Do you want to reach optimal results and productivity daily? Here’s how to plan your day and get huge results if you stick to the plan.
Take just 5 to 10 minutes every morning, or the evening before, to plan out the day ahead of you. You will start getting more out of your day and you never want to go back once you start doing that.
Learning how to plan your day has changed my life in a way I never imagined. I thought I was already quite productive and already knew what I wanted to do in a day more or less. However, I use the hours in the day more effectively when I’m planning my day.
Plus, when planning for the day, you know exactly when you will do what activity. This means no more stressing out about when things will get done. It’s already planned!
We all have the same 24 hours in the day, be aware of how you’re using them.
In this post, I’ll be going into how to plan your day step-by-step. This is the process I use weekly and daily to reach optimal productivity.
Have A Weekly Plan
Before planning every day individually, I have a weekly plan. It’s to make sure that everything I do is aligned with the monthly & yearly goals that I set for myself. I am always working towards a bigger picture, like my yearly goals or my current goal in life (financial freedom).
In my weekly planning, I pick the most important priorities for that week. This can be anything that I want to focus on for the week, that can be broken down into smaller tasks. The Four Hour Work Week also explains this in detail.
Using my weekly goals to align with my monthly goals is a great way to make progress. When your long-term goals align with your plan for the week and your plan for the day, you are moving closer and closer over time.
It’s important that you know WHY you are going all of this, what it’s all for. Why do you want to reach these big goals?
When you know your why, it gets clearer what you need to accomplish on a weekly basis and you are more motivated to do so.
How To Plan Your Day
Knowing how to plan your day can be a game-changer. The process of planning your day is quite simple, but it took me some getting used to. It’s based on the Rapid Planning Method (RPM) from Tony Robbins, check out his video for more in-depth information:
Here are the steps I take to plan the day:
1. Write Down Everything I Want To Do
Take out a notebook or an app and start writing. What things do you want to do today? What do you want to focus on?
Most of the time I’m taking these tasks from my weekly plan. Throughout the week, more things tend to come up and they are added as well.
Let’s take today as an example. Things I might come up with are:
- Do my morning ritual – one thing that helped me get out of bed in the morning is I stopped drinking coffee
- Read 30 minutes
- Work out 30 minutes & do my monthly plank challenge
- Go for a 30 minutes walk
- Write one blog post
- Check & respond to email
- Reply to Facebook Messages
- Put up my sales page for How To Win The Money Game ebook
- Write emails for launch ebook
- Do breathwork
- Block 8 hours for my day job (even though I believe working 8 hours per day is too much)
This is everything I want to get done for today.
As you can see, it’s very unorganized and there is no clear structure to the list.
This might work for some as a to-do list for the day, but it definitely doesn’t work for me.
Now everything that was in your head is out on paper, your head is clear. You can now start with the RPM method, which stands for:
- Result
- Purpose
- Massive Action
2. What Is The Result I’m After?
Ask yourself: what do I want?
This is your result. What are you working towards? What is the bigger reason behind it?
Let’s take my example of going for a 30-minute walk.
Yes, I want to go for a walk. I go for a walk just for the sake of walking. I am going for a walk because I want to clear my head, move my body, and increase my productivity in the afternoon.
The reason I want to go for a walk is to stay healthy and keep my energy high.
Your result should be related to your yearly or monthly goals. These are the things that are important to you, so you want to work on them on a consistent basis.
Another example: replying to Facebook messages. I reply to my Facebook messages because I want to build a connection with my readers and I want to help people get ahead with their finances.
When you focus on the result you want, it’s important to relate it to your goals.
Make sure it excites you and gives you energy. The more specific your result is, the more likely you’ll get excited by thinking about it.
3. Focus On Your Purpose
You know what you want and you’ve written it down. You know what the result is you’re striving for. Now it’s time to focus on your bigger purpose.
Knowing WHY you want it.
Under your result, you write down the reasons why you want it. This will motivate you further to achieve what you want and go for the outcome.
For example:
Result – I want to clear my head, move my body, and increase my productivity in the afternoon.
Purpose:
- To feel energetic
- Have a healthy body over the long term
- To increase my productivity
For the other example:
Result – I want to build a connection with my readers and I want to help people get ahead with their finances.
Purpose:
- To add value to the lives of others and help them
- Experience massive personal growth by communicating and serving
- Ultimately I want to serve and help thousands of people!
While this process is simple, it may be difficult to come up with these reasons in the beginning. Personally, I make them short and write them down quickly, in order to not think about them for too long.
For me personally, writing down the purpose behind your actions will motivate you. It will make sure that you stay on track.
4. Take Massive Action
After you’ve written down the result you want and what your purpose is, you can start to make a massive action plan.
This action plan is going to be based on all the items you wrote down in step 1. Organize the actions for the results and purpose you want.
You may notice that when your brain is clear on the results and the purpose you have, it will point out more actions that you can do during the day. You can write them down as well.
For my results, I’ll create the following massive action plan:
Results – I want to clear my head, move my body, and increase my productivity in the afternoon.
Purpose:
- To feel energetic
- Have a healthy body over the long term
- To increase my productivity
Massive action:
- Morning ritual
- Work out 30 minutes
- Go for a 30 minutes walk
- Do breathwork
- Eat whole foods
- Drink 2 liters of water
- Make my morning smoothie
- Take my supplements
This is great! Now that I know my specific result and purpose, I can add things that can help me achieve this outcome even better. That’s what I’ve done.
Another result that I want to achieve is:
Results – I want to build a connection with my readers and I want to help people get ahead with their finances.
Purpose:
- To add value to the lives of others and help them
- Experience massive personal growth by communicating and serving
- Ultimately I want to serve and help thousands of people!
Massive action:
- Write one blog post
- Check & respond to email
- Reply to Facebook Messages
- Put up my sales page for How To Win The Money Game ebook
- Write emails for launch ebook
- Publish a post on Instagram
- Respond to comments on recent blogs
Everything that I’ve written down in step 1 supports my result, but because I’m now clear on the result I can add more action items to better achieve my results.
Go through this for every result that you have for the day, and you will have your massive action list.
Probably this will be slightly different every day. Every day has different results, desirable outcomes, and thus your massive action list will be different as well.
Don’t get overwhelmed or think that it is too much. Don’t expect from yourself that you’re doing EVERYTHING on your massive action list today.
5. Set Priorities
Now we’re getting to the stage where you’re setting priorities. Probably you’ve written down dozens of action points, so it will be very hard to accomplish all of them today.
Next to your massive action list, prioritize your tasks. Write down a 1 to the most important activity, a 2 for the most important after that, and so on.
This will help you schedule your tasks in order of importance throughout the day.
6. Schedule
Now you have your plan! You know what you want to do today and you know which items are the most important. You’re executing based on the results you want, instead of executing on the things you NEED to do but don’t want to do.
Side note; even though I am not super excited about working at my day job, I will still schedule it. I’m planning 8 hours every day for working at my day job and plan my other activities around that. That’s why setting priorities is SUPER important, so you’re focusing on the most important task first.
I will schedule every single activity on my calendar. I am scheduling when I’m writing my blog posts, when I’m working out, when I’m walking, and more.
Scheduling gives you a direction for the day. When you don’t schedule, it’s easy to get distracted or go overtime with activities that prevent you from going forward.
Something that works great for me to create urgency, is to have a Pomodoro timer. This timer gives you 25 minutes of focused work and 5 minutes of rest after that. It helps you to keep focus and eliminate distractions.
7. Work-Life Balance
Because I am working full time and have limited time to work on my passion projects, I will schedule the top 3 activities for that day. If I get done more, great. If not, totally fine as well.
All other activities I just move to the next day.
While it is great to check everything off your list, make sure you have a decent work-life balance.
Progress over perfection, always.
Conclusions On How To Plan Your Day
When you want to know how to plan your day, the RPM method has been working great for me. There are many different opinions and systems out there. Try and test what works for YOU and stick to that.
Personally, I love to know what I can and can’t do, and when. There is time scheduled to get it done. Anything that didn’t make your planning or schedule can wait until tomorrow.
When you plan your day, there is no longer a sense of overwhelm. You can fully focus on executing your plan, without thinking about everything you need to do.
If you want to listen to the entire RPM method, I recommend checking out the Time of Your Life program by Tony Robbins.
How do you plan your day? Do you are additional tips when planning for the day?
This article first appeared on Radical FIRE and has been republished with permission.