How to plan your day for peak performance

Without planning, your odds of enjoying a balanced and full life decrease significantly and your daily motivation and mental health suffer in respect.

There are times when it feels like there just aren’t enough hours in a day to get everything done. Have you ever checked the time to see 6 0’clock with a burnt feeling and restless about all the incomplete challenges and tasks that are piled up?
The weighed down feeling at the end of the day is common and can be repelled with these planning tips I offer, to peak your daily performance.

1. Priority ranking

The PR method is all about focusing on what’s more essential first. Rather than ordinarily making a to-do list and trying to get everything done, define each task according to their importance and urgency, list them in descending order, then ruthlessly handle each of those tasks one after the other while being conscious of the time you allocated to each.

The reality is that most days there are few vital tasks that we must carry out. It always seems as though all the tasks in our to-do list needs attention, but most of those tasks do not have the same level of importance or urgency. As a goal-getter and goal tracker, you should have the discipline to filter your tasks according to their importance.

The motivation to obsessively rank your tasks according to importance can majorly be gotten from habit tracking, goal setting, and goal tracking.

2. Break down your daily goals

Breakdown your daily tasks into systematic bits, with each giving way to another one easily. Review your professional and personal goals when you are planning your day, and put together tasks that bring you nearer to both.

Specify each of your goals based on how you intend to achieve them. It’s not enough to just list tasks you intend to complete without writing or consciously stating how you intend to carry it out. This process improves your sense of motivation as you now know exactly what you are meant to do. It also gives your to-do list a goal tracking attribute.

3. Make your schedule around your energy

One of the surest ways to end a day completely spent and burnt out is to attack your daily tasks without recognizing when your energy is best on-point. We have different levels of energy peak each day, recognize yours.

Your energy is inevitably crucial to your productivity level. Acknowledge your abilities and lapses and understand how to draw your schedule accordingly. For instance, if you are a morning person, you can start your day with the most important and demanding of your tasks. On the other hand, as a night person, it’s better to start your morning with less stressful tasks. You can just start by responding to your emails and listening to voicemails.

Figure out when best you are active, both mentally and physically, plan each task according to when you are most efficient and watch yourself conquer each task in your schedule.

4. Create rewards for completing each major tasks

This is best achieved by using your distractions. Is it Texting? Hunger? Small talks with workers? You can easily turn those distractions into a source of motivation for goal getting. These distractions will always come in between your planned time for work, so it is up to you to push that urge until the end of a particular task.

“Once I’m through with this report, I’ll go get myself a coffee”.

Statements like the one above conditions your mind to seek tasks in smaller bits of time, giving the needed motivation and drive to complete them quickly and efficiently.

5. Plan for the next day before going to bed

This sure sounds like the first step to take in planning your day, that’s why it comes last, so you can remember how essential it is. Starting your day with an already-made schedule gives you a confident head-start compared to a person who woke up to only a rough idea of what he/she intends to achieve for the day.

Imagine waking up, and having to start drawing a plan for your day while preparing for your bath or while preparing breakfast. Doing this also helps with your stress management for each day – you wake up to an outlined goal.

Even with the best of intentions and a solid plan, it’s difficult to always complete all our tasks for the day. Of course, our days might not go the way we planned, but a sure way of having a disorganized and frustrating day is to ignore planning.