You saw in my previous blog (Discipline #2 – The Organize Habit) how random items that come into your day can be quickly and easily sorted into like-areas.
For personal areas, examples were health, family, finances, hobbies. For business we used members, team, sales/marketing, admin/finance.
It looked like this:
Personal Life
*Buy XX on Amazon → Family (also QUICK)*Schedule call w mortgage broker → Finance (also QUICK)
*Go to YY conference in Jan (this item is bigger, so it might become a project) → Hobbies → New Project: Jan YY Conference
*Send Mom bday flowers → Family (also QUICK)
*Dial in nutrition & training (this item is bigger, so it might become a project) → Health → New Project: Hit --% bodyfat
Business Life
*ZZ Coach traveling Date-Date, talk about in team meeting → Team
*Email back member VV about restarting membership → Sales & Marketing (also QUICK)
*Text Admin Person MM to set up VV account in CRM system → Admin/finance (also QUICK)
*Review last month quickbooks → Admin/Finance
*Approve t-shirt designs for QQ event → Members (also QUICK)
*Launch new gym ads (this is a bigger item, so it might become a project) → Sales & Marketing → New Project: Launch new ads
Quick Items (these are taken from the areas above, so the items can be batched at once)
*Buy XX on Amazon (8 min)
*Schedule call w mortgage broker (5 min)
*Send Mom bday flowers (10 min)
*Email back member VV about restarting membership (5 min)
*Text Admin Person MM to set up VV account in CRM system (3 min)
*Approve t-shirt designs for QQ event (10 min)
Total Quick Item time: 41 minutes
Today we'll cover Part 1, Planning the Day, using these examples.
When it’s the end of a productive day, and time to be present with your family, you want to close the workday asap. But first it's time to PLAN.
On a regular basis you will build two types of plans: Day and Week.
During the workday, there are always things that pop up -- things you don’t need to think about this week, but should be reminded of when you plan next week. Put these items on a special list called “Week Capture,” which could be a piece of paper, or appropriate software you can tag.
It’s up to you, when you decide to build these two types of PLANS. But, let's say that now is the time for Discipline #3 - Part 1 - Planning your day.
Scan through everything you've captured during the day (review the capture list). Find everything that's Urgent, and do them if necessary (usually they can wait).
Let’s say everything can wait.
If it’s Tuesday, plan Wednesday. Open your calendar and see how much time is available tomorrow. You see an open block from 8 until 11am.
Slot the time you'll need for all the Quick items. Completing these closes the loops and loose ends that cause feelings of overwhelm. It’s very important. On your Calendar, slot “Quick Tasks” from 8:00-9:00am -- you've decided to do them first. Based on your previous estimate, these should take about 40 minutes -- but you give yourself a 20 minutes buffer, just in case. Planned ✅
Now you take a look at the rest of the items.
Personal Life
*Go to YY conference in Jan (this item is bigger, so it might become a project) → Hobbies → New Project: Jan YY Conference
*Dial in nutrition & training (this item is bigger, so it might become a project) → Health → New Project: Hit --% bodyfat
Business Life
*ZZ Coach traveling Date-Date, talk about in team meeting → Team
*Review last month quickbooks → Admin/Finance
*Launch new gym ads (this is a bigger item, so it might become a project) → Sales & Marketing → New Project: Launch new ads
You see that the new projects can wait a few days before you dive in. So you mark them down on your Week Capture list:
New Project: Jan YY Conference → Week Capture
New Project: Hit --% bodyfat → Week Capture
New Project: Launch new ads → Week Capture
When it’s time for Discipline #3 (Part 2) - Planning Your Week, you'll be reminded, and can decide what actions need to be taken next week.
Now all that's left is: Review last month’s quickbooks.
You ask: “Is there anything else that needs doing in the area of Finances/Admin within the business?” (Asking this question consistently will give you a huge advantage.)
Yep, there sure is! You want to double check, clean up and organize your CRM. Even though you have an admin person managing it, the last time you logged in you noticed something weird -- but couldn’t spend time on it.
So now you have:
1) Review last months finances in quickbooks
2) Double check, clean up, and do screen recording of what you want for Admin Person.
You give 30 minutes for each of these tasks, 60 minutes total.
On your Calendar you slot “Finance/Admin” from 9:30-10:30am.
Now Wednesday is planned:
8:00 - 9:00am - Quick Tasks
9:30 - 10:30am - Finance/Admin
This doesn’t include all your other appointments, classes, meetings, recurring block project block time -- but it illustrates the flow of new things coming into your life, and how to deal with them.
You can unplug from your work day, knowing everything is organized. If something important comes up tomorrow, and you don’t get to the block you scheduled, MOVE IT -- do it at another time.
We’ve taken all the random inputs from your day that you’ve Captured (Discipline #1), then slotted them in the right place and have them Organized (Discipline #2), and now everything is Planned as to when you will do them, or see them next (Discipline #3).
In Part 2 of Planning, we'll see how to use the Week Capture list to plan out the next week.
