How to Make a Daily Schedule for Yourself

Being an organized person is not by chance.  Contrary to popular belief, being organized isn’t a gift that some people have and others just skirt by in life.  No, it’s something that comes from diligence, skill (remember you can learn a skill), and keeping to a schedule.  Knowing how to create and stick to a daily schedule will really get you to the place you want to be personally and professionally.  

In this post, I will explain how to structure your day, how to make a daily schedule for yourself, and we’ll talk about the difference between a daily time schedule and a daily routine.  I’ll also give you an example daily schedule, my simple day planner you can download and go, and a daily schedule template so you can create your own.

How Do I Structure My Day?

Isn’t it great just to sleep until you are ready to bounce out of bed, then take as long as you want to shower, cook a nice breakfast, maybe watch a bit of youtube, then go wherever you’d like, maybe shopping or visit a friend?  That sounds like a vacation and actually the last time I went out of town, that’s basically what I did.  It’d be great if that was every day but for most of us, we need to have more structure.  

So how do you structure your day?  Making a daily schedule for yourself can be as simple as having a morning, midday, and evening routine.  

Watch as I set up a new evening family routine using the FREE Productivity Planner

Start by identifying recurring tasks and events in your day.  I mean besides breakfast, lunch and dinner of course.  Maybe every morning you have a business meeting or every afternoon you meet with friends at the library.  

Once you take note that every day you need to do certain tasks, then you can put everything in order of morning, noon and evening, or just early and late.  Early in the day I need to do my morning journal, work online, exercise and create a meal plan, late in the day I need to do household chores, meet with a friend and do the dishes after dinner.  These categories or blocks of time will give some reasonable structure to your day. 

How to Make a Daily Schedule When You Have Nothing to Do?

What if you want to make a daily schedule for yourself but you literally have nothing to do most of the time?  Well, first, I want to congratulate you on the superb amount of freedom you have!  I also want to tell you there is a lot more to life than you think and you can take advantage of this free time.  Your schedule may be set by the boundaries of school, work, dinner, and sleep, but don’t just fill in the blanks with television and scrolling.  

You definitely can be leveling up your skills for work or a future career, help a neighbor or someone in your community, volunteer to build community, friendships, and skills, or you can start a hobby.  

There are literally hundreds of things you can do with your time.  

Creating a daily time schedule can be really motivating and cause you to be super productive, but it isn’t always fit for everyone.  

Daily Schedule or Daily Routine

I have said it before and I’ll say it again, a routine is not a daily time schedule.  

When we are talking about a daily schedule we are referring to tasks or events by a timed schedule.  You can look at it and see mornings is this, afternoons is that.  Or you can see that at 10 o’clock we do this, 10:30 we do that, 11 o’clock is this, and so on.  Some people feel really confident and organized doing that kind of schedule.  

Some people feel overwhelmed and stifled. For those who feel unmotivated with a schedule, try routines.

A daily routine is simpler.  A routine says, in general, I do this then that.  Period.  There are no time restraints.  It’s as simple as point and click.  Now, if you are interested in knowing more I talk you through how to set up a daily routine in this post.

Here’s How to Schedule Your Day

Now for the fun part!  I always start out creating a daily schedule for myself with what could be called the perfect daily schedule.  Keeping in mind that there is no perfect schedule, I like to start with the intention of achieving the best day possible.

To create the best daily schedule for yourself you simply take the structure we laid out above and apply it to specific times.  What it means to set up a schedule is placing your necessary, daily tasks and pairing it with a time of day.  

Again, you can definitely set up your schedule by the Morning, Midday, Evening time blocks and leave it at that.  But the real meaning of scheduling is to place your regular to-dos into a time slot.  

Daily Schedule Example

Mornings

5:30 Wake up, Bible and Devotional Time

6:00 Exercise and Start Laundry

6:30 Shower and Prepare for the Day

7:30 Breakfast

8a Leave for Work and School

9am Start Work

10:15 Meetings

Afternoon

12n Lunch

2p Leave Work

3p Pick Up Kids

3:30 Snacks and Flip Laundry – Kids Go Outside

4:30 Chores

5:00 Homework, Start Dinner

Evening

6p Dinner

7p Time with Kids

8p Start Bedtime Routine

9:30 Journaling

10p Off to Sleep

This is similar to but not my personal schedule.  I talk about that in another post, if you really love planning like I do you can check it out.

Daily Schedule Template

Now I saw how other sites list the daily template as basically the same as the daily schedule example, and if you want that, I’ll have it below.  But I’m also going to give you a printable daily schedule template.  You can fill it out or use it how you would like, it’s a free download and you don’t even have to sign up.  

Just click here for your free daily schedule template.

But for those who want an idea of what to do, you can see the template below:

Mornings

5:30 _______________________________________

6a _________________________________________    

6:30 _______________________________________

7 __________________________________________    

7:30 _______________________________________

8 __________________________________________    

9 __________________________________________   

10 _________________________________________  

Afternoon

12n ________________________________________

1p _________________________________________    

2p _________________________________________  

3p _________________________________________  

3:30 _______________________________________

4p _________________________________________  

4:30 _______________________________________

5p _________________________________________

Evening

6p _________________________________________

7p _________________________________________

8p _________________________________________

9p _________________________________________

10p ________________________________________

11p ________________________________________

Other Things to Consider When Making a Daily Schedule

To prevent getting lost in this whole process, you might want to consider.

Creating Habits

A schedule is perfect for creating habits.  There are simple things that can be added to your schedule that can make your life flow much smoother.  Take a few minutes in the structuring step to brainstorm anything that you need to build a habit on but never seem to think detailed about.  Some examples of these are:

Detailed cleaning

Gardening

Self-care habits like dry brushing or learning new hairstyles

Reviewing and cleaning out your inbox

Ironing Clothes

Remember no task is too small, this is for you, so add whatever is important to you.

Top priorities

There are so many things to do each day, or at least that you would like to do, that it’s hard to settle with one type of schedule.  That’s okay and normal, but to put things in gear and actually create a daily schedule for yourself you are going to have to prioritize.  

Think about what’s important to most of your days, like running the dishwasher or having some downtime with family or friends.  

Time Blocks & Clustering

When you create a daily schedule, consider the blocks of time and group-like activities together.  We all have natural blocks of time in our day, maybe the after-lunch hours or the time between dinner and getting ready for bed.  Consider what happens in these time blocks and if you can cluster certain tasks together.  This can also help with creating strong habits.

To-Dos vs Must-Dos

I do want to clarify that your daily schedule is not the place to put in your daily to-dos.  That’s a different story.  

To-dos are things that pop up in your day or your week and they need to be taken care of but they are not on your regular schedule.  It’s not something you need to do daily, it is something you need… to… Do.  Not something you must do.

I think the confusion comes when a to-do is not a one-off task.  It may be an ongoing task that has many parts and takes days or weeks to complete.  

Sometimes these types of tasks can temporarily be added to your daily schedule.  

Only you can decide how integral the task (or set of tasks) is to your daily life.  But in most cases you can write your to-dos separately from your schedule and during your morning planning time, you can review this list and decide when you can work on it. 

Next Steps After You Create Your Daily Schedule

Now you should be feeling pretty confident about the way you are spending your days.  Making a daily schedule will give you more flexibility with your day because you are more in control.  

To make it easy for you to get started, I created this productivity planner that you can download for free.