How to Plan a (Peacefully) Productive Day
Wondering how to prep for your day without feeling frazzled, overwhelmed, or like you're forgetting something important? Well, do I have a treat for you — I’m sharing part of The 5-Step Hustle Sanely Schedule Building Framework with you today!
When I sit down to plan for my days, I follow 5 simple steps that set me up to make real progress on my goals without sacrificing my mental health and the important relationships in my life.
Say goodbye to the days when you sit at your desk wondering what the actual heck to do 😅 I’ve found a planning system that works well for me and I’m happily going to share it with you because I’m confident that the 5-step framework for planning a peacefully productive day will be applicable to almost anyone!
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ 5 steps to follow to plan a peacefully productive day
If you missed last week’s post, we talked about how I plan my weeks. Today we’re taking the next step and I’m gonna walk you through how I plan my days!
I plan my days a combination of the evening before and the morning of - which I’ll explain more as we go along.
I’ve found a planning system that works well for me and I’m happily going to share it with you, but just know that the tools I use, may not be the right fit for you and that’s okay! I’m confident that the 5-step framework for planning a peacefully productive day will be applicable to almost anyone so pay close attention to those and figure out which planning tools work best for you.
I’m a fan of using the weekly Peacefully Productive Planner and then the Hustle Sanely daily planning notepad together. I prefer to see my week at a glance and then I use the daily planning notepad usually Monday-Thursday because those days are pretty full for me. Now to be honest, my weekends I plan pretty loosely. Adam and I don’t have kids yet so our time is just ours and we kinda wing the weekends.
Like I told you last week, I sit down on Friday afternoons, as my last work task, and plan out the following week. Then as my last work task each day, I spend 5ish minutes planning the next day in detail.
Here are the 5 steps to follow to plan a peacefully productive day:
01. Make note of time-bound tasks.
I do this step the evening before — I have my daily planning notepad and weekly planner in front of me at the end of my workday (I use the paper version but we do have a digital version as well) and I look at my weekly planner for the following day to see what meetings, calls, and/or appointments that I have. I use a gold-colored Flair pen and write those on my daily schedule - which if you’ve never seen the notepad, on the right side, there is an hourly schedule section that goes from 5 AM to 10 PM.
I like to use a different color for my time-bound tasks so that they stand out against everything else on my daily planning pad. I do everything else in the same color (pink in case you’re wondering, lol).
02. Do a self- check-in
Now this step is one that I do the evening before I’m planning and again the morning of when I actually get my day started. It takes like 15 seconds - I ask myself, “Okay, looking at what needs to be done tomorrow (based on my weekly plan that I made the week before) how am I feeling about the tasks?” So this is just a way to check in with your energy and give yourself the opportunity to move anything around if you need to/are able to.
So example, typically at the start of a week, I have more brainpower and the capacity to do more high-energy tasks so my to-do lists Monday-Wednesday usually have more high-energy/creative tasks.
By Thursday, I’m focused on doing fewer tasks each day because I know my capacity isn’t the same as it is at the beginning of the week. Being aware of your energy and how you work best allows you to be peacefully productive instead of feeling like you’re grinding and behind all the time.
Now I do ask myself this again in the morning once I sit down to work and from time to time, I will shift around some of my work tasks based on how I’m feeling in the moment. So when I’m on my period, I’m really good at doing admin-type stuff. So if I had planned to do something that was more creative and I’m having a mentally foggy day, I’ll switch stuff around. Everything still gets done but it takes less effort from me because I’m honoring my energy instead of working against it.
Y’all know that I teach that our schedules and routines are tools, not chains so this is that in action. Honoring my energy and creating my schedule around it whenever I possibly can.
03. Determine and schedule HS5 tasks.
If you’re new to Hustle Sanely -- HI, WELCOME! Real quick, HS5 or Hustle Sanely 5 is a list of 5 intentional things that the Hustle Sanely community does every day to help us work toward our goals without sacrificing our mental health & relationships. Think of HS5 as your daily action steps to help you Hustle Sanely. There is a place on the daily planning notepad to track your HS5 tasks so that’s where I jot mine down every day. Here are the 5 HS5 tasks:
Complete your Focus 3 (3 most important tasks for the day)
Move your body for 30 minutes.
Tidy for 15 minutes.
Say or do one kind thing for yourself.
Say or do one kind thing for someone else.
So once I check in with my energy and how I’m feeling the evening before, I go ahead and plan and schedule some of my HS5 tasks. I brainstorm what I’m going to do and then when it’s applicable, I write what time I’m doing it on my schedule. Some of these are planned ahead of time - like my workouts and tidying and others I kind of play it by ear day-to-day like the kind thing I’m going to do for myself and someone else.
I like to plan and schedule most of my HS5 tasks so I can intentionally weave them throughout instead of trying to cram them all in at the end because that defeats the purpose. These 5 tasks were intentionally chosen to make up HS5 because they help us to take care of ourselves in a well-rounded way. The purpose of them is to help each our your days be peacefully productive!
The cool thing about HS5 is you can adjust it to make it work for your life.
04. Make note of any other tasks to get done once Focus 3 tasks are done.
The next step as I’m planning the evening before is to peek over at my weekly planner and look at the weekly task list (again, I talked about how I make this in last week’s blog post) to see which tasks make sense to get done that next day. I use batching to group tasks together which allows me to use my energy well.
05. Create daily schedule using time blocking.
Time blocking is my BFF. Seriously. It’s how I actually complete so much every day without feeling burned out or drained. Okay, so what is time blocking exactly? Simply put, it's scheduling out your day. Assigning certain tasks to certain times during the day.
“Let’s go a little deeper with the definition: It’s a well-known time management tool where you divide your day into blocks of time. Each block is assigned a specific task (or group of tasks). During that time block, you only work on the task that you’ve assigned to it. This strategy helps us stay focused on a single task (or group of tasks that go together) with a less likely chance of giving into working a little bit on 15 things at once, really getting not much done, and sending ourselves into a tailspin of overwhelm. ”
So I basically take all of my tasks on my Focus 3 and “other tasks” lists on the left side of my daily notepad and I assign them to time blocks on the right side. Doing this helps me to not stare at my list and try to figure out what to do next. I make a game plan while looking at all of the tasks at once and pair certain ones together that make the most sense, energy-wise, while I’m time blocking for the day.
Finding a daily outline that works for you will take some trial + error to find your rhythm and that’s normal. Give yourself grace. This is a long game, not a quick fix. And guess what else? You might find that some days you crave more structure than others…also 100% okay! Hustling Sanely is about managing your time AND your energy. Lean in and allow yourself to pivot when necessary. But know this is not permission to be lazy. You have to be disciplined to make your goals happen, of course, but not at the expense of your mental health or important relationships. Stay in alignment with your values!
Planning my days like this has been incredible in helping me to not constantly be thinking about my to-do list and wondering when I’m going to get it all done. When I’m with my friends and family, I am mentally with them and it’s incredible! That’s honestly why I continue to be disciplined in how I plan — because it gives me so much more freedom in the long run. I know what needs to be done and when I’m gonna get it done. I don’t waste time stressing or re-writing to-do lists over and over again.
Here is a peek at the daily spread in the Peacefully Productive Planner so you can kind of visualize the steps that I explained:
Oh and let me just go ahead and give you a spoiler alert right now — this is barely skimming the surface about the stuff we cover in the Create Your Peacefully Productive Schedule course! If you really struggle with time and energy management and creating a schedule that doesn’t overwhelm you and truly reflects your priorities, mmm girl, this is the course for you!
If you enjoyed this post, tune into episode 103 of The Hustle Sanely Podcast to dive deeper into this topic:
