“Failing to plan is planning to fail.”
- Alan Lakein
“10/90 Rule – The 10 percent of time that you spend planning and organizing your work before you begin will save you as much as 90 percent of time in getting the job done once you get started.”
PLAN EVERYTHING IN ADVANCE!
This may be obvious to you but you’d be surprised how many people don’t do this. It is very important that you try and do this before you leave each day. Take 10 minutes to review and plan what you will do following day. According to Tracy, planning your day in advance will save you between 1-2 hours of inefficiency throughout the day. I believe it.
- Get out your pen and paper and make a list
- Write down all the stuff you didn’t get done today
- Then add all of the items need to do the following day
- Then sort it in order of importance
- Not sure what is important, ask your boss
By making the list the night before you free your conscious mind of thinking of what you need to do the next day and it also allows your subconscious mind will work on your list all night long while you sleep. You’ll probably wake up with great ideas and insights that you can use to get your job done faster and better than before. The more you do this and the more detailed you get, the more effective an efficient you will become.
There is a really nice side benefit you will get from doing this – you can visually see your progress. Who doesn’t like the feeling you get when you cross stuff off your list right? It’s progress, you achieved something that day. It will raise your emotional well being. Trust me. If you have one really big task to do, make sure to write down components on your daily plan. That way you have something to mark off as you make progress.
Want to take it a step further?
Make 3 different lists – daily, weekly and monthly. After you get good at the daily exercise, start trying to plan all 3 in advance. If you want to be less aggressive, move to weekly for a month or two and then graduate to the point you can add monthly lists. I’d recommend you review the lists with your boss during your 1-2-1 meetings.
