Most of us don't like planning our daily lives too much. Maybe this is because planning itself does not yield any immediate gratification. Doing something that gives something back right now, often feels like a better use of our time.
What we really should understand, is the immense value of quality planning. If we understand and truly believe the value of a well planned day, week, etc., we will dedicate more time to planning. To achieve this belief we must continuously experience the positives of great planning. My way to do this, is to have a weekly holy hour.
Each Sunday evening I give myself time to think. I think about all the things I need or want to do during the next week. Have a couple of jogs around the lake, read at least 10 chapters of a book, go swimming, implement the new shop system at work, have salmon for dinner, go shopping, etc.. All these things I write down in a unordered list. I set my alarm clock to 5:30am and make sure I do not go to bed too late.
Monday morning at 5:30 I wake up and jump out off bed (some people say they can't jump out of bed like that - I don't believe them). My weekly holy hour is about to begin. I prepare a quick but healthy and robust breakfast (müsli with milk and a good smoothie will do just fine) and sit down with my schedule which happens to be iCal on my Mac. Now, I look at the list I wrote yesterday and start plotting all the things into my schedule. I'm not just choosing the days for my weekly jogs - I'm also trying to determine as realistically as I can what time of day would be a the wisest. After this, I try to think of others things that might be added to the list. For example, I could decide what to have for dinner throughout this week. At the end, I can see which days I will have some time free, and dedicate these to book reading, watching a movie or whatever I feel like.
When I'm done I have a great overview of how my week will be.
So, what are the benefits of this strict planning as some might call it? There are several major benefits. Firstly, by actually dedicating a hour of my precious time Monday morning to planning, I do not constantly have to think about how to plan i.e. my day or my evening during the week - it has all been taking care of. If your day/week is not well planned, you are forcing yourself to plan in your head "on the fly" during the day. Even though this works it has a lot of major drawbacks. It can be hard to get and overview of the things you have planned and the things you want to plan. This forces you to focus on a short term future, which then forces you to do a lot of short "planning sessions" during the week. This fragments your time spent planning. You end up wasting time by constantly going in and out of "planning mode" - and your will have a higher likelihood of making bad decisions as you miss a clear longer term overview of your time. So, spend one hour planning each week and hereby defragment your overall planning, and you'll get several hours back to do something constructive or enjoyable!
The second benefit of quality planning is that it simply makes you feel better. You do not need to worry about shopping for dinner tonight - all weeks' ingredients are already in the fridge thanks to your week plan remember? You do not need to fight your conscience about having a jog or not after work - you already know thanks to your plan. All these small daily life worries are suddenly gone or at least reduced, which will make you feel happier about yourselves. In addition, by defragmenting your planning time, you will gain more free time, which reduces the risk of feeling stressed out.
Thirdly, with quality planning comes clarity. And with clarity comes wise actions. Wise actions breeds good results! Don't live randomly!
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that you should be a slave of your schedule. Just because your schedule says that you should shop for dinner at 5pm, does not mean that you must do it. It simply means that yourself has suggested that it would be wise if you do so.
My idea of holy hour and planning defragmentation is what works for me. You must find out what works for you. The first step is to understand how profound quality planning is, and I hope I've helped you do this by writing this article.
Happy planning!
PS: My idea of holy hour and planning defragmentation is derived from the inspirational "The Greatness Guide":http://www.thegreatnessguide.com by "Robin Sharma":http://www.robinsharma.com - it is highly recommendable.