How to plan for a productive day

The success of your day can be measured by how productive your day was. A productive day is not about getting a lot done; it is about the getting the important stuff done i.e. the stuff which really matters to you. A productive day does not happen by accident. You cannot just go into work and start on the first task which comes your way. You need to have an effective productivity system to ensure that you capture all of the commitments you make but once that is done, you still need to turn those commitments into effective action. To do this you need to plan your day. With a few simple steps conducted the night before, or first thing in the morning, you can increase your chances of having a highly productive day. Imagine drastically improving the quality of results you achieve, just by taking 5 minutes each day to plan your day.

7 Tips to plan a productive day

The following tips will help you to plan a productive day and get your most important tasks completed. When you take the time to plan your day like this, you can focus on taking action and hit the ground running.

1. Review your task list the night before

Before you start to plan you must review your task lists. When you know what you have to get done, you can start to make a plan for the day which will allow you to hit the ground running. It is most effective to make your plan the night before but if you must do your planning first thing in the morning; it is far better than having no plan at all.

 2. Identify the most important task

If you could get only one task completed today, which task would it be? Once you have determined your most important task; that is your number one priority. Completing just one task on any given day can be very productive, as long as that one task is the most important task. You do not need to get a lot done to have a productive day; you need to get the right stuff done. So, focus on the most important work.

In addition to your most important task, identify the next 2-3 most important tasks. Once you have completed your number 1 priority, you can move onto these.

 3. Visualise your day

Visualising a productive day gives you something to work to. When you visualise your day, you will visualise the most important aspects of the day and they will be at the forefront of your mind whenever you need to make a decision about where to spend your time.

 4. Schedule time for email and voicemail

Make sure you have set times for checking your voicemail and email. If you have a regular day, and you always work from the same place, you may already have these times in place. If not, then you need to identify the times where you will check voicemail and email.  You can then avoid checking your email and voicemail outside of these times. This will serve to eliminate many unnecessary distractions. If you want to have a productive day, you need to have a plan for dealing with the distractions so that you can maintain focus on your priorities.

 5. Have your task lists to hand at all times

You may plan and schedule large parts of your day e.g. you may have a task which has a set deadline or, you may have a time-specific task. However, life happens, things change and the best made plans regularly get cast aside. A productive day occurs when you make the best use of the time which is available to you. To do this, you need to be able to consult your task lists whenever time becomes available and select the most appropriate task to complete.

You may find that your meeting has been delayed by 15 minutes. Rather than waste the 15 minutes, you can quickly scan your task lists and determine the most important task which you can complete with the resources available to you. You may be in a position to make an important phone call, or read an important document etc. If you do not have your task lists to hand, you are not in a position to make the most effective decision.

I move around a lot so I keep my task lists on a Google spreadsheet. This allows me to access them via Google Drive on my laptop or on my phone, meaning they are always close to hand.

 6. Gather your support material

When you have your day planned, you know what your most important tasks are going to be. You can decide what material you need to be able to complete these tasks e.g. documents. Gather this material at the start of the day, or the night before, to ensure that it is close to hand when you need it. If you are working out of office, make sure you have the material ready to bring with you.

 7. Do your most important task first

There are many people who would argue that you should start with an easy task to ease yourself into the day. I would argue against this. Time and energy are limited resources. You need to focus them on the most important tasks. If you get your most important task finished early, then no matter happens for the rest of the day, your day has still been productive.

For more great tips to help you master productivity, check out The Organised Mind. A productive day requires planning. You cannot plan and schedule your whole day; in fact, it is unwise to do so as you need to have flexibility built into your schedule. A productive day is not about getting everything done. A productive day is not about getting a lot done. It is about getting the most important tasks done. There is too much going on in the world, competing for your attention, for you to be able to do everything which you would like to do. Therefore, you need to focus on the important tasks. With just a few minutes of planning each day, you can increase the productivity of your day and ensure that you achieve more desirable results. Image credit: KT