What’s Gotta Stay

Ever feel like you get to the end of the day and you really haven’t accomplished much?  Oh, you worked hard at a variety of things, but nothing important seemed to get done.  You are likely not alone, but don’t take solace in that, do something about it!

I have found that my most productive times in my life are when I have a clear plan of what I am going to accomplish, and I stick to the plan.  I served as a religious missionary for a couple of years, and part of our daily life was to plan three weeks ahead what we would be doing.  Of course our plan would continually change, but we had goals and itemized tasks we were going to accomplish during that time frame.  Each weekend we would look ahead to the coming week and make adjustments to the plan.  Then, each night the following day was planned out to enough detail that we knew what we would be doing every half hour of the day.

Of course, life as a missionary had some pretty defined goals and limited scope of tasks, but the life lessons learned there have stuck with me.  I am not perfect at it now, in fact I often find myself just coasting through a day and kicking myself at the end of it for not having made the most of my time.  At times like this, I look back at my better attempts at planning out my day and come back to those basics.

You can choose how detailed you want to be, whether you want to simply go off of a task list for the day or go so far as to plan things out by time.  I definitely suggest the more detailed route as you will likely get more done than you would off of a more loose approach.  If you use a day book, that is a great place to make your notes; if not make a simple list of hours in the day that you can note next to it what you will be doing during that time.  Each night before you get into your “going to bed” routine, sit down for five minutes and plan out your next day.

You will likely have some set appointments or things that have to take place at specific times; write those in first.  Then look at the available times in between and write down specific tasks you can do during those slots.  Once your day is as full as you would like it to be, you are done.  The next day, simply follow the plan.

Try this out for a week and see how you do.  You will likely be amazed at how much more you get accomplished and energized you feel for having done so much.