10 Day Planning Method

I’ve talked before about my monthly planning and monthly notes(goals), but a recent addition to how I break up my monthly activities is 10 Day Planning.

The concept of 10 Day Planning is to break the month into 3 sections:

-Early month (first 10 days aka 1-10)

-Mid month (11-20)

-Late month (21-30 or 31)

This is actually meant to replace weekly planning, essentially giving you 10 days instead of 7 to get everything done. Those extra 3 days can really be the push needed to get everything accomplished.

I, however, still follow weekly planning. So the way I implement 10 Day Planning is to simply break out my tasks into ones that are suited for early, mid and late month.

Let’s go over an example of what my 10-Day planning looks like.

I usually write all this out on a large sticky note (the size of an index card) and attach it to the beginning of my planner so every time I flip it open this list is visible and easy to reference.

Here is a re-creation of my 10 Day Planning setup for January:

Early	Mid	Late
-get eyebrows done -scrapbook previous month -read -write -catch up on tech news -start weights at gym -record video	-write/post blog post -set up feb journal -donate -write -edit/post video	-finish/finalize birthday gifts -scrapbook -write -jan wrap-up -listen to nct 127 discography

This month, I am proud to say I crossed off everything for early month. It’s not often that happens but I had a surprisingly productive start to this year.

If you wanted to replace weekly planning with 10 Day Planning, there are a few ways to do that. One of the more popular ways is to use the Alastair Method.

This method orients vertically where the days of the week go across the top and the events go down the side. You then mark with a circle or a checkmark or an x (whatever you like) on the row of the task and match it up with the column of the day you completed the task.

Here is an example of my Early Month planning using this system:

(The highlighted lines are just to make it easier to see which column I’m checking.)

This method is popular in journaling and can be applied to more than just 10 Day Planning. Here is a video that describes this method further: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKNTftOmxeU

I have been using 10 Day Planning since August and have really liked having focus areas to help complete all my goals for the month.

It means that at any given time I have a small, focused list of things to be working on. And as it’s mid-month now, this blog post is indeed being written and posted so that’s another check done!

If this is something you try out, let me know your thoughts in the comments! See you next month!