How to Plan Your Day
One of the ways to look at planning is that it's about following through with your goals. This means that we set goals, break them down into their component parts, and then we get after it. But this can also be overwhelming when we first start working on planning, if we're setting our goals for the years, so that they inform what we do every month and that informed what we're doing every week, which then helps with our daily planning.
Well, that's awesome. But if we're not ready for that, it can be really intimidating to get into planning. Maybe you don't have goals for the year right now. well, then that makes the rest of the process kind of hard to follow through on. This is absolutely a place where we have to meet ourselves where we're at.
And if we're just trying to get by then looking at the bigger picture can be hard and not be the place we're ready for. Instead, we can start with looking at day-to-day planning instead of biting off that huge chunk. We can just look at the next 24 hours.
Planning is one of those things that feels like we can skip because, Hey, I was just going to do those things anyway. Why would I need to spend the time writing out the whole process? Well, because often what's in our head is just part of that picture. When I go to write down that plan, I usually find my brain freezing up because suddenly all those steps I thought were there are not quite as mapped out as I thought. And this happens in the moment as well. I'll decide that I want to do some cleaning and then, Ugh, this is overwhelming now. And I feel the anxiety rising up the back of my neck and I can't figure out how I'm supposed to start.
Yeah, I know what I'm supposed to do, but once I try and start, I realized that what I knew was only a vague notion.
We can also bring in that hot, cold empathy gap here, because while all of us have experienced this feeling of overwhelm, when approaching a big task, we seem to think that the last time was the exception and that this time skipping the planning phase will be okay
for those of you that miss the episode on the hot, cold, empathy gap. The idea is that when we're in a different emotional state, we have trouble visualizing what we'd be like in another state and that keeps us from predicting how we'll act. So for example, right now, I'm not hungry. And so if I think about whether or not I'm going to need a snack this afternoon, my brain says you're not hungry now, so you'll be fine.
Except I know that I'm absolutely going to be looking for a snack around four. And if I don't have something prepared, I'm just going to eat the easiest thing.
What we need to work on then it's thinking about how these empathy gaps work in our planning., I know these things about my afternoon, so if I want to have a healthy snack, I need to be thinking and preparing ahead of time.
This also applies to other areas of planning. When I'm planning out my day, I need to be thinking about how I'm going to be feeling later in the day. A helpful exercise here is to spend some time getting to know our ultradian rhythm. An ultradian rhythm is a cycle our body goes through from high energy to lower energy throughout the day.
You probably notice a peak in your energy around mid-morning then a dip as we approach the afternoon and another peak sometime in the evening. And then finally we'll dip as we move towards sleep. Of course, this is just an example of how my rhythm works - you'll have to track your own energy levels to see where your peaks and dips are. Because of this energy flow. I know there are certain times of day when I'm going to be better suited for certain tasks. I try to get all my creative work and writing done during that morning peak. I then try to schedule less demanding tests for the afternoon where it won't matter if I'm not quite as sharp.
But I also understand a lot of you are going, “so I have to do this every day? I'm never going to be able to do that.”
This is a pretty realistic fear. There have been a ton of things I have wanted to get started with that I've just failed to make into habits. Things that I actually enjoy doing, so the idea that I could get into daily planning seems less than likely.
And yet I still think that it's something that we can accomplish.
surprise, surprise. A big reason that we failed to make these habits stick often comes from a lack of planning. And that includes planning about planning.
I know very meta.
One of the things that we often forget about is that we need to protect time to do our plans. What that means is that we're setting aside time, just for planning. Time that isn't easily moved around or interrupted. Additionally, it needs to be a time where we're still motivated to do our planning. It might be great if we got time around 10:00 PM, but if I'm just going to stare at my planner for 10 minutes and then go, “nope!”
Well, then that isn't an especially good time for me to schedule my planning for.
Accountability can be a great tool here. I first got into daily planning when I was going through the ADHD reWired Coaching and Accountability Groups. The way I kept at my planning was that I would write up my schedule every morning and then send a picture to my accountability group.
This wasn't to judge what I had planned for the day. It was just about confirming that I did that planning. And the point here also isn't to say that planning should be easy. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. Even though I know the benefits of planning, I can still find myself resistant to the idea of planning because I don't want to do it. And when I have a case of the, I don't wanna's, it's important that I acknowledge that this isn't always easy. When we pretend something is easy, even when it isn't, we make it harder because we're not approaching it with the same conviction that we would for a hard task,.
If something is truly easy, I know I'll get to. But when it's not easy, I will absolutely put it off pretty much forever. I will absolutely forget about it. And I will absolutely judge myself for not doing. But when something is hard and I know it's hard but still worth doing.
It's easy for me to justify setting up those systems, that will help me get it done. It's easier to make sure that I put aside that time to my day to do it because I know it's not something I'd gravitate towards naturally.
One of the places that we often find resistance is that we think we need the right tools for planning. And in some ways we do, we're not going to want to just use a crap planner, but it's also not that easy. We can't just find the ultimate planner and have our planning woes solved.
We still are going to have to put in the work.
And what works for me may not work best for you. The truth is the best planner is the one that we actually use. That is absolutely the most important aspect. What we'll get you to use it. And that means that really any planner can work because it's not about the planner. It's about you.
With that said, I can recommend a few that I think make it a bit easier for us to work with. I like simple planners that don't need a lot of fiddling with or need to have a lot filled out.
I also like being able to see more than just today, because often what I'm doing today is influenced by what I need to be doing later in the week. Right now I just use an appointment book. This is a simple 53-week daily planner that lays out my day in 15-minute increments, 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM.
It folds out so that they can see the whole week at a time. And I just love the simplicity of it. But as I said earlier, what works for me might not work for you. Maybe you want something a little bit fancier or something where you only see today, for example, I'm also a fan of Cal Newport's time block planner, and that focuses on just one day at a time. , and that one's also great because it offers a lot of flexibility in how you can change your plan as your day goes on because remember planning is not setting anything in stone.
Now, I think it's also worth talking about how I actually go about the process of planning my day, not just the sitting down, but the actual doing. And one of the biggest benefits I find from planning is that you suddenly realize how much time you actually have. While it's still easy to over-plan your day, when you go from just having a to-do list to having actual times, you are doing things on your to-do lists. Suddenly the amount you think you can get done in your day is very different. With just my to-do list, all those tasks are ephemeral. Sure. I know they take time and I can only do so much in a day, but I still think I should be able to cross most of the things off my list. When they have times assigned to them I have a much more realistic view of how long they're each gonna take.
All right. So typically I have part of my planner already filled out when I'm planning my day and this is because there are things that are pretty much the same every day.
I don't fill in things like waking up or going to bed. although having a plan for when you're going to start getting ready for bed, isn't a bad idea. But what I do have are the things right. Get going. So on the planner, my day starts when I take my kids to school and I can fill that out for the entire week because that doesn't really change. And of course, there are some times when I'm going to have to plan other things that I'm doing in my morning, but this is where I start.
What I'm also going to do is look over my calendar and fill in any appointments or events that I've got going on. For example, I can just fill in the second Tuesday of the month at 10:00 AM for the ADHD, reWired Live Q&A, I already know that's going to happen, so it's easy to just pop that in there.
And it's important to get those kinds of things into your calendar first because they're the things that are not moving around.
Once I have those kinds of things down, I can build the rest of my schedule around them. The idea here is to just get all the things that are already planned into your schedule. So maybe you don't have kids at your schedule around, but you might have a time you need to be at work or a time when you need to be at class. Whatever can give you some structure to your day.
Once my kids are in school, I can look at what I actually want to accomplish that day.
At this point, I'm just looking at about a three-hour block between 9:00 AM and noon. Here I'm time-blocking. This is my most productive time of the day and I'm thinking about what tasks are going to take the most significant amount of mental focus. In this block, I'm only looking at one, maybe two things that are going to make the most difference. I'm not trying to do a bunch of different things, just the most important ones.
One of the places our ADHD can get us in trouble is thinking that we have to do so many things every day. Our problem is that we don't have time to do a dozen important things. We try to squeeze them in, but we can't and we feel guilty about what we didn't accomplish. So let's skip that feeling guilty part and just plan on doing fewer things. We'll get about the same amount done, but we'll feel better about it.
Now, the reason I'm only looking at a three-hour block here is because I also want to be scheduling when I'm having lunch. I used to think that scheduling lunch wasn't necessary because I just eat when I was hungry, right? Well, no, I'd put off making anything because I was focused on doing something else. Then by the time that I decided that I was hungry enough to make something. I was also in a state where I didn't want to make something and would make food choices that wouldn't fuelme for the rest of the day.
Sure it's easy to make a bag of popcorn, but that isn't going to get me to do anything productive in the afternoon.
Along with things like lunch is also important to schedule any other breaks you'd want to be taking and transition. For example, I've got a zoom call I'm going to be on, in about an hour. So I have my schedule to finish up what I'm doing now about 20 minutes before I start that, so I can get myself mentally ready when I go to that meeting.
While it might feel like we can easily just move from task to task. There are often unseen transitions we aren't thinking about. And additionally, remember that every task is comprised of three parts, setup, doing the task, and cleanup. don't neglect time in your schedule for both set up and clean up.
All right. Now I've got the afternoon. This is a shorter block until I've got my kids home. And so instead of focusing on mentally taxing stuff, I'm focused on stuff that needs to get done, but isn't going to take quite as much of that focus -sorting paperwork, doing online courses, reading, replying to emails.
And yes, I absolutely acknowledge that those tasks take focus and creative energy. But there are things where I'm not as engaged as when I'm doing my writing or creating something.
This is also the kind of time that I'd be doing things like Pomodoros, to break up my workflow.
After that point in my day, it's kid stuff, getting dinner made, and getting kids to bed after which it's time for me to start unwinding and getting ready for bed myself. The idea here is that we're not really planning out 24 hours. In fact, we're not really planning out most of our day. routine can help us figure out the rhythm of our day and then we can just figure out how we want to use those middle hours.
I'd also like to point out here that it's important to have a time when you're wrapping up your day. Well, mine is easy. When my kids get home, it's something that's important to do, regardless of what else is going on in your life. With ADHD, it's easy to get into the mindset where we just go, go, go. And I know I used to have those days where I was working until 10:00 PM or later, While, this can make you really productive for a while. It isn't a great way to manage your ADHD because we absolutely need that time to recharge as well.
So instead of looking at our day and adding things until we've scheduled everything on our to-do list, Pick a time that you're wrapping things up. While theoretically, you could jam more into your day. We're trying to build more balance into our life and include things like recovery.
It's just as important. No scratch. That it's even more important. We have to schedule when we're getting a rest and recovery time.
And look over your day. Do you have anything fun scheduled? If not add something. There's no point in increasing our productivity if we're only doing it to make ourselves miserable. And if we still need a productivity angle there, when we're happy, we are more productive, so don't fret about scheduling those things that are going to bring you joy.
This Episode’s Top Tips
When we don't know what to do next we can get paralyzed with indecision from a lack of executive function - we can help alleviate some of this paralysis through planning.
While doing our initial planning it's important that we also set aside time to regularly do our planning. If we don't build planning time into our schedule it's easy for us to skip doing it.
When planning it's important that we're not just scheduling things on our to-do lists but our breaks and things that bring us joy.
