Planning your day offers several key benefits that significantly improve productivity, focus, and overall well-being. Before showing you how I organize my day, let me share the main advantages with you.
Increase Productivity
Clear priorities: By planning, you set clear priorities for your day, ensuring that you focus on the most critical tasks first.
Time management: Planning helps you allocate time effectively to various activities, reduce wasted time, and fit in more productive hours.
Reduced stress and anxiety
Less decision fatigue: When you plan, you reduce the need to make constant decisions throughout the day, which can be mentally exhausting; this lowers stress levels.
Preparedness: Knowing your day will entail helps you feel more prepared and less overwhelmed by unexpected tasks or responsibilities.
Improved focus
Minimized distractions: with a clear plan in place, you're less likely to get distracted by low-priority tasks or interruptions. You know what you should be doing at any given moment.
Enhanced concentration: breaking down your day into specific tasks allows you to focus entirely on one thing at a time, leading to better concentration and quality of work.
Better time for breaks and rest.
Scheduled downtime: Planning helps you carve out time for breaks and relaxation, which are essential for maintaining long-term productivity and avoiding burnout.
Work-life balance: when you plan, you can more easily manage personal and professional tasks, ensuring time for family and rest.
Goal achievement
Progress tracking: planning allows you to break long-term goals into smaller, actionable steps. Each day becomes an opportunity to take a step toward your larger objectives.
Sense of accomplishment: Ticking off completed tasks gives you a sense of achievement, boosting motivation to continue working toward your goals.
Proactive problem solving
Anticipate challenges: when you plan your day, you can foresee potential problems or bottlenecks and prepare solutions in advance.
More flexibility: Paradoxically, planning ahead allows you to handle unexpected changes better, as you already have a clear structure to fall back on and adapt to.
Improved discipline and accountability
Commitment to goals: having a daily plan creates a commitment to yourself, which can boost discipline and help hold you accountable for completing tasks.
Consistency fosters daily habits and routines, contributing to long-term success and personal development.
Now, the way that I do it. I use multiple tools to stay organized.
Bullet journal: Although I didn't make one for 2024, I used a planner already made. It was a busy year, and my mom gifted it to me last December for my birthday, so I saw an opportunity.
Alarm: It's as simple as it sounds! I name each alarm on my phone to know why it's ringing so I'm sure I won't forget it. If I'm not able to do it right away, I just snooze it until I can.
Google Tasks: I use Google Calendar to plan my articles ahead of time, so I always have it on. It only seems fair to use Tasks and have them right in front of me, too. It's also great as it pops up your tasks 5 minutes before the time you choose.
To-do lists: I have to-do lists on my phone when there's stuff I have to do that contains outdoor errands. Otherwise, I have a paper to-do list for everyone in the house. I put down cleaning tasks I want to do, things in the house to finish, or the food I like to cook. I put it on the countertop in the middle of the apartment; it's easily reachable and has a pen. It's great when you think of something; you write it down right away, allowing you to declutter your brain.
Now, here is how I organize my day.
Every morning, I wake up at 8:30 am (sometimes before). My man wakes up at 9 am. So I have a 30-minute gap to myself. I put on headphones and an audiobook, and here's what I do:
Open the window to let fresh air in and the cats out.
Start the coffee machine so it's freshly brewed and hot; no need to heat it in the microwave.
Put away the dishes that were put to dry the evening before.
Clean the countertops; I'm sure the cats went on them at night.
Clean the cats' litter boxes.
I mop the apartment with the Swiffer twice a day: once in the morning and once in the evening.
I take the trash out; there's no way I'm staying with a pooping-smelling bag in the house, lol. If I have to go buy food for lunch, I go early. Usually, it's for the fish and the vegetables, and I like to go early because it's fresh, there are not a lot of people outside, it's still calm, and it allows me to breathe fresh air!
And I prepare breakfast. Usually, it's toast, nocciolata for my fiancé, and strawberry jam for me.
After breakfast, we clean the kitchen. If the dishwasher is complete, we empty it.
I go make the bed (yes, I do it; my man does it, but not the way I do it, lol) and open the bedroom window.
Shower time! Once I did everything around the house, I took a shower.
I plan my day: house tasks, blog tasks, and self-time.
I set an alarm for noon to start making lunch so I can focus on other things without having to look at the clock every five minutes, scared I'll forget the time.
After we eat lunch, we clean the kitchen, have coffee together, and have some quality time; either I watch him play his video games, or we just talk. Usually, it's just me messing with him or us doing weird things, lol.
In the afternoon, I go back to the tasks I planned.
I always get tired around 4 pm, so I take a 20-minute nap and then return to my tasks.
I set an alarm for 7 pm to feed the cats and start cooking.
After dinner, we clean, again a cup of tea for me, and either we watch a TV show, or he goes back to play while I go back to my hobbies. My desk is behind the couch, so I can watch him play while doing my stuff. I set an alarm for 10h30pm to start the laundry load.
And, of course, we play with the cats multiple times during the day.
Planning your day creates a structured environment that enhances your ability to focus, reduces stress, and makes it easier to achieve your goals efficiently.
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