Did you know that for every 1 minute of planning that you do you save yourself 4 precious minutes of your time? It’s true! Think about that for a minute then ask yourself how much time are you losing each day because of a lack of planning. Daily planning helps you to focus on what is important and weed out the not so important things so that your day can be more productive.
Have you planned your way through this year or have you just been winging it; flying by the seat of your pants. We’ve all heard the saying, “if you fail to plan you plan to fail”, and it’s true. If you’re not consciously planning what you’re doing, how do you know that you’re going to get where you want to? Of course, you can’t get where you want to go without a clear picture and the plans followed by the action to make it all happen. If you didn’t plan your way through this year, it’s time to take some action and start planning for next year.
Before you begin to look at what you’d like to do next year, take inventory to see what you’ve accomplished this year and if you’re where you planned to be at this point of the year. Look at the list of things you wanted to accomplish during the course of this year and in these final months. What’s left to do? Do you have time to get those things done before year’s end? If not, choose one that’s most important to you and get it done during the home stretch. Move the other items to your January calendar. If you’ve been winging it, there’s probably quite a few things that you haven’t finished and might not be able to before the end of the year. Be reasonable about what you can finish before the end of the year. Don’t rush this process; take your time. Once that’s done you can begin to think about what’s on the agenda for next year. I’ll share more in my next post.