Learning to organise your day planner is a key skill. If your time is not your own, who’s is it? If you are a parent with young children clearly your time might be theirs. In any other situation do you really want your boss, spouse and friends to own your calendar? Even worse what if Facebook, Instagram or Netflix owned your time?

When thinking about organising my day planner the first thing I do, is not wanting to be busy on a day-to-day basis. This is why I argue for having a year planner, which helps me organise my life. If you think about it, your days are small movements towards the plan you created for the year. I want to stress the strong emphasis on the plan you created. Don’t be in the back seat with organising your life and your days if you don’t, others will.

Know thyself

Before you even get to putting thoughts on paper or in an electronic day planner.
Have a think about how you would like to work.

When are you most energetic?

Energy levels

When can you do 4 hours of work in 1?
I guess this is not in the middle of the day. Most people feel energetic either in the morning or at night.

Personally

I am a morning person. Give me anything to tackle before 10 am, after this it things are more hard work. Between 3 and 4 pm you can find me curled up (if possible on the lounge or a bed) the running joke is that “I can’t adult between 3 - 4 pm”. Hopefully, you aren’t this extreme. More and more research however is coming out that we don’t plateau with our work and energy levels, we oscillate (Newport, C 2016, Bailey, 2018, Fitch, J and Frenzel, M, 2020, McKeown, 2021). It is important to realise your energy ebbs and flows and where possible embrace them. My dream is to have a sofa in my office one day for those afternoon naps.

Introvert or extravert?

This is important as well.

How do you get your energy being around others or away from them?
How does this work with your energy levels?
Do you need to work/recharge by being quiet and alone?
- Or by being surrounded by lots of people?

When you answer these questions, we are getting somewhere in terms of being able to plan our day and organise your day planner. You essentially accept the rules of engagement for you. What this allows you to do is try to steer the ship as much as you can. Most people don’t do think about when, why and how they work best on their big projects. Many people also don’t guard their time as well as they could, this gives you a fair amount of scope.

Meeting anyone?

I nearly always suggest meeting someone after 11 rather than ask them for their perfect time. I do this because it means my concentrated work for the day has already been completed. Most people don’t know that I focus deeply in the morning and essentially I am somewhat inflexible with my schedule. If on the other hand you meet people that do plan their day and this comes up in conversation they probably respect and celebrate with you still allowing you to have the morning free to do your thing.

Let’s make an "organise your day planner" template

We have done a bit of thinking on things you might not think were relevant to organise your day planner. Now we are moving on to the practical aspect and doing part. I suggest to organise your day planner start by using a blank piece of paper and make a “template”. Don’t get scared by this. Your days won’t all be cookie cutters or feel like Groundhog Day. This exercise is meant to empower you, not to bore or stifle the way you like to work.

Personal example

Morning

For me I do my best work in the morning so taxing things like writing, deep thinking about work related issues or PhD work needs to go there. Cal Newport (2016) calls this type of work Deep Work. I try to have this daily in my calendar even during weekends if possible. If I feel I need a break I skip one day – very rarely two days. This template is set up is to harness my energy and enthusiasm. So normally a day later I am normally excited to jump back into my project (the project of that particular time during the year)

I try and keep meetings off the calendar till 9:30 am at the earliest if possible. What this does is I can get solid traction on some of my key projects anywhere between 6 am and 10 am. As an introvert, I need quiet time, by the time this first block of work is done I feel great. I feel in control, rested, and glad to be moving forward with my big project (whatever it is I am working on at that point in time).

Midday

After a block of deep work, I might eat or go for a walk and start to work on either lighter tasks or join in meetings and enter the flurry of the day. What I like about this approach is that I consciously join when I am ready. Forget about the crazy US movies where women (mothers) run from one event to the other, not in control of any area of their life – let’s push back. Even as an introvert I still really enjoy the day’s social events, meeting with others, joining spontaneous chats, etc. Al the things that Cal Newport (2021) calls the hive mind. I see it for what it is, some gold nuggets of relationship building, some valuable meetings and actions, the rest is busy work.

Later afternoon

Come late afternoon I fade out of this stage and start to rest up. Normally I have animated chats with the kids about their day. For me, this is also a good time for self-care and thinking about how I will move forward tomorrow based on the events of today. Should I block times to look at a specific problem or project soon? When? I try to book a week or so ahead again oscillating between more social, administrative, fragmented days and more solid deep workdays.

Evening

This is time for eating, chatting some more with my family, excercise (which we often do together) and again some selfcare.

Putting it all together

You are now in a place to organise your day planner. Look at your overarching year plan.

What is your key project for now? Book that into your deep work time.

Is there a big work project happening?

Who are the key people to be in touch with now? Maybe book regular meetings with them to keep your combined projects moving along.

Look at the administrative work you need to do.

Which parts of this can you easily do in low energy mode?
Will you do this daily or a couple of times a week?

Electronic or paper based?

I resisted electronic calendars for a long time but have moved to electronic as others need to see my calendar and realistically I am on the computer and phone every day. Several people still like to use a mixture of both or they might have a think book that allows them to draw out the day. Others use e note cards that show their day plan in one spot.

What I like about the electronic calendar is that I can template it. I am not available (or it becomes a negotiation) if someone wants to book something in the morning or late afternoon. I block out deep work months in advance, mostly on the same days and the same time. Even if I haven’t specified what I am working on in the day planner yet. This time is protected. I can specify what I'll do when I plan the week and day ahead. It allows me time in the calendar to do work that is important to move the needle forward.

Above is an example of a weekly schedule template, I have colours for deep work, regular work, motherhood obligations, meetings and exercise. (And sorry I write my calendar bilingual half English / half Dutch ;-) You can even see that weekend that I looked ahead of my schedule and it is time to have a weekend away to recharge.

How I use it

The above image shows my day. Deep work has been specified what and when I work on something difficult or challenging. You see orange are my meetings in the afternoon. Normally I rest in the afternoon (blue) but there is a meeting so the break will have to be pushed back a bit later. Organising your day planner this way means you can move things around when the need arises, nothing is set in stone.

With this organised day planner I also like that people will meet me most of the time when I am happy and energetic (simply because that is my available time for meetings). Some people wouldn’t know I am an introvert, that I am craving quiet. Because the blocks of rest and deep work, are simply blocked out in my calendar. As they suggest in the plane, always first put your oxygen mask on before you help others. My organised day planner is where I am a productive quiet introvert it is my secret weapon).

Some additional thoughts:

As you can see there is a lot more to organising your day planner than booking your meetings. Before we wrap up I want to talk about the movement between daily and weekly plans as well as the importance of calling it a day. We can spend all our energy, if we keep going we produce bad work and tap into our reserves (doubly bad in the long term).

Weekly and daily

I agree with the many great minds and authors doing a weekly plan on Friday or the weekend before the week kicks off will pay dividends.

The weekly plan allows you to see in the next week.

What are your more taxing days?
Does your family need to know?
What about food and rest on those days?
When can you give and do more?

Initially, this feels a bit forced especially towards children, “come talk to me about your homework on Thursday”. However, as everyone got used to it there was a shift. I can now rely on being fully present and really able to help the kids. Instead of doing a half-assed effort of Tuesday when you are tired and have used all your energy for the day.

Weekly and yearly plans

The weekly planning also allows us to regularly go back to our year goals, are we working on the big goals we set out to do? If the answer is no, why not, what needs to change to either achieve the goal or pivot and drop that plan to do something else in our life which has become more important.

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When to call it a day

More research is coming out daily confirming we have limited concentration. Once this concentration has been spent, we might "be spent". I really struggle with this. Clearly, I am a type-A that wants to achieve. If you are a bit similar what if you have spent a lot of time and effort planning your day and some events have just wiped you out? It isn’t easy but maybe you need to call it a day.

Journey Entry

Recently I had a big presentation and a grading for my martial arts on the same day. Needless to say, even though there were 2 events only taking 3 hours of the day I was as high as a kite and exhausted at the same time. No deep work that day. This is worthwhile remembering, you can aim to be productive, do deep work and move the needle forward on your big project of the time but some days external events or your own adrenaline levels can impact this. That particular night I went to bed hours after my normal bedtime. I deliberately ended up folding clothes (which might have fallen behind) to slowly work my way down the rush, hopefully getting a bit bored. In this example, ironically, I was moving the needle forward on simple things in the house. My mind, however, got the break it needed.

Over to you – how do you organise your day planner?

This page has a number of ideas and suggestions as well as some anecdotal stories of what worked or didn’t for me. I hope this really helps you organise your day planner. Don’t take my word for it, trial it what works / doesn’t work for you?

Days are as individual as the people who live them. The gift here is starting to own our days and practise organised living through a day-by-day, hour-by-hour process. You colour the pages, you decide what an organised, happy and fulfilling life looks like for you.

Happy organising!

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References:

Bailey, C, 2018, Hyper focus; How to Work Less and Achieve More, Pan
Fitch, J and Frenzel, M, 2020, Time Off
McKeown, G, 2021, Effortless, Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most, Ebury Publishing
Newport, C, 2016, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Piatkus
Newport, C, 2021, A world without email, Penguin