How To Plan Your Day Effectively (The Night Before!)

Dec 1

Today I'm going to show you how you can plan your day the night before.

By using my three simple steps, you will have a more productive and efficient day every day.

How To Plan Your Day Effectively The Night Before:

Step 1: Plan out what an ideal day would actually look like for you.

This is where you're going to plan out everything you want to do in an ideal day. When are you going to work out, or eat, go run some errands, take breaks, actually work? Seeing how much time you realistically can work is important.

If you want to take things to the next level, I really encourage you take advantage of The Pomodoro Method:

Work for 25 minutes (totally focused)
Take a 5 minute break

Instead of having 4 hours where I just put "work", which is not very helpful, I break it down into 30-minute work sessions. I just label them: "Pomodoro 1," "Pomodoro 2," "Pomodoro 3."

That way you can have a more actionable game plan for your day and see how many "pomodoros" you can fit into an ideal day.

If you're not sure how to get started planning out your own ideal day, don't worry, I've got you covered. I've created a free ideal day planning workbook that you can download by putting your information in below:

Step 2: Build out your ideal day onto your calendar.

If you use iCal or Google Calendar, this is so easy. All you need to do is create a new calendar, name it "Ideal Schedule," and build out an appointment for each thing that you mapped out on your ideal day.

I have a few tips for you to take advantage of this and make it as useful as possible.

TIP #1: Don't make an appointment for sleeping hours.

I don't feel like you need to map your sleeping hours. Just start from the first moment that I want to do anything. The first appointment on my ideal deal day calendar, for example, is get ready for workout.

TIP #2: Hide this calendar by default!

I don't want you to use this to reference all day, because I think it'll get overwhelming to look at your calendar, see every single day booked out to the nines. That's not helpful. That's overwhelming.

TIP #3: Set each appointment to recur every workday.

That way your ideal schedule is built out for you in advance! This is particularly helpful once we get to Step 3.

Step 3: Plan out your day the night before!

Go to the Ideal Schedule calendar you just built out, make it visible, and go to the next day. You'll see appointments that you've already accepted on your main calendar. Maybe you have a client call, or maybe you have to go take the dog to the vet. You'll also see your idea schedule compared to it.

What you want to do is actually go through every single appointment and copy it over to your main calendar, the one that you do look at every day.

This is where the magic really comes in.

Yes, you're mapping over things maybe you do every day, maybe waking up and getting ready, or having a cup of coffee, or working out, whatever is on your ideal day, no judgement. What you're going to do is copy that over.

When you get to a conflict, let's say you already have a Skype call scheduled when you're supposed to be doing Pomodoro 3, that's okay. All you'll want to do is just take that into consideration and maybe move that Pomodoro somewhere else. Maybe you work a little bit earlier or later, or maybe that Skype call is work.

What I like to do is, when I have a free schedule, and I'm just mapping over Pomodoro 1, Pomodoro 2, Pomodoro 3, I am actually replacing the word "Pomodoro 1" on the main calendar, with what I'm actually going to do during that Pomodoro. Instead of it just saying, "Pomodoro 1," I'm going to say, "Plan Instagram for the next week," or maybe it'll be, "Write script for next week's video," anything like that. I'm actually going to write that in place, and now I have it scheduled.

This is how you really get to make an ideal schedule work for you every day, even though every day is different.

Unexpected things will happen. That's okay. By having a game plan the night before for the next day, you're going to start that next day knowing exactly what you want to be doing.

TIP #4: Your last appointment for the work day should be "Plan Tomorrow"!

Make sure you actually incorporate this planning time in your idea schedule. I have all of my different work Pomodoros, the very last one is, "Plan tomorrow."

If you didn't build that in already, make sure that the last appointment you have for yourself on every work day, the end of your work time says, "Plan tomorrow."

Don't wait until after dinner or anything like that, because you're just going to get tired, and it's going to be so easy to just not do it.

It needs to be part of a focused work session. I really encourage you to go ahead and add that right now, and then you will never forget to plan tomorrow!

Now you know how to plan your day the night before, and how to have a more efficient and productive day every day. You can't do it if you don't even know what your ideal day is. That's why I created a planning worksheet for you to actually map out what your ideal day would look like.