One useful way to think of a day is as a series of 24 one-hour timeslots, in which actions can be performed. The process of planning is the assignment of actions to those timeslots. If you sleep for eight hours, that leaves 16 timeslots available for actions.
What to put in them?
In reality, each day is a mosaic of actions. Some (like bathing and brushing your teeth) are life sustainment actions that must be done every day. Others (like buying groceries) are life sustainment actions that must be done every week, and the day you’re planning just happens to be the day for that action. Similarly for sustainment actions that recur monthly, quarterly, or yearly.
When planning a Day, sustainment actions form the outline of it, since they often must be done to avoid incurring a loss of some kind–either immediately or gradually over many days. For example, if you didn’t go to work for several days in a row, you would probably lose your job. If you didn’t take out the trash, eventually, it would overflow and your floors would gradually be covered with garbage.
Therefore, the first step in Day Planning is to assign the sustainment actions that should be done that Day. Since these are usually recurring actions, one effective way to do this is to work through their recurrence frequency, starting at the Day level and working your way up through larger blocks of time. Because Day-level recurring actions are so necessary and by definition must be done every day, one method is to just block out certain timeslots in your schedule for those actions, so you don’t have to keep reassigning them over and over.
After you’ve assigned all the Day-level recurring sustainment actions, then next step is assigning those that recur at a Week-level. For example, buying groceries. For certain such actions, it doesn’t matter much which day of the week you do it, only that you do it at some point during the week. But for such actions, it’s actually helpful if you can be consistent about which day of the week you assign them. That way, you don’t have to keep repeating the task of assigning such tasks to a day of the week. You do it once, then don’t have to think about it again. For example, if you assign the weekly action of buying groceries to Saturday, then you never have to do it again.
This same rule holds true for recurring sustainment actions that repeat at longer intervals. If there is an action that must be done monthly, then it’s helpful to always do it on the 1st day of the month, or the first Tuesday of the month, or similar, so you never have to think about which day to assign it to again.
After we’ve worked our way up through all levels (Day, Week, Month, Quarterly, Year) and assigned the appropriate recurring sustainment actions, the next step is to assign life improvement actions.
The number of available timeslots that remain after all the required sustainment actions have been assigned can vary from day to day. On some days, sustainment actions may consume most or even all of the entire day. But on others, there is more discretionary time available.
How to decide which life improvement or enjoyment action to assign to the first available timeslot?
Days of the Week
It’s important to remember is that every day of the week is different, so you need to adapt to what makes each day unique.
Most people work outside their home for a living, so they are busy working during the day Monday through Friday.
Friday evenings and Saturdays are usually the best times to get together with friends. But you can’t wait until Friday or Saturday to make plans with them because by then they will already have made them. So Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday are good days for making plans with friends.
The season matters too. In the northern hemisphere, days are longer in summer than winter, so there is more daylight in the evening then. Warmer too.
Your energy level changes throughout the day too, so you should try to do things that require more mental effort when you’re at your most alert. Early afternoon is usually not a good time for this.