## A Minimal Viable Day as a planning skeleton I read [this article on Medium ](https://snapcrackle.medium.com/feeling-overwhelmed-you-need-a-mvd-minimum-viable-day-bf07b7b90eb) about concept called "MVD" for Minimum Viable Day, which sparked my interest. It is tightly similar to the [MVP (Minimum Viable Product)](MVP%20(Minimum%20Viable%20Product).md) concept. I read other articles about this and I found different ways to embrace the MVD concept : one is about making a slower day with the most essential work, the other is about making a consistant planning for each days that help making progress towards your personal goals. I found both very interesting and somewhat complementary. ## MVD as a slow day to fight anxiety This form of the MVD concept is about organizing your day in order to do the most essential work only. It help you make a slower day to rest today and be able to go faster tomorrow. It is not about making a vacation day, it's about doing the tasks that brings the most value or are the most important ones only and postpone every other tasks to tomorrow. When I read about this, I find that my sunday could be my best moment to make a recurrent MVD. I'm already doing a sort of MVD, by doing these only tasks from the morning to the night: 1. Tidying my room and my desk (15 minutes) 2. Answering the most important emails and get rid of one very urgent task (15 minutes to 1 hour) 3. Reading some of my favorite newsletters and/or article about new subjects (30 minutes to 1 hour) 4. Writing in my [digital garden](Digital%20garden.md) (1 hour to sometimes 4 hours in a row) 5. Playing the guitar (1 to 3 hours in a row) 6. Do a side project task, whether it's coding a feature on a project, making a video, execute and/or improve [my investment strategy](My%20investment%20strategy.md), or just puting more efforts on playing the guitar or writing in my digital garden In this MVD, I'm carrying of my most important tasks only at the beginning of my day, when I'm the most productive, to get rid for these as fast as I can and get free time to do creative things. ## MVD as a persistant planning I also like to see the MVD as a minimum pool of tasks that help you progress towards your current goals, whatever they are. What's interesting here, is that the MVD can and will be in perpetual evolution because goals evolve, get done or abandoned. One of the most challenging thing here, is to find the minimum tasks that will help you progress in any situation, no matter the goal's nature. I see this more as constructing habits but with an ever evolving outcome. It's not only saying that "my main goal is to remain healthy, so my MVD must contain a sport activity", it's also adding things like "in the day, I need to execute at least one task that is bringing the biggest value to `x` or `y` (about work and/or personal live)" It's a lot about how do you prioritize tasks in order to achieve everyday, at least, this MVD. ## Mixing the two concepts Having in mind what your everyday MVD is can really help being more productive, because everything is planned and you know that, in the moment you don't perform well, you at least made the most essentials things. Doing slow MVD every weeks (or any other recurrence) will help to lower the pressure and the anxiety to better perform the next day. So ones can absolutely combine those. The everyday MVD as a guide towards your goals and the slow MVD as a release phase to be better at running everyday MVDs. ## Resources - [Feeling overwhelmed? You need an MVD (Minimum Viable Day) - Medium](https://snapcrackle.medium.com/feeling-overwhelmed-you-need-a-mvd-minimum-viable-day-bf07b7b90eb) - [The Minimum Viable Day - The 365 Commitment](https://the365commitment.com/2019/12/28/the-minimum-viable-day/) - [Embrace 'Minimum Viable Days' to Boost Your Productivity](https://www.inc.com/damon-brown/how-a-minimum-viable-day-can-boost-your-productivity.html)