Time planning and time management can help you not only achieve your goals, but also motivate you to achieve those goals. Often, the feeling that you can’t do anything can lead to self-doubt, stress and other negative feelings, usually leading to sleeping and free time cuts. These components of everyday life are very important for the psychological health of a person.
When planning your day, aim for consistency and flexibility, not perfection.
Start by making a to-do list. It is important that goals are measurable and achievable. It is better to have more small tasks than several, but difficult to achieve.
Set a priority for each task – which tasks are important but critical today (put them at the beginning of the day); relatively important, but not critical, and which are of lesser importance.
Arrange the tasks chronologically in the daily plan. Don’t forget to include break times. Maybe it will be after completing each task, or maybe after several small tasks. Either way, it’s a very important component because it helps you step back and clear your head a bit, preventing burnout. Maybe it will be a short walk, a cup of tea or a short nap. Leisure activities and hobbies are also important. Whether it will be a visit to the sports club, maybe dinner with a friend, or just a “date with yourself” with a cup of cocoa with a good book.
Watch yourself and do not engage in unnecessary work. If so, don’t start blaming yourself, but just ask yourself why it happened, how you feel and what you can possibly change.
Once you define the problem, you will solve it much faster. It is also useful to use a task calendar, where you can mark deadlines, meetings or events. Make regular time planning a habit. To make it easier, add this activity to an already existing habit. For example, listening to music in the evening or drinking coffee in the morning.
When planning daily tasks, don’t forget to think about the whole week. Take a look at the work that awaits you in the future, maybe you can start doing it now by dividing it into small parts.
Have you heard about the Pomodoro technique? It is a focused work within a certain predetermined work interval. Try it.
Even with a solid plan and the best of intentions, it’s hard to get everything done for the day. Yes, our days will never go exactly as planned, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth planning for.