Many people conduct their activities around planning in December. There is nothing wrong with consistently planning in December. My suggestion is add August to the plan agenda.
Make the time right now to plan.
You might schedule the time during the work week each day for the next few days or carve out a few hours over this weekend. Either way make the time right now to plan. If you need to save the plan on your laptop, tablet or phone fine.
My preference is for you to hand write out your plan. Scratch out the changes. Use different colors, like a few mentors of mine – they use the pens with the multiple color ink options for this exact purpose.
Some type of a connection is made with our heart and our brain when we hand write out certain items. A plan is one of these items. You can always take an image of them for your electronic devices to have the information once you are ready to click away.
What should you be planning?
This question does come up more often than you would think. A response of everything might be tempting for some people to say. This would not be realistic and would in fact take luck and some fun out of our lives. These two things – luck and fun are important parts of our lives so why risk losing one of these or both. We don’t plan everything.
What should be planned for example are –
- Our personal growth for the next six months – what will we read, study or take part in?
- Our career if in a job – where to next – what challenge, metrics, growth in the role will we take on?
- Our relationships with people – where do we need to work on our relationships – at home within our family – in our community – with friends – with our co-workers?
- Our business if we are the owner or co-owner – do we want to grow, expand, hire new people, let some folks go, train our people and grow our people, roll out new products or services?
*You may wish to add more to this list – feel free to go right to the comments section and add your ideas there. Then come right back here.
Some things to think about while going through this process:
- Be very specific about what you plan.
- Consider placing dates next to each of the items to hold yourself accountable.
- Share your plans with someone you know and ask for feedback.
- Stretch yourself, so stay away from daily routine items like “walk the dog every evening.”
- Recognize right from the start, that this is not written in stone and plans do change, however, this is not to say we will give up at the first sign of resistance or obstacles. Pushing through these is where the real growth comes from.
Most of all – enjoy the planning process!
Mitch Tublin is the CEO and Founder of Wenkroy International LLC a boutique consulting company with a main focus on Strategic Business Consulting, Training and Business Coaching. Our passion is to take people to the next level in their life and in their business.
