Living intentionally is a focus for me right now. I don’t want to drift through my days, reacting to what comes up. I find that my days go better when I spend even a few minutes planning the day. Here’s what I’m doing right now.
In the morning, I enter my intentions for the day. I put them down in a place where they’ll be easy to review and check off throughout the day. I’m using an app called Complice to do this. Complice is a thoughtfully designed app for setting intentions for the day and ensuring that they align with larger goals. It’s not very user friendly, though. It’s pretty much for computer geeks. But here’s the guidance they give when entering intentions for the day:
Try to come up with a list small enough you can confidently commit to, but large enough you’ll feel proud if you held yourself accountable to them. At the end of the day, you’ll see how you did compared to your intentions.
I roughly arrange the intentions in the order in which I plan to do them. I try to distribute them throughout the day if possible, so I don’t end up with an impossibly long and demoralizing list of tasks at the end of the day. I’ve found that often forget to set my intentions in the morning, so I am now trying to enter them at a specific time in the morning, at 9 AM.
Then I will plan to do my mid-day review at 1 PM, my end of afternoon review at 5 PM, and my end of day review at 9 PM. Doing these reviews throughout the day helps me stay on track, and adjust my plans as needed. And each one only takes a few minutes. I just quickly review what I did in the last few hours, and the two or three things I plan to accomplish in the next few hours. I got this idea from a great post by Dr. Cameron Sepah.
Finally, at the end of the day, I review how I did that day, how many of my intentions I managed to complete. Then I do some writing reflecting on the day overall. I find that it’s helpful to try to answer a few general questions each day, like what went well, what I could have done better, and what I’m grateful for. And to just do some free writing, too.
I find that doing all of this takes less than half an hour in total, and makes my days more purposeful and satisfying.
Very good idea! It sounds like a lot of work so I like how you included that it only takes you 30 min to complete all the tasks...makes it seem doable for anyone!
I could definitely benefit from this exercise, Coleman. Thank you for sharing and describing how you go about planning your day in this thoughtful way.