034: 10+ pick-and-mix planning ideas (to help your brain out)
If you struggle and feel stressed, frazzled, or overwhelmed throughout the day because you don’t know what to work on and everything feels equally important in the moment, it’ll probably help you out to have some kind of planning practice in place. Planning and getting a bit more organized really helps free up your brain to focus.
Because we're all different, what works for one person might not work for the next person.
I'm sharing these planning ideas with you today, so that you can mix and match, tweak and refine things to create your own structure that allows you to shine and succeed – while having plenty of time over to be spontaneous.
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Show notes
Planning and structure in your days has many benefits:
You can to start your days, and move through your days, feeling calm and in control
A lower stress level supports better sleep
You can make progress in your business, even when you have multiple projects going on at the same time
It’s easier to stick to deadlines
You remember to take consistent action in different areas of your business
Because we’re all different, what works for one person might not work for the next person.
I wanted to share all these planning ideas with you, so that you can mix and match, tweak and refine things to eventually create your own planning practice that allows you to shine and succeed.
A FEW OVERARCHING THOUGHTS ABOUT PLANNING
It’s important to have a written record of the things you want to remember and get done. Like I mentioned earlier, your brain has a limit to how much it can keep in your working memory. If you carry all this information, all the things you need to remember, in your head only, it takes up a lot of that memory and it’s easy to forget stuff.
Now, if you’re someone who’s just creating personal projects that don’t really have to do with deadlines and you’re not accountable to other people, it might be different. But if you’re someone who creates products or services for others, or the work you do includes lots of steps, having it all captured somewhere is going to free up brain space.
Another important overall thing to consider is when to do your planning. As a general rule, based on how the brain is wired, it’s good to plan before you actually need to get to work. If you leave the planning for when it’s time to get work done, it eats up a lot of the brainpower and energy that you could use for the work.
You could plan the day before if you only go one day at a time, or if you’re planning weekly then maybe you’re putting together next week’s plan on Friday or Sunday.
1 – DITCH YOUR TO-DO LIST
If you tend to feel like you’re always behind on tasks, I don’t recommend keeping an ongoing to-do list of all the things you want to get done. Having a list that you’re always adding to might not give you that sense of satisfaction of having finished enough work on any given day.
Instead, you could always give tasks slots in your calendar or schedule as they show up.
Whenever I come up with a task I want to get done, I give it a slot in my weekly planning sheets right away – if I decide that the task is worth doing.
2 – ASSIGN SOME TASKS REGULAR SLOTS IN YOUR WEEK
One way to help your brain out a ton is to give certain tasks, or certain types of tasks, a regular spot in your schedule. Planning certain tasks this way, especially ones that you repeat often, can help your brain get into the groove faster and as doing a type of task at a certain time becomes a habit, it also tends to become more effortless.
You don’t have to get super specific around the actual task you schedule – it could be something as simple as deciding that Monday afternoons are for marketing.
Planning in this way can also create some helpful boundaries. For example, because I only schedule calls on two days of the week, I know that I can plan my other days without worrying about my plans getting derailed by someone booking a coaching calll.
Blocking off regular time for activities outside of your business can be helpful too, because taking care of ourselves and having fun often get pushed to the margins as a business owner.
When applying this idea, the point isn’t to schedule out every single thing in a regular spot – unless that actually sounds appealing and helpful to you.
3 – PLAN TASKS ON A WEEKLY BASIS
If your weeks tend to look very different from each other, you might want to plan week by week.
You could either give each task its own time slot in your calendar, or you could simply make a list of 2-4 tasks to tackle per day.
4 – PLAN TASKS ON A DAILY BASIS
Just like with planning your tasks on a weekly basis, you could either create daily to-do lists or give each task a specific time slot in your calendar.
I’d recommend planning each day the day before, if you have a tendency to spend a lot of time trying to decide what to do when you start your day.
5 – KEEP A MASTER LIST
If you’re someone who has a lot of projects going on at the same time, it might be helpful to keep track of all your active projects and their parts in a spreadsheet.
In it, you could outline all the relevant information you need to keep in mind for each project or assignment, for example:
the name of the project
the client
purpose of project
project collaborators
each task or step that’s required for it
deadlines for different steps of the project
When your project is broken down into smaller parts like this, it makes it easier to know what to work on next and your brain doesn’t get overwhelmed by the big project as easily
If you have management software where you can keep track of these things, that’s great! That’ll act as your master list.
6 – THE ROLLING TO-DO LIST
I recently came across the concept of a rolling to-do list. The idea is that you have a master list of all the tasks you need to do, and then every day you grab some items from your master list into a to-do list for your next day.
Whatever you don’t finish that day, you roll into the next day – plus you add in some new tasks again from your master list.
7 – BATCHING
When you work on similar tasks in batches, your brain doesn’t need to keep switching between different types of tasks.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that it’ll be good to work on just one type of task all day. You could for example do all your admin work in one hour a week versus spreading them out. Or maybe you set aside 2-3 hours of client work each morning, or run as many errands as possible in the same afternoon.
8 – TIME-BLOCKING
Time-blocking looks like working on a certain task for a specified amount of time – uninterrupted. These might be as short as 15-minute blocks, up towards 2-hour chunks of time.
The important part in time-blocking is to let yourself get fully immersed with the task, and to eliminate as many distractions as possible upfront. Ideally you’ll also give yourself a break every time you finish a time block.
I can imagine that time-blocking would be helpful when you’re working on something pretty big and you can’t finish the task in one sitting, but you still want to make a decent dent in it.
Time-blocking might aslo be helpful if there’s a task that tends to drag out because you distract yourself throughout. By setting a time limit to it and minimizing distractions, you can get that task done quickly, and then you’ll have time to do something fun intentionally, instead of just as a distraction.
9 – SEPARATE BETWEEN TASK TYPES
If you don’t want to plan anything into your days upfront, it could be helpful to your brain to at least separate between different types of tasks depending on what’s required of you.
You could have one list of tasks that are priorities, that have a deadline, or that require a lot of focus or creative thinking. When you have a good amount of time to focus, you’ll know that you can refer to this list.
Another list could include tasks that aren’t as important, or that don’t require a lot of focus. When you have a little bit of time, or when it’s a time of day when you’re not feeling too focused, you can refer to this list to knock off some appropriate tasks.
10 – KEEP A DISTRACTIONS LIST
I get distracted by ideas and to-dos throughout my workday, but when I’m working on something important I don’t want to just divert myself from the thing I’m already focused on.
So what I do, is I write these ideas and to-dos on a little list throughout the day, and then I take some time towards the end of the day to decide if they’re worth doing. If they are, I might take care of some shorter ones right away, while I give the rest spots somewhere in my weekly plans.
Quickly writing your ideas down helps you free up your brainspace to keep working, because you’re not worrying about forgetting that idea that popped up.
BONUS IDEA
Taking good care of yourself is the best thing you can do to help your working memory. I highly recommend that you first block off time for yourself as you’re planning your weeks.
It can be tempting to try to think your way to a planning practice that works for you, but the best way to figure that out is through trial and error.
Try ideas that sound most appealing to you, see how they feel, and refine them until you find what works in this season of your life and business.