You know how things always take longer than you think and how your carefully thought out plan for the day too often goes to pot? You start the day and discover you allocated too much time to one thing and not enough time to others, or didn’t do things you’ve been putting off.

Yes, you can adjust. We all do. But there’s something else we can do before we start our day that makes it less likely we’ll need to adjust and more likely we’ll get our most important tasks done.

After you make your list, visualize the day ahead in as much detail as possible. 

Run through the list and imagine everything on it, as though you are doing it.

See yourself waking up, doing your morning routines, checking your list and calendar, and then making calls, responding to email, talking to your staff, reviewing and drafting documents—everything, until it’s time to call it a day.

See the entire day—what you do, how long it takes, and how it feels as you do it.

It’s a simple way to know if your plan is both realistic and likely to accomplish your most important tasks. 

Does anything seem unnecessary? Do you have enough time to do everything? Is there something you should do (or want to do) that’s not on the list?

Think of it as a dress rehearsal for the day. If you don’t like your performance (in your head), you can make adjustments before the day begins.

Or realize you need to call your understudy so you can take the day off. 

Over time, my weekly review has become more about tidying up (emails, notes, tasks, projects) and choosing tasks for the upcoming week rather than an actual review of what I did the preceding week and using that to plan the next.  

You too? 

One thing we can do to improve our “review” is to take a high-level inventory of the week by asking two questions: 

1. What went well? 
2. What can I do better? 

We can take a quick look at our calendar and/or task management app and note everything we did that week, what worked, and what didn’t, or drill down into specific projects or cases and identify our progress or lack thereof.  

We could record our results in a diary, or spreadsheet, so we have something to look back on. We could also gamify what we’re doing and reward ourselves when we follow our plan.  

Sometimes, it’s difficult to be objective about what we’ve done and we should consider asking others for feedback. Talk to a partner or friend, or email your subscribers, and ask what they think about your recent offer, article, action, or idea. 

What went well? What can improve? 

Perhaps the biggest benefit of tracking our activities this way is knowing that by doing that, we’ll develop the habit of thinking about what we’re about to do before we do it. 

How’s that for a novel idea?