Introduction
I’m a proponent of planning your day out in the morning.
This blog post is about all the different day planning layouts I’ve tried. They are mostly bullet journal spreads, but I’ve also included a couple of digital methods that I’ve toyed with over the years.
- Weekly spreads
- Daily time blocking
- “Zombie mode”
Table of Contents
Introduction Time blockingDaily SpreadWeekly SpreadDigital Weekly spread - Google Calendar“Zombie mode”ConclusionResources
Time blocking
What is time blocking
When you schedule a chunk of time to work on a single project, problem, or task, you bring all of your mental resources to bear on one thing rather than spreading your attention thin across several tasks. The more you “single task”, the more you build the mental muscles required for deep work and the easier its becomes to stay focused.
Daily Spread
Digital, large page, small page
A note on bullet journals - I like how after time you can see them filling up. It feels good to be able to flip through past entries and see how far you’ve come and how much time has past since you first started writing in your newest journal.
The digital daily spread in Notion
Weekly Spread
Digital Weekly spread - Google Calendar
I don’t like using Google calendar anymore for purely personal reasons. Writing on paper feels better to me. I’m more likely to look at it later in the day if I have a physical reminder on my desk of what I should be doing - as opposed to a Google calendar tab open. I want to say around 95% of the work I actually do in both my day job and in my personal creative projects takes place digitally, so having just 1 task that I can do daily helps me with keeping my moral up.
“Zombie mode”
“Zombie Mode” is what I call the state of being when I do not want to think and just want to be told what to do next. I have two collections to use when I am in this state — one for workdays and one for non-workdays. They both contain lists of tasks to be completed for the day, in order, until I snap out of Zombie Mode or the day ends.
Conclusion
I don’t have one method that I stick to 100% of the time. How I choose to plan my day depends a lot on my mood. Whether I’m going out or staying in. If I have a lot of errands to run or if I have a lot of calls or digital admin tasks to complete. The different spreads are good at different things. Its all about playing with what you like best. And having fun too! Your days should be fun, and at least for me, trying new ways of looking at each of my days as they go by can be refreshing.