These tips for planning your day will help you be more productive whether you’re at home or at work you’ll set yourself up for success.
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Are you ready to talk about why planning your day is super duper important? But not only why it’s important, but how the heck do you even plan your day?
Spoiler alert?
The more you plan, the easier your life will be.
So many of us have self inflicted overwhelm and burnout because we’re not planning our day. We’re flying by the seat of our pants and waiting until the last minute to get everything done, which leads to overwhelm.
If you’re tired of constantly being stressed out and not being the mom you thought you would be, keep reading because I’m going to walk you through a simple six step process for planning your day!
But first, are you excited to learn about how to prioritize your time so you can get more done without doing a bunch of random tasks?
Check out the Time Blocking Blueprint which will walk you through step-by-step how to prioritize your time.
Why is planning your day so important?
I have 6 good reasons why you may want to start planning your day.
1. Less stress
Whenever you know what to expect it’ll be less stressful for not only you, but your family, because everyone knows what’s coming up.
No one is out of the loop and feeling like they don’t know what to expect throughout the day.
When you plan your day, you’ll have less stress, and your kids will have less tantrums.
It’s also easier to get out of bed when you know what to expect. So that’s the first reason why planning your day is so important.
2. Easier to prioritize your time
You get to decide if what’s planned is really important or if it’s something that you can do later because other things are more important right now.
A lot of us go to bed feeling overwhelmed like we did a bunch of random tasks and that’s because we did do a bunch of random tasks!
We didn’t prioritize what was important.
We just got things done and now we’re going to bed feeling like what we got done could have waited.
So whenever you’re able to prioritize your time, your day will have more structure and you won’t go to bed feeling like you did a bunch of random tasks and feeling defeated.
3. More freedom
More structure in your day equals more freedom.
You’ll have more time for fun and family because you’ve planned it into your day.
Instead of using the reason, “we didn’t have time to do it today,” if you plan your day you’ll have time because you’ll make time for it.
Planning equals more freedom.
4. Less procrastination
Planning also equals less procrastination. You already know what to do so there’s less debate about getting it done.
You plan to procrastinate.
If you know that you have a lot to do, you can plan to spend 30 minutes checking your phone.
You’ll be able to procrastinate with less guilt and check your phone because you know that you’re getting the important things done.
5. More prepared
You can prepare in advance so you’re not waiting until the last minute and then you don’t have everything you need to complete the task or to do whatever you have planned.
Whenever you can, plan as much as possible the day before or however far in advance that you can.
This will help you feel more organized because you’re going into the situation well prepared and well equipped.
6. Evaluate your time
When you plan your day, you’ll know how much you got done throughout the day because it was all planned.
You’ll learn more about your energy levels which helps you know when to accomplish certain tasks.
You’ll know to put all of your cleaning activities in the morning because that’s when you have the most energy.
You can strategize your day and be more realistic about how you’re planning your time.
I often hear that when people are trying to plan their time, they don’t know how much time a certain task will take, which is a common concern.
But if you’re planning your day you’ll start to realize how much time a task will take and you’ll be able to plan accordingly.
So that’s why planning your day is so important and it’ll help you out so much.
5 success tips for planning your day
Now that you know why planning your day is so important and helpful, let’s hop into a few starter tips.
I have five tips that’ll help you get started with planning your day because, of course, with anything new it takes some practice.
So don’t jump into it thinking you’ll do it perfectly from day one. It’ll take some practice but these tips will help.
1. Routines will change, but the process stays the same
Let me explain what that means.
During the summer you’ll probably have a different routine than during the school year if your children go to school.
The steps that I’m about to teach you for planning your day will stay consistent no matter which season of life you’re in.
2. Motivation comes from action
A lot of times people sit around waiting to be motivated so they can get things done. When in reality, motivation is a result of you taking action.
The more you get done, the more motivated you are to get more done.
So instead of sitting around waiting to feel motivated, get up and start taking action.
Motivation will follow.
3. Make time to plan
You can’t just hope that you’ll have time to plan your day. You have to be very intentional about it and you have to make time in your day to plan for the next day or plan for the next week.
I like to plan the night before. So for Monday, I sit down on Sunday evening and get everything prepared in advance for Monday.
You may like to plan the afternoon before because that’s during nap time or while your kids are at school.
No matter what time works best for you, stay consistent.
4. Build habits
Habits are easier to build whenever we see fast results. So whenever we’re doing something and we’re not seeing any results it starts to feel like a waste of time.
That’s when we stop doing whatever the habit is.
But that’s also what’s so great about planning your day, because it’s a habit that will give you results immediately.
You’ll quickly notice…
- You’re less stressed
- You procrastinate less
- How prepared you feel
- How organized you are
You’ll have instant results that you can see which comes from you taking the five to 10 minutes to plan for the next day.
So planning your day will eventually become second nature and you’ll be able to do it super quick.
Eventually you’ll start doing it without even realizing it because you know how much it benefits your life.
5. Always know why a task is important
Always think about the outcome of the task. Why are you doing it in the first place?
Don’t just fill your day up with a bunch of random tasks because you feel like you need to be doing stuff.
Fill your day up with tasks that are important to get done.
If you don’t need to do it today, then it’s okay to not do it today. Busy is not better.
Focus on getting the right things done instead of just doing random things.
The 6 step process for planning your day
Are you ready to hop into the six step process for planning your day? Let’s do it!
1. Decide your must-do tasks
These are the tasks that are non-negotiable. These tasks have to get done today. These are your high priority tasks.
If you only accomplish these tasks today and that’s all you got done for the day, you would be fine because you know that what you were focused on was super important.
Mom tip: Always go to bed knowing what you’re going to cook the next day. You'll have one less thing to worry about.
2. Decide your should do tasks
These are the tasks that are important, but they are not a super high priority like the must-do tasks.
So these are things you should probably consider getting done throughout the day but if you don’t get to it, that’s fine.
3. Decide your want to do tasks
What tasks do you want to get done if you have time left over?
Once all of your must do tasks are done and all of your should do tasks are done you’ll move to your want to do tasks.
What’s something you’ve been wanting to do but haven’t gotten around to it yet?
4. Decide what tasks to delegate
Look at your list of all your tasks and see what you can delegate because not everything needs to be done by you.
What tasks can be done by other people?
5. Create your time blocks
Whenever I block my day, I use the process I teach inside the Time Blocking Blueprint.
Instead of creating a strict schedule, I find it easier to block my day based on our routines.
I use our anchor tasks like nap time, dinner, bedtime, etc. to keep us on track rather than times.
So I know around noon my daughter takes a nap and I have a plan for what I want to get done during nap time even if she goes to sleep earlier or later than noon it doesn’t throw off our day.
But you could also block your time using a time based schedule where you are figuring out exactly what time you wanna do a task and then creating a schedule from there.
This is helpful because you’ll know exactly when you’re gonna get each task done. It’s also more stressful trying to stick to specific time frames.
There are many forms of time blocking so you’ll have to play around and figure out which type works for you.
But I like to block my time according to routines which you can learn in the Time Blocking Blueprint.
Remember that less is more. We’re done with hustle culture.
You don’t need to burn yourself out to get things done. We’re embracing less is more mentality so don’t feel bad if your list is short, that’s okay.
You don’t need a super long list to feel accomplished.
Focus on the right things that need to get done instead of focusing on all the things that need to get done.
And remember that resting is important.
It’s non-negotiable and it’s important to teach your kids that it’s okay to rest when you get tired because we don’t want them growing up in a hustle culture where they think they have to constantly be doing something to feel relevant.
6. Prepare in advance
What can you do today that’ll make your life easier tomorrow?
Always ask yourself that question.
Anything you can do today, that the future version of you will appreciate, go ahead and get it done.
You set yourself up for even more success if you go ahead and get something done so you’re not stressed about it the next day.
You don’t want to bring yesterday’s problems into today. You don’t want to bring yesterday’s dishes into today. You don’t want to bring yesterday’s random messes on the floor into today.
So go ahead and prepare as much as you can in advance.
A few examples of this would be…
- Laying out your clothes the night before
- Laying out your kids’ clothes
- Finding your keys
- Packing backpacks
- Gathering your cleaning supplies
Go ahead and prepare as much as you can in advance in that way you’ll be more organized and have less stress.
Quick recap…
So that’s the six steps it takes to plan your day.
Super simple!
You’ll have less stress, less procrastination, and more freedom to do what you love.
And the more you practice it’ll eventually become a habit.
Don’t forget to check out the Time Blocking Blueprint so you can prioritize your time. I walk you through the steps to plan your day with video tutorials.
You can go through it with me on your phone and we’ll go through the process of…
- Prioritizing your time
- Planning your day
- Preparing in advance
- Creating your time blocks
- And there’s even bonus videos
Planning your day doesn’t have to be hard. It just takes persistence and practice. Don’t give up before you even get started.
