3 Important Questions to Ask When Planning Your Day, Week, Month, or Year

Three Questions to Help Prioritize Your Planning

Have you been making to-do lists for years? You may be missing an important element in your planning routine if you aren’t asking yourself these three questions when you sit down to plan your day, week, month, or year.

These three questions can help you prioritize more effectively and accomplish your most important tasks.

What Can I Do to Make Life Easier for Myself?

Question #1 to ask yourself when planning…

What can I do to make life easier for myself tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year?

Give some thought to ways you can eliminate unnecessary tasks, get help or delegate, or streamline processes.

Consider these ideas to eliminate, delegate, or streamline:

do some tasks in the evening to make mornings less chaotic
eat the same thing for breakfast every day
create a “uniform” to reduce clothing decisions
divvy up household tasks among family members
assign specific times to check and respond to email (and stick to it)
choose set times to spend on social media
use grocery delivery services
set up a delivery schedule for frequently purchased household items
hire a house cleaner
create a chore schedule
ask your spouse or a babysitter to commit to a regular schedule of watching kids once a week to allow for special project work
set time blocks for focused work hours (and let others know you should not be interrupted)

Read: 7 Best Tips for a Good Morning

Is There Anything I’ve Been Avoiding or Putting Off?

Those pesky little tasks that pop up in the back of your mind frequently can become a distraction that results in a measurable decrease in your productivity.

Question #2 to ask yourself when planning…

Are there things I have been avoiding or putting off that I should take care of?

Put those items on your calendar or write them on a someday/maybe task list if they aren’t truly important.

A wide variety of tasks may fall into this category: making appointments, answering an email, researching a vacation, completing a household project.

This question is especially helpful to ask on a weekly or monthly basis. The next time you sit down for a weekly or monthly planning session, consider this question. Take a few minutes to think through what you’ve been procrastinating and decide whether they are important.

If so, get them on your calendar or your task list for the upcoming week. If not, keep a list of those tasks that you may want to come back to at a later date. By writing them down in a designated place, you’ll be able to stop endlessly reminding yourself to remember it. Choose one particular notebook, Google doc, or place in your task management system to keep those “someday, maybe, later” tasks so you know where to find them.

Do I Have Unrealistic Expectations?

Question #3 to ask yourself when planning…

Do I have unrealistic expectations of myself or others?

People who love to plan sometimes have a tendency to create plans bigger than the time we have to spend on them. I’ll admit I fall into this trap too often. It’s the same idea as our eyes being bigger than our stomachs at the dessert buffet.

When you sit down to plan, think about what you can reasonably expect to accomplish in a day. Allow for the inevitable interruptions and disruptions that occur.

If you plan on a weekly basis, give a realistic assessment of how much work you generally get through in a week before filling up every hour of your days with meetings, tasks, and projects.

Ideas for implementing realistic planning on a weekly basis:

leave time for unexpected and legitimately urgent tasks that arise throughout the week
give buffer space after a meeting to process, make notes, and create an action plan for whatever needs to happen next
include travel time in your calendar
schedule a period of time at the end of the week to review and plan for the week ahead
tackle one big goal or project at a time
keep track of weekly accomplishments and look back at them as a realistic measure of how much you can get done in a week
plan according to your stage of life (leave space for family and kid responsibilities)

For more questions to incorporate into your weekly review and planning, read this article:
20 Reflection Questions for Effective Weekly Planning

Ask Yourself These Three Questions Every Time You Plan

These are the three questions you should ask yourself every time you plan your day, week, month, or year.

1. What can I do to make life easier for myself tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year?

2. Are there things I have been avoiding or putting off that I should take care of?

3. Do I have unrealistic expectations of myself or others?

If you think about these three questions and answer them honestly for yourself, you will be better able to prioritize what you need to work on and set realistic expectations about what you can accomplish while choosing to set up systems that make your life run more smoothly.

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