how to plan your day better

How To Plan Your Day Better To Be More Productive

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Planning your day can be a great habit that can improve your life. When you plan things smartly, you develop a balance between completing your tasks and enjoying life. Here I am giving you my tips on how to plan your day better.

Why Should You Start Planning Your Day?

There are many benefits of planning your day but I will keep it short and simple.

  • It makes you more disciplined
  • You learn to manage your time and tasks
  • It boosts your productivity
  • Makes your life stress free
  • You get to make time to enjoy other things in life
how to plan your day better

How To Plan Your Day Better To Be More Productive

Some of the tips that you should keep in mind while planning is-

Plan your day the night before- Spend 10-15 minutes before going to bed for planning the next day. At least make a list of the most important tasks you need to do tomorrow.

Look at that plan and edit/revise it in the morning- In the morning, divide your time according to the tasks.

Read my blog on 10 Best Morning Habits For A Productive Day

Build your plans according to your goals- Your plans should be aligned to your goals, if your goal is to complete an online course in a month, make sure you dedicate a time slot to complete one chapter of the course at least.

Try to be consistent- Consistency is the key to achieving any goal in your life, making plans won’t work if you don’t follow them daily, try to be as efficient as possible.

Reward yourself for completing your tasks- When you achieve a goal or complete a task, reward yourself with small treats. This will release dopamine in the brain, make you feel positive and you will be motivated the next time you work on that. For example, if I complete this assignment, I will reward myself with my favorite chocolate for that.

I hope you will keep these tips in mind. Now let’s talk about the method that I follow in my life. The method has made my life simpler and more efficient. I found online this too and it has made it easy for me to plan my day, it is Eisenhower Matrix.

What is Eisenhower Matrix?

The Eisenhower matrix is named after the 24th president of the US, Dwight D. Eisenhower. It is basically a tool or a method through which you can prioritize your tasks, make decisions and be more productive

This is something many successful people and organizations use for planning and decision-making. One of the popular quotes of Eisenhower is ‘Most things which are urgent are not important and most things which are important are not urgent.’ This quote is the basis of the  Eisenhower Matrix.

How To Use Eisenhower Matrix For Planning?

The Matrix consists of 4 quadrants. You can name them Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4. In these quadrants, you will enter your tasks according to how important or urgent they are.

Look at the picture below, this is an example from my pages-

how to plan your day better

What you should understand through this picture is-

  •  Quadrant 1 – things that are important and urgent
  •  Quadrant 2 – things that are important but not urgent right now
  •  Quadrant 3 – things that are urgent but less important
  •  Quadrant 4 – things that are less important and less urgent

List all the tasks that are coming to your mind. Small, urgent, important, or not important. Then take a piece of paper or maybe a blank planner and draw the matrix. Post that, you have to place the tasks in every matrix, that is, Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4. But how will you do it? Let’s see!

Quadrant 4

In this matrix, you will be placing stuff that is less important and not urgent. This will be something that you don’t have to worry about right now. Through this matrix, you’ll understand which tasks do not need our attention right now and it will not matter if you don’t complete them today.

For example, you have your best friend’s birthday next month and you decide to make a WhatsApp group to plan a surprise party.  This is something that is not urgent and not important for today. It can be done tomorrow or maybe whenever you have free time after completing all the other tasks.

If you get time today, you can do less but not it will not create a difference. This can also include watching a TV series that you want to watch but if not today, you can watch it tomorrow. Identify such tasks in your life right now and put them in Quadrant 4.

Quadrant 3

In this matrix, you can place tasks that are urgent but not that important. For example, you have planned to go out with your friends this weekend where you decided to make snacks for the picnic and you don’t have the ingredients for the same.

You know that there are job-related projects to be submitted which are more important than going into a grocery store. But for you, making sure that you have all the ingredients so that you don’t mess up at the picnic is important too. 

Now, this is something that needs to be done right now but if you don’t do it, there will be no big impacts. Also, you can ask someone else to get this time can write a list, and ask your husband to get it from our grocery store. 

Remember that it is not that they are not important but how important they are as compared to other tasks that you need to complete today. Some tasks can be easily sorted that way and that is why you need to place them in Quadrant 3.

Quadrant 2

In this quadrant, you will place things that are important but not urgent. Things that have no deadline attached to them but they are very important and it will be better if you complete them as soon as possible.

This quadrant is very important because it makes you realize what is really important in your life right now. Place those things that mean a lot to you.

For example, completing the syllabus for an exam that is 10 days away.  You know it is important and you score better if you do it beforehand but you can also postpone it and study tomorrow or the day after tomorrow if you have some other urgent works work to do. Things related to your career and dreams should take up a place in quadrant 2.

Quadrant 1

Now let’s come to the most important quadrant which is quadrant 1. Here you will put the most important and the most urgent stuff. Things that need to be completed immediately and you cannot postpone them.

A deadline is there and if you don’t complete these tasks, you might need to face consequences. For example, there is a draft article that you promised to submit by noon or an important email that you had to send last night but you forgot. You need to fully focus on the stars and prioritize them at the moment to make sure you finish them on time. 

So this was the Eisenhower Matrix. Once you divide your tasks into them, you will know your priorities and make decisions according to them.

First, you need to do things which you have placed in Q1, Then you decide about tasks placed in Q 3, you can assign them to someone else. Following that, schedule things in Q2, and in the end, decide if you can do the stuff placed in Q4 or you can not do it today. It depends on you and can be postponed to the next day.

Over To You

This was all about how to plan your day better. Planning and implementing it can elevate your life productivity and can make your life organized. If you have some other interesting methods or ways to plan your day, I would love to know them. I hope this motivates you to take charge of your day and plan it in a better way. Happy Planning!

how to plan your day better

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