1 – Set a Daily Highlight
For each area of my life, I choose to commit to one thing a day. At the gym, I may aim to lift a certain weight. At work, it may be to complete a certain document. For my own personal development, it may be to read a certain book for 10 mins. I like to split my goals across 3 or 4 different areas of my life. Therefore, I will usually end up with 3 or 4 goals overall (1 per area).
It sounds simple, but how many times have you sat down in the evening and thought “I didn’t get a single useful thing done today”?
Setting a Daily Highlight helps us do stuff that actually matters. If we did our highlight every day for a year, that’d be 365 goals achieved – which sounds pretty good.
2 – Block Out Time
Once I have set out my main goals, I usually block out time to perform the goal. I tend to put this in my calendar so I am not distracted from any meetings or distractions that pop up during the day.
However, this isn’t something I overly stress about. As long as I have blocked out time mentally to focus on achieving that goal, that is fine for me.
3 – Review
Reviewing isn’t directly ‘planning’, but can help you plan for the future and can help you figure out if your plan is working, or needs adjusting.
At the end of the day, I usually look over my goals and see if I have managed to tick them off. If I did, then great. I can now set another goal within a specific area of my life to further progress in whatever I am doing. If I didn’t, then why didn’t I achieve that goal? Did I not have enough time? Did I have the time but just spent it procrastinating? The more you review, the better refined your plan will become for you.
Even if you just spend 10 seconds setting your Daily Highlight in the morning, I guarantee you’ll be more productive and intentional with your time. However, also understand that life things will always pop up and things won’t always ‘go to plan’. When this happens, don’t beat yourself up, and just use planning as a tool to help guide you every day to achieve certain goals.
