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Hey {{ first name | there }}! Welcome back to The Flow by Flocus. If you’re new around here, welcome! 👋 You can catch up on our previous editions right here.
This week: Forget about your “ideal” day — what’s up with your “default” day(s)? How to discover what your daily rhythms really look like, assess whether they’re serving you, and power things up accordingly. Suit up for this one, friends; we’re digging deep!
😌 Your “Ideal” Day…
Your ideal day = Your daily schedule when you’re at your most productive, or in top form
Having an “ideal” schedule to refer back to can ground you at times, sure. But it’s also super rigid (which isn’t how life works), introducing unnecessary pressure.
Your ideal day includes things like what times you’d like to wake up, eat breakfast, work on creative projects, and hang out with your faves.
It also tends to cram too many things, from too many areas of life, into a wee 24 hours.
👀 Your “ideal” day doesn’t account for…
🪫 Low energy levels: Your ideal day assumes your focus, energy, and optimism levels are 100% throughout the whole day. When was the last time you felt that was true for you?
🤹 The heavy or delicate items you’re juggling: Your ideal day probably doesn’t include the emotional hangover after a major fight with a friend. This is just one example of something heavy you might be carrying that can disrupt things for longer than you’d like.
⚖️ Those times when you’re balancing two difficult truths of life: So many of our biggest challenges are gray, not black-and-white. They require us to accept that 2 opposing things can be true at the same time — simple in theory, nearly impossible in practice.
🫂 Entire seasons dominated by grief, burnout, illness, or trauma: Would you expect every day to be “ideal” after you’ve lost someone you love? Or when you’re so burnt out that you can barely function? (We certainly hope not!)
A better exercise: Map your “default” days instead.
Read on to learn what those are, how to do it, and why aiming for the moon instead of the stars is more realistic for making progress.
👕 …Versus Your “Default” Days
Your default day = Your daily schedule at your baseline / average / most realistic
Unlike your ideal day, your default day gets measured as you go, instead of mapped out ahead of time from a place of murky assumption.
You may even find you have several different default days depending on which areas of life require your focus and attention.
🤝 Default days work better than ideal days because…
🕰️ They require you to track how you actually spend your time: And not just how you want to spend your time, or how you think your days are going.
They account for the messiness of real life: Things happen, all the time. We get knocked off course constantly by emergencies and relationship hiccups — but rarely will we find any of that messiness in our “ideal” day.
🏔️ They give you perspective on how much effort and time your responsibilities take: How often have you found yourself frustrated because something took way longer than you thought, which cut into other stuff? Yeah, us too.
With all this in mind, how do you find out what your default days really look like? Read on for 3 strong starting points.
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Now, here’s how to figure out your default days!
How to Measure & Assess Your Default Day(s)
❤️🔥 Start with what you know to be true
How are you actually spending your time? What challenges are just up ahead of you? What hardships are you enduring right now, and when do you expect them to “end” or “resolve”?
Whatever insights you have on these questions, and wherever else these prompts may lead, do some exploring in a journal (digital or physical).
Getting these “truths” out of your head and into a note gives you something to refer back to when you’re not sure what to do next.
⏱️ Track your time for a week (or longer)
You won’t actually know how your days unfold unless you measure them. (Read that again.)
While there’s no need to be to-the-minute with this, the more accurate you are, the more clarity you’ll gain.
We also encourage you to push back against the notion that time-tracking is purely associated with work (where you may have a boss, teacher, or administrator watching your every move).
Rather, approach your new tracking habit with curiosity and willingness. To add a pinch of fun and competition, you may even want to estimate how long you think something will take before starting your stopwatch.
🪣 Consider several default days for different areas of life
The truth is, some days of our lives require us to focus on one specific “bucket” or area of life.
Examples: Major home renovations / Illnesses impacting loved ones / Exam season
It would be literally impossible to live our “ideal” days — where we cram in everything from work to fun to fitness — in times like these.
To get ahead of whatever’s currently going on in each area of your life, try mapping out a default day for each.
Remember, flexibility and agility are key. Build your schedules with the knowledge that they’ll grow, evolve, and change over time (right alongside you!).
🪅 Flocus Picks
A curated list of things worth sharing.
How to Balance 2 Hard Truths at The Same Time (The Flow Archives) — Imagine yourself carrying 2 full-to-the-brim cups of liquid down a hallway, and you’re halfway to understanding what it’s like to balance multiple conflicting truths at once
How to Tackle Life’s Chaos Before It Spreads (The Flow Archives) — Rarely will you experience a default day that’s 100% dedicated to just 1 area of life. If you’ve “got a lot of fires to put out” everywhere you look, this throwback is for you!
super chill lofi (Playlist) — Be, breathe, and just flow with this ultra relaxing mix
✨ Flocus: Your Personal Productivity Dashboard
Your default day is a lot easier to manage when everything's in one place. Flocus keeps your tasks visible and your workspace calm, so whatever your day actually looks like, you've always got a clear starting point.
🗳️ POLL: Which sounds more like you right now?
What’d you think of this one? We got inspired after several (failed) attempts to map out and follow an “ideal” daily schedule. Share your take in the replies (we read every single one!)
Until next Sunday,
Flocus Team
