I came to conclusion many years ago that in order for a planning routine to have staying power for me it had to be:<p>1. Real simple
2. Require minimal effort<p>If it fails both of those criteria, chances are you won't stick with it for too long. The planning itself becomes something you have to plan into your schedule, for example from the post:<p>"The bulk of my weekly planning takes place on Sunday evening."<p>Sorry but that's not going to work for me.
I developed a similar system to this last year, but instead of defining my tasks for the week, I'd just choose the three most important tasks I wanted to get done for the day at the beginning of each morning.<p>If I got my three tasks done, it was a productive day and anything else I did was gravy. If I didn't, I forced myself to look back at what I spent my time on that day. The three-task system helped me get focused to avoid "fake work" like meetings, emails, etc.<p>I eventually coded it up into a simple tool for myself that I still use every day. I haven't focused on marketing so I'm honestly the only user, but I'd love if the folks here could check it out and tell me what you think - <a href="http://three.do" rel="nofollow">http://three.do</a>
- I spend a few minutes before bed reading/thinking about the thing I'm going to do the next morning.<p>- The sooner I start hacking after waking up in the morning the better.<p>- I wake up an hour earlier than necessary and hack from a coffee shop (with a press pot) before my commute starts.<p>- I budget the time during my commute (train) in 5-10 minute goal-oriented intervals.<p>- I listen to Bach piano contrapunctus if the ambient noise gets distracting. I find it hard to get enter the zone quickly with a hiphop mix or any kind of hipster music.
I wake up to my hacker alarm clock, quickly hack myself up and go to shower, I hack through it quickly and hack myself dry with a towel. Then I proceed to hack my socks, pants and other hacker essentials before hacking my commute to work.<p>I'm already late, so I need to hack myself and sprint to the trainstation.<p>Hacking away at some wordpress themes and finally a master hack to change the colorscheme of my xterm.