Planning

There’s a place for everything and everything should be in its place. How about your plan? Do you have a plan or strategy for organizing your time and commitments?

For a while I was not disciplined. And then I met Steve. The dude set me straight. With life on the line, we need to be disciplined, and stick to our plan.

I’m sure you’ve heard people say  there aren’t enough hours in a day? Funny eh! Not matter how much you wish it, it is unlikely that you can get more than 24 hours in a day. So, the trick is really how you get the most out of the hours you have.

I have learned to set aside time to plan, but being a golden oldie :-) I need to think about my plan first before putting it down on paper. (And the best time I do this is when I’m jogging,  early in the morning,  listening to Pink Flod!)

Unless you make planning a habit, and doing the tasks religiously, it will not work. Trust me on this one! I set aside an hour on Sunday mornings to plan my week. You will feel much more focused when you have identified what you want to accomplish for the week ahead.  Some people only plan one day at a time, but I think that you need to be more forward looking than that. So, I suggest you focus on at least one week at a time, but also review what may be coming up in the next month while you are considering what to prioritize for the next week. The more proactive you are about your life/work, the less often you will find yourself having to react to unforeseen situations.

Oh, and don’t forget to plan personal and play time too. The schedule isn’t only for work, this is a plan for your life. So, make sure that you block off time for your personal life as well. The goal is to have time to handle everything that’s important to us, not just things that are important concerning work.

Discipline, discipline, discipline. Once you have your days scheduled, you need to exercise discipline and stick to what you planned. Do everything you can to eliminate distractions and really focus on what you have to do. You will be amazed how much more productive you can be. So let it be written, so let it be done.