Tool #3/5: “Today’s plan” (Seth’s Student Success Toolkit)

Today’s video is 9 minutes. Click to watch.

Tool #3: Summary of Today’s Plan

If your executive function skills aren’t exactly stellar, you probably resist planning. GOOD! Because it’s normal and okay! BUT, plan anyway, because it will help you accomplish the goals that matter to you for the rest of your life. The habit of making a daily plan WILL help you get more on top of everything and WILL help you feel more confident.

How long does daily planning take?

3-5 minutes a day.

What age students should learn to plan?

This is important for all ages. You can simplify the process for younger kids by customizing your own template. The older they are, the bigger the to-do list, often 3-5 items per night for most high schoolers.

How do I make a daily plan the easy way?

  1. Make a template, here’s my latest pdf version: Daily Plan Checklist
  2. You might include the following:
    1. Intention
    2. #1 Priority
    3. To-do list of other things you need to do today
    4. Backburner area for other tasks that come to mind that you “might” get to
  3. Print and cut about 90 per semester (there are 4 plans per page, so 25 copies is plenty).
  4. Put them in a convenient place, like your study space.
  5. When you get home from school, take 3-5 minutes to focus on planning the rest of your day. Look at your planner or on the teacher websites and list everything important on your daily plan.

Try This

  1. Download the PDF: Daily Plan Checklist
  2. Customize it to meet your needs or just make your own.
  3. Print and cut several.
  4. Start using them every single day when you get home from school to plan the night.
  5. You can chunk tasks down into smaller tasks. This can be very helpful.
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Reading the transcript? Great! We’re currently uploading hundreds of transcripts so you can read them asap, but they are NOT all edited yet. This is a big process. If you notice anything wrong and want to help us, feel free to click this Google Form to share it. Thanks so much for pitching in! – Seth

Video transcript:

Hey, welcome back. This is stuff again. I’m here to share with you. Today’s tool which is called today’s plan. Now, notoriously my students do not like planners and they do not like planning. There are a few of them that do but most of my students don’t like to plan they actually like to be spontaneous in free and go with the flow and planning can feel restrictive. I can feel confusing but in order for you to accomplish the things that you need to accomplish in life so that you can have an awesome life where you’re free to do anything. You want have any job you want create the lifestyle you want. You must figure out a way to manage a lot of details and tasks that you don’t want to do. Well something that you’ll need to develop eventually is to have today’s plan. So you do unfortunately need to have a plan or system of some sort to plan for long-term things like weeks in months. But you also need to be making a daily plan. I’m sorry to break it to you but it really is necessary. And here’s why you’re a very right-brain creative thinker and non linear thinker somebody who doesn’t fit inside the Box generally speaking. You’re a very abstract thinker which is a great thing, but when it comes to details and to remembering what needs to be done in managing small details of multiple things, especially when you start getting into middle school high school and college you need a way to make things concrete, you need to take them from the abstract right-brain and move them into a concrete way so that you can manage it in one of the best ways to make it concrete is by making a daily plan. Don’t worry. It’s not that difficult. I’ll break it down for you right now. First of all part of the reason you dislike planning and planners is because you struggle with executive function things that have been talking about executive function, but that’s the brain’s ability to execute tasks but the brain’s ability to do stuff with a lot of details complex things like homework or writing a paper getting it from start actually getting it in the teacher’s hand. There’s a lot going on and that is challenging for you. So it’s just not fun. So that’s part of the reason that this is so Troublesome, but the good news is that it’s a legitimate thing that has to do with brain development and your brain is still developing and it will get better and better. So that’s good to know. Now in order for you to be able to use a method like it’s to make today’s plan. It has to be simple. It also has to be useful. You aren’t the type of person who will just do something that you’re told to do. Generally you need to find meaning in it have to be useful to you. And if somebody’s just telling you to do something and it doesn’t feel authentic or useful you don’t want to do it. So it has to be simple useful. And finally you have to have some ownership. You have to create your own style for making today’s plan or for your folders are for any system that you have you have to have ownership. You have to feel like it’s yours. You have to be able to create a style for planning that works for you. Now that somebody just tells you how to do it. So I’m not going to tell you exactly how to do it. I want you to make your own I’m going to give you some guidelines of what works though because I do this all the time with student, but you’re going to create your own style of this. You got that buying also and that means that you believe in it and it’s hard to get buying because you want to resist it again because you dislike it. It’s not fun. So to get the buy-in is hard, but you probably know that if you did have a method for having a daily plan, it probably would help your life. I can’t convince you of that. You really have to have the buy-in though the feel like this is valuable. So I’m telling you it is but you got to be there. Now. How do we do this here is half. Basically you’re going to be making a little piece of paper that says today’s plan on it the ones I use with my students are really small really easy really manage while you can make them on colored paper white paper anything you want but I make just I will take a chart and I’ll have it on my site for you and I make a 4 by 4 chart and I have the template on that chart and then I cut up a bunch of them for my student. So basically, here’s how it works. The first thing that I do with my students that works really well as I have them set an intention for your plan for the day. So let’s say you come home from school you sit down and you write out you start to write out your plan. The first thing that you want to write out is what your intentions so that could be to be focused and not have any distractions. Maybe you’re going to use a website blocker to block websites that are distracting to you. Maybe you’ll turn off your cell phone. Whatever it is. Your intention might be to finish the most important your intention might be to enjoy yourself while you’re study or to do it anyway, or to relax while you’re studying whatever your intention is. I have my students choose their intention. It’s really really powerful because it sets in motion your brain wanting to do that thing to actually writing out the intention helps the brain actualize that intentions very very power. May not seem like it but if you try it for a while you’ll see that it is after you write your intention you write your number one priority for the day. If you get nothing else done that day or that evening. What’s the most important thing? Is it studying for a test drafting a paper doing a specific homework checking your grades emailing a teacher for support. I don’t care what it is. But what do you think is the most important thing? So that’s the next thing we look at because if you get nothing else done, at least you hopefully have the most important thing done. Next you just start a simple to-do list today. I need to do math page 32 numbers 1 through 20 today. I need to do write my draft. I need to finish my science lab. I need to do my French homework. Whatever it is. Just make a very simple to-do list of your homework and studying and projects are papers for that evening that you need to work on and finally is the back burner if you are sitting there and you think of something that’s not exactly relevance, but you want to remember it. You need to remember it Road in the little back burner section of your paper. And that could be remember to get Mom a birthday present or that you have to purchase something at the store or whatever. It is anything that’s backburner. You want to make a phone call or remember to email someone just throw those things on this little back burner with so again, here’s how it works. Downforce all your intention. Done your number one priority. If nothing else happens that thing is going to happen today. No matter what course you’re not always going to do it. You’re not perfect. Don’t be really heavy on yourself of that stuff. But you’re going to want to at least get it down next. What are the other things you need to do next? Is there anything on the back burner? So Let’s try this, but I want you to try today. Is to download the template that I have that will give you this. This song that is playing right here copied and pasted into your own Google doc or where dock tweak it the way that you want to make it. Look how you want me to say the word that you want France about 40 of them and there are four page. So that’s printing about 10 pages or get him caught get about 10 pages copy cut them up so that you have a stack of about 40 of these little slips of paper. Put them in a really good spot. I could be on the desk. It could be in the backpack. You could have some on your desk some in the back pack does matter get them in a good spot where you’re going to be able to easily access them cuz they’re no good to you. If you can’t find them use them daily. Finally when you use them daily take about 3 minutes my tickets to 5 minutes to sit down and just focus on what do I need to do today and write out your today’s plan? So, that’s what I want you to try get a tailored how you like it and try to use it. This is very powerful. I cannot tell you how powerful this is. It helps my students take control of their lives and feel more on top of things feel more confident and makes the abstract become concrete. Good luck to you and I’ll see you soon. Take care.