How to Learn to Plan - 4 Practical Tips

Today we want to share with you a special post:

4 Practical Tips to Help You Plan 

In the hectic world, we live in, we feel like we don't have time to do everything we had planned to do.

Work tasks are a priority and mandatory and, of course, we have to fulfill them but, at the expense of them, many times we do not enjoy our free time and our interpersonal relationships.

Not planning time means feeling like the hours, days, weeks and months are getting smaller, slipping away from us while we feel like we are wasting our lives without being able to do much about it.

But the truth is that we can change, and improve time management and the tasks that we set for ourselves. If you are one of those people who wonder how to learn to better plan your time, what comes next will interest you.

Organize our life. The importance of the to-do list

We cannot manage time well without planning the day well and, for this, we have to organize ourselves.

This sounds like a no-brainer, and to many, it might be, but in practice, people often underestimate the importance of being clear first thing in the morning or during the workday about what to do today/this week.

All this can be solved by doing something very simple: a to-do list.

In this list, we will not only put the tasks to be carried out but also the time that we calculate that they will take us, as well as the possible unforeseen events that may arise and take time.

This is very subjective and in fact, we are more optimistic in theory than in practice.

For example, we believe that a task will cost us an hour of our lives, but the reality is that it will probably take much longer. One recommendation is that while we calculate what we are going to bring, we add about 30-45 minutes of courtesy.

Thus, if we take longer than expected, we will not despair, believing that we are wasting time on the next task.

Tasks within tasks

Once we are clear about the tasks to be carried out throughout the day and the associated objectives, it is time to divide them into small activities. The reason for this has to do directly with our motivation.

For example, if you have a huge task to do, to which you need to dedicate a lot of time, you can fall into procrastination and feel lazy to carry it out.

On the other hand, if you subdivide that same task into small tasks, which will take me, say, 20 or 30 minutes, you will feel more motivated and you can even complete it in the blink of an eye.

Working this way will make you see the glass as half full instead of half empty, or in this case, the task is half done and almost done.

Set priorities

Once you've made the list and checked off the smaller tasks in each of its sections, it's time to prioritize.

What we consider a priority or not will depend on many things, although one guideline is to prioritize what takes the longest, basically because we leave the most complicated and heavy work for the end of the day.

When we are tired of having done the work or pending tasks, they will overwhelm us and, on top of that, we will feel that we are doing our job worse.

We must establish the urgency, importance, and duration of each task and evaluate, based on these parameters, the importance of carrying them out.

You have to be realistic and understand how we work, understanding that if there are things that are very difficult for us, it is best to prioritize them, so that they do not accumulate and overwhelm us even more when doing them.

Planning our life is planning everything

Professional life is not the only thing that we must organize in our life. Leisure, personal relationships, hobbies, and life goals are part of life and are aspects that we must also plan if we want all areas to work as we would like.

Not everything in life is work, and if we let work absorb us, the frustration of seeing that we don't have time for activities and needs that satisfy us will make us worse and unhappy.

For example, if we want to learn a new language, that should also be on our daily to-do list. The goal of learning the target language can be broken down into smaller tasks, such as learning new vocabulary, practicing pronunciation, or reading a book in the target language.

Planning it, and dividing it into easy and quick activities to carry out, will make us feel that we are reaching that goal that we have set for ourselves.

Whatever personal desires we wish to fulfill, we cannot ignore them. Planning our life is valid for absolutely everything and, if we do it and stick to it, we will feel like when we were children and time gave us everything.

Let's plan our lives as much as possible to feel more productive and happy.

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