Last time in ‘habits that stick’ (perhaps I should make this a dedicated series!) I talked about the benefits I experienced from reading at least one page from a book each morning. Today, I want to talk about planning your day ahead. 📅
There have been many days at work where after arriving, I never quite got started until I was ready to leave. I quickly found out that this happened mostly when I didn’t have something on which I could simply get started. I would do something here and there, check my email, annotate a paper from last week, talk to a colleague and go for an early swim.
Besides these days being unproductive, they also felt unproductive. Tones and hints of guilt and shame and lack of purpose were certainly meandering around.
To-do's from yesterday
During these kinds of days, it’s when I most clearly see the value of to-do lists, and particularly the value of making them the day-ahead.Â
Similar to the post about reading, I feel like our brain needs some time to go from dream-state, when we seem to be thinking about ‘everything everywhere all at once,’ to focus state in order to get stuff done.
When we do not have at least the first thing written out in front of us, we set ourselves up for failure. Our brain seems incredibly susceptible to finding everything equally important and unable to decide on what thing to start. We activate all our brain regions a little bit and are, indeed, far from focused at all.
So, today’s habit I’d like to recommend is to find a moment, at least before the end of your (work)day, to decide what you will do tomorrow. This doesn’t have to be a detailed planning of your entire day, but at least the first thing you can focus on. If only to get your brain from dream- to focus state. ðŸ§
