“So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12
Techniques and tips for planning your day are meant to support and guide you to do the right things for the day so that you can climb into your cosy bed and feel like you’ve made a small step forward towards a bigger goal you have set. A way for you to steward your time each day well. It’s not about being a hamster on a hyper-productive hamster wheel to squeeze as much as you can in one day, but rather planning with the aim to have space for being productive and for enjoying rest. To gain focus and clarity to plan and do a few things well in your day. We may all have 24 hours in a day, but that limit shows that we as humans are limited with energy and that we can leave it to God who is more than capable to take care of things when we need to sleep.
“But”, you may say. “I still need to do the things that I need to do!”. Yes, of course. So, let’s dig into how we can plan to do the things we need to do with the time we have in a way that’s simple but that allows space for rest and rejuvenation.
The main tip is to write it down. Pencil and paper work wonders for our brains, so whether it’s at work, at home or your personal life, consider how you can carve a few moments to clear your head and dump it out onto a piece of paper. That way, you can see all that needs to be done today, what can be pushed over to another day and determine what is perhaps unnecessary.
Here are some tips to help you plan your day simply:
+ review your monthly goals
+ start with the end in mind - 'what would a successful-to-you day look like?” given your monthly goals
+ plot 2 - 3 priorities (this is not just the serious things but also priorities of wellness, of play and of rest)
+ break those priorities down into bite-size action tasks
+ allocate timeslots in your day to complete those action tasks
+ plan for short breaks to rest and transition to the next task
+ at the end of the day, review what you did, what could be improved and tweaked and then plot the yet-to-do tasks for another day
You may have noticed that 'reviewing' has appeared twice - as the first step, and then as the last. This is a helpful way to check that you are on the right track doing the right things. If not, then maybe it's time to course correct and plot one or two small action steps to move closer towards your goal.
The days can pass so quickly into weeks and months, and if we don’t catch ourselves to carve out a plan on how to spend our days well, we’ll miss the opportunity to have time to do the things we love and get stuck in the neverending rush rut. So, use the tips above to spend 10 minutes to give your day purpose towards planning small steps towards a joyful life.
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