Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

The dynamic of one day can vary a lot, but if you stick yourself to some key anchors, you will be able to practice more control over your time. This is especially valid for the upcoming period when our habits might change due to the constraints which we all will face. However, this might also become an opportunity to learn more about how we plan and manage our days and how we could do it in a better way.

Break the day into pieces

It is not just one single day, it is a morning, a noon, afternoon, evening. Organizing your day begins from the very beginning when you usually wake up and become active. Some decide to wake up very early while other give themselves time for getting connected to everything around. With a high probability, your day is made of 16–18 hours which is broken down into solving your basic human jobs such as work, family, home, personal development. But how much goes into one or another is a matter of your own management.

Breaking the day into two-hour periods is one way to go through everything. Another way is to define what early morning, morning, early afternoon, late afternoon, evening or late-night mean to you. Depending on your work these times of days could be more active or passive ones. If you are keen to improve you time-management during working hours, then organize those ours into bigger chunks of time.

Define some typical days for you and then stick to them

It can be a creative working day, or it can be a day of meetings and increased human interaction. Or it can be just pure paperwork, catching up with all reports or administration you did not manage during the recent past. (During these constraining times interaction will probably resume to online calls and e-mails. Try to define your type of day and try to stick to it as much as your surrounding allows you this. IF you are a freelancer, this might be totally in your control. However, if you are part of a bigger team, try to observe how the dynamic of the team works during a week or month and adapt your own routine within this dynamic. You can still have pretty much control on a large chunk of your working hours.

Plan your day in advance

Whether you stick to just organizing your working hours more efficiently, or you extend your thorough planning for any activity you might have, do it in advance. A high number of people do this in the evening while others do this in the morning. Our suggestion is to try something a little bit different: end your working hours by allocating just 10 minutes on how your following day would look like. If you have your own set times of day, then your planning can focus on what you aim to do in these times of day, and you do not need to break it into further details.

Set yourself daily goals or at least a minimal list of to-dos

When you think of your upcoming day, a very good trick of feeling successful is by setting a not-to-high bar for yourself. It is vital to have a perspective on what do you want to reach until the end of the day, but it might be better to feel accomplished by fulfilling 5 out of 5 tasks then 7 out of 15, for example. Others might aim to push themselves more if having more to reach. Whatever your approach is, set yourself some short-term goals for the day.

Keep focus, be offline

Creating a habit of being offline during various times of the day can keep you moving forward. This is valid no matter your type for work. Even if your work demands permanent interaction with others, having offline moments helps you gathering your thoughts. Have this time somewhere during your day, even if it is right before getting into action or immediately after working hours are over. That investment of 10–15 minutes or half-an-hour will save you a lot of energy and it will create you the feeling of control.


Photo by Nikita Kachanovsky on Unsplash

Do not just plan, do evaluate

Planning goes usually easier than evaluation. However, a conscious way of looking back to how one day progressed is can provide valuable experience for the future, which will accumulate in time and will make you the master of efficient daily routine. We’ll gather you some efficient evaluation suggestions and lay it for you in a short while.