Wondering how to plan your busy day and week without getting overwhelmed?

Are you looking for some practical tips to help you better plan your schedule?

You sit down to do some planning in your schedule.

You’re going along at a good clip, when you start to feel overwhelmed.

You want to start working on one item in your schedule, followed by another, and another.

Your schedule seems so exciting, and yet at the same, so complex, difficult, and busy!

In this post, you’ll find several ways to sit down and do some planning…while still keeping your cool.

Plan routine or familiar items first.

Think of this exercise as a type of mini warm up.

The idea here is to start your planning session off slowly, but surely, and let you ease into the more challenging items.

Start with the basics: schedule your lunch breaks for the week and the times you arrive and leave work.

Include any regular weekly meetings you may have as well as other responsibilities..

Having these routine items already booked in your schedule nicely frames your other work.

What’s more, it gives you a few less things to worry about in your planning.

Get project tasks out of your head.

Give your mind some breathing room and write down all of those project ideas that are swimming around in your head.

You could create a list of tasks, working quickly to write one item down on a single line, followed by another.

Or you could capture tasks or actions on index cards.

Start with a full stack of blank cards, and quickly write a single action on each card, and tuck it behind the stack.

Once you’ve listed specific tasks, you can return to your list or stack of cards when you’re ready to process items.

Work with limited tools in a different environment.

You say you can’t help but try to work on a project when you’re at the computer at your desk.

Why not shift your working environment and tools?

Allow yourself to focus on your work by changing your physical location and removing any unnecessary tools and materials from your reach.

You could move to an empty conference room or office or sit in a park or cafe.

Take only the bare essentials needed for your planning, such as a planner, schedule, blank notebook, and a pen.

Give yourself a break.

Feeling completely overwhelmed?

Sometimes you can become so involved in your planning it’s hard to differentiate between small and large items.

If so, it’s probably a good sign you should put away your schedule and take a break.

Put the planning aside for a few hours, or perhaps even a day, or two.

Work on something completely different. Try working on an unrelated work or personal project.

Practice makes perfect.

Like many things in life, there’s no substitute for plain old practice.

The more you practice planning, the better you’ll become.

The planning process will become more and more comfortable over time.

However, this will only happen if you put in the time to do so.

Try scheduling a regular planning session for yourself every week at the same day and time.

Treat yourself right and make it a pleasant and enjoyable experience.

You could put on some soothing music in the background and brew a cup of your favorite hot beverage.

Pull out your favorite pens or pencils and get to work. 

How about you? Are you ever tempted to work on a project task as you’re planning? What do you do to stay focused? Join the conversation and leave a comment below!