Before even planning the tasks to be done, it is super important to plan your work schedules . How many hours a day do you want to work? And how do you want to distribute these working hours throughout the day?
Scheduling specific work hours will help you get into the work mood when you need to start (remember: procrastination hovers above you like a vulture!) but also to get out of work and into leisure mode.
Before finishing work, always take 10 minutes to plan for the next day . For example, I do a monthly plan at the end of each month and then, every day, I focus on refining my plan for the following day.
In this way I am always sure of how much time I need for the various tasks I have to complete and how much time I have available both to carry on work projects and daily life commitments.
And – no less important – I always have the big picture clearly in mind , the overall vision of everything I’m carrying out .
And I assure you that if before my answer to everything was “I’m really messed up”, now I always find the time to do anything . It’s not such an obvious result for a freelancer, believe me!
Paper agenda or virtual agenda?
Personally, I don’t recommend volatile stuff like post-its because – and I’m telling you from experience since I’m a stickler for post-its! – in a couple of days you find yourself like this:
You have a million choices: from creating mind maps to define the big picture to daily calendars for managing daily tasks .
Personally I use Todoist , Calendar and that allows me to keep track of all the tasks to be completed divided by project. But you also have other choices such as:
- Slick Plan
- Trello
- Asanas
- Google Calendar
- a paper agenda
- a blog planner
… and so on.
Digital diaries obviously have several advantages:
- you can assign tasks to other people on your team
- you can access the agenda from any device
- you can sort tasks alphabetically, by due date or by priority
- they have reminders
- you can edit them easier.
Some people are better off with paper though .
So don’t limit yourself to your first choice. Try different planners , both digital and paper, and find the one that works best for you.
