If you’ve made it to this article, you’re probably not that good with daily planning, right? Like many of us. That’s normal. We are not born with the ability to plan, to be organized, or the gift of productivity. It’s all about creating a habit of doing things that improve our efficiency. So let’s look at the importance of daily planning and how to apply it.

Why Is Daily Planning So Important?

Introducing daily planning into your routine is an easy but necessary step to creating balance in your life: it allows you to clearly separate the time you spend working and the time you have for everything else. Here are a few reasons why you should consider introducing some planning into your life sooner rather than later:

• It can make your life a lot less stressful: Knowing what to expect from the day ahead greatly reduces the amount of stress for the day ahead.
• It allows you to evaluate yourself: Plans allow you to analyze whether you are sticking to them, to evaluate your own ability to stick or not to the plan.
• It helps you be prepared: You can’t predict the obstacles that may arise, but having a contingency plan for emergencies or unexpected situations can be part of your planning routine.
• It will help you avoid panic.

How Should You Go About Your Daily Planning?

It depends! Everyone works differently and so are  their planning methods, so your daily schedule will be as unique as you are. Some experts advise you to plan the whole day the afternoon before, others prefer to do it first thing in the morning. Try what works for you.

Speaking of crossing things off your list, that’s another thing that comes with daily planning: the sense of accomplishment of moving one card at a time to the “done” stage. Small victories are important and motivating, so every task you complete is a small victory for myself.

The only thing that doesn’t change is: you have to start planning by clearly defining your goals – from then on you will proceed to the necessary tasks to achieve the goals you define. If you only plan a day ahead, these will be smaller tasks, but if you plan for the whole week, you can broaden your horizons. It is very important that each task has a level of priority, an estimated time to complete and if possible a due date – this will allow you to better organize them all throughout the day.