Feeling overwhelmed? Hoping to live with more intention – to align how you spend your time with what you want out of life? But not sure where to start?
You’re in the right place! We believe that everyone can design – and live – a life that they love, and our mission is to help you do just that.
Day Designer was created to help the busy parent, professional, or student get organized and find balance in their everyday life. Our signature daily planning page, found in our Flagship Daily Planner, guides you to design each day for success – with a focus on your priorities, productivity, and organization.
Because here’s the thing . . .
Small steps, accumulated over time, turn into big leaps!
What you do on a daily basis is the foundation for the direction you will go in life. When your daily activities and tasks are in alignment with your goals and priorities – you will find yourself living the well-designed life you crave.
We’ve created a practical guide featuring our top five daily planning tips. Let’s get started!
1. Identify your top three
At Day Designer, we believe in prioritization. Before you fully dive into designing your day, prioritize your top three tasks. What are the three things that must get done? What top tasks would make your day a success if you completed them?
The reality is that we all have a million and one things to do every day, but we’re not very likely to finish any of them if we try to tackle them all. Become present to what’s most important and most necessary, and shift your time and attention there first.
2. Map out appointments
By the time your day begins, you likely have a few places to be in the next 24 hours – either in person or virtually!
Whether you keep a digital calendar to keep track of your family activities, work commitments, and personal appointments or you keep them on the monthly calendar spread in your planner – it’s important to write these out on your daily planning page as you design your day, enabling you to better visualize your time and white space.
3. Create a to-do list
Next, it’s time to map out what tasks and to-dos you hope to accomplish outside of your pre-set appointments and obligations.
A common mistake here is setting unrealistic standards. We have to start being realistic about what we can accomplish in a day! You’re only setting yourself up for failure if you create a mile-long list every day.
Pro-Tip #1: Keep your overall list of to-dos somewhere separate – we refer to this as a Brain Dump. It’s extremely beneficial to have these tasks out of your head and on paper, and you can refer back to your big list each day to identify your tasks for that day!
Pro-Tip #2: As you outline your day, batch similar tasks in order to limit distractions and achieve efficiency. For example, have a set hour when you respond to email and another time when all emails and alerts are turned off.
Pro-Tip #3: Scheduling your to-dos makes them more likely to happen. Do you have a big project on your plate? Identify an hour (or even a half-hour) to make some progress on it.
4. Add notes and reminders
It’s hard to stay present when you’re walking around with too much information taking up space in your brain. That’s why we recommend making notes!
While you might not be able to sit down and update your Day Designer calendar and to-do list at every moment of any day – you can likely pause to jot down a few notes. And we’ve created space for that too.
By getting that information out of your head and down onto paper, you’re not only able to continue through your day with clarity and presence – you’re a lot more likely to actually remember to do whatever you jotted down.
Extras: In addition to space for notes, the daily planning page in our Flagship Planner includes prompts for Due, Dollars, Dinner, and Don’t Forget. This quadrant of the page is meant to be highly versatile – use it however it works best for you. Record your spending, remind yourself of what bills are due, map out what’s for dinner, and more!
5. Practice gratitude
Practicing gratitude has been a core activity in the Day Designer planner from the very beginning. To cultivate a well-designed life, it’s important to take a few moments each day to appreciate it!
There’s space for daily gratitude reflection on every daily planning page of the Day Designer Flagship Daily Planner. It’s not meant to be overwhelming and it’s not meant to be another to-do; it’s just a small space in your every day to look back over your life and remember something that you’re grateful for.
When you take these brief moments to reflect each day, you can go into the next days with a renewed sense of purpose, refreshed energy, and a consistent reminder of all that is good right here in the present moment.
What is your biggest struggle when it comes to daily planning? We’d love to help!