6 Super Ways To Improve Your Daily Planning

Make your daily planning more accurate and effective

Everybody knows the disappointment that comes with making a planning and then failing to stick to it. For numerous reasons the planning did not end up to be realistic, be it because of a wrong time estimate or other less obvious factors that play a role in making a good strategy for the day.

In order to make a reliable daily planning we make use of the art of asking questions.

“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.” — Confucius

Questions are the best tool to make the human mind come up with answers.

Getting better answers is a direct result of asking better questions, and learning to ask better questions is key to having success solving any problem.

These 6 questions help you to make a daily planning that makes your daily planning a success. Also will they prevent you from making mistakes while coming up with your plan:

1. Looking back at the end of the day, what do I want to have accomplished?

In order to create your desired results, first you have to be aware of what exactly the desired outcome of your daily planning is.

Sometimes it can be very hard to come up with an answer out of the blue.

The solution to this comes from assuming that at the the end of the day you will have accomplished your desired result.

Look back on your day and already feel proud about your achievements. Doing so will make it easier to come up with your specific preferred outcome.

This is because your mind is better at ‘remembering’ something it already knows to exist, then to come up with something that is completely new.

2. What result would be good enough and what result would be amazing?

Posing a minimal goal will help you get clear what it is that needs to be done for the day. However, it can also be very helpful to imagine what the ideal result of your daily planning looks like. Then ask yourself:

How does the ideal goal differ from the minimal goal?

Knowing this difference makes it clear to you at all times, what you need to do to make the activities more effective at reaching their goals.

It will help you see what is actually useful and what is wasting your time.

3. What activities do I have as a time reference?

Like you probably already know, making an accurate time estimate can be very tricky. To make better estimates the following technique works wonders:

Let’s say that you are planning to write 10 emails, read 40 pages and will have a meeting. Come up with references for every activity and make accurate time estimates for how much time each of these activities consumed in the past.

Sometimes you have to take an average of a couple of activities. For example if the time the activity takes to complete can change from time to time, or when the time of one activity is very short (like reading one email).

For example with email it is best to take the time to complete reading (and possibly answering) 10-20 emails and divide the total time this takes by the number of emails.

This way you get a reliable estimate of the time one email takes, then multiply by the amount of emails you are planning to complete.

If you have planned a meeting, look back at previous comparable meetings and take the average time one of these meetings took you.

4. What checkpoints are there to identify progress?

When picking goals for the day it is often the case that these goals are big and daunting. Also the estimated time a task will take is very unpredictable as tasks get bigger.

To make sure you stay on track and make adjustments if you get off track, it is important to check every once in a while whether you are still on par with your planning.

To do so, identify which smaller components (checkpoints) a bigger task consists of, and how much time you estimate each of these components will take you to complete.

Doing this will not only help you making adjustments when needed during the day. Also will it help you to make a more reliable planning in the first place. This is because it is easier to make a time estimate for a smaller task than for a bigger task.

When you notice that you are taking longer than expected during the day, adjust the planning for the rest of the day so that you will still be able to stay on track for the remaining tasks.

If time estimates in your daily planning did not end up to be accurate, write down what caused this. Also come up with how you can make it more reliable the next time. This way you can turn adversity to your advantage.

5. Imagine looking back at the end of the day and seeing your planning has failed to be accurate. What are 3 things that are most likely to have caused this?

The ancient stoics had an exercise to make sure no trouble will come your way unseen. They called it: Premeditatio Malorum. By looking ahead, imagining things that might go wrong, you have created the opportunity to be prepared.

Of all the things that might go wrong ask yourself which of these things are most likely to go wrong.

Then ask yourself why exactly these parts of the planning may fail.

Make a top 3 of the reasons that cause things to go wrong in your daily planning.

How can you make sure you got these things covered?

For each of these 3 reasons make a plan to avoid these events from happening.

If these reasons are out of your control, come up with the best way to deal with them in advance. This way you will never be unprepared and feel confident to deal with them.

6. What goal does your daily planning ultimately serve?

It is important to have a very clear picture of the reason you are making a daily planning. What are you trying to accomplish and how does making a planning help you to do this?

When you have an answer it is time to make a task list. Also write down how important every task is on a scale from 1 to 10.

Once it is clear what the important tasks in your planning are, it is time for the last step. You are now ready to make a planning that accurately reflects the importance of the underlying goals.

Pro tip: take 2 minutes at the end of your day to review your daily planning by asking yourself:

Did you make accurate estimations of the time each task takes up?

What can you do to make a better daily planning tomorrow?

If you are interested in clarity and decision making, check out this article!

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