Day-planning how & why

Some of us plan
some of us don't
some of us succeed
and some of us won't.
(.anon [me-no-poet])

Well, no, planning and succeeding definitely don't have a IF/THEN relationship, at least not necessarily. But depending on who you are, how you function, why you function, what's your environment like, what's your work like, planning or no planning can make a huge difference.

I don't have an office, neither do I need one. I can usually get everything done at home or in some cafeteria with wireless internet. I have pretty flexible schedule as well as I can pretty much decide daily bases what I want to do now.

But you know what, there's really hundreds of different things I COULD do. And deciding on what is the most important thing isn't that easy. Especially in the morning when your eyes aren't even fully open yet. Cold shower? Well, yes, you could try that, but still, deciding on these things in the morning ain't the best - in my case, I don't make ANY decisions then or might end up not working at all. Well yes, for most of you that's the ideal day, but then again, I don't get anything done then either. Or if I do make some decisions as to what to do "today" I usually pick the easier things, not the most important things.

Last week I tried the evening-planning. Meaning before I shut off my laptop (okay, I just set myself away in SKYPE), I wrote down the things I SHOULD do tomorrow. I got a nice list. And you know what - I actually got it all done. Not a usual scenario in my case.

It might sound easy, creating the list that is, but at the same time you should consider couple of important things. Firstly, list only the things you really do need to get done on that day - if you just list the things that you "could" do the next day or "whenever" then you won't have much motivation to work on them. But if you list very specific tasks that can and should be done within a specific timeframe it's a lot better.

You shouldn't overestimate yourself - meaning, don't make a list of things that will take you a minimum of 16 hours. That doesn't work. Make a list of things that theoretically should take you anywhere between 4-6 hours. This keeps you motivated; it doesn't look too long to get it done in a day; and you'll definitely have the time to get everything done in the list.

You migth say that working just 4-6 hours in a day ain't good enough. Might be true. But if you didn't have the list, you might be working 12 hours without a proper plan, thus the efficiency of your work might be even lower. Plus the things in your 4-6-hour list all might have some add-on tasks which you can work on after you have done everything else.

Feel free to let me know your thoughts on this topic.