Become a planning pro

Tyson's point is simple: It's important to be able to handle anything life throws at you. Hopefully none of us are in position to literally get punched in the face like boxers, but figuratively there are many ways life can punch us in the face—some ways that hurt more than a punch in the face—including:

• Work projects requiring many hours of overtime to complete
• The kids participating in so many activities you can barely get from one place to the next
• Family and friend obligations, especially around the holidays
• Unexpected expenses or health issues that happen and need to be handled
• Many of these items at the same time!

The stress from all of this causes emotional and stress eating, poor sleep and more. The next thing you know, we are harried, grouchy, eating what we can grab and just trying to make it from one day to the next. Sound familiar? I know I’ve been there.

In other words, once we leave that quiet place where we thought about what’s most important to us and our long-term goals, life goes back to happening fast and we can easily lose sight of our goals and be consumed by everyday life in the shuffle and hustle.

Building habits and daily planning are two top ways to maintain as much control over your life as possible and act as a bridge to your goals. The definition of a habit is behavior that, in time, becomes almost involuntary. Consider the act of brushing your teeth before you leave in the morning or checking your email when you get to work—each one was once learned and is now done without much thought. We build habits in the areas of health and fitness so that even if life does punch you in the face, there is a fair chance your habits will hold up under this pressure and help you handle the punch.

This ability to train yourself to overcome the punches is one of the true benefits of developing healthy habits. When you also strengthen your body over time through our program, this becomes a powerful combination.

The Science Behind Planning

Daily planning is a top way to build habits.  The science showing how your brain works helps explain one reason daily planning works. Neurotransmitters are chemicals that are responsible for different functions in your brain.  The neurotransmitter called dopamine helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers.

When you enter a task into a daily planner and then check it off as complete, your brain releases dopamine and this makes you feel good.

The brain also releases dopamine when people eat, take illicit drugs, play video games, and even use social media. Many of these activities are fine in moderation, but dopamine is closely associated with overeating, drug addiction, and other types of addiction.

As you can see, our goal is to use daily planning as a positive source of dopamine -- possibly even replacing some negative sources of dopamine.  By understanding how dopamine works, you can use this as a smart advantage in building your healthy lifestyle. I don’t want to say we hope you’ll become "addicted" to reaching goals because there is some danger in that too, but how about "very excited" about reaching one small goal at a time as a way to transform your life.

How to Steal My SparkTime Routine

I like to call my daily planning in the morning my "SparkTime." I use this time to connect my bigger-picture goals to my daily routine and figure out what I’ll try to do that day. This process helps me feel more in control of my destiny on a daily basis, and also helps me build healthy habits one at a time and importantly use existing healthy habits.  This helps me be more productive because I’m not floating from one thing to another; there is a plan in place. As a "Crisscross Effect," this feeling of control can also reduce stress levels, which lowers the odds of stress and emotional eating, one of the top issues our members face.

SparkCoach Planner

The SparkCoach planner is the main element on the page when you login.  SparkCoach lists your tasks for the day down the page. Here are points about using the planner:

• Tracking your nutrition and fitness plus some other coaching tasks are automatically included in your planner (but you can also delete any of these coaching tasks from the planner)
• This 28-day program is also included each day and will advance every time you login (so if you skip a day, the program will stay on the same day until you complete that day)
• The "Plan Your Day" task let’s you click that link to insert your own tasks for the day.

Tasks that you enter into the planner can be incredibly small and specific like eating breakfast, walking the dog, completing a work project, or any task you need to do today.  You can also choose to have tasks repeat on specific days if you’d like as a powerful reminder function.

Prioritization Tools

Prioritization is an important concept for daily planning.  If you don’t practice prioritization, then it is tempting to fill your day completing many simple yet relatively unimportant items.  Prioritizing helps you tackle your most important items for the day leading to higher productivity. But, do what works best for you.  I usually like doing a few simple tasks first to build momentum and then tackle a more challenging project.

One way you can prioritize is to re-order your tasks. Just click the "Prioritize & Edit Tasks" icon to do this.

To Do Now

The To Do Now feature is another way to prioritize. To enable this feature, simply click the same "Prioritize & Edit Tasks" icon and then click the red "X" at the bottom to make the green check mark show up.

You will then see another tab in your planner.  In this tab, you can place items that you would like to complete in the next 30-60 minutes. I love using this strategy as a motivational technique to work hard to complete the items in this list.  It’s a huge productivity trainer. By practicing putting a small amount of friendly pressure on yourself if you are comfortable with this, over time you will become dramatically more productive and have more fun!

Turn On To Do Now

Summary

Daily planning keeps me on track and acts as a coach. I do this almost every day. When I move a task to the completed section, it feels like a small reward from the dopamine release. Seeing tasks on this list keeps me accountable throughout the day, as I feel like I'm slowly and efficiently working towards accomplishments.

Using this routine, my mind doesn't get cluttered with a bunch of details and I'm free to do more thinking about bigger projects that will make a real impact on my life!

Are you ready to do daily planning as a tool to bridge your major goals to your daily routine and take more control of your destiny?