How do you plan your day?

Elif Duran
109 replies
I believe that it's important to remember that we only have 24 hours in a day, and essential to use this time wisely by planning and organizing our activities. What are you doing to plan your day? Do you use any tool or follow specific methodologies?

Replies

1. Open up my task manager tool (Trello & Notion) 2. Sort as calendar 3. Prioritize due to deadline 4. Time blocking in my calendar 5. Make a large coffee and there you go!
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Elif Duran
@alara_akcasiz Clean steps 🚀 Do you reflect your day at the end or check yesterday's remaining?
Maciej Czajkowski
@alara_akcasiz If you only prioritize due to deadline, you never do tasks, that are strategically important. Those tasks are never time sensitive, so it's very easy to postpone them forever. Unfortunately, that leads to a never ending loop of putting the fires down. How do you deal with that?
Gökçen Öğütçü
After trying out several tools & methods, I found out that breaking tasks into pieces that make sense is what matters. Once you do it, even a piece of paper is up to the task. Having said that, I like using @'s for people, #'s for projects/clients, and → 's for pointing directions, to increase readability. I never schedule my daily tasks (I use calendars for already scheduled items such as meetings); instead, I order them during the day. I don't group tasks by day, either. I create todo's for scheduled meetings as well, for a little sense of achievement :) One needs to keep going. I don't mix personal stuff and business stuff. And for those who may ask, since I live and breathe e-mail (Gmail, namely), I use its built-in to-do list for tracking my daily stuff.
Tunahan Tolga Yıldız
Time management is my biggest plan for this year. I want to use Notion and Clickup. Thank you for the question, I'll follow the reply!
Mayank Jain
Setting up the day, before anyone starts, over a cup of coffee! We have our monthly and weekly tasks set out clearly. Just reflecting on both first thing in the morning and planning the day helps a lot.
Elif Duran
Thank you Mayank! I am curious about how do you plan your 8(working) hours, do you estimate which task is gonna take how many hours, do you track your time?
I strongly believe this: if you win the morning, you win the day. - I look at my "Tasks" list and prioritize them - I divide the main tasks into smaller ones. - If I need to delegate a task, I send the task to my "waiting from someone" list and assign it to a suitable person - If I need to do it myself it goes to my calendar - I open my calendar (google calendar) and reserve time for the 3 important tasks - I make sure that I insert the most important one before lunch - I use the Pomodoro technique to complete my tasks - I try not to exceed the reserved time (obey the timebox!) - Then I complete all tasks (hopefully:))
Elif Duran
@noyanidin Great flow Noyan, thanks for sharing! Do you reflect your day at the end: How many hours does a task take, more than you think or less? What happens unfinished tasks, you move them to tomorrow?
Selin Anil
I write everything down in my agenda - both professional and personal plans. So I can get organized and also force myself to keep a healthy balance!
Elif Duran
@selin_anil I think the pen and paper are irreplaceable, the feeling of intention and completion; but if I want to see what I did specifically on a day, I get lost.
Selin Anil
@elifduran by agenda I meant digital version ;-) I also need to have retroactive visibility on what happened each day, that's why i sometimes even correct my meetings & activity in my online agenda a posteriori!
Ramon Williamson
I practice Review/Preview. How it works: (1) I stop at 4PM* each work day to ask and journal 3 questions: What did I do right today? What did I learn? What will I do differently moving forward? * I set the 4PM time as a constraint to stop overworking. (2) Next, I set priorities for my (next) work day: 1 big thing 3 important things 5 quick things (3) I track all this in a daily/weekly progress journal and, leverage accountability to stay consistent and improve work flow. It’s also important to know that I pre-structure my day by blocking out time for three distinct activities in my calendar. This way I have containers for what matters and a framework for uninterrupted focus and consistent progress. —— Background: I originally developed this approach because I needed a way to self-manage as an entrepreneur. Later, I taught the method to my life coaching clients. I’m building out Zero Resistance Productivity to guide implementation. If you’re curious and want to try it, just ask. I’ll share the work-in-progress beta. Feel free to DM me on Twitter and mention this post.
Elif Duran
@ramonwilliamson It is amazing Ramon, thank you for sharing your routine. Do you stick with the time interval that you assigned for tasks? Do you track how many hours it takes? I am curious about the reflection at the end of the day, and how to improve tomorrow's session specifically. How to get better at estimating which task will take how many hours and set them clear.
Brenna Donoghue
@ramonwilliamson Yes, I am such a big believer in reflecting at the end of the day and planning the next. Starting a day with a plan in place already, makes it such much easier to just get into it. Love you reflection questions.
Ramon Williamson
@elifduran It’s all about thinking differently about time and how work works. Then developing the mindset and supporting skills and behaviors. I think about work as purpose (why I’m actually doing this or that), playbooks (learning and optimizing the approach), practices (ongoing activities I do over and over, things that help me be at my best and the fundamentals that are essential in the business), and projects (a set of activities that produce a “product” from my work). Within projects, there are micro tasks connected to specific knowledge and skills I must get good at or outsource to others. These tasks are modular and show up in many different projects. I’m really tracking and improving a series of micro tasks vs 1 big project, and improving thinking and building playbooks. This is how you become the most valuable person in any room. Let’s break this down: I’ve found that there are 7-10 primary projects and maybe 50 micro tasks in my work. I use a timer when I work to track time and also because it helps my focus. The time blocks prefilled in my calendar for “completion” of projects and tasks are 90 minutes. The breakthrough for me was understanding which tasks really matter and documenting the time for the micro tasks, also assigning times to the daily 135 (1= one big thing that takes 60-90mins, 3= three important things that take 25-50mins, 5= five quick things that take 5-15mins). This helps me schedule in tasks efficiently. For bigger projects, I break the project down to 25 minute cycles, there are 3 per 90 minutes. I’ve learned over time that certain tasks take x amount of time so knowing this helps me plan better. I’ve also shifted my thinking from how long an overall project takes to how much time I’m giving the overall project and the micro tasks within the project. That constraint is helpful to me. The end of day reflection is 3+1 questions answered in a project journal shared with a coach. I trained my coach in my method so they know how to coach me. I do the same thing with my coaching clients, and teach entrepreneurs and managers of remote teams. The thing that’s helped me and my clients most is knowing what really matters and what to improve. Mostly I find it’s refining and speeding up completion of micro tasks and paying attention to the flow in my system and checklist. I make a checklist for every project and micro task. This makes me very efficient and I don’t need ti be creative. I wasn’t very good at estimating time. I got better by defining the outcome of a project, overcoming overthinking, perfection, and procrastination, making a checklist for each primary project with all the micro tasks, doing the project and tasks and timing it. Because I break everything down, I’m actually timing tasks within a bigger projects. So I don’t think in terms of how much time to write an essay, I think in terms of how much time for each step. What I discovered is that many of the steps or micro tasks are modular, in other words, they are part of other projects so when I’m doing a new project and that step/task is in the checklist I have a better idea of the time. One final note: Notice I said I don’t need to be creative. It’s important to get you needs met outside the work you do. Most of the nonsense and drama you see in work is people trying to get their emotional and self worth needs met. When you get all that stuff handled outside work, you can focus on what matters and find joy in the process. This is being a craftsman vs whatever you call yourself now. Useful? Let me know.
Ramon Williamson
@brenna_donoghue Thank you Brenna. The two most important things I’ve learned about this are (1) put it on your calendar as an appointment and (2) answer the focusing questions in 1 place every time.
Francesco Impellizzeri
I like to organise my daily schedule in sprints, 3-4hrs each depending on the day. I write everything down on a notebook right before starting my day. During the sprints it is very important for me to cut all distractions out: so no socials, phone calls (except emergencies), or messages. I realised that you can really achieve 8 hours worth of progress in 3-4 hours if you're really really focused. I usually kick-off with the hardest (often most boring) stuff first and leave more creative/engaging projects for the evening. This might not be ideal for everybody but hey, it seems to work great in controlling my inner procrastinator. :) I also like to do workout, reading and journaling in the middle of the day, between morning and evening sprints. It helps my mind and body to reset before going into the second phase of the day. Talking about tools: I use Notion and Cron. I love them and I probably could not survive or function properly without them aha. Cron has been acquired by Notion later this year, so I can't wait to see how the two will integrate with one another in the future.
Angeli Zhao
1. Open my planner 2. Write to-do's down 3. Do them.
Elif Duran
@angeli_ Clean workflow, do you think it is important to see how many hours you assigned them to finish? How do you decide how many task you are going to finish in a daily basis?
phprunner
My usual routine: 1. Get up around 7-8am 2. Breakfast and coffee 3. Routine work till lunch: answering emails, quick meetings with the team 4. Lunch 5. Nap 6. Another coffee and creative work till 6pm 7. Something doing some personal project after dinner If I have something urgent, like sending out a newsletter, I block 1-2 hours of time around 10am-12pm to get it done.
Elif Duran
@sergey_kornilov1 Do you use only calendar app for this routine?
Vijay Singh Khatri
You can follow my plan for the day: 👉 Review your long-term goals 👉 Identify your priorities 👉 Make a to-do list 👉 Schedule your time 👉 Review and adjust
Elif Duran
@vijay_singh_khatri Hey Vijay, do you use any tools for this flow?
Krishnaswamy Anand Ganesh
I plan my day on the previous day itself. This takes not more than 10 mins and it's focussed on how i spend the first 2-3 hours of office time. After that is all unplanned
Dawns Li
Make a to-do list and do all the tasks one by one...
Elif Duran
@dawnsli It is the most straightforward one for me as well, do you assign time intervals for them?
Dawns Li
@elifduran Yes, for some daily to-do tasks, I try to finish them within a specific time. For some challenging tasks, I will assign specific intervals and try to do them in advance.
Lokesh Joshi
I think time management is one of the biggest things that everyone wants to manage and along with this consistency, discipline, and psychology are also very important.
Elif Duran
@lokeshjoshi31 Could not agree more. Do you have a personal strategy?
Nithin Jawahar
I plan on a weekly basis. For example, since we're launching LaunchPedia this week, I and my co-founder got on a call yesterday, created a checklist on taskade to note all the tasks and divided them between each other with deadlines. Now we've started working on them based on the deadlines.
Elif Duran
@nithin_jawahar Hey Nithin, congrats for the launch 🚀 The question that I am curious about: There are lots of tasks in a board, and maybe same deadlines but, how do you plan your day? By choosing a task and just start? Do you assign any time for the tasks, for example it will take 3 hours then I will do this...
Irsa Doham
I have a specified routine. Just follow it.
Anoir Houmou
Using a physical diary as well as my phone calendar.
Elif Duran
@anoirhoumou Hey Anoir, do you need to go back to check what you have worked on before?