Recently, I’ve explained how I use a time budget to give myself permission to have fun. If you missed those earlier posts, you can check them out here, here, and here. Now, I’ll take you through how I use my time budget to plan a day.
I like to do my daily planning the night before. I have a solid morning routine in place. Nevertheless, if I start the day without a plan, I tend to waffle and waste time. Many people like to plan in the morning though, and you can do whatever works for you!
Check the Time
The first thing I do is check the sum of my commitments for the day. You may recall that I try to budget about 14 hours across my 16-hour days. So I check to see how much I’ve budgeted for the day I’ve planned by dividing the total number of minutes by 60. If I’m under 14, I know I’m looking at a good day to pull in a task from section 4. I also look ahead to see if any other days are already over 14. If so, I may need to work ahead to move some tasks out of those days and into my lighter ones.
I also take a look at my total time for the week and make sure I’m on track. I delete the amounts out of my time budget as I complete tasks and hide columns when a day is over. That way, I can keep an eye on whether I’m “spending” all the time I intended to. When I’m planning Wednesday, for example, my total time assigned should be down to about 70 hours (14*5). If I’m way off, I know I need to reassess.
Pick Your Priorities
I do a lot of my big picture planning digitally, but I still love a paper planner for daily planning. I’ve tried a lot of them over the years, and my current favorite is the Day Designer Daily planner. These planners are beautiful and are set up in a way that meshes well with my planning style. You can use this link for $15 off!
The Day Designer prompts you to pick you “top three” priorities every day. As an Enneagram One, I love routines. So repeating most tasks daily and then adding in a few extras works really well for me. To choose, I take a look at sections 2 and 3 of my time budget to see if I have anything scheduled. Usually there are one or two; sometimes I pull all three from what I have scheduled already. If I have four or more commitments (unusual, but it happens), I make a note of that in my “top three” section. If I still have space, I take a look at section 4 to see what else I can do that day. Maybe I can make a batch of muffins to throw in the freezer. Or maybe I can schedule some of the fun I was hoping to have!
Fill Your Placeholders
The Day Designer includes four extra boxes at the top: Due, Dollars, Dinner, and Don’t Forget. I use “Due” to keep track of whether my daughters have completed their responsibilities that day. They earn a bonus on their allowance if they complete a 7-day streak. So I make a quick check or X as applicable in that box for the day we’ve just completed. I use “Dollars” to keep track of earnings goals for my day job as a freelance editor.
“Dinner” and “Don’t Forget” each function as a line item in my time budget. Rather than write what we’re having for dinner that night, I write what I need to do that day to prepare for dinner. It might be feeding my sourdough starter, pulling meat out of the freezer for the next night’s dinner, or putting dinner in the slow cooker. Some days, it’s all three. But anything that needs to happen before about 5 pm to ensure dinner is fun and not frustrating goes in this box. Knocking out these items gets a 10-minute slot in my budget.
I use “Don’t Forget” for all those nagging one-off tasks that have a tendency to pile up. I budget about 10 minutes a day for these as well. Google Tasks makes it easy to keep a running list so that I can add items as I think of them. These items could include buying a birthday present for a kid’s friend, rescheduling a dentist appointment, or writing a thank-you note. Each night, I try to figure out which item from my list is the most time-sensitive. And I plan to knock it out the next day.
Schedule Your Tasks
The Day Designer shows the hours from 5 to 9, which works great for me. I’m an early bird and like to be in bed by 9:30. This way, I’m not tempted to schedule anything past my bedtime just to fit it in! I like to draw a vertical line through the schedule section to divide it into half-hour blocks.
Once I have my grid ready, I start filling in my schedule for the day, using my time budget as a reference. I start with anything that’s time-bound, from appointments to school drop-offs, so that I have a good sense of what open time I have available. Next, I usually add in meals, since we tend to be pretty consistent about that. Then I decide how I will use nap time—my toddler typically sleeps about two hours every afternoon, so this is prime time for knocking out some work or a workout.
Once all the big stuff is in place, I figure out when I can squeeze in everything else I budgeted for that day. Since I’m working with a 16-hour grid and I try to budget only 14 hours, it should all fit. I either leave white space as needed or leave smaller tasks in a larger grid section (like a 10-minute item might be the only thing filling a half-hour block). This helps ensure I have time to catch up and be flexible when life happens!
Stay on Track
My planner is pretty, but it’s big. And I don’t like to carry it around with me. So once I get the day filled out, I snap a picture with my phone. That way, I can just refer to my plan as needed throughout the day. When I do get to my desk, I might do a quick review and check off what I’ve completed to make sure nothing got missed. I also like to periodically check in with my time budget and delete anything that I’ve completed. This definitely helps give a busy mom a sense of accomplishment as I move through my day!
When I’m doing my evening planning session, I finish deleting that day’s tasks from the time budget. If anything got missed, I decide whether I need to migrate that time to a different day or whether it’s something that just isn’t going to happen that week. Once I’ve cleared out the day’s column, I hide it in my spreadsheet. This makes it easier to see the task name and the amount of time I’ve budgeted for it as I move through the week. Then I start the process over to plan the next day!
How do you plan a day? Have you given time budgeting a try? Let me know in the comments!
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