How to Plan your Day the Day Before to Boost your Productivity?

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.” - Abraham Lincoln

What does this quote express? The quote above suggests that planning is necessary to achieve something. The efforts of cutting down a tree will only be productive when the ax is sharpened. Planning is very crucial if one person wants to accomplish a target successfully. Planning helps a person to become more productive. If you begin your day having no clue about what to do, your day gets wasted because half the time you spend thinking what you should actually do. When you start working, you forget the most important task you had to perform because you did not plan a day before. If you plan your day the day before then, there will be no chaos at all. You will not forget your important work, you will, not be late and you will be able to do extra work because, by planning, you will be saving a lot of time in your day.

Planning is as valuable as the product. Your planning will decide how much you are able to produce. When there is no mess in your day, you will be able to concentrate better on your work and with a high level of attention, your work will be more creative and superior than those who do not plan the day the day before. When you plan your day the day before then, you get enough time to manage all the tasks in order. You have your calendar and your priority list in your hand the day before because of which you can easily plan what you should do the next day. You can prepare for the morning task the night before like ironing your clothes you are going to wear the next day before sleeping. This will save the time you would waste in thinking what to wear and ironing them. The time you save through this can be used in doing more productive which helps you in the long run like exercise. 

If you do not maintain your health by working out because you did not get time for it, then you should start doing it by saving your time. It is not necessary that you utilize the saved time in the morning. You could also consume the left time after work by meeting people you have missed for a long time or by completing the old chores you forgot to do. So, how should you plan your day the day before to boost your productivity? Let us know.

#1. Pen Down The Tasks On A Paper

No matter how bad your day was, you need to start planning for the next because you do not want your tomorrow to be as bad as today. Sit down at night, hold a pen and a notebook and start writing what you want to do and you have to do the next day. Writing the tasks down will help you memorize them, and you will get an idea about what you really want to do and what you should do first. When you will look at all the tasks, you will think about them only to realize what needs to be done when. You should carry a calendar along to check the deadlines and dates for appointments you have already made. If you do not check them, you will probably overlap your schedule with the meetings you have already arranged. When you plan things in your head, you often miss a lot of things but writing down will make everything clear.

#2. Utilize The Technology For Planning

Now that technology has made human life smooth and comfortable, we should all make optimum use of it. A lot of apps have been developed that remind you about your appointments, important dates and significant tasks at the time you want yourself to be reminded. Such apps are preinstalled in mobile phones as they are most usable and generic apps. Different apps for calendars that allow you to personalize them have been launched so download one app of your choice and make full use of it. It often happens that we forget the things we were supposed to do when we have a lot of work, and at these times the apps remind us. The easiest example is that we often forget to take medicines because we get tangled in our work, and these apps can remind you at the time you should take them. With the help of technology, your work will get effortless.

#3. Make Your Mornings Busy

The next step in planning your day the day before is to make your mornings busy. Why? A person feels the most energetic and fresh in the morning so try to complete difficult tasks in the morning itself so that they do not burden you later in the day. Your efficiency in the morning will be more than during the rest of the day. Try completing all the tasks before you start feeling lethargic and drowsy. It is important to keep in mind that you sleep early at night so that you wake up feeling excited. If you do not have a full sleep then it will affect your work in the morning. Have a routine early in the morning so that some tasks do not look like a task anymore. Like making your bed should not be a task, it should be a part of the routine. Something you do unconsciously. Plan wisely by assigning yourself tasks that are boring and can take a lot of time for completing first and then do the shorter and interesting ones. Boring tasks will make you feel lazy, so it is advisable to complete them when you are cheerful.

#4. Mark Out The Most Important Tasks 

When you have penned down all the tasks for the next day, mark the ones that are more urgent and need to be done on priority. The list of functions includes all the important and the menial tasks so by scoring the important ones you will be segregating the both. You will know what you need to do first and what you can keep for later. Having a list of tasks will make it easy for you to see what you should do first. You will not miss out on important meetings and appointments, and the stress that comes with these large tasks will vanish once you have your day according to them. The tasks list will be your priority list. You will also learn what kind of works you have taken once you read the list thoroughly to realize how much importance you give to what thing in your life. You can ignore a task for something that is more important. The understanding of the value of time and people will come from this list. So, planning does not only organize your life, but it also teaches you lessons.

#5. Avoid The Unnecessary Distractions

What usually happens is that people make themselves busy with things that are not even a part of their list. You were going to take a bath, but a message on your phone caught your attention. You began chatting to your friend, and you forget what you were going to do. It was wastage of time. We often get distracted by a lot of other things around us which hinder our progress towards the prior objective. Social media, games, television, and family members are distractions that stop a person from doing what they initially were going to do. A family member comes by to ask for something and a whole discussion for about twenty minutes goes on. Ask yourself if that was necessary? Wonder all that you could have done in those twenty minutes. Therefore, ignore the distractions around you. 

#6. Create Deadlines For Yourself

Whatever task you take up should have a time limit. Bound the functions with time and observe the difference after some time. When you work under a time restriction you will work faster and gradually you will work efficiently. Even if there is no deadline for a job then create one for yourself. Because when you work with the time, you will create time for doing other things. Not every assignment needs a day or more. If you can do something today in half an hour, then do it. If a task has a deadline for a week, but you think you can do it in an hour then do it. Do not wait to complete your projects a day before the deadline. You should only be planning your day the day before and nothing else.

#7. Practice Till Perfection Is Achieved

Planning is not going to be something you know by birth. Every person is not a great planner. Planning is a skill that will come by after a long time of preparation. Initially, you will not be able to manage many tasks in a day, but eventually, you will lead to several complete jobs in a day with practice. When you have learned to work in less time without getting distracted then your life will become uncomplicated, and if some urgent work comes up, then you will not have any stress as you will have extra time in your hands.

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