How To Plan, Prioritize and Stay Focused for Optimal Business Success
An extremely wise mentor of mine, Todd Holcomb of Grow Mind and Spirit, recently took the hardline stance that the ‘To Do List’ is dead and that true achievers rely on calendars instead of lists in guaranteeing their success. Admittedly, it took me a year of missing deadlines, pushing projects and not achieving my ideal goals before I began to realize that he was correct. (Thanks Todd for the lesson and your patience!)
As a business owner, you can create a list of spectacular plans and ground breaking action items a mile long, but until you coordinate that list with the appropriate amount of work hours necessary, and then calendar in the exact dates and times to get the work done, you will just be Sandra Bullock driving that speeding bus around LA with no map, a broken gas meter, and no idea when the ride is going to be over.
Starting this year at DIAKADI, we are test running a completely new way of organizing our annual project schedule for our entire team using the ideas below. So far so good for us, and I promise to keep you updated on how things turn out.
In the mean time, I hope the ideas below are helpful to you and your team in developing, organizing and successfully achieving your ultimate business visions.
CALENDAR TIME TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS
Set aside time in your calendar, ideally a minimum of one hour a week where you organize yourself, your priorities and your focus. During this time, it is important for you to determine an average number of hours a week that you can commit to working on the new business development projects which will help you grow your practice. You will use this hour count in order to successfully determine each project’s quarterly deadline dates.
ANNUALLY:
Be clear about your ideal vision of where you are trying to go with your business. Ideally, you should be looking three years out, and then backing into a one year plan. If three years feels like an impossible amount of time to plan ahead, be sure to have a twelve month plan at a minimum.
QUARTERLY:
Based on the weekly number of hours that you can commit to working on these new projects, determine a logical list of achievable projects for Q1. Prioritize these projects, remembering that you can really only do one thing at a time. So stay focused, complete your number one, then move on to number two. At the end of each quarter, assess your completed work, make any adjustments necessary in the annual game plan, and then determine your deliverables for Q2. Again, schedule a date and time at the end of each quarter in your calendar where you reassess and plan for the upcoming quarter.
MONTHLY:
Based on your quarterly goals, decide what portion of the work will be completed by the end of the current month. Then calendar an exact day and time to complete all of the projects that you have committed to complete by month’s end. Remember, if it there is not a time booked to complete the work, it will not get done.
WEEKLY:
Set aside an hour at the start of each week for you to gather your thoughts and prepare for the work goals you have coming up in your weekly calendar. Make sure that you have all of the information, tools, and resources you need in order to complete the work successfully and on time.
SOFTWARE:
Lastly, our team has found great success with using the organizational software Asana for our projects. Whether Asana works well for your team or not, be sure to have a clean and clear system for tracking your vision goals and project work.
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