Making Your Weekly/Daily Plan

The next step is probably to most important step you can take in reducing stress in your life. What we want to do next is to move those items that we have identified for each of our roles, as the most important items in our lives, to our daily task lists. How does this reduce your stress? Our minds are very powerful and if we have a single list of things that we have to get done or accomplish, our minds are going to try and work on all the items on that list all at once. We might not be thinking about all of them conciously, but in our subconcious, are minds are wearing themselves out trying to deal with all these items once.

Take the list of items that you identified, and assign them to a particular day. Make your self say "I am going to take care of this item on Tuesday.", or "This item can wait until Thursday, but I need it for the meeting on Friday," By placing the items into a daily plan you are allowing your subcouncious to say, "Alright, I do not have to worry about this item until Wednesday. " You are now able to focus on today's tasks more effectively and allow your full power to be focused on what is important today. You can relax because you know that on Wednesday, your planning tool will remind you that you need to take care of this other important item.

You can even go a step further. You can assign a particular task to an exact time in your calendar. For example let's say that you have an important proposal due later this week and you want to get the draft completed a few days early so you have plenty of time to review it. Make an appointment with your self to work on that task. Thats right, actually put it on your calendar as an appointment. If someone tries to schedule something at that time, you have the ability to say "I sorry that time will not work for me, I have an appointment. Can we find a time that will work for both of us." You have now protected the time that you are going to dedicate to that project.

There is an old saying that I say all the time, "How do you eat and elephant? One bite at a time." By breaking down your roles into tasks and planning those tasks into your day you are breaking the larger project into achievable action items and planning your time to get the most important items done first so that you will have Peak Achievement Today.

Using Roles to Make a Plan

Once you have established the roles that you have in your life you can use them to establish a monthly and weekly plan that will guide you to achieve the items that you put the most value on. At the beginning of each month, and on Monday mornings is sit down with my list of roles and walk through this process:

1. I review the list of ROLES and make sure that they are all still current and viable. I add or subtract roles based on the month or week.
2. I then go through each role and determine the key items that need to be done for each of these roles. As I do this I write down the key tasks that need to be done for each of these roles.
3. Not all roles are equal - achieving balance does not mean that each role has the same number of tasks that need to be completed. Some roles my have 7 key things that need to be done, and roles may even have only 2 or 3. (I sometimes maintain a role with 0 tasks for a particular week)
4. Make sure that you do not ignore roles that are important in your life, but do not "seem" urgent. One of the roles that I have on my planning list is "husband". I always try to think of one or two things that I could do for my bride that will let her know that she is important to me.
5. Place your list somewhere where you will look at it daily.

This does not need to take a lot of time. When you are first starting a process like this it may take you 30 -40 minutes. As you practice over time the time will decrease. I challenge you that if you take this time here, you will save hours throughout the week by eliminating distractions that come in day to day life.

I have been taking these steps every month and most weeks for the last 19 years. I can complete this process in about 15 minutes a week. I will be amazed at the volume of work I get done by Tuesday night, just because I sit down on Monday morning and identify the key priorities of the week.

On the next posting we will look at moving these items from your weekly plan, and getting them into your daily schedule.

The Gas Pump of Life

We have a choice between positive energy and negative energy. Positive energy is high octane fuel for the ride of your life while negative energy causes sludge to accumulate in your energy pipeline.

With high gas prices, I know that we are all used to going to the pump with the cheapest gas. Yes we could splurge and buy a tank of high octane gas for our car, but we pull up and fill up with good old regular gasoline. Our car survives on regular gas, it gets us from point a to point b, right.

This may work well for my car, but when it comes to my attitude I have to believe that I am worth the very best octane I can buy. (With a diesel car I understand high fuel cost :) ) My attitude is like that Lexus my friend owns, it requires high octane fuel or you void the warranty. If we can fill our life with positive energy, we will achieve more. We will find the extra spark to tackle a tough problem or to push that last bit to achieve the goal we set.

Sometimes we may need to add a fuel additive to our tank to clean out old deposits, but from now on, I AM BUYING THE HIGH OCTANE FUEL FOR LIFE.

Quote - Taking Action

" There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction."

John F Kennedy
35th President of the United States

Book Review - Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

OK this book review is going to be a little bit out of place on our current topic, but I just finished this book this weekend. I have been working on it for a while and it is very thought provoking. For those that are following this blog, that also work for the Boy Scouts, I would not be surprised to find out that Bob M. is basing some of his current changes off this book. Bob's Blog sounds like it could have been a direct result of reading this book. Additionally the setup of the "Department of Innovation" and the new Innovation engine could have been direct results of reading this book. The key is that we need to take advantage of these new tools and do our part to make them a vibrant place for the development of new ideas. We need to seize this opportunity that is being presented to us by our top leadership and contribute our thoughts and ideas to help us all achieve Peak Achievement.

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott

rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a very thought provoking book, and has many great observations and predictions of where we will be going in the future. My biggest challenge with this book is that I was hoping for a little bit more of a road map of how to implement the theory into the work place.

After listening to the book for a while, I started to get some ideas of ways to build collaboration within my own work space, but now I need to search out and learn how to use some of these technologies. The part near the end of the book about older people just needing to get out and experiment with social networks, blogs, you tube, wikis and other collaborative spots on the web is where I am going to get started.

View all my reviews.

Identify Your Roles and Achieve Greater Ballance

One of the fundamental parts of my planning is the identification of the roles that I choose to serve and participate in. Life is not simple, we have many priorities that we have to juggle. Even at work, most of us have multiple projects or goals that we are having to work on at any one time. Throw on top of that all the things that you have to do at home, for family and your community involvement and you have a very complex life to plan.

In selecting your roles, you are identifying those areas of your life that you are going to make a priority now. Think about the key areas or goals you have in your life that are important to you and right them down.

For example I have a variety of different goals at roles at work. I am responsible for the team achievement of our sales goal, I am responsible for helping develop staff and I have a primary role in developing and implementing our communication plan to clients. Each and everyone of the work roles has something that I need to do each week to achieve the year end goal that I wish to achieve.

In addition to my roles at work, I am also a father, husband, soccer coach (for part of the year), a homeowner and I am involved in the community. Each of these are as important to me as my work and I have to make sure that I plan the needs of these roles into my week. If you only set up the roles that you have at work, and ignore the personal roles that are important to you, you are creating stress in your life. I believe that this is what "workaholics" do, they are only able to focus on work items and never learn the skill of life planning.

Take some time and think about the roles you want to have in your life. What things are important to you, and require your attention to maintain in a positive way. What goals are you wanting to achieve. Write down a list of roles, then we will look at the use of roles in planning your life for Peak Achievement!

Book Review - The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family

The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family: A Leadership Fable About Restoring Sanity To The Most Important Organization In Your Life by Patrick Lencioni

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I thought that this was an excellent book on how to strengthen your family and business with a similar type approach. As business leaders we need to strengthen our families as well to be able to reach our full potential. This book does a great job of taking a business consulting approach and applying it to ones family.

Most interesting to me from this book is the discussion of core values. I have fallen into the trap of having a long list of "Core Values". I like the way Lencioni describes values into 4 categories of values.

I also like the concept of the Rallying Cry, and can think back to times when I have provided a clear singular goal to a team and that was the focus. Our best results were in times like these. Along with this I appreciate the recognition of Defining Objectives and Standard Objectives under the Rallying Cry.

Great book, I highly recommend it. It is a very quick read.


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Can you take action on your "To Do List"

After yesterdays post about planning and the types of planing I received an email about an important part of any of these four planning steps from Sue. Sue is a very well organized, get it done lady who manages a very bust schedule. It does not surprise me at all that Sue is a planner and that she prescribes to the habit when planning.

Most people (myself included) have a tendency of making "to do lists" that are not lists of action items, but are really lists of small projects. For instance, "Steve's birthday" is not an action item. "Buy gift for Steve, bake cake, pick up card, and invite .... for dinner on Steve's birthday" are action items. When making lists of things I want to accomplish this month, (your grid of 4) I list projects. Then, for my weekly and daily lists, I make sure the items are individual action items and NOT projects. Projects- even if they are very small with only a couple of action items, (like the birthday) are much easier to skip on a daily basis because they cannot be acted upon without further breaking down."

Determining an actionable next step is vital to having a plan that will work for you, and this was going to be the subject for one of my posts. So lets tackle it now.

The key words here are actionable next step. An actionable next step is the task that can stand alone and has it's own start and finish. It is something that you can go out, get done and mark it off your list. Sue gives a great example of this in her email, but lets look at another example.

In the Boy Scouts we want to make sure that every kid has the opportunity to join a quality Scouting program, so we are frequently working on starting new units. Many times I will see the following action item on a weekly or daily plan:

Start new unit at Franklin Elementary School

This is important but it is not the actionable next step. By having this on the weekly or daily plan it does not provide specific direction to what exactly needs to happen. This item probably has 30 or more actionable next steps that need to happen. So the challenge is this - drill down into non-actionable items on your task list, to find your real tasks that need to be done. By identifying the specific actionable next steps, you can plan an appropriate number of these steps in a logical order into your plan. You will be taking the right action each day that will lead to the completion of the larger project, and you will have a lot more fun marking off each item that you have completed towards the larger goal.

What are some actionable next steps for starting this unit? If this were going to be on my to do list I would start with some of these.

• Set appointment to meet with school principal
• Meet with school principal to discuss Scouting
• Select date for recruiting night
• Order flyers and invitations for recruiting night
• Deliver flyers and invitations for recruiting night to school
• Make arrangements for in-school presentation to kids
• Order in-school stickers.
• Hang posters at school
  

This is just a start but it gives you the idea. Remember that you do not have to get all these items done today or even this week. Just make sure that you have captured the actionable steps that need to be taken and begin working them into your schedule.

Too many times we do not break the item down far enough for us to take action, the result is inaction and nothing gets done. Why is this? I think that this happens in part because we do not want our to do list to "get to big". We feel that if we write down everything that we have to do, the list will be overwhelming, not to mention that it will take us a lot longer to write all that down.

I encourage everyone to think about what is the actionable next step I can take as you are doing your planning. Take joy in knowing that you have the plan in place. Take joy in marking off each item as you complete it. Most importantly, take joy that you are reaching your Peak Achievement through strong planning.

Types of Planning To Use

There are four different styles or types of planning that I use. It is the combination of these four planning phases that help me achieve my best results possible.

Backdating
Let's say that you have a major project that you need to get done in the text several months, something like a special event, a major project around the house or a sales campaign, you need to have a plan. Taking time to think through all the different things that need to happen can help you solidify the project path in your mind, can help you identify critical items and dates, and can help you see how this big project is just a series of smaller items that need to take place over a period of time.

Monthly Planning
At the beginning of each month I sit down and review the goals I have set for both my professional and my personal life. I section off a piece of paper and of paper into blocks and write the title of goals that I need to work on that month at the top of each block. I then list out the key 3 - 5 items that need to happen that month to achieve that goal. These can be broader tasks that will be broken up into actionable items when I get to my weekly and daily planning. Make sure that you have read every one of your professional goals (yes that means that they are written down) and your personal goals.

Weekly Planning
Weekly planning is where the rubber meets the road. This is where you are going to identify the action items that are going to lead your to your goal achievement. I do this planning at the same time every week. For me the best time for this process is bright and early on Monday morning, sometime betwen 5:00 and 6:30 AM. You should pick a time that will work well for you, maybe Friday afternoon before you leave the office, or Sunday night will work better for you. The key is to pick a time and be consistent. I will be writing a future entry all about weekly planning because it is one of the most important processes. The weekly plan identifies the tasks you are going to commit to doing this week and schedules the into your schedule along with all you appointments.

Daily Planning
Daily planning is a quick and fast review of how your weekly plan is shaping up for the day. This process should only take 10 to 15 minutes if you completed the weekly planning. You review the tasks you have on your plan, look at any new priorties that have been throwen at you by a supervisor or client, and re-prioritize your work for the day. Identifying what is important and setting priorities are very important here. Your daily plan will serve as your road map for the day and keep you on track as you deal with multiple interuptions and unplanned obstacles.

If you have not used a planning method in the past you may think this seams like a lot of time spent on planning. The great thing about planning is that the time you spend planning will come back to you four fold. You will work with greater clarity, work on what is important, know what is coming up and what you can commit to as others ask you to take on more projects. I truely believe that doing weekly planning every single week probably saves me 3 - 5 hours a week. In one year that is 256 hours or 6.5 work weeks that I can spend working on other projects, spending time with my family or riding my mountain bike. That sounds like a Peak Achievement I can handle.

Over the next couple of posts I will be discussing the specifics of some of these planning steps and providing you with more thoughts and tools to get more out of your planning session.

First Things First - Learning Goal Centered Life Management

First Things First: To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy by Stephen R. Covey
rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first read this book in about 1990 and the content is as relevant today as it was back then. I learned so much from this book that has served me well for 19 years of professional work, and every time I reread a section it just reminds me how important if is to make sure you are doing first things first.

I feel that Covey has a great mind when it comes to achieving your personal best, and this book puts the rubber to the road. The materials in this book about setting goals, translating your goals into weekly planning that guides your daily decisions can make this book worth so much to anyone.

If you are looking for a book that will help you learn how to make sure that the important things to you get done first, before all of life's interruptions get in and mess things up then I highly recommend this book.

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Taking Time to Plan

One of my principal believes that I have developed is that you need to take time to prepare. When I joined the Boy Scouts at age 11, I learned the Boy Scout motto BE PREPARED! Of course back then it was about making sure that you did not forget your mess kit, or making sure that you had a first aid kit with you on a campout. Today I take it to be much more.

Today I take the motto "Be Prepared" as my guide post to take time to develop a plan for achievement and to mentally prepare for Peak Achievement. Everyone is busy with lots of work, in fact most people are so busy with their work that they can do not have time to plan. Just ask them. You do not know how many times I have heard someone, most likely running around with to much work to do, say that they have so much to do that they do not have time to sit down and plan their work?

Many years ago I got into two habits that have serve me very well in my life. Those two habits were to complete a Weekly Planning Session and the beginning of each week, and a Daily Planning Session first thing in the morning.

The time that you spend planning will be saved three times over throughout the week.

• Planning does not have to take forever, it can be done quickly.
• Planning your week relaxes your brain to focus on what you are currently working on.
• Planning helps you achieve a greater balance in your life.
• Planning helps you avoid the "15 hour" work days.
• Planning will help you stay focused on your goals.
• Planning will help you build strong relationships with others.

Planning is just to vital to reaching Peak Achievement. So I want to dedicate November to learning to plan.