How to learn to plan: 4 practical tips

In the busy world we live in, it gives us the feeling that we don't have the time to do everything we planned to do. Work tasks are priority and mandatory and, of course, we have to do them but, at the expense of them, it often happens that we do not enjoy our leisure and interpersonal relationships.

Not planning the time means feeling like the hours, days, weeks and months are becoming more and more little ones, slipping through our hands as we feel like we are wasting our lives without being able to do much to avoid it.

But the truth is that we can change, improve our time management and the tasks that we have set ourselves. If you are one of those who wonders how to learn to plan your time better, what comes next interests you.

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How to learn to plan: 4 psychological keys

Time is that substance, it is an imaginary fluid that slips through our fingers without our being able to avoid it. Funny how

As we grow, the passage of time seems to accelerate, to go faster making what were hours before are now perceived as minutes, and minutes as seconds.

Our days go by so fast, they vanish, they fade away while we feel that everything we wanted to do we did not finish because the day does not give us so much.

But there was a time that he did give it to us: our childhood. At least it happens to me that when I was a child I gave myself time for everything and without even thinking about it or planning it. I went to school, learned there and did what the teachers told me to do, played at recess without being told it seemed that the break was too short, classes ended, came home and did homework earlier to eat. The afternoon was wonderful, giving me time to play, study, watch TV and meet a friend from time to time.

My childish self was, unwittingly, apparently vastly more responsible and efficient than my adult self, and it was all because of her perception of time. When you are little, the hours are lived longer than they are, and you do not get the feeling that by doing one thing you are wasting time for others. At least in my personal case, leisure, personal relationships, hobbies and academic responsibilities they were snug, and when I went to sleep early, I didn't feel like I'd lost my day.

It is true that as children we have our parents who are behind us, but really if at those ages we could do everything, how are we not going to be able to manage the time we are older? Simply It is a matter of learning to plan, be constant, patient, knowing how to differentiate between what is a priority and what is not. and fulfill what one proposes. Whatever our age, the days will remain 24 hours, 1440 minutes and 86,400 seconds. It is up to us how much use we make of our time.

But for this you need to know how to do it ...

1. Organizing our lives. The importance of the to-do list

We cannot manage time well without properly planning the day and, for this, we have to organize ourselves. This sounds like a no-brainer, and for many it may be, but in practice people often underestimate the importance of being clear first thing in the morning or during the working day what to do today / this week.

It often happens that the fact that the day has seemed shorter than it is is because we have started it badly. We leave the difficult for last, thinking that if we do the easiest and shortest thing to do, we will to motivate and we will be more prepared to face the complex at the end of the day. The problem is that since we have invested all our strength in easy things during the morning, when the most difficult thing arrives it overwhelms us, overwhelms us and we do it reluctantly and badly.

Other times, what happens, more to do with the difficulty, has to do with the problem of not knowing what tasks to do. I mean, we do know them deep in our minds, but since we don't have them listed in a list nor have we made a planning, as the day goes by we have to remember these chores. As the human memory It is not infallible, we may remember to do X or Y late, do it in a hurry and feel frustrated that we did not remember earlier.

Whatever our possible case, all this is solved by doing something very simple. We just need a little time, thought, and patience - a to-do list. Easy right? Simply by putting on a piece of paper or in a mobile application that reminds us what to do we will be well aware of what are the tasks, goals or objectives to be fulfilled throughout the day or the week. When we finish one we will simply have to look at the list and see which one is the next, without going into a crisis or wasting time remembering what was playing next.

In this list we will not only put the tasks to do, but the time that we calculate that they will take us. This is very subjective and, in fact, in theory we are more optimistic than in practice. By this I mean that if, for example, we believe that a task is going to lose us an hour of our lives, the reality is that it will probably take much longer. One recommendation is that, while we calculate that it will take us to add 30-45 minutes of courtesy. A) Yes, If we take longer than expected, we will not despair believing that we are wasting time for the next task.

Making a list or writing down our tasks on an agenda is something that we must do with a certain frequency, being the ideal every day so that we acquire the habit of planning early in the morning our journey. In this to do list too we must incorporate the possible unforeseen events, anything that could waste our time. This depends more on us and the type of tasks and jobs we do, that is why it is very important that we remember the unforeseen we had in the past, looking at the time they made us lose and writing it down on the list as a potential time to miss.

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2. Tasks within tasks

Once we are clear about the tasks to be carried out throughout the day and the associated objectives, it is time to divide them into small activities. The reason for this has to do directly with our motivation. At least my case is the following: if I have to do an enormous task, for which I calculate that I have to dedicate a lot of time, I start to get very lazy to even start it. It seems that the longer the task, the longer it takes to do it.

On the other hand, if that same task is subdivided into small tasks, which will take me about 20 or 30 minutes, it motivates me more and, even, I may do them all at once without realizing it. Little by little I am moving forward and, when I look at everything I have done up to that point, I feel even more motivated to do what remains. Working like this makes me see the glass as half full instead of half empty, or in this case, the task half done and close to completion.

It is true that this depends a lot on the task at hand, but in most cases all our goals for the day can be subdivided into as many. For example, we have to write a report in our office that we have calculated that at least 2 hours will take us out of our lives. Instead of seeing it like this, let's see it as we have to do about 5 sections that will take us about 20-30 minutes to do them each. We have turned a large task into 5 smaller ones that motivate us more to do them.

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3. Mark priorities

Once we have made the list and we have marked in each of its smaller tasks sections, it is time to establish priorities. What we consider a priority or not will depend on many things, although one orientation is to prioritize whatever is longer, basically because leave the most complicated and heavy for the end of the day, when we are tired from having done the rest of the pending tasks, it will overwhelm us more and, above all, we will feel that we are doing our job worse.

Must establish the urgency, importance and duration of each task and assess, based on these parameters, the priority of doing them. You have to be realistic and understand how we work, understanding that there are things that really cost us to do the best would be to give them priority, lest they accumulate and overwhelm us even more having to do them.

Everyone is free to mark themselves in the way they like the most, which indicates what is a priority over what is not. We can use color systems, question marks, underline, highlight with a symbol... anything is valid to remind us what is most important. We can also redo the list and put things in order according to their priority and set alarms on the mobile let us know what to do every hour, so we will not forget to follow the order that we have proposed.

Here we insist that all this must be done every day or, at least, with a certain frequency but, and almost more important than anything, respect it. There is absolutely no use for us to list what we have to do, to indicate the importance of each task and how long it will take us to do each of them if, later, we do not respect our own planning.

It is true that There can be unforeseen events and that we have to change one task for another while the day goes by, but that is one thing and another is that we want to start easy and leave the complicated at the end. It is not a good idea.

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4. Planning our life is planning everything

So far I have insisted a lot on work-oriented planning, but that is not the only thing we must organize in our lives. Leisure, personal relationships, our hobbies and vital goals are part of life and are aspects that we must also plan if we want all areas to work according to how we would like.

Not everything in life is work and, if we let work absorb us, the frustration at seeing how not having time for activities and needs that satisfy us will make us perform worse and be unhappy.

For example, if we have a desire to learn a new language, that should also go on our daily to-do list. The goal of learning the language in question can be broken down into smaller tasks, such as example learn new vocabulary, practice pronunciation or read a book in the language objective. Planning this, breaking it down into easy and quick activities to do, will make us feel that we are achieving this goal that we have set for ourselves.

Whatever personal wishes we want to fulfill, we cannot ignore them. Planning our lives applies to absolutely everything and, if we do it and fulfill it, we will feel like when we were children and time gave us for everything. Let's plan our lives as much as possible to feel more productive and happy.