The Secret to Effective Planning

Today’s guest post is from Philip D. Piercy as 
part of the Organized Executive series. 
Philip is the Assistant Principal for Academics 
at Archbishop Curley High School in 
Baltimore, MD and reads The Daily Saint at least a 
few times per day. (ppiercy@archbishopcurley.org) 

There is never enough time to do all that I want to do and have it done right. This is a sentiment that I hear repeated quite often by busy executives and administrators. This type of comment led me to consider how I am able to juggle all of the different responsibilities I have. I thought about all of the literature, workshops, conferences, and professionals out there who have myriad ways of helping me get and stay organized. Upon reflection, however, it is something of my own design that works best for me. I utilize a 3-pronged preparation plan that doesn’t take long to employ, yet, is invaluable to me.  Over my next three postings on The Daily Saint I will share with you each piece of the plan which includes daily, weekly, and 1-3 week planning.  I hope that these simple suggestions will work well for you.

Planning 1-3weeks out

Begin by spending a few minutes each week looking ahead 1-3 weeks out. Although I keep a calendar of events, activities, and meetings that covers several months, in my experience, to plan tasks and projects in any great detail beyond this point is time wasted. Consider the following steps as you begin planning:

 

• Look at your calendar and/or agenda books. Establish what is fixed (i.e. meeting with the boss) and what may be negotiable. Use this information to help plan benchmarks and deadlines
• Determine what projects and tasks must be worked on and/or completed in the next 1-3 weeks
• Break larger projects and tasks into parts; determine benchmarks and/or deadlines for each part
• Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize…What can wait until week 3? Week 2? What needs to be worked on next week?
• Create separate lists of tasks for each of the next 3 weeks.

The more you utilize this type of planning the more comfortable you will feel with it. Soon it will become second nature and the time spent preparing will decrease. Also, once you have the first three weeks planned out, each subsequent week will be mostly refining the work you have already done. The benefits of planning ahead 1-3 weeks can be enormous and include:

Gaining perspective (“10,000 foot view) instead of just dealing with what is right in front of you

• Allowing you to deal with relevant and meaningful work based on intentional prioritization
• Helping you to avoid last minute rush jobs that are more likely to have mistakes and create much more stress for you and your colleagues
• Giving time to catch mistakes and make revisions before being finalized
• Allowing you to deal better with unexpected issues that inevitably arise

People will often ask me how I find time to do such preparation. I ask them, how can anyone work effectively without making the time to do it? You must make the time; planning your activities, tasks, and projects must become a priority. The time you spend planning will come back to you tenfold. I am convinced preparing this way will help you focus, deal with unexpected problems, and, ultimately, save you time. In the coming weeks as we discuss and you implement weekly and daily planning you will save even more time and your productivity and effectiveness will increase as well.

Good luck and God bless! I look forward to sharing more with you next month.

Phil

Resources for the Road

Be Cool.  Be Organized.

One Simple Question About Productivity

What Does it Mean to be a "Workplace Saint"?

Keep it Simple: Goal Setting

 

Comments

[Michele Piercy]

As Phil's wife, I can vouch that he utilizes these effective planning tools on a daily basis!

[Simon Rome]

I'm also a firm believer in monthly planning. However, I find that using a traditional calendar is counterintuitive for planning purposes, since all projects get mixed up in the squares and that most of the time, the exact date that something gets done is unimportant, it's the week and the order of the steps to achieve an objective that really count.

I like using a simple hand-drawn adaptation of the Gantt chart used by project managers. It consists of 6 columns: project name, week 1, 2, 3, 4, and long-term.

I start by writing the deadline or objective in the appropriate week column or long-term if it's farther than a month. I then work my way backwards by entering the steps in the appropriate week column to meet this deadline, and drawing arrows between the steps to indicate logical order.

Even large and complicated tasks look so much simpler that way, and there is also the pleasure of checking off the completed steps! I find that doing a new chart once a month is enough, or else you get the feeling of wasting more time drawing than you are gaining in productivity.