Why Should you Plan Your Day? And How to Do That?
“The person who does not plan may succeed, but the difficulties, obstacles, and problems they face are more and more severe than those facing the person who has a clear plan and goal, and it is not clever or intelligent to replace the one who is inferior with the one who is good.” This is what Dr. Ibrahim Al-Feki said. In this article, we will introduce you to the importance of daily planning and why you should plan your day, and how you can do it, so follow us in the next few lines.
Why should you plan your day?
There are many reasons why planning your day is essential to organize life and overcoming its difficulty, and the most important of these reasons are the following:
1. Performance improvement:
Planning your day and dividing its hours according to the tasks you are required to achieve gives you a clear vision of the things you must do first, your priorities, and the time spent to complete them. Planning and scheduling tasks within certain times reduces procrastination, wasting time on distractions, and reducing the confusion resulting from not knowing what to do first, which increases your focus to accomplish the necessary tasks.
2. Stress relief:
When you have a lot of tasks to do, both professionally and personally, it makes you anxious and increases your stress, but planning your day reduces your stress levels significantly, helps you to schedule priorities in order, and saves time to complete each task separately.
3. Completing the required tasks on time
Planning your day will help you get all done on time, sometimes ahead of schedule.
4. Increasing career opportunities:
One of the things that helps you improve your career and get better job opportunities is the “professional reputation” that can be gained by delivering all the tasks entrusted to you with great accuracy and time, and this stage can not be reached without good planning of your day and organization of times and commitment to them.
5. Mastery of work:
It is critical to allocate the right time for each work and avoid working under the influence of time pressure, and this can not be achieved without good planning and organization of time.
6. Enhancing self-confidence:
Completing the tasks assigned to you perfectly and on time enhances your confidence in yourself and your abilities. You can achieve this by planning your day, as you are constantly completing your daily tasks is a significant incentive for you, which drives you to improve your planning and time management skills, and take advantage of new job opportunities.
How to plan your day?
1. Determine bedtimes and wake up early:
The first step in organizing time and planning a good day is to wake up early, and one of the things that help you to set a suitable time for sleep is to get enough rest. Sleep hours should not be less than 8 hours minimum, so you must sleep early to give yourself enough rest, and restore the vitality of your body, and to be able to start your day actively and optimistically.
2. Perseverance and persistence:
Many of us suffer from difficult beginnings, but do not allow these difficulties to prevent you from continuing and moving forward to achieve what you want. Everything in your life will become easier, and self-confidence will strengthen once you succeed in achieving daily planning and sticking to it.
3. Create a clear vision of your day:
It is very critical to plan your day successfully to have a clear picture and mental vision about the tasks that you want to accomplish on this day without going into the details of these tasks, and just a quick narrative of all that you want to do.
4. Do not waste time browsing the Internet:
One of the most common distractions in our time is" the Internet;" you can spend long hours moving from one site to another and from one page to another. So, you should set a specific time for browsing and try not to use it except when needed.
5. Eliminate the procrastination problem:
You can get rid of this problem by following several tips. The most important of which are the following:
5.1. Getting the job done directly:
Delaying and procrastinating the completion of tasks increases your feelings of frustration, anxiety, and stress. To avoid all this, commit to doing what you are asked to do either directly or as soon as possible.
5.2. Delegation:
You can delegate the right person to accomplish a task.
5..3. Postponement:
Here comes the order of priorities and challenging tasks. If the task is unnecessary, it can be postponed and the critical tasks can be done.
6. Increase focus and energy:
You must increase focus and maintain your vitality and activity, in addition to increasing your energy, so that you can do all the tasks entrusted to you efficiently and productively. You can not achieve this if you do not care about a healthy lifestyle, from proper nutrition, regular sleep, and exercise constantly.
7. Schedule your to-do list:
One of the most powerful ways to plan daily and increase productivity is to write a list of tasks required daily, whether necessary and challenging or non-urgent tasks and determine the time needed for each.
8. Reward yourself for what you have accomplished:
One of the most critical means self-stimulation is "rewarding oneself." One of the most important positive effects is the following:
- Reduce the difficulty of any task you are required to accomplish, no matter how difficult.
- Increase your enthusiasm and joy when doing any work.
- Creates motivation to accomplish tasks and achieve them perfectly.
- It helps you keep getting things done no matter how difficult they are.
Statements and Verdict on Planning:
- “It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” Eleanor Roosevelt.
- Spending seven hours planning with ideas and clear goals is a good and better result than spending seven days without direction or goal.
- “Long range planning does not deal with future decisions, but with the future of present decisions,” by Peter F. Drucker
- “Study the past, if you would divine the future.” Confucius.
- The essence of planning lies in finding practical formulas to make our daily activities contribute to building the image we want to have at the end of our lives.
- “Plans are nothing, planning is everything.” Eisenhower
- “Every hour spent in good planning saves three or four hours in execution.” Al Khuzami.
- “My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there, so I want to be reasonably sure of what kind of future it’s going to be.” Charles Kettering.
- “Most people don't plan to fail but they fail to plan.” Emerson.
- “Happy is the person who knows what to remember of the past, what to enjoy in the present, and what to plan for in the future.” Arnold Glasgow.
- “I don't believe in conspiracy theories, neglect is the only explanation for everything. A conspiracy requires a little intelligence and scientific planning and we lack them.” Ahmed Khaled Tawfiq.
- “Man finds himself without planning and programming attracted to doing easy things and avoiding challenging things.”
- “Whenever success comes as a result of good planning and constant perseverance coupled with the right opportunity, people consider it luck.” Henry Ford.
- “The desired piety is not Darwish's rosary, nor a sheikh’s turban, nor a devout angle; it is science and action, religion and worldliness, spirit and substance, planning and organization, development and production, mastery and charity.” Abu al-Hasan al-Nadawi.
- “Planning is the art of making mistakes on paper.”
- “Planning is an activity that helps you become the person you want to be.”
- “Life has taught me that planning for the future is a waste of time.” Charles Simic.
- “One day you will be exhausted over the planning of your life, the next day you will be composted with the earth, and you will be a banquet for worms, such is the amazing miracle of death.” Chuck Polanek.
- “Many people spend more time planning weddings than they do planning marriages.” Zig Ziglar.
- “The joy of solitude does not consist only in dreaming. I think planning is next in terms of pleasure.” Anna Nigel.
- “I'm very organized, and I like to plan things. I get frustrated when things don't go according to plan.” Tia Murray.
- “If something were inevitable, it would be changing, and the world we plan for today would not exist like this.” Phil Crosby.
- “A goal without a plan is nothing more than a wish.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
- “If you plan on making money and nothing else, you'll be broke.” Hill Geber Selassie.
We've given you essential tips on how to plan your day; and how you can do it.