HTBP - Should you plan your 'perfect' day?
Reflection and research on the fundamentals of our day-to-day
Abstract
With a multitude of tools for productivity, time-blocking, limiting distractions, and so much more, we have many opportunities to take control of how we manage our time and focus.
In my last post I discussed ‘the illusion of managing your time effectively’, where I highlighted the appeal of adding commitments in order to make yourself seem productive. Alongside this, the point of not squeezing time out of your day was key, where in this post I highlight how time is a lot more malleable than we think.
The risk that comes with trying to have ‘perfect’ days is frustration, which is energy-sapping.
What nips your energy in the bud even more is the demotivation that comes as a result of that frustration, which makes getting started/continuing a task harder every time you fail to do so.
Therefore, I discuss how the pressures and standards you impose on yourself can be accommodated for simply by enabling them to become more fluid, and in turn facilitating satisfaction at the end of your day.
Discussion
Energy Levels
Although I had a slight understanding about how my energy levels affected my concentration, motivation, and performance, I gradually recognised the value of planning your day in accordance with them.
They provide a framework to plan your days.
Of course, whilst in education or work, you are limited as to what extent you can follow your energy levels, but it is important to recognise the scope of time you are working with outside of these responsibilities.
Therefore, I looked into how energy levels affect productivity and predominantly found research on the productivity of businesses rather than individuals. Despite this limitation, I found some key points to highlight the importance of energy levels.
Research: Energy level fluctuations and their impact
A survey on the energy levels of business leaders found that “leaders who are constantly interrupted are in an over-energized state that leads to loss of productivity and burnout.”
This finding is transferrable to our daily lives, in which distractions such as our phones keep us overstimulated when working on a task.
The challenge this presents is in your consistency, whereby being consistent is a key part of productivity and determines the pace at which you work towards achieving the results you desire.
Why this is a key point is because we unknowingly detriment our ability to remain productive in a multitude of ways. If we use the phone as an example, below are couple points I recognised as being detriments to my own performance:
The time lost to the phone as a distraction
Continuously reducing our attention span across all facets of our day-to-day
The time required to refocus; focus is dynamic and time is needed to engage again with a task
— Andrew Huberman highlights the challenge of refocusing in his podcast, and explains how to combat this is through deliberate decompression - taking breaks by doing menial tasks or tasks of low concentration, avoiding the phone.
Aside from productivity, we are generally decreasing our quality of life by having distractions, as it adds a further limitation in the way of reaching our potential. Most importantly, this saps energy away from what is important, which compounds upon my additional research on sleep, diet, and exercise.
When doing further research into factors that affect energy levels, I picked out two key points which can prompt practical adjustments when trying to become more productive:
Sleep deprivation: The American Academy of Sleep Medicine found that: “those who reported getting 5 to 6 hours experienced 19 percent more productivity loss, and those who got less than 5 hours of sleep experienced 29 percent more productivity loss.”
Diet and Exercise: A Population Health Management study highlights the effects of both diet and exercise on employee productivity - “Employees with an unhealthy diet were 66 percent more likely to report having experienced a loss in productivity than those who regularly ate whole grains, fruits and vegetables. Employees who exercised only occasionally were 50 percent more likely to report having lower levels of productivity than employees who were regular exercisers.”
Although adjustments with regards to diet, exercise and sleep may be obvious, they are also elements of a healthy lifestyle that are often ignored. In addition, as humans we tend to seek more complicated solutions to our problems, called the complexity bias, and so therefore reverting back to the fundamentals is the best place to start prior to trying alternative solutions.
To reinforce this, you may have heard of or resonate with the phrase ‘tired of being tired’, and by discussing the importance of energy levels and its impact upon productivity, I hope this highlights it as a key component of what a ‘perfect day’ would look like.
Generally, it is a consideration easily overlooked, even though understanding that energy levels play a part in your general performance of tasks can enable you to collaborate with it, rather than counteract it.
Becoming familiar with your energy levels is a prerequisite to planning what your ‘perfect’ day looks like.
The ‘Perfect’ Day
Firstly, minimise your frustrations in the pursuit of a ‘perfect’ day by starting with a skeleton of what each day looks like.
Uncertainty is your enemy, but our flaw is our overpreparation in the battle to minimise uncertainty.
Given this, there is a fine balance between planning and overplanning, and through my experience, I hope you can recognise this.
At the moment, I have a calendar and to-do list for each day, where I strive for sustainable positive progression.
By understanding my demands and the additional ones I can choose to take - which are predominantly in my to-do list, I would rarely end a day feeling it was unproductive.
Despite this, I still allow for spontaneous activities/opportunities to occur.
How so?
I have learnt to simplify my days, away from the temptation of planning each minute of the day out.
Although it may be comforting and satisfying to know how our time is going to be used by the minute, it never works out that way. This is not only because of random occurrences and procrastination, but also due to the natural limitation we have in predicting how long a task will take.
For me, the only uncertainty I face is the order in which I complete the tasks on my to-do list, which is something I don’t mind. This is because, from past experiences I have learnt that being overprepared by intricately planning your day can be exhausting and very frustrating when it doesn’t work out that way.
Therefore, with circumstances always changing, I ensure my calendar is up-to-date and my to-do list for each day is sensible.
As a result, I have found it easier to uptake opportunities that come my way, as they don’t cause significant disruption to my plans. This is as compared to before, where these opportunities would have met a fortified blockade caused by the rigorous plans I used to have for the days ahead.
Perhaps having a skeleton of your day is not enough for you though. You may want complete clarity on the order and time spent on your priorities throughout the day.
A question I have for you is:
What is the threshold for the type of day you wouldn’t be proud of?
In my personal example, I identified this through having my calendar and to-do list as somewhat of a minimum threshold, which has enabled me to usually feel good in my reflections of the day.
For you, what would your threshold be, and why would you fail to reach it?
What I must preface first is that it is not as easy as just choosing immediately what this threshold is.
It requires a journey of self-reflection, as you do not want to rush the process of guessing what this threshold is, overwhelming yourself, and then risk adopting a toxic mindset.
As mentioned in the introduction, ‘the illusion of managing your time effectively’ is an example where unbound ambition reaches its limits.
This is where the power of your inner voice should not be underestimated, as it ultimately dictates the actions you take. Therefore, understanding your threshold for what a good day would be is important, but what is more important is the mindset that drives you towards it.
The threshold will change at least incrementally day-by-day, but your attitude, mindset, and mentality is what dictates its levels.
On the flipside, what does your best day look like?
Scale back all your responsibilities and imagine an empty day. What would you do that would make that day hold value?
Doing this can be an eye-opening exercise, as when you recognise what is important to you, the ownness is on you to incorporate these elements into your actual day.
Although it can be challenging to do this, it provides an important principle behind what a ‘perfect’ day is.
We know perfect is not exactly attainable, but by planning what a perfect day looks like and reflecting holistically, your sense of direction will become clear alongside the time you spend on what matters to you.
That is also known as productivity.
Conclusion
So, should you plan your ‘perfect’ day?
There is no perfect day, but it can feel perfect if you are consistent in your days being fulfilling with regards to you being productive and achieving what you set out to do.
Conversely, if you find yourself frustrated day-by-day, something needs to change.
How drastically you change is up to you but reflect on what is causing your days to end in this way in tandem with the solutions for these problems.
On the other hand, if you feel as if you have your days organised and sorted, reflect on how much time you have left. How are you using that time?
By asking yourself this question, your prompting yourself to uncover possibilities, entice new opportunities, and explore new interests (quadrant two activities).
However, filling up that time unnecessarily is the worst thing you can do, as rest should be factored in. This is so you can work productively with the time you allocate to priorities and important tasks.
Overall, optimising your days until they become ‘perfect’ requires extensive experimentation, and as you learn more about yourself, the more productive potential you uncover.
Avoid rushing the process and be open-minded in mastering your time.
P.S.
How strict do you structure your days?
Do you always allocate a fixed amount of time to a task?