Unleash Your Planning Power! 4 Easy Tips to Boost Your Planning Sessions
As a self-professed planning geek, I've got a question for you: How do you plan?
This question fires me up for two reasons. First, planning is my thing; it's what I'm all about. Second, I get a kick out of the wide range of responses I receive.
Some are early birds and plan their day first thing in the morning. Others are night owls.
Some plan daily while others rarely plan, choosing instead to fly by the seat of their pants.
Some enjoy making meticulous to-do lists, while others are all about doodles and scatterbrained notes strewn across a page.
In short, there's no one-size-fits-all approach to planning. It's all about discovering what clicks with your style and schedule. Let's dive into a few tips to help you get the most out of your planning sessions.
1. Prioritize Regularly Planning for Your Business's Future
As business leaders, our days are often jam-packed with meetings, tasks, and deadlines that keep our organization afloat. But amid the daily whirlwind, don't lose sight of the big picture. Are your tasks driving you toward your big goals, or are they just firefighting?
I can’t stress this enough - carve out a weekly planning session with yourself. Take stock of your progress towards these larger goals and tackle tasks that propel you and your organization toward this envisioned future.
2. Find Tools that Work for You
When it comes to planning, there's a buffet of tools available – spreadsheets, goal-setting apps, project management software, and the classic pen-and-paper combo. Personally, I often brainstorm, plan, and manage my tasks in a spreadsheet. Yet, sometimes, scribbling ideas on paper or recording them haphazardly on my phone works better. And when I'm in a creative jam, I unleash the Post-it army, playing with pads of all sizes and colorful, fat tipped markers. It might be messy, but it's a beautiful and effective process.
The key is to find methods that resonate with you. Ones that let you freely jot down ideas and work through them to craft an actionable plan that's easy to track. Which brings me to my next tip...
3. Write Down All Ideas THEN Sort and Prioritize
Brainstorming is an important part of the planning process. Whether you're dreaming about new business offerings or thinking of different ways to solve a problem, this creative process opens the door to fresh ideas, smashes mental roadblocks, and offers an array of potential solutions.
But here's the secret: Write down every single idea first and resist the urge to categorize or trash them just yet. Once written down, review the ideas and begin organizing and filtering. For those you decide to toss, file them away for later. They might not be gold now but could provide value down the road.
4. Create a Framework for Big Goals and Projects Now
It's easy to be fooled by the thought that you have “plenty of time” to tackle big goals or projects, often pushing off these goals to tackle the multiple fires that continuously pop up. But beware of the procrastination pitfall – start mapping it all out now! Break down your timeline into manageable chunks, with clear milestones and large tasks defined. This allows you to understand and quantify the tasks, time and resources needed to complete the goal and pinpoint a drop dead start date to ensure that you hit the finish line right on schedule.
Remember, there is a plethora of tools and systems at your disposal, but the real magic lies in finding a planning strategy that resonates with you. The goal is to maximize your productivity and ensure that you are continuing to work on growing your organization instead of just fighting fires to survive.