The term Plan your day might trigger the thinking that Oh! I (or that guy) must be very busy. I do not have to be busy to learn how to plan my day. It is just another fun thing in life that I can try. It is cool if things are planned and organized before getting started.

When starting a day, everyone has different expectations depending on their job, their position, the nature of business they are in. Regardless, one must have something done in the day.

Being a developer and team leader of a team of 10, here are typical things that are expecting me when I start a day

1. Unread messages in MS Teams channels
2. Emails from pull requests (PR) that need to review
3. Emails from comments, discussions on the PR that I reviewed
4. Emails from product backlog items (PBI), bugs that team members asked
5. My own PBIs, Bugs that I have to work on today

Very short and simple list. But sometimes, I had problems.

1. Jumped between PRs
2. Forgot to answer some questions/discussions

Most of the time, they are not big deals. But it is cool to be better at it. Here are what I have come up with.

Plan your day

Everyday, before starting a working day, I spend around 25 minutes or less (a Pomodoro) to plan for the day. It is a habit that I want to develop and be disciplined about. Instead of chasing around my day, I step back and plan.

It is quite easy and simple to improve the siuation with existing free tools—Browsers and Microsoft To Do app.

Browser tabs

I usually have a couple of browsers opened. There are some tabs in each. The content is vary. Some are just news, some are technical bogs, some are social media.

Why did I not have one for planning purpose? Let’s try that. And it works for some weeks for me.

1. Open a new blank browser (I use Chrome)
2. Go through my emails. Skim through one by one and open the links in the email in that empty browser. It is important that I do not proceed them immediately. Just read through quickly and open the links
3. Sometimes I prioritize them by reordering the tabs

During the day, I close one by one. And for any new things come up while working, the same approach is used.

Microsoft To Do app

I use it to jot down my tasks as quick as possible. It has a cool feature called My Day that allows me to jot down things I have to do in that day.

1. Answer John questions on MS Teams channel
2. Ask Anna how things is going with the PBI 1234
3. ….

If my To-Do list is empty, I have a quite, good day.

Summary

It is simple but it works. All the tools are there and free

1. A browser: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, …
2. A to do app: Microsoft To Do is free and good if you have Microsoft account
3. A little bit of discipline