Are you motivated?

So much content online about being productive tries to motivate listeners with inspirational stories, quotes or talks.

While this content is useful to some, I think other people who watch that sort of content already have a desire to be productive. Especially if they’ve sought out this content in the first place.

And more importantly, once someone is motivated… now what?

Instead of “why”, I would suggest that many people would like to learn how to be productive.

In this article, I’d like to share my system. You’ll likely need to adapt it to work with your workflow and preferred methodology, but I hope this can be a start.

Planning is a Skill

I learned personal planning while I was a missionary. While we had a great deal of freedom with planning, we still had a suggested method for “Daily Planning” and “Weekly Planning” to best plan our work and set goals.

Even with a thorough structure provided by my church, it still took me about 6 months to really “get it”. To use planning as a tool.

Here are some things I learned from my experience:

• You can set goals in your life to accomplish things you never thought possible before.

• You can change your life every day.

• Your brain doesn’t have to juggle around all sorts of things when it trusts you will get back to it on your planner.

• You can break down large goals into small and simple goals.

• You can reflect on your life daily and weekly, and make course corrections on your journey.

• Your planner becomes a personal log. Like a journal of your life and your achievements.

When you first start planning however, you’ll need to get used to it. You’ll need to practice it, and you will get better and better.

When you first start, just keep trying. You may stumble as you find your way, but you will learn and get better.

Here are some potential ways people can stumble:

• Forgetting to plan your day

• Setting goals not in alignment with your objectives (yes reading books is good but wasn’t your goal to run a 5K? Maybe going for a jog might be better.)

• Being too cautious with your goals. You should stretch yourself.

My Method

Finally this article gets to it.

I have three major forms of planning:

1. Project Planning
2. Weekly Planning
3. Daily Planning

Project Planning

I separate my life into “projects”. These are both temporary works which can be completed, and on-going work throughout my life. Here are some examples:

• Marriage
• Health
• Work
• Website
• YouTube
• Education
• Read Book A
• Read Book B

*Note: Some projects are on hold and just here as an example. *

I regularly review projects and assess if they’re progressing or not. I regularly think “what is the next step”. Or if there are issues that arise.

I then create a backlog. A backlog consists of goals that I might accomplish at some point. For health, I would re-assess my regular grocery list for example. Or go for regular jogs.

What your left with is hopefully a giant list of things you can do in alignment with your objectives.

Daily Planning

I then take backlog items from my projects and put them on a day I want to accomplish them.

What you’re left with is a list of goals each day that actually aligns with what you want to accomplish. Not just nice things like reading random books or doing random exercises.

Weekly Planning

I like to assess my life at least weekly (though you can do this more). I like to have a theme for each week based on where I’d like to do. For example, if I want to improve what I eat, the theme might be “Reset”.

In practice however, weekly planning is just a combination of both daily planning and project planning. But it helps bridge those two together

How to Plan

Method 1 - Paper and Pen

At a minimum, a single paper notebook is all you need. Daily planning goes in the front and project planning goes in the back. Give each project 2 or more pages, and have a separate notebook if you want to write very detailed notes on projects.

It helps to number the pages if you want to quickly find projects. Maybe dedicate the first two pages to a table of contents.

You may also consider buying two notepads, one for projects and another for daily planning.

Method 2 - Digital

Consider doing an equivalent method on a digital tool. Some good applications you can use are:

• OneNote
• Notion
• Word
• Excel
• Notes
• Evernote

Or an equivalent program.

Prefer a program which you can access on your phone with you.

Issues

In using this method, I’ve found the following issues come up:

Problem 1 - A goal on a project cannot be completed in one day.

Solution: Add more goals that you can accomplish in a day. This helps to break down long-term goals into many short-term goals.

Problem 2 - I can’t find time to plan.

Solution: Take your planner with you! You’ll likely find some moment in the day. If it’s physically on you, it’s a constant reminder. It’s okay if you miss a day.

Problem 3 - I have too many goals for one day.

Solution: It doesn’t matter! For me I actually prefer this. It helps me to think “how could I accomplish all this”, and helps me to stretch myself.

Problem 4 - I have too many goals on a project.

Solution: I do put goals on hold, and mark goals as higher priority. From lots of use, your planner will have lots of goals. That’s okay.

Problem 5 - I’ve run out of pages.

Solution: Buy another planner and do your projects again! That’s a great time to reflect and reassess.

Adjust

Everyone’s workflow is different, and may require differing tools. I view my planner as harmonious with other tools. Any one of your projects could also benefit from a separate Project Management Plan, or design document, etc.

Maybe your daily planner also supports time blocking. I generally don’t use time blocking unless my goals are appointment based. Some of your goals can be accomplished in 5 minutes, so why block out 30 minutes or an hour for them? And yet others might take longer. Maybe you can accomplish 7 goals in an hour. For this reason, certain goals don’t benefit from time blocking.

I also have adapted some of this procedure and added other things. For example, some goals repeat every day.

I also have a scoring system for each goal. Each project has a number between 1 and 1000 for its priority. When I accomplish a goal in that project, I get that much score. So if one project has 500 priority, and I accomplish 3 goals in a day for that project, I have 1,500 points. Scoring isn’t perfect, but I find it very useful for measuring how much I’m accomplishing goals aligned with my long-term goals.

Final thought, be patient and good to yourself 🙂. It’s okay to not be perfect at planning in the beginning. Planning is a tool to help.

I wish you the best on your planning journey!