Design your perfect Day

to unlock your perfect life.

Design your perfect day by Magicthreadworks

Everyone wants to live a perfect life where they are healthy, happy and enjoying every bit of it. Ironically, we always envision this perfect life, sometime in the future — as we always have some or the other excuses for not being there already. Say, right now I don’t have enough money, I don’t have time, there are major commitments, maybe once they get over I will live my perfect life.

Some years back a profound thought came to me, maybe my perfect life is not in the future, maybe I can live it right now too. Most of us just have a vague idea of what perfect life means to us, the fact is, none of us really say down to define what a perfect life will mean to us. As Loial in the “Wheel of Time” says “Always in such a rush, these Humans. Never taking the time to properly prepare for what they are walking into”

This is precisely what our problem is, we just don’t plan. We venture into our biggest project, to have a great life, without any detailed roadmap or design and hope it will eventually happen. The advantage of planning is, when you start putting things into tangible actions, the outcome we are striving for doesn’t look that difficult or far away anymore.

The seed of a thought that the perfect is within my reach had taken root, and what added water & sunlight to germinate it further was the book “ Atomic Habits “. The book simply asks you to break down your big goals into tiny chunks of a habit which requires minimal effort and just you consistently everyday with 1% improvement. It is a super simple concept which works like a charm. So all that was left for me was to design my day with the habit I would want in my perfect day, to start with, and then keep iterating everything else around it.

An ideal life is nothing but an ideal day lived with a higher intensity than last.

How to design your perfect day?

Step 1: Write down how your current day looks like.

Write in terms of bigger blocks, where your time is going. This gives you a perspective of what you are actually doing where you are going wrong. Always remember the only currency you have is attention. The purpose you pay attention to, will grow and rest will fade away. You always keep asking, “Why am I not able to finish things?” “ Why am I always overwhelmed with work? “ “Where is my mind?” Once you do this exercise you will see all your answers on the paper.

Step 2: Identify Key Life Blocks and map them on your day

There are 4 key life blocks everyone would have in their day.

A. Health - includes movement, workout, food and sleep

B. Family — includes time for kids, partner, extended Family & Friends

C. Passion — Essentially “Me” time, includes time for Entertainment, Learning, Growth, Self Care, Hobbies, Passion Projects

D. Work — time for your core work which takes most of your time and pays your bills.

When I first did this exercise I realised though there is so much I wanted to achieve in life, I was literally not doing anything about it on my regular day. I wanted to become healthy, but I was not taking any steps about it. I was feeling strain in the connection with my family and I realised we have stopped spending time together. My passion projects feature in my regular day just as a day dream.

What exactly was I doing all day? I was either working, binging Netflix or scrolling reels. There was no positive movement in any sphere of my life, which was stressing me out and making me completely disinterested in work. I was essentially trying to escape from everything by drowning myself in mindless content and then to make my miserable self happy, was doing stress eating and mindless shopping. Eat, Shop, Scroll, Repeat. That was all, my life was about. You have to realise, the stress that you are going through is not because there is so much to do but because you are not doing things that you actually want to.

Step 3: Block time for important things first.

Now prioritise the four blocks of life based on what you deem most important in your life. In my case Family comes first and then Health, Passion and Work in that order. For you it might differ but most of us Health or Family will feature in the top two spots. If they are so important for us, does that importance reflect in how we live our lives? If most of us say that what we are doing is our family, doesn’t qualify time with your family, should feature as the first block you plan for. This time need not be long but this time definitely needs to be non-negotiable. Everything needs to be pushed aside to make this time happen and not the other way around.

So start your day with important things first. Block non negotiable time slots for important activities. Now plan your day around it. An hour and half max for each time block is more than enough. You don’t need to do a lot of things everyday. There is no need to do too much of the one thing every day either. Balance is the key. A little and consistent progress everyday will take you miles. You actually see things as reality which were only a yearning previously. You might argue that not enough time is left for other things after that. It is completely fine if you have less time for non important things. You will still feel satisfied and have more energy and focus for lesser important things because you already had a productive day and did things you actually wanted to. In my case work was my fourth priority.

I realised that time is stretchable. If we give an activity four hours, we will finish it in four hours but if we give it one hour, our mind will work overtime to finish it in the stipulated period. Lesser the time you have for an activity more focused you would be to complete it and with a sense of urgency. It’s a win-win.

Bonus Tip : Always plan from the night before.

Whenever we make a plan, we end up planning from the time we wake up. We set a time and the first line item is always — Wake Up. I am not a morning person. When it comes to actually implementing the plan, I have failed on this very first step time and again. No count of snoozes on my alarm clock can make me get up on time. Even if I do I feel drowsy all day long, not really feeling like following the plan. The reason was simple. I am a night owl. I keep scrolling on my phone till late every night. If I sleep late it is very difficult for me to get up in the morning and have motivation for the day.

Here is the hack which changed everything. Plan for the night before. You have to prep for the day for it to be successful. Trust me, sleeping on time and stop scrolling on your phone will give you so much time and energy in your day.

Final Thoughts:

Start now and just be at it. It’s not like you are going to have a perfect day tomorrow just because you have planned for it. I have been doing this for almost four years now, it’s only now that I can say I have a better grasp over things.

It’s not like everything is perfect now. I have not reached my goal yet but I am inspired for my day. I actually do so many activities everyday which were just part of my imagination some time back. Let me take you in on a secret here, when you are actually taking action — the comparison just goes and shoots itself in its head. Now you are not jealous of people anymore, you see them as inspiration because you know you are going to achieve your own goal in time. Now I don’t get upset when I am detailing, I just pull myself back to do the basics. Now I have a blueprint, a plan.

If you want to discuss this further or want my help in planning a perfect day for you let me know in the comments to block an hour-long session.