Plan your way to success

Today I want you to think about what you want to achieve this week.

Grab a pen and a bit of paper and write down everything you say you want to achieve during the next 7 days – yes including the weekend. This may take you some time, but it's important that you do it. Now once you have done this part I need you to find a calendar or fire up your online version.

Begin by slotting those things into your calendar you wouldn’t normally put in.

Mark a time slot for everything that happens to you from the moment you get up to the moment you go to bed.

Bathroom, getting ready, travelling to work or school, time at work, breaks, travelling back, cooking dinner, doing the dishes and laundry, exercise and having fun. I mean everything – use codes if you don’t want to say how many times you’ve been to the loo, and if you waste time – say so. All we are doing at this stage is looking for patterns.

Once you have done that you will see there should be some gaps. But is it enough to do what you say you want to do? Do you need to modify your plans and / or the time that you spend on doing some of other things. What can you stop doing, so you can start doing the new things?

Bear in mind that you can multi-task, so use your car to listen to books or programs...or download a voice recorder onto your smart phone and outline your book or training program. Can you get up half an hour early and do some exercise or can you slot a walk in at lunch time? When you know what time you have to "spend" you are less likely to waste it on things that do not matter.

There are several things I would like to add to this planning session you are undertaking at the moment: 

• Balance. Don't try and do too much - you will wear yourself out (been there, done that and bought the t-shirt on the way past) and you will struggle to keep up the momentum.
• Book appointments well in advance, diarise them - that way you don't forget to go to doctors / dentists / get your car in for a service - it's called preventative maintenance....and it works.
• Block time for the other important things....What kind of things? Well exercise is vital, yet it is usually the first thing to go by the by when "you don't have time" - block it in like any other appointment you have and when the time comes around, get up and get going. 
• Check the time. Make a note of the time you spent on certain activities as opposed to the time that you wanted / needed to spend on them. The beauty with making appointments especially with people like personal trainers, is it’s going to cost you money – so you are less likely to slack off. It's really easy to stop running if you're not training with anyone, or not do the required number of repetitions - especially if you don't write it down....don't rely on your memory, if it's anything like mine it's got more holes than swiss cheese. Time / distance / weights / reps / calories consumed / time spent on project. Sometimes the actual act of writing something down means you will stick to it.
• Review your weekly goal list regularly. We can usually under estimate what we can achieve in a year and over estimate what we say we can achieve in a week. It's fantastic that you have your goals written down. But you do need to review the list regularly to make sure that you are still on target and that you still want "it" whatever "it" is for you. Do you need to revise targets? Do you need to revise time frames / collaborators? Keeping the goal front of mind (by reading and reviewing the list regularly) makes you more likely to achieve them.
• Have fun with it. Make sure your goals are your goals and not someone else’s.

Plan your way to success and your thoughts and actions will follow.