Why You Need To Plan Your Day

Have you ever wondered why people plan their days? Does it seem like a waste of time? It might surprise you that if you spend time planning, you will actually save time in the end. This might seem like an odd concept, but the chances are that you are often distracted and other people quickly fill up any time that you have; planning can stop this because you are more aware of the things that you need to accomplish and the time you have available. By planning your day, you will accomplish more and you can reduce the stress that you feel, too.

 

Plan Your Day

If you plan what you need to do during the day it will give you some focus, I am not suggesting that you create a list that is just impossible to complete, have a realistic targets for your day. If you know what you need to accomplish then you are ready for the day ahead; however, it is important that while it might seem like a great idea to do the easy tasks first, it is more important to do those difficult tasks first before any distractions get in the way.

By planning your day, you are acting in a proactive manner; it means that you are taking control of your time; after all, you can’t increase the number of hours in the day.

Knowing how to plan, is the key to a successful experience, it is not something that comes naturally for many people, even those who love to plan can always learn something new and exciting with learning new techniques or even a different approach to planning. It will help to develop your own planning techniques and this is important to ensure that you are getting the most from your planning.

The Details In The Planning

There are different planning techniques that you can use and they will get you to a more organized and less stressful day. You have to find a technique that works for you, I can’t get on with electronic planners, they just don’t have the same feel as a paper and pen, yet these electronic planners do work for some people.

It doesn’t matter the medium that you use, what does matter is the planning, you need realistic goals and plans, without these you will be floundering around in your day and not really making the progress that you want or need.

The more detailed that you make your plan the better, however it is important that you are flexible, then this will make them more attainable.

For example: if I need to get an article written, I will have already completed the plan, the article should not take more than an hour, which is the time allotted to the task. However, if the phone rings during this scheduled time I will answer the call and maybe deal with the query and if this takes 15 minutes in total, I am able to bump down my schedule by this time because I always leave a buffer of time for interruptions. I plan for unscheduled happenings, if nothing happens to warrant the use of the bump time it gives me extra time to do something unexpected and this comes off the master to-do list, which I have rough time estimates assigned to each task and I can pick one suited to the time allotted.

A planned day will give you focus and you will move towards your goals, it can even help if you take this approach at work in securing a promotion, organized people are more likely to make better managers, as they will be able to prioritize the tasks that need completion.

Therefore, if you are looking for reasons why you need to plan, the benefits for you are a reduction in stress, a more focused day and you will have more time to do the things that you want, instead of chasing your tail and only ever just keeping on top of the tasks in hand.

If you are looking for more articles on this topic head over to the landing page where you will find links to other posts on organizing.