why not avboid these hinderances by using a tool, which helps people plan their day, track and analyze for improvement?
I like to plan mine the night before (although I can be slack at it). I pack my bag, organise lunch, lay out my clothes, review my diary and if needed scan my emails for anything I’ll need to deal with first thing in the morning, so when I wake up it’s all mapped out already. It definitely helps and I’m a lot more efficient for it.
Spend 5 mins the night before planning what you will do in the 30 min planning time…then your subconscious can be working on it while you sleep!
I aim to plan my day the night before, but sometimes I end up doing it in the morning – ideally just after morning pages, and just *before* I turn the wifi on…