How I stopped planning my day to the minute to increase my flexibility and productivity

I used to plan my day very precisely, everyday. I would sit every morning, or the night before, and I would have a clear idea of what the day would look like for me. My calendar was full of activities to execute between a start time and an end time, I would have a TODO list accompanying the calendar, in case I needed to move the meetings around, or to add tasks, or to plan the day after. I would even have an additional list of goals, which were at a higher level than simple tasks to make sure that my long term goals fit with my day to day activities.

Don’t get me wrong, it was working, for the most part. However, with some experience I noticed issues and wanted to try something different.

Issue 1: Quantity of time spent is not equivalent to a quantity of work done

This is an issue that everyone is probably familiar with, but giving a time estimate to a task is difficult. When I was planning, I was always trying to assess how long it would take me to do the task, and then putting it neatly in my calendar. Making an accurate estimate takes a lot of time and energy, and is sometimes just guesswork. When the estimate turned out to be wrong (most often, I didn’t finish the task in the given time), I had to make a choice on the go on sticking to the schedule or sticking to my tasks list.