Most of us start the day by reacting. Open our inbox. Turn on the news. Scroll social feeds.
We let other’s agendas rule our day because the decision-making network in our brain doesn’t prioritize. Decisions in the moment favor the urgent or pleasurable over the important.
Prioritization is no secret, but hardly anyone does it.
This is why I am a big proponent of creating a daily game plan. It involves identifying the most important thing to get done and also the things that will derail you.
This turns each day into a conscious act of progressing toward goals rather than a series of reactive moves.
Before I talk about how to write a game plan, let me debunk why a to-do list cannot be your plan.
A good to-do list (digital or paper) is meant for one thing. Taking anything in your mind that needs action to an external device.
But to-do lists have a flawed feature. They don’t account for time.
This makes you bite more than you can chew.
There is a feel-good moment from marking something to be done today at the start of the day to the inescapable feeling of guilt by the end…