05 Plan The Day, Win The Day

In today's episode, we break down a fast, practical morning ritual that reclaims your time, reduces decision fatigue, and turns scattered effort into clear, measurable wins you can feel by the end of the day.

We start with the simplest shift that changes everything: naming one decisive outcome that makes the day a win even if chaos hits. From there, we add two to three essentials that support your goals, then put everything on the calendar so intention meets a specific hour. You’ll hear how time blocking converts ideas into finished work, why closing loops after meetings protects momentum, and how small buffers absorb the inevitable surprises without blowing up your plan. Instead of guessing what to do next, your calendar becomes a reliable cue that moves you forward.

We also talk about protecting the first hour to plan and begin your one big win, designing your day around energy, and making peace with interruptions by planning for them. The result is a scoreboard you can trust: real outcomes over busyness, progress over reactivity, confidence over chaos. If you’ve ever ended a day wondering where the time went, this is your reset.

If this helped you take back your mornings, subscribe, share the episode with a friend who needs it, and leave a quick review so others can find the show. What will your one big win be today?

Blinn Bates - BlinnBates.com

Woods & Bates, P.C. - woodsandbates.com

Chapters

• 1:00 Why Your Day Feels Lost
• 1:14 Planning Creates Control
• 1:45 The Cost Of Winging It
• 2:13 A Simple Daily Planning Ritual
• 2:56 Time Blocking For Big Wins
• 3:11 Plan For Interruptions
• 3:56 Protect The First Hour
• 4:45 Reduce Decision Fatigue
• 4:59 Set Your Scoreboard And Win
• 5:19 Take Five Minutes And Begin

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:30

Welcome back. Have you ever reached the end of your day and wondered where did this day go? If you have, the problem isn't your effort, it's your planning. Today I want to share why taking a few minutes in the morning can completely change the trajectory of your day. So the idea is that planning is going to create the control of your day that you need. Most days fall apart because we're reacting all the time. We do not build those days with intention. First thing we do is we wake up, we pick up our phone, we open our email, and we start doing other people's priorities. Planning your day flips that equation on its head. And when you plan your day, you're the one in the driver's seat. And even if you can take five to ten minutes in the morning, the clarity you're going to have the rest of the day is going to be profound. So if we're not planning our day, we're winging it. Without a plan, we're in survival mode. We're constantly shifting tasks. We have what's called decision fatigue at the end of the day. We never know what we're going to do next. We feel really, really busy, really overwhelmed, but we're not accomplishing anything really meaningful. This isn't a very good strategy. Uh, it's just hope, which is disguised as productivity. And what we want to do is we want to plan our day. So I'm going to give you what I hope can become a ritual in your days and a repeatable structure to plan your day for success. So the first thing we want to do is identify what is our one thing that we want to accomplish today that's going to make us feel like today we won. Today we won the day. Everything else goes sideways. If we've accomplished this one thing, we've done well. And then from there, we want to pick another couple things, couple tasks, a couple essentials that we want to accomplish that day. These can be small, medium tasks that support our role, support our responsibilities, our goals. And these things are going to create momentum. So we're going to start with wins and then we're going to keep winning. The way that we're going to do this is we're going to block time out on our schedule. So if we assign a task, a place on our calendar, we're going to do this from 10 o'clock to 11 o'clock, and we're going to get our one big thing done. Again, what gets calendared gets accomplished. So we're going to anticipate ahead of time that there's going to be obstacles in our day. Things are going to come up. Clients are going to call with problems. We're going to have the school call with a sick child, hopefully, not a child that's in trouble. Meetings are going to come up. You know, we're going to have to have some margin for travel, things like that. But we're going to plan around these interruptions instead of being ambushed by these. So if I have an important client meeting from nine to 10 o'clock, I know that. I'm going to build in maybe 30 minutes after that meeting so I can collect my thoughts, write down my notes, assign some next tasks, whatever I need to do, I'm going to protect that time to do that. And then I know this is what I'm doing during that time. That loop is closed. I'm ready to move on. If you can, I'm going to suggest that you protect the first hour of your day to plan, to get things ready, to prepare yourself for what you've decided you're going to accomplish on that day. And then start in on your one big thing that you want to accomplish. If we can get that done first, right at the beginning of the day, great. So this process is going to help us reduce decision fatigue. We know where we're supposed to go. We know what's next. Our calendar is going to ding. It's going to tell us this is what we need to do. It's going to start to create momentum and our wins are going to start to compound. And it's going to build our confidence. Planning is leading ourselves. So if we're planning, the things that we're planning are going to align with what our priorities are and not somebody else's. And it gives us a way to say, here's what I accomplished today. I hit the finish line. I didn't just survive. I wasn't in survival mode and reactivity mode all day. Planning your day is how you set that scoreboard to know at the end of the day I've won. So tomorrow morning or today, even better would be today. Take five minutes before you open your email, before you check your phone, plan your day. Identify your big win. What are my essentials? Get those calendared and watch how differently your day unfolds compared to how it normally would. If you plan your day, you really are going to maximize your time. And over time, you're certainly going to elevate your life. See you next time.