6 Step Tool For Personal Planning Success

You’ll know these people: They aren’t very good at managing their time. They run out of it; they arrive late; they have too much to do. The worst thing is that many of them just don’t care. They are quite happy being average – or much less in some cases.

You’re different. How do I know that? Well, because you’ve taken some time to read this for a start. I know you are the kind of person who loves to learn and improve.

My job is to find easy ways for you to improve what you do and to share them with you. Whenever I hear that this has worked for you and it’s improved your life in any way, no matter how small, I feel great.

My quest for ‘better ways’ started as a bit of a hobby, now it’s almost and obsession.

Many years ago I worked with a woman who was amazingly fast at what she did. I was intrigued and just had to find out how she did it. I’m going to share the secret with you. The silly thing is, it isn’t really a secret. It’s so easy anyone could do it. But it takes a particular kind of person to put in the small amount of effort required.

If you are one of those people (and I think you are), have a look at this.

The Quick Way
It was a pretty normal day in the factory where I was a production manager. My boss came to me in a panic saying he needed 17 “1515” units ready for lunch time the next day.

My heart sank. We made coin mechanisms for vending machines. There were different types for different countries and several different machines for each of those countries, to cope with all the different currencies.

The 1515 was a particularly awkward one to make. You had to modify another unit, always harder than making a new one from scratch. Worse still we only had 17 of the other units left, so there was no margin for error.

Eric, our engineer, told us that this modification would take at least 2 hours 30 minutes for each unit. That was more than a week’s work for one person. I could only spare one person. You can imagine how I felt.

I took the job to Naz. Naz was one of the most beautiful people I have ever known. She was from the Punjab and had a lovely, kind face with large smiling brown eyes. Her movements were elegant and fluid. She was quiet and very timid. I’d worked with her for a year or two and knew how good she was. But surely she couldn’t be that good. She was my only hope.

I explained what was needed and gave her the information. I told her how urgent the job was. She smiled her beaming smile and I rushed off to sort out some other problems, keeping my fingers firmly crossed.

At the coffee break, an hour later, I came back to see how she was getting on. My heart was heavy and I didn’t really want to hear the answer. I knew if it was bad I’d have to tell my boss we couldn’t hit the deadline.

“How’s it going?” I asked nervously.
“I done three.” She told me with her timid smile in her broken English.
“Three?” I said. “How have you done three?”
She just gave me that quiet smile, and responded with these words I remember so clearly: “I find quick way.”

What Is The Quick Way?
You know how “Less is More”: well, in Time Management “Slow is Fast”. Very often, you will find that slowing down is the best way to speed up in the long run. This is because when you are rushing round you tend not to plan, so end up wasting effort.

And when you don’t plan, your time management is usually pretty poor.

Why Is That?
It’s because, when you are stressed your ability to plan is drastically reduced. So you start responding with knee-jerk reactions instead of being proactive. Your ability to think ahead, or even look ahead is reduced so you stop being able to identify the consequences of your actions and just act.

I expect you have seen others doing this and noticed how stupid it is. The trouble is, it’s much harder to notice when it’s you. Naz always planned her work. Before starting anything new, she would carefully try out just one unit, really taking her time to find the best way to do it.

Then she would assemble all her tools and components, putting them in exactly the right place on her bench so that her work was fast and efficient.

Then she would start. She would soon overtake those who seemed to be rushing around and initially seemed faster than she was. It worked every time.

So how do you plan?
These days, with schedules easily available on your PC or Mac, there’s no excuse.

Step 1
If you have never done any planning before, the first thing to do is to write down all the tasks you have to complete in a list. Then put an estimate of how long you think they will take by the side.

Step 2
Once you have done this, it’s time to add the deadlines.
If you’ve done it on a spreadsheet, you might want to add up how much time you have committed yourself to (or you might not). It can be quite shocking.

Find our teleseminar on Time Management here

Step 3
Now you can start putting them into your schedule, so that you allow enough time to complete each one.
 
Frightening isn’t it?

Step 4
What If You Don’t Have Enough Time?
You may well find you just don’t have enough time to do them all when they need to be done.

In this case you need to make a decision on which tasks need to be rescheduled and start negotiating with whoever will be affected.

Step 5
Once you have everything in your schedule, you need to adopt a new policy of never agreeing to do anything till you have checked your schedule and put in the time you think it will take.

Once you are able to do this, you’ll find life becomes a great deal easier.

Step 6
Be Flexible
These days, with electronic schedules, you can easily move tasks around if it becomes necessary, so don’t imagine that having a schedule makes you inflexible. It does quite the reverse.

The Result
What it also does is allow you to see how much time you have available so stops you from agreeing to things you just don’t have time for.

For more help with your time management get my booklet 'Time Management Made Easy'

In this short, simple, step-by-step guide you will find out:

• How to set goals - a really key time management skill.
• How to plan - this will ensure you achieve your goals.
• How to prioritise - this will help you work out what is most important to you and make sure you achieve it.
• How to monitor your progress effectively so you achieve your goals.
• How to deal with unreliable people. These people can really mess up your plans, you'll find out how to stop that happening when your read Time Management Made Easy.
• How to motivate yourself.  There are things we all do that make it harder to be motivated.  You'll find out what makes it easier.
• How to make meetings effective. Stop wasting far too much time in your meetings.
• How to say 'No' without saying 'No'. Most people hate saying 'No' so I'm giving you a way of doing it without saying it and it really works.
• How to deal with interruptions so they don't mess up your whole schedule. So often you have everything planned perfectly and then someone else messes up.  I show you how to avoid that happening.
• How to keep up with your reading. Have you got piles of stuff you should have to read?  You'll discover how to get rid of them.
• How to make decisions.  Not sure if you can decide or not?  Find out how to change that.
• How to dea with too many emails.  The modern curse.  Easy ways to resolve it.
• How to clear all that rubbish on your desk and make sure it stays clear.