Daily Planning
Like Weekly Planning, having an effective Daily Planning process is absolutely essential to keep you focused and productive. There should be only 3 things that determine all of your activities each day: Your Calendar, your Daily Commitments Checklist (we’ll cover that in a separate lesson a bit later on) and your Daily Plan. Working from these 3 keeps you proactive; anything else is by definition reactive – they keep you like the pilot of the jet airplane instead being back drifting on the raft in the ocean. And as you learned in a previous lesson, you should create your Daily Plan the prior evening.
Most people have no plan at all for their day, or wait to create a plan until the morning, but then they inevitably fall prey to digital distractions, so hours can slip away in reactive mode before they even create a plan, much less accomplish anything. The 2nd mistake most people make is to try to work from a big to-do list consisting of everything they can think of to do in the future. While that might be better than having no to-do list at all, trying to work from an all-inclusive list leads to feeling overwhelmed and without focus, so they often distract themselves with email, social media, and knocking out trivial tasks instead of the most important actions.
I’m going to give you 6 simple Daily Planning rules to ensure you accomplish your most important action items each day, and thus make steady progress towards achieving your goals and living your ideal future life.
Make your plan at the end of the prior work day. As we talked about in the Evening Routine lesson, you should establish a set end time for your workday, ensuring better health, improved relationships, and increased productivity. As you end your workday, you must create your plan for the next day. This simple change will have a profound impact on your clarity and productivity.
Gain focus by only listing the handful of important actions you are absolutely committed to completing the next day. Rather than talking about a to-do list, in the Happiful program we create a Daily Success Plan. Our goal isn’t to just do things, it’s to achieve success! It is far better to only list 5 of your Most Vital Priorities (MVPs) and complete them all the next day, than it is to list 25 things and do 20 of them. How can that be? In the latter case, you will probably end up frustrated and feeling like a failure, and you will likely have procrastinated instead of doing those 5 most important things on the list. Since you already identified your MVPs in your Weekly Plan, that’s where you look first when making your Daily Success Plan.
The long list of tasks that you are not going to do tomorrow needs to go into a Task Management System. I recommend www.RememberTheMilk.com, as it is free, powerful, and intuitive.
Hand write your plan, not in electronic format. We’ll talk more about this in the next lesson, and we’ll also start reviewing our proprietary Happiful Planner you can use that sets you up for success each day.
Number your actions in order of impact on your life. When you work, you can then stay focused on completing each number in order, secure in knowing that you are always working on the most important thing. Without the clarity that comes from numbering them, you are more likely to find ways to distract yourself.
This last point isn’t about making your list for the next day, it’s what you do immediately after making your Daily Plan: you unplug from electronics. You should turn off your computer, and switch your phone to airplane mode and place it out of sight.
Try this tonight to help you have a more successful day tomorrow.
Next, we’ll start reviewing our free, ready-to-use Happiful Planner. As part of your Weekly Planning process, you’ll print out seven copies each week, and at the end of each workday, you’ll fill out one sheet. Follow the rules above, and I guarantee you will enjoy your most productive days ever, accomplishing the things that actually matter.