Keep Your Investment on Track: Plan and Prioritize Every Month, Week, and Day

At times, it feels as if our brains are like popcorn machines.

“Call Sue.” 

“Email Alan.” 

“Pick up the dry cleaning.” 

“Don’t forget to buy milk.”

There is an incessant popping of to-dos, ideas, and errands to run. Popcorn brain is not only annoying, it is also interferes with our ability to prioritize and plan because it takes up significant amounts of mental energy.

Planning and prioritizing have been offered as time-saving tools and as an antidote to the stress caused by overflowing calendars and task lists. Planning and prioritizing are valuable and helpful—but by themselves they will not cure popcorn brain. In fact, the process of prioritizing and planning can add to your sense of stress. 

Think about the last time you prioritized your task list. The job required you to make decisions among many competing projects, deadlines, and important stakeholders. If you’re like most people, you found it difficult. Planning and prioritizing are energy-intensive tasks that become increasingly stressful after your brain has been engaged for a period of time. Our brains require significant amounts of fuel, glucose, and oxygen, and all of these fuels are used up faster than we realize. As Roy Baumeister of Florida State University explains, “We have a limited bucket of resources for activities like decision making and impulse control, and when we use these up we don’t have as much for the next activity.” Make one difficult decision--what you need to do first today, for example—and the next one is more difficult. Your best quality thinking lasts for only a limited time.

So what can you do? How can you conserve your brain’s fuel and use it to more effectively to prioritize, plan, and ultimately save time? Here are some specific techniques that have been shown to conserve energy and reduce your natural tendency to suffer from popcorn brain.

• Do a brain dump by listing everything you need to do in the next several days. Empty onto paper, a whiteboard, or into the computer program of your choice everything and anything that is popping in your mind. Get it all out of your head and into the physical world. Clear the mental decks.  
• Brainstorm using mind-mapping tools or paper and post-it notes to ensure that the most important ideas are captured and can be easily expanded without additional mental output. This ensures that you are not expending precious mental energy trying to remember project ideas, what you need to do, or whom you need to talk to. Follow the wise advice offered by productivity consultant David Allen, author of Getting Things Done: Use your brain to think about ideas, not of them.

Having captured today’s serving of popcorn from your brain on a piece of paper, apply the following best practices to your action planning. I have mapped them for you at three time intervals—monthly, weekly, and daily. Get into the habit of using these techniques regularly, and you’ll find yourself less mentally exhausted. You will be able to turn countless once-wasted hours into productive time.

MONTHLY PLANNING BEST PRACTICES

Monthly planning provides the big-picture view of your goals, commitments, and priorities, ensuring that your calendar is aligned to each of these. Here are the steps I recommend you take once a month, at a routine, pre-set time—on the first of the month, for example, or on the first Monday of the month if you prefer.

• Review your professional and personal goals for the quarter. Do you have projects and tasks on your to-do list that will move you closer to achieving each of these goals? If not, update your to-do list with the projects and tasks that are required for you to achieve your professional and personal goals. Is there time on your calendar this month to work on these projects and tasks? If not, block or schedule time to work on these projects and tasks.

Review your calendar for the upcoming month and ask yourself the following questions: 

• Are all of my project milestones and deadlines noted on my calendar?
•  Do I have enough buffer time scheduled this month?
• How many days this month am I in back-to-back meetings? Where can I shift or eliminate a few meetings to give myself the time I need to digest, think about what happened during the meeting, and develop strategy?
•  Do I have personal time on the calendar this month? Personal time is essential if you want to consistently perform well.
•  If you have a family, a significant other, and/or other special relationships in your life, are their events and needs captured and reflected on your calendar?

Revise your calendar as needed until you’re satisfied with the answers to all the questions above.

WEEKLY PLANNING BEST PRACTICES

Weekly planning is designed to prevent your brain from trying to remember and remind you of what you need to do—a task that needlessly consumes precious mental energy. The goal each week is give yourself the opportunity to review your projects, gather and process the stuff that has accumulated during the week, and ensure that it is collected, processed, and organized. Weekly planning ensures that your brain is clear and prepared for the week. 

I recommend you develop the habit of setting aside time for weekly planning on the same day every week—at the end of your workday on Friday or first thing on Monday morning, for example, so that you’re ready to hit the ground running when you arrive at the office on Monday. Here are the recommended steps.

• Collect any loose documents, scraps of paper, business cards, and other materials that have accumulated on your desk, in your workbag, and in your pockets. File, trash, or add a task to your to-do list for each item you’ve collected.
• Review and process your notes. Review meeting notes, notes scribbled on bits of paper, notes in OneNote, and on your computer. Put action items on your to-do list, put project due dates on your calendar, and file any reference notes and meeting materials.
• Review last week’s calendar in detail and capture any remaining to-dos and reference information. Transfer to-dos to your task list and file reference information.
• Look at the upcoming week’s calendar. Capture any action steps, to-dos about project work, and arrangements or preparation for any upcoming events.

Review your goals. Evaluate the status of your goals and projects, and ensure that you have at least one action or to-do for each one.

DAILY PLANNING BEST PRACTICES

Daily planning is designed to focus your attention on your top priorities for the day, ensuring that you have a laser-like focus on what you want to accomplish during the day. By deciding what to focus on before the day actually starts, you can minimize the impact of distractions and competing projects that often come up. Ideally, you should plan your day the afternoon or evening before so the next morning you can immediately start working on your priorities. If this is not possible, take just a few minutes for daily planning at the start of your morning, before the flood gates of email, phone calls, and in-person meetings open. Here are the recommended steps.

• Review your current projects and tasks. Before you do any work (including checking email), decide on your top three priorities for the day. Use these to guide and structure your day.
• Start your day by tackling your highest-value task—one that is aligned to your goals and relates to the revenue line, which is where you and your organization make money.

React to shifting priorities and demands, and decide what to do next during the day by considering the following:

• Check your required tools. Do you have all the tools necessary to complete a given action on your schedule for today? Many to-dos require a specific location (at the office or a client site, for example) and/or a specific tool (a phone or computer application). Make sure all the tools you need are in place as you start your day.
• Check your buffer time. If you have only five minutes between meetings, your action choices are limited. Try to re-arrange one or more activities to give yourself some breathing room in the course of your day.
• Check your energy availability. Some projects and tasks require significant amounts of fresh, creative mental energy. If necessary, move one or more activities so that your most demanding projects and tasks are scheduled for the times when your energy is likely to be highest.
• Prioritize your activities. Considering the required tools, time, and energy available, which to-do offers the highest return on time investment?

Each of the monthly, weekly, and daily planning best practices outlined above work for all of the Productivity Styles. However, there are slight differences in each style that need to be considered for optimal planning. Outlined in the table below are questions to consider as you complete your monthly, weekly, and daily planning.

If You’re a Prioritizer

How You Plan: You are naturally goal oriented; planning your months, weeks, and days to achieve your goals is easy for you. At times, however, your focus on the outcome tends to impact your understRachelng of how the work needs to be completed, who needs to be involved, and why it is important.

Questions to Ask:

• How does the work need to be completed to achieve my goal?
• Who else needs to be involved or know about my work to support me in achieving my goal? Who are the key stakeholders? Who are the constituencies impacted by this work?
• Why is the work important? How does it connect back to my goals and the organization’s goals?

If You’re a Planner

How You Plan: Planning is natural for you. At times, however, your focus on how to complete work can create a myopic plan that overlooks or minimizes what actually needs to be accomplished, who needs to be involved, and why the work is important.

Questions to Ask:

• What is the outcome or stated goal for this work?
• Who else needs to be involved or know about my work to support me in achieving my goal? Who are the key stakeholders? Who are the constituencies impacted by this work?
• Why is the work important? How does it connect back to my goals and the organization’s goals?

If You’re an Arranger

How You Plan: You intuitively know what work needs to be completed and by when. At times, however, your focus on the people involved in the work or project can overshadow what the goal or outcome is, how to efficiently complete the work, and why it is important.

Questions to Ask:

• What is the outcome or stated goal for this work?
• What are the specific, tangible action steps I must take to complete the work? How has this work been completed in the past? Is there any historical precedent or prior experience I can draw upon?
• Why is the work important? How does it connect back to my goals and the organization’s goals?

If You’re a Visualizer

How You Plan: You are a strategic, big-picture thinker, and long-range planning is in alignment with your natural preferences. At times, however, your big picture orientation tends to interfere with your determining the shorter-term intermediate goals and action steps needed to realize a broader, strategic goal.

Questions to Ask:

• What are the intermediate goals and outcomes needed to achieve my broader goals and those of my organization?
• What specific, tangible action steps must I take to complete the work? Remember to make these action steps small, discrete, and doable.

Who else needs to be involved or know about my work to support me in achieving my goal? Who are the key stakeholders? Who are the constituencies impacted by this work?

Planning and prioritizing are energy-intensive tasks that use significant mental resources. Harness the productive power of your brain by utilizing the monthly, weekly, and daily planning best practices I’ve recommended. You’ll be glad you did.

Craving more productivity and efficiency tips and strategies? Let's talk about organizing those good ol' email threads.

Carson Tate is the author of Work Simply, published by Penguin/Portfolio in 2015. "Work Simply is not only rich with solid, practical, grounded advice about reclaiming your time, it’s infused with heart, warmth, and humanity to boot," says New York Times best-selling author Sonia Choquette. 

Follow Carson on Twitter: @thecarsontate