Want to Minimize Recurring Crises? Learn How to Analyze and Plan

How do you plan for your week? Do you plan? Analyzing how you spend your time and planning your time are two important keys to managing your effectiveness and energy. Whether 100% on target and ready to take on the week or slightly off due to illness, vacation, or family visitors, there’s a typical planning process I follow. Look at the week ahead. I do this first thing on Monday morning. I call first to confirm any appointments. Typically, appointments are prime time. If for some reason a client or potential client has to postpone, another high priority task takes the place on my plan. Then, I get a mental picture of how I want all I am doing to turn out. For example, I have two of those 1-2-1 referral marketing meetings this week. Do you know the kind a mean? Being a member in a referral marketing networking group, gives the members the responsibility of meeting weekly with at least one other member to build that relationship. In my planning visualization, to give those associates at least two referrals each, will be a good outcome. And, if they also give me two referrals, that will be perfect! A third thing I do is look at weekend to-dos that may have changed my priorities. For example, this past weekend I learned what day my daughter-in-law will be here with my granddaughter. I called my travel agent to work on a flight to get my mom here at just that time – it’s going to be a four generation get together. This kind of high priority task is easy enough to delegate to our travel agent. I'm quite clear on my values: my second highest value is my relationships, family being number one. For me, when I pla I keep my values in my mind, and yes, on my planner. That way I'm sure to plan tasks that are congruent with my goals. Everything is tied together. Certainly, there is more to analyzing your plans than the three keys I've reviewed here. Do you want to discover if you know how you are spending your time so that you can plan better? I’ve set up a short assessment at Want to be Better Organized? where you can assess yourself in at least ten planning areas.