hey what's up guys so in today's video
I'm gonna go over my entire planning
system that I use to get things done now
there's one thing I've learned over the
past like 6 to 7 years of experimenting
with tons of different apps and
productivity systems and reading the
daily habits of famous people it's that
productivity is a very individual thing
we all have our own little
idiosyncrasies and weird quirks in ways
that we like to work so different
systems are going to fit different
people and your system might be a weird
Frankenstein amalgamation of different
systems that you seen from other people
which mine is all this goes to say that
you don't need to look at my system and
think that it needs to be your system
but you might find specific components
that work well within the things you're
already doing with that caveat out of
the way I'll start this off by showing
you that my system has three specific
tiers tier one which is for idea capture
and organization tier 2 for weekly
planning and tier 3 for daily planning
where all the actual action happens so
tier 1 I call idea capture because I
don't think calling it task capture does
it justice now on a task management
sense at least to me an idea is any
piece of information that you want to
process and take action on later and
that could include a specific task but
it could also include an event or a
free-form idea that doesn't exactly have
concrete action items attached to it yet
but that you still want to save since
ideas can take a number of different
forms I use several different apps to
capture them based on their category or
action type and then process them as
efficiently as I can so specific tasks
or action items go into todoist and I've
used a number of different to do
managers over the years like wunderlist
and productive and all sorts of other
kinds of apps and I've kind of settled
on to do us now because it's very
minimalist it has a clean design I can
use labels to assign contexts energy
levels or locations to my tasks and it
also syncs between all my different
devices events will go into Google
Calendar which I probably using for six
or seven years at this point and if I'm
out and about away from my computer and
just have my iPhone that I use an app
called sunrise calendar which syncs
nicely to it anything that's not a task
or an event will go into Evernote where
I have lots of different notebooks and I
kind of consider Evernote my second
brain it's where all my ideas get stored
so I don't have to keep them jumbled up
in my head and then I can process them
later now tier one is all about idea
capture so I'm using these apps on a
daily basis when everything's come up to
capture things quickly but then I don't
really have to mess with them later on
Sundays I have my planning sessions or
actually take these ideas from all these
different tier ones
and figure out what I'm gonna do with
them in any given week and I do all that
in my handy environ Oats sustainable
cardboard not very attractive looking
notebook now on the current week's page
I put the week's date to the top and
then I make three different sections
events tasks and maybe so events are
things that I have scheduled on the
calendar maybe meetings with people or
events I want to go to conferences
things like that and I'll write them
down there to keep them separate from
the actual tasks the task section makes
up the bulk of the weekly plan and it
basically holds all the different tasks
I want to get done in a given week and
at the top I always have the video in
the podcast because I'm a content
creator but I'll also have lots of
little things that just need to get done
and finally the maybe section holds some
tasks that I'm not exactly sure I'll
have time to do but I'd like to get done
if everything goes well and that brings
us to tier 3 which is my daily plan so
when I wake up at 6 a.m. every morning
and come into my office and I look at
both the notebook and my calendar and
from that I create a daily plan on my
whiteboard now the daily plan is all
about action I wanted to drive me
through the day and take away all
ambiguity over what I should be doing at
any given time to help with that I try
as hard as I possibly can to write the
daily plan in the exact order that I
want to do the tasks and I also estimate
at what time I should get each one done
using a fudge ratio to account for the
planning fallacy and this helps me with
lots of practice mind you be able to
basically predict how many tasks I'll be
able to get done in a given day using
the time estimates also puts a bit of
time pressure on me which makes me work
a bit more efficiently and that's always
helpful now as I go through my day and
complete tasks I'll check them off on
the whiteboard and then once I'm
finished with my work for the day I'll
also check off everything I got done in
the weekly plan so hopefully you enjoyed
this video and got something out of it
if you've got other planning tips I
didn't mention here want to talk about
your own system then let me know about
it down in the comments otherwise I will
see you next week hey there thanks for
watching this video about my planning
process now I just like let you know
that I also wrote a hundred plus page
book on getting better grades in Chapter
four of that book is all about planning
so if you want some additional tips then
click the picture of the book and I will
send you a free copy you want to get
more videos every single week on being
an awesome college student and hit that
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and you can also find any of the
resources I talked about in this video
at the companion blog post which you can
find by clicking right there if you
missed last week's video is equipment
playing so definitely check it out and
if you want to connect with me i'm
@tomfrankly on twitter or you can leave
a comment on this video and let me know
if you have other ideas for new videos
thanks for watching