Plan Your Day and Double Your Time
In the past, I did plan my mornings really well. The problem was that I would finish all of those tasks in the early hours of the day, and as I didn't plan anything to do in the afternoon nor nights, I would procrastinate a lot more!
But I did learn the lesson, and now I plan both mornings and afternoons (and sometimes nights). Actually, I find that planning my next day is something I really enjoy doing because it excites me for the next morning! (yup, I'm in a relationship with planning!).
Don't plan excessively nor reductively your day. Some people like to plan every second of their day, for me, it doesn't work that way. Because sometimes things that need to be done happen, and basically my day is all wrong.
Find the number of hours you can and want to work per day, and plan your tasks considering the amount of time you want to spend on them. Of course, if you only have 3 hours of free time tomorrow, you won't be able to clean all of your houses, read a book and start your new blog. Be rational when deciding your goals, but also believe that you can do everything you want! But let's put this into practice!
The Day Before:
Decide your 3 main goals;
Break those big goals into small ones
Decide which ones you want to do in the morning and the other ones in the afternoon and/or night.
Organise your workspace! Make sure the place you're going to work is well organised and ready for your daily tasks! You don't want to lose any time nor motivation cleaning or organising the space around you.
Yup! That simple! But very effectively, because it pretty much doubles the time you have for your day. Only because you plan and break your big tasks into small ones, which makes them much easier to follow and accomplish! Your "procrastination levels" will decrease exponentially, because you didn't plan to waste your time, did you? Me neither! It's important to decide what you want to do the day before so you won't be spending your morning energy organising that stuff!
Now that you have organised everything that you need to do the next morning, go to sleep! :P
In the Morning: As most of the things were already planned there are just a few things to adjust to make sure you feel motivated and actually, excited to complete your goals!
Read the list of daily tasks you made the day before, and think if what you will do during the day will keep you close from your month/year/life main goal! If not, re-think what you planned! I prefer to do this in the mornings because I have a lot more mental clarity to decide and analyse if the tasks for the day are according to my long term objectives. If not, I change them (only the ones I have the freedom to not do, of course)!
During the Tasks:
When I'm working on what I was planning, I like to set up alarms on my phone to make a pause to analyse if I'm actually making progress, or just procrastinating. If you see you aren't doing much because you're having trouble focusing, do other tasks that don't require the use of your brain that much!
At the end of the Day:
At the end of the day, review the progress you did throughout the day. If you see you didn't have time to all the things you planned on doing, consider you're over planning or you're just procrastinating a lot! This reviewing process will help you set new goals and test new ways to accomplish more and more each day! Also by rejecting methods, projects and goals that aren't leading to your final destination, you will be able to focus on only the ones that are important and that actually will make you succeed.