Everyday when we wake up, there’s a perfect opportunity to review our most important tasks and plan them in for the day. And that’s usually first thing in the morning!
When we spend time time working without a plan, we can’t be sure we’re prioritising our most important tasks. Our minds aren’t great at switching back and forth between the task at-hand and our greater workload. That’s why we should always have a plan written down that we’re actively working towards.
This post will run through how to schedule a day around your most important tasks. We’ll discuss the best ways to plan your day as well as how to prioritise tasks.
Why Planning Our Days Is Productive
It’s easy to think that we’re good at our job and therefore don’t need a plan for each day. You should be able to just improvise your way through the day, while getting the most important tasks done. Right?
The truth is we spend most of our day on autopilot, not objectively seeing what we’re doing with our time.
Deep Work author, Cal Newport, gives the example of people watching TV. When a survey asked 25-34 year-olds in the UK how much time they spent watching TV per week, they estimated between 15-16 hours per week.
When the Broadcaster’s Audience Research Board used their actual data, they found that this demographic looks at TV closer to 28 hours per week. The hard data shows nearly twice as much as people’s wishful thinking.
This example shows why we need to get ahead of our work. We need to prioritise our most important tasks and then create a plan for the day. Otherwise, we risk ending up as items on other people’s to-do lists instead.
So when will I have time to focus on the projects that truly matter?
That’s the question productive people answer every morning.
How to Schedule Every Minute of Your Day with Time Blocks
At the beginning of each workday, plan your meetings, tasks and breaks for the day using a makeshift calendar on a piece of paper. You can use your notebook or just a loose piece of paper. It’s important that you keep this page visible so you can follow it throughout the day.
When you’re done planning your daily schedule, each minute of your day should be part of an assigned “time block”. Each time block will list out all the meetings, tasks or breaks you will be focusing on that day.
If a task takes longer than expected or some new obligations arise, of course you can prioritise these tasks. But to follow this system, it would help to take a minute and update your schedule. Your morning schedule is not set in stone, so you should update it to reflect any needed changes.
If you’re not sure how long a task will take, you can add another flexible block following the initial task block. We can use this extra block to complete the task if needed. Otherwise, it can also be used for lower-priority tasks.
A good rule might also be that whenever something important comes up, feel free to disregard your schedule for the rest of the day. We don’t always have to follow a schedule, especially if it doesn’t help our productivity. Sometimes urgent matters come up throughout the day and we need to play the role of firefighter. In these cases, following a plan may be difficult.
Time blocks help us sort out our daily schedule and should reflect our most important priorities. No need for constant wondering what you should be doing if you plan your day up-front. Now simply go through your workday with this schedule to guide you.
Plan Each Day with your Ideal Week
In his book, Free to Focus, Michael Hyatt recommends planning our ideal week. With this guide, we can see all the work we’ll do at a glance. He suggests splitting our week into “front stage” and “back stage” days.
Back stage work is any activity that prepares you for the actual job you were hired to do. This might include sending email, learning new skills, arranging meetings, doing research and team meetings – among other activities.
On the other hand, front stage refers to the actual job you were hired to do. This will change depending on your profession. For example, as a public speaker, the author’s front stage activities include speaking at conferences, creating new video content and hosting clients.
Michael Hyatt makes a point in scheduling his front stage days from Tuesday to Thursday. He reserves Mondays & Fridays for email, arranging conferences and other backstage tasks.
At the end of the week, our weekly review will help us identify any potential improvements in our current plan.
My Personal Take on Front Stage & Back Stage
You may think it sounds easy to schedule your days like this when you’re your own boss. In that case, you and I are probably in the same boat. The main obstacle for my on stage work is the number of meetings I need to attend each week.
My strategy is to try and book as many meetings as I can in a row. I feel there’s less wasted time that way, because you know the meeting can’t go over time. Also this technique frees up long stretches of time for deep work. Even if you can’t schedule entire days to be on-stage, you should be able to find blocks of time for such activity.
Try to plan your week by dividing days (or at least half-days) between front stage and back stage tasks. You’ll need at least one to two front stage days per week, or your job performance may suffer.
Having this ideal week in mind will help guide you as you plan your day.
Plan Your Most Important Tasks for the Day
Now that we’ve discussed how to plan our days effectively, it’s time to start scheduling our day.
Scheduling our day will come down to two steps. First, we’ll have to know what our priorities are for the day. And next, we need to plan when we’ll get to our priority tasks.
Prioritise Your Tasks with the Eisenhower Matrix
In this first step, we need to identify our priority actions. The Eisenhower Matrix is a framework that helps us prioritise our work. This framework asks of each task:
- Is this urgent?
- Is this important?
The matrix is then split into four quadrants, ranked by urgency and importance:
The first quadrant is where we should first focus our energy. These tasks are time-sensitive and have important outcomes. Over time, we should aim to reduce the number of urgent tasks on our list by improving our processes and automating our work wherever possible. Making tasks more flexible allows us to be more productive, and it’s also more enjoyable!
The second quadrant is for tasks that are not urgent but still important. This is where we often need to refocus our time because it’s too easy for quadrant two tasks to get neglected and deferred! Important tasks should always take priority over unimportant, urgent tasks.
The third quadrant contains tasks that are urgent but not important. Too often quadrant three tasks will end up at the top spot on our to-do lists – even when there are more important tasks to be done! If that’s the case, you may want to consider how many important tasks you often leave unfinished. Ask yourself: “Can I remove any unimportant urgent tasks on my list in favour of something more important?”
Finally, we have tasks that are not urgent and not important. Why are these even on our to-do list in the first place? Unless we’re managing everything perfectly, we shouldn’t spend any time in this quadrant. Even then, the only exception should be if we REALLY enjoy the task – like a sort of entertainment. Otherwise, we should avoid quadrant four at all costs!
Prioritise your Daily Big 3 Tasks Each Morning
Now that we’ve prioritised our tasks, we should have a clear idea of what we need to be working on – today, tomorrow and perhaps even the rest of the month. But unless we plan them into our day, we’ll likely get distracted from other things that may seem more urgent.
Mark Twain once said something that applies to this rule:
If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.
Imagine our tasks as frogs. You want to start your day by getting them out of the way. And you want to start your morning tackling the bigger one.
What Makes Mornings So Productive?
There’s a few reasons we should tackle our biggest tasks first thing in the morning. Firstly, it’s usually when we have the most energy. We’re still well-rested after effective rejuvenation, and we may even be starting to feel a rush from our morning coffee.
Imagine doing your most important task right after lunch. I know I don’t get much done between 1 and 2pm. That makes this an ideal time for meetings!
Another key reason to start our day on priorities is that doing the most important task first helps us start our day productively. The focus we put into an important task sets us up to be productive for our next few tasks. On the other hand, starting our day with the easiest task sets us up for a morning of procrastination.
The final reason to start with your biggest tasks is that you don’t know what will come up throughout the day. If anything urgent were to come up around lunch, and you started your day with less important tasks, you probably won’t finish your most important tasks that day.
Starting your day with priorities improves the chances you’ll finish them that day.
How to make an effective daily schedule in 4 simple steps
- Map out your ideal weekly and daily schedules in accordance with your other obligations
- Use “time blocking” to plan each minute of your ideal day
- Start your day with priority tasks, determined by the Eisenhower Matrix
- Follow your energy flow
- BONUS: Where possible, plan your meetings consecutively to make longer spaces for deep work
Priority Tasks & Day Planning in a Nutshell
Starting each day with a plan of what we’d like to accomplish that day is a great productivity technique. Many productive people start each day by simply asking, “When will I have time to focus on the projects that truly matter?”
The trick comes down to planning your day into “time blocks”. Each block will contain a number of tasks and activities. You should feel free to optimise this schedule around your personal preferences and other obligations.
Determining priorities can be as simple as asking yourself “What’s most important?” and “What’s most urgent?” It’s important that we focus on what’s important, and don’t just get swept along with unimportant urgent tasks.
Ultimately, we should try to schedule our most important tasks first thing in the morning – if only to make sure we finish them before the day gets away from us.
Planning your day around your most important tasks is one of the best ways to improve productivity. Another way is to do something productive next time you’re bored.
Plan your day with priority tasks and Mind & Practice today.