Coaches

Some people are so structured and seem to plan every detail of their day. Yet, others tend to fumble around, hoping they don’t miss something vital that they need to do. If you want to learn how to get everything you need to do in a day, there is no secret or magic trick.

It’s not difficult to plan your day, but it takes some determination and a few life-changing tips. Why should you plan your day? Well, here are a few reasons.

Four Excellent Reasons to Plan Your Day

Here are some useful planning tips for implementing today.

1. You’re Better Prepared

When you have everything planned, then you know what to expect. Your goals for the day are clear, and unless something unforeseen arises, you’ve got things covered. When you have a prepared mindset, you will have a higher chance of having a good and productive day.

The problem comes into play when you don’t have a clue what’s going on. You will struggle through the day fighting hard and have a low chance of success. When you wake up ready to tackle the day, you will be motivated and drive to accomplish the tasks at hand.

Your brain needs to be prepared to be able to have full motivation. If you’re in doubt, you should know that this method works, and it will help you finish the tasks you have to do promptly.

2. You Prioritize

How many times have you worked all day long and haven’t seemed to accomplish anything? You might feel like a dog chasing its tail around in circles. You must know that this is a rookie mistake, and it must be avoided.

When you plan, you have the chance to prioritize the tasks you must complete making sure each one is fulfilled. If you don’t have a plan, then you can run in 100 directions and do whatever comes to mind first. When nothing is connected or coherent, your entire day is run very haphazardly.

It’s essential that you give time to the things of the highest priority. When you start your day armed with a plan, then you can make sure that all the urgent tasks are handled. If you need to see a doctor or attend your child’s school play, then you can ensure those tasks get worked into your day too.

The fact is that you can get where you need to be, and you don’t have to compromise your responsibilities to yourself or your family to do so.

3. Improves Time Management

Your day and productivity level come down to your time management. Do you need to manage every second of the day? Well, no one is perfect, and it’s hard to have a life so scripted.

Thankfully, you can schedule your day and make good use of every minute of it. The most important task should go into slot one, followed by the next important thing, an hour for lunch, and so on until you’ve filled your schedule.

Make sure that you have a list and don’t let anything overlap. You have deadlines, personal commitments, and you must ensure that everything is planned out for 24 hours so that you don’t waste any time or feel burdened.

4. Create Structure

Do you have days when you seem to wing everything? Spontaneity is the spice of life, but you can’t live every day in that manner. It sounds fun to throw caution to the wind and not let life become too structured and regimented, but did you realize that living like that will take a toll on your mental health?

It’s not fun to deal with surprises and urgencies as they can affect your personal life and your work efficiency. When you plan your day, it brings order to an otherwise chaotic time. Planning gives you structure and order, and it will make your life seem more systematic.

Now, you shouldn’t mentally confuse a scheduled day with an uninteresting lifestyle. Having composition means that you have a plan and know what you need to do to be successful. Your routine must be pre-planned and thought out clearly.

You can boost your productivity and keep a structured life, but this type of lifestyle can help you get rid of all your bad habits and strengthen your good ones.

When you are accomplishing tasks and reaching goals, then it gives you a boost in your step. It does incredible things for your self-esteem to mark items off your checklist as accomplished.

5 Tips to Planning the Perfect Day

If you want to plan your day and boost your results, you need an effective method. Here are some tips for you to consider.

1. Begin with Clear Goals

You must first start each day with clearly defined goals. Never start a day without a plan. It’s essential to keep your daily goals on track to achieve all you need.

While setting precise daily goals, you must also keep in mind your plans for the week. You want to make sure that one day flows into the next, and you’re not left wandering around.
When you have not only your daily but weekly goals in mind, you can plan in advance. Your goals must allow you to accomplish all you need to do and allow time for the unforeseen events.

2. Each day must Be Part of the Bigger Picture

Please don’t get so caught up on a single day that you forget it’s part of the bigger picture. Remember, Monday is only one-seventh of your week, so you can’t single it out over the whole week or month. Everything you plan must take into consideration the week, month, year, and your life.

Having a cohesive plan is advisable, and it should fit into what you want to achieve for the long term. Additionally, keep the events from yesterday and those from tomorrow in the back of your mind. If you have unfinished business from Tuesday, and it’s not Wednesday, you must consider what’s left and what’s on the list for Thursday.

When you have deadlines in both the business and personal parts of life, you need to be mindful of them daily rather than waiting until the last minute.

3. Classify

Your day should be about much more than your job. In every life comes the need for socialization, personal commitments, chores around your home, and family time. You must ensure that you include all these things in your schedule and learn to make time for each classification.

Self-care is an item that many people don’t make time for in their day. You are more important than dusting the furniture, paying the cable bill, and making a work deadline. Yes, all those things are essential, but if you don’t take care of yourself and your needs, you will never accomplish all you need to do.

You should have no less than 30 minutes each day to reflect, create, and boost your mental strength. When you have it all planned according to then, it’s easier to balance your day.

4. Allow for Flexibility

When you plan your day, you don’t want to make the time restraints, so regimented that there is no time for flexibility. Life is full of surprises, and you never know what each day will hold. You must have room for adjustments.

Your boss may throw a surprise assignment on you, or your child may wake up sick. There always needs to be a plan b or backup to your day. You must be able to move things around so that you can handle life’s unexpected challenges.

5. Sustain Balance

You only have 24 hours in your day, so you don’t want to put so much onto your schedule that it’s not humanly possible to do it all. When you plan your day, you want to give yourself about one or two major tasks.

Once those big tasks are handled, then you can schedule about three or four smaller ones. Remember, some jobs will take more time than others, and you need to allow for interruptions, phone calls, and other things that can get you off schedule.

You also need to have some sort of balance. Your day cannot be all about work, or you won’t have time to relax and read a book or watch your favorite television program. Don’t cram so much into one day that it stresses you out and take the rest of the week to recover.

Final Thoughts on How You Can Achieve Better Results When You Plan Your Day

Are you convinced that planning your day is worth the effort? Make sure you make those plans the day before to wake up knowing exactly what you face that day. It’s all about keeping things into perspective and seeing yourself reach each goal that you set.

Don’t feel pressured to tackle all of these suggestions at one time. Small steps will equal big changes in due time. So start with little goal-setting and work up from there.

The goal is to see growth and development in your life, which can happen when you plan your day and make time for all the things you must do.

You have goals. That’s wonderful. Believe it or not, you’re doing great. Life coaches everywhere will tell you that a lot of people haven’t even made it that far.

Now you’re probably wondering how to achieve those goals. Many people psych themselves out at this step. It can be overwhelming trying to figure out how to achieve these grand goals you have floating in your head.

Life coach Lauren Handel Zander suggests that people haven’t really taken enough time to figure out what they want out of life. Taking the time to sit down and map out what you want can help guide your life. “Whatever you’re chasing in life — it needs to be you true north,” says Zander.

The best way to not get overwhelmed, and to achieve goals is to create an action plan. When you have a plan, you can see the journey step by step and suddenly your goals seem easy to attain. Here is the best way to create a great action plan based on advice from several life coaches.

A Ten-Step Action Plan to Help You Reach Your Dreams

Step 1: Relax.

As stated before, a lot of people can be overwhelmed at the thought of trying to achieve goals. Just relax. You need to get rid of stress first before you embark on this journey because you need a clear head.

Whatever you need to do to take the edge off, do it (as long as it’s nothing harmful to yourself like drugs or alcohol). Take a couple of days off, do yoga, read some self-help books, and get yourself in the right state of mind. You don’t want to start the journey off as a frazzled mess. That isn’t going to help anything.

Step 2: Clearly define your SMART goals.

You may have goals, but your goals need to be clearly defined. According to life coach Alexis Robin, co-founder of pLink Coaching Center, “when you get crystal clear about where you are going on a project, in your career, or in your life, each decision you make will get you closer to or further from that vision. If you are struggling with big decisions it may be because you don’t have your destination clearly identified.”

To clearly identify your goals, you should use the acronym SMART. This stands for:

• Specific – your smart goal should be as specific as possible. For example, instead of just saying you want to save money, you should specify how much you want to save and give yourself a deadline.
• Measurable – you should be able to keep track of your progress. It’s essential to be able to see the progress from week to week or month to month.
• Attainable – you should always aim high, but the goal needs to be reasonable and attainable. For example, don’t say you want to save a million dollars in six months if you’re currently only bringing in $20,000 annually.
• Relevant – the goal should be relevant to your life, skills, and needs. For example, don’t have a plan to buy a new car if your goal is to save money.
• Time-based – you should be able to set a deadline for you to achieve the goal. The deadline should be reasonable.

Step 3: Figure out your reason why.

It’s important to understand why you want to reach the SMART goal you’re striving for. Your reason why could be simple. You want to save money so you’re not living paycheck to paycheck. You want to lose weight so you can live a healthier lifestyle. These are simple, but sometimes you have to dig a little deeper to find the real why.

This could take some self-exploration and it may be a little scary to do that. However, understanding why you want to achieve that goal will provide you with the motivation you need to do it.

For example, you might want to save money so you can enjoy more time and activities with your children before they completely grow up. That’s much more motivational than simply saying you don’t want to live paycheck to paycheck.

Step 4. Create actions and a timeline.

You have your SMART goal in place, and you’re motivated to accomplish it. This part of the action plan is where you map out exactly how you’re going to do that.

You should be able to create a list of actions or tasks that will take you, step by step, to your goal. Essentially, you’re going to divide your main goal into smaller goals. Remember to keep the smaller goals attainable.

Step 5: Get started.

You would be surprised how many people create an entire action plan but never put it into action. Now that you have your plan all set, you have to start doing it. A plan without any action isn’t a plan at all.

This is where your real why is most important. It’s going to give you that fire to get started. Keep that in mind and don’t be afraid to take that first step in your plan.

Step 6: Delegate tasks and designate resources.

Parts of your plan may require the help of other people and outside resources. Don’t be afraid to seek out that help. However, make sure you’re counting on reliable people.

For example, if your goal is saving money, you might have a plan to get a promotion so you can have more money coming in. This means you may need to step up at work and take on leadership positions which include managing other co-workers. Here is where you’d delegate tasks and designate resources.

Step 7: Take your plan step by step.

Remember to take your plan step by step. Of course, you’re going to keep your primary goal in mind, but don’t allow yourself to think of the entire goal at one time. You may find yourself getting overwhelmed.

Remember, you made an action plan for a reason. Don’t focus on future steps. Focus on the step that you’re currently working on.

Step 8: Don’t give up.

Your plan makes it easier to achieve your goals, but it doesn’t make everything easy. There are still going to be challenges along the way. These challenges might push you to your limit.

You have to remember not to give up. Make sure you have a source of strength around you to keep you pushing towards your goals. Keep a reminder of your real why near you. Write daily affirmations, listen to motivational videos, and do whatever it takes to keep going. Remember, when things get hard, or almost impossible, don’t give up.

Step 9: Monitor your progress.

Keep an eye on the progress that you’re making. As you achieve each of your smaller goals, look at them as milestones. Look at them as points in the plan where you need to recognize your small successes so far and make sure you’re still on track.

In other words, hold yourself accountable. If your goal involves a team, hold your team accountable. Have meetings to make sure everything is going as planned. If you need to, meet with individual team members.

Pay attention to the needs that arise as you follow the steps of the action plan. Make sure you’re providing those needs so that your progress won’t stop. In fact, you may need to anticipate needs so that your progress doesn’t stall. You can’t anticipate needs unless you’re doing a great job of monitoring your progress.

Step 10. Celebrate your successes.

Everyone works better on a rewards system. Plan to reward yourself with the accomplishment of each small goal. It can be a small reward, or it can be something extravagant (although if you’re trying to save money you may want to go with a small reward).

If you have a team that’s involved in your plan, don’t forget to reward them for their successes as well. The reward could be as simple as recognition for their efforts. There are plenty of studies that show that employees (or team members) work harder and are more productive when they are recognized for their efforts.

This includes you recognizing yourself. It’s a great way to keep up your self-motivation.

Final Thoughts on Creating an Action Plan to Attain Your Goals

Having goals is the first step to a better future, but you have to find a way to reach them. Action plans are the way to do this. Focusing on the big picture all at once can be overwhelming but creating a plan to get you there makes your goals much more attainable.

Life coaches everywhere will tell you that smaller, attainable tasks take the pressure off you and that taking the pressure off allows you to thrive when you’re pursuing your goals. Take this advice and get started on your action plan as soon as possible. Remember to stay focused and stay motivated and before you know it, your big picture will become a reality.