There is no shortage of experts ready to say that daily planning is necessary regardless of your station in life. They are quick to assert that everyone needs a daily planner to organize their thoughts and prioritize tasks. But is it true? More to the point, how important is effective daily planning to you?
Truth be told, nearly all of us engage in basic planning even if we don't write things down in a journal or high-performance planner. When we go to bed at night, we do so with a plan to get up in the morning. We plan to eat a couple of meals every day. We plan to take a shower, go to work, etc.
Even if our plans are not written down in a coherent manner, they exist in our brains. That brings us back to the question of daily planning in a formal sense. Is it important to you to write things down? Do you have an insatiable desire to organize your thoughts on paper or in a digital space?
Why People Use Daily Planners
Some people are extremely gifted in the area of organization. They are capable of organizing just about anything in their minds, without the need for paper or digital planning spaces. If you are that type of person, kudos to you for what you can pull off. If you're not that kind of person, you might need something like a high-performance planner.
People use paper and digital planners for lots of reasons. For example:
- They find using a planner reduces daily stress
- Prioritizing tasks helps them get more things done
- Using a daily planner makes them feel more prepared
- Daily planning trains their brains to think in a more organized way.
There are any number of reasons for using a daily planner that are not on this list. Furthermore, some people go beyond basic daily planning to include habit tracking and daily brain dumps. Still others throw daily journaling into the mix.
Daily Planning with ADHD
It has been our experience that people with ADHD find daily planning helpful. There are exceptions to the rule of course, but daily planning helps ADHDers overcome some of the systemic problems associated with the condition. Unfortunately, most daily planners are not designed with ADHDers in mind. As such, they don't work well for ADHDers.
We’re happy to say that we have designed an ADHD daily planner that overcomes the weaknesses one-size-fits-all planners are known for. For example, our planner has no dates. Why? Because not every ADHDer looks at dates the same way. The same goes for calendars.
Our planner is designed to be so flexible that you can use it in any way that makes sense to you. You can plan every minute of every day or just provide yourself an overview. You can prioritize your tasks by time, date, or any other criteria. You can even use our daily planner to facilitate your daily brain dump.
We All Plan Differently
The sum total of this discussion is that we all plan differently. As such, we all assign a different level of importance to formal planning with paper or digital tools. Some people are content with basic planning using little more than sticky notes or pieces of scrap paper. Others need to write everything down in a power planner or paper journal. Still others keep everything in their heads.
We all plan to some degree. It is part of being human. The good thing is that we don't all have to do it the same way. So how important is effective daily planning to you?