Stuart Danker

You know how optimistic you feel at night, and you tell yourself tomorrow’s going to be different?

Maybe you’ll wake up before sunrise for once. Maybe even go for a run. And that’s the least ambitious thing you can think of.

Then the next day rolls around and all your dreams fall victim to the snooze button, sometimes quite literally.

That tends to happen a lot when you start your day without a plan. In a previous post, I mentioned the benefits of planning your day ahead of time, and I still do believe in its powers.

My planned days unfold much smoother than my unplanned ones, for some reason. It’s almost as if the universe acknowledges my efforts to live better. There must be a magic to this. And it’s this magic that we’ll be exploring today.

Why waste time planning ahead?

Why, you ask? Because it doesn’t take much time in the first place. The crudest to-do list would probably take five minutes at most, and it has the potential to save you hours.

Secondly, prepared tasks have a higher chance of completion. And I’ve found that trying to prepare on the same day just doesn’t give the same oomph.

Third, there’s decision fatigue. I know, there’s been a lot of discourse on whether this symptom actually exists. But if a placebo works, then it’s not a placebo, am I right?

I find that the fewer decisions I have to make on the spot, the more mental resources I reserve. And all that energy can be used to deal with the more unexpected events.

Lastly, and most importantly, we’re much more clear-headed in the evenings compared to the mornings. We make better decisions for ourselves at night. Try mapping our day when we’re still groggy from sleep and it’s almost certain we’ll pick the easiest path.

So how do we get on with planning our day?

a. Start with infrastructure

This is an easy place to start because we all have habits. You’ve laid out your clothes for work before, haven’t you? Or maybe you’ve packed your bags for the gym?

Prepping your infrastructure is doing exactly that, for your most common tasks.

So make your morning coffee easier to brew by setting aside your equipment every night. Have your lunch prepped and ready to go. Have your pentagram scrawled on the floor ready for your next devil worship. You know, the simple things.

For the weekly things like cleaning, leave the broom or mop within reach. Fill the pail the night before. Prepare the bleach to clean out all that goat blood. Again, the simple things.

My infrastructure revolves around my everyday tasks. Eating, writing, exercising. Those are my top priorities for a good life, so I prep my meals, plan a workout, and have my writing outline ready to go, all before I need them.

You’d be surprised how much more you follow through when everything’s laid out. Even for harder tasks.

In short: Target your everyday duties first, since you’ll be repeating them for most of your life.

b. Aim to get started

In muay thai, we’re taught to kick through our target instead of just stopping at the point of contact. The same can be said about preparing for your tasks.

When planning your next day out, you should aim to make tasks as easy as possible to start. So don’t just record your plan and think that your future self will pick up the slack.

My personal example would be tough work e-mails that I have to deal with. I could set a reminder and leave it at that. Or, I could list a few bullet points I wish to cover, thus removing the dread of starting from scratch.

I do this for cooking too. I’ll have the recipe book opened to the appropriate page, the equipment ready on the stove, and if I have the time, the ingredients set aside in the refrigerator.

Let me tell you that not having to hunt for that lone pepper makes all the difference in whether I start cooking or not. All these little things add up in the course of a day.

And this is also when you’ll learn that starting is the problem. Not the actual tasks themselves, which feel neutral once you get going.

In short: Don’t just populate your to-do list. Try to facilitate starting.

c. Use your imagination

Think about your upcoming day. Are there any potential snags in your plans? Do you need any special equipment for the day? Do you have enough gas for your commute?

Which parts of the day can you expect stress? And which parts make you happy? Are you scheduling too much stress into your life? Maybe you could stop trying to summon the devil?

You want to know what’s the best part of visualising? It’s that you get to be Tom Cruise in Edge Of Tomorrow. If you find yourself not liking a particular visualisation, you get to actually live it again and try to do better.

You also get to imagine how you want your ideal day to be. Maybe you want to wake up refreshed. That would lead you to earlier bedtimes. And proper sleep hygiene. And many other action plans that you wouldn’t have had, had you not tried visualisation.

In short: Visualise your day and get a chance to optimise it before it arrives.

d. Do a post-mortem

Just because you’re preparing for tomorrow doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look back. In fact, you should take the events of the day into account to help you make better decisions for the next.

Like Socrates said, an unexamined life is not worth living. I won’t go so far as to take that quote literally, but why not take the time to see if we’re making the most out of life?

So look back on your day and ask yourself if certain processes aren’t working out for you. Maybe exercising is taking too much time. And it’s a hassle to mop your sweat off the floor when you’re already crunched for time.

Perhaps you could try HIIT and shorten your training. And maybe you could do it outdoors to cut down on mopping.

Our habits make us, both good and bad, so let’s not fall into the grooves of life that don’t necessarily take us where we wish to go.

In short: Don’t just let your day pass. Think how you could’ve made it better.

You can start now (for tomorrow)

The good news is that you don’t need any fancy tools or specialised knowledge to start planning your day. You can very well do it now, even if it’s not nighttime.

Perhaps try both. Wing it for one day, and then prepare for the next. See if it makes a difference in your life. We all have very individual circumstances, after all.

But do give it a go because it’s worth a try. After all, wasn’t it Abraham Lincoln that said he’d spend four hours sharpening his axe for a six-hour job?

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