Time Management Hacks- Introducing the High Performance Planner

Are you interested in incorporating into your daily planner additional features such as tracking habits that lead to better performance in your daily life? The High Performance Planner created by one of the top minds in self-development, Brendon Burchard, is the ideal for you. I have been following Brendon for several years and couldn’t resist the opportunity to buy the High Performance Planner to achieve my daily goals while working on self-improvement simultaneously.

The planner is a hardback A4 sized book that comes in a variety of colours, and there is an explanation on how to use it effectively at the begining. It accompanies a book written by Brendon Burchard called High Performance Habits which reviewed what habits that highly successful people employed that led to that success in their respective fields. While this was not tailored specifically to medical professionals, the book is filled with insights that can be used by anyone who wants to excel in their career. In this post I have highlighted the various features of the planner and how they will help a busy doctor or medical student not only organise their day, week and month, but also grow as a person.

1. Mornings are the best time to set your objectives for the day

The morning mindset section is there for you to plan your task. One easy way of doing this is to complete it during breakfast time, I found this to be effective as it took me away from scrolling mindlessly on apps on my phone and focus my mind to tackle the day ahead.

2. Use colour to fill in your timetable

Anything can be scheduled into your timetable including work times, errands to do on your day off and revision schedules. I have used the planner specifically for study planning so that I can ensure that I do not compromise on the healthy habits such as exercise and self-care. It also helped me organise what topics I had to cover for the day and how long to spend on it. By committing a block of time to a specific topic I was able to ensure that I did not procrastinate on what to study and space out my learning.

Filling in your daily planner using different colours will make it eye-catching and helps you to easily see what your schedule looks like. To ensure that your day is balanced ensure that you schedule in time for meals, exercise and self-care as well as time with friends/family.

3. Top 3 goals and tasks for the day

There is a small section in the planner for this and you can choose anything as a goal, this can be as small as cleaning up you work desk to finishing the write up of your audit. Having a short to-do list will help you keep on track without feeling overwhelmed with too many tasks to complete.

4. Evening reflections

At the end of the day there are questions to reflect on how your day went and you can score yourself on the 6 essential habit domains (clarity, productivity, energy, influence, necessity and courage) which is described in Brendon Burchard’s book. This element is a refreshing way to reflect and with a quantitative review it was possible to track how I improved on these domains over weeks and months.

5. Read the book!

Brendon Burchard has published a book on High Performance Habits from which the planner was based. I would recommend anyone interested in understanding the reason behind why the planner was developed to read this book and gain a deeper understanding on living the best life you can.