Plan Tomorrow Tonight 🗓

10 minutes

What it is

A short end-of-day ritual where you capture and prioritize tomorrow’s tasks before you sleep.

Daily planning studies: time-management planning helps next-day performance; planning for interruptions (contingent planning) keeps benefits even on chaotic days. PubMed+1
Sleep & anxiety: a Baylor experiment found that spending 5 minutes writing a to-do list before bed helped people fall asleep faster than journaling what they’d already done; more detailed lists helped more. (Less rumination → faster sleep → better next-day energy.) PubMed+2news.web.baylor.edu+2
Decision fatigue: reducing next-day choices up front is associated with better judgments and lower cognitive load. Planning the night before is one way to “pre-decide.” PMC+1

Over-specifying a volatile day: tightly time-boxing a day with many interruptions can make you feel behind by 10am. Include contingency buffers or use “if-then” branches. PubMed
Bedtime overactivation: thinking about unfinished tasks can keep you awake, but writing them down reduces that effect. Keep it brief and on paper, not in your head. PubMed
List-length traps: long wishlists create the planning-fallacy problem (too much for one day). Use a hard cap (see Ivy Lee method below). James Clear

Ivy Lee → Charles M. Schwab (Bethlehem Steel): the famous (possibly apocryphal) six-item, in-order daily list that executives prepared the day before. Modern write-ups popularized it again. James Clear
Cal Newport’s “shutdown ritual”: intentionally closing loops and sketching the next day to reduce evening work thoughts. Cal Newport
GTD (David Allen): stresses externalizing tasks and frequent review so your mind isn’t a storage device—planning the next actions ahead of time is core to the method. Getting Things Done®+1

Contingent daily plan: list the top tasks and pre-decide what you’ll do “if X interrupts.” (E.g., “If the client pings between 10–12, I’ll triage for 10 min, then resume Block A.”) This preserves performance under interruptions. PubMed
Ivy Lee (6 items max): pick up to six important tasks, rank them, start at #1 tomorrow, move leftovers down. Great antidote to over-planning. James Clear
Time-blocking next-day: assign calendar blocks to 1–3 priority tasks; it pairs well with the list. (Evidence base is indirect but aligns with daily-planning findings.) todoist.com+1
GTD Weekly Review + nightly micro-plan: keep the system clean weekly; each night only select the next day’s “next actions.” Getting Things Done®

Inbox dump (1 min) – write everything buzzing in your head for tomorrow. Paper or a single app. (Offloading reduces rumination.) PubMed
Pick 3 (1 min) – choose the Three Most Important Tasks (MITs) that, if done, make the day a win. Cap the list to fight the planning fallacy. James Clear
Time + trigger (2 min) – assign each MIT a start time and, if helpful, an if-then cue: “At 9:00 in my office, I will draft the proposal.” (That’s an implementation intention.) nyuscholars.nyu.edu
Contingencies (1 min) – write 1–2 “if interrupted, then…” rules. PubMed
Shutdown phrase (10 sec) – consciously close work (Newport-style) to prevent after-hours mental loops. Cal Newport
Place the plan (10 sec) – put it where you’ll see it at breakfast—don’t rely on memory. Getting Things Done®

Be concrete (“call Maria about invoice at 11:30 after stand-up”), not vague (“work on finances”). That’s the implementation-intention edge. nyuscholars.nyu.edu
Write it down, don’t just think it—especially near bedtime. PubMed
Expect chaos: make one MIT truly “must-do,” and keep 20–30% of the day unscheduled for surprises. PubMed
Review weekly so your nightly plan always points at the right goals. Getting Things Done®