A planner is not a calendar
A calendar is something that hangs on the wall or stands on your desk so you can check the day of the week or see whether your birthday falls on a Saturday. But a planner, although it may resemble a calendar in many ways, has expanded functions. It reveals both your work and personal plans, lists your goals, highlights the priorities, records your "to do" list, indicates when assignments are due, keeps track of appointments and becomes a journal of tasks accomplished, places visited and information acquired. To perform these functions, a planner should be larger than the standard pocket version and have time segments of 15-minute increments or less, extending well into the evenings, for all seven days each week. Ideally, a planner will contain a whole year or more, and have space for notes, important telephone numbers and daily reminders. Your planner is your most important time management tool, so choose it carefully.
Don't rely on to do lists.
To Do lists are fine for grocery shopping; but if you're a results-oriented person, a scheduled commitment is a must. A list of things to do provides no commitment. So don't rely on to do lists if you want to get the important things done.
Instead, separate the priority, high-payback activities from the items of lesser importance and schedule these must do items directly into your planner along with your meetings. For instance, the development of a policy manual should never remain on a To Do list. Block out the time needed in your planner, let's say between 2:30 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. and treat it as though it were a meeting with the boss. Close your door and have calls intercepted if that's what you would do if it were a meeting with your boss. If you schedule several of these meetings with yourself during the week, you will accomplish those priority jobs and increase your effectiveness.
Using your planner to accomplish your goals.
In order to determine the target date on your goal, estimate how many hours it would take to complete the task. In some cases, this is impossible to determine accurately. If so, simply guess, and then add up to 50 percent to be on the safe side. For example, if you feel it could take 100 hours of solid writing to finish a book, make it 150 hours. Then divide this figure by the number of weeks you plan to work that year. For example, if you work 50 weeks, then the number of hours each week that you will have to work on your goal-related activity should be three. Since it is difficult to work steadily for three hours on any activity, break this into two sessions of one-and-a-half hours each. To accomplish your goal of writing a book, you would have to spend one and-a-half hours twice per week in order to complete it by the end of the year. If this amount of time is unrealistic, set the goal for the end of the following year and work half as long each week. Don't be impatient; be realistic.
Let's assume that you have set a goal, recorded the target date, and have estimated that you would have to spend two blocks of time (of one-and-a-half hours) each week throughout the year. Each week you must now schedule an actual time in your weekly planner to work on that particular task. Once your priority, goal-related activities have been scheduled, resist any temptation to use this time for less important spur of the moment things. Pretend they are appointments with your surgeon. Few people would delay life-saving surgery.
This method of actually determining the amount of time it will take to accomplish a goal forces you to be realistic. If you had ten goals, for instance, all requiring two hours each week to accomplish, it is unlikely you would be able to steal 20 hours each week to work on those special projects. You would have no time for your regular jobs (or for family time if you planned to work on them in the evening). But there's always next year. Boil those goals down to the few really meaningful accomplishments that would give you the greatest return on invested time.
How to use your planner effectively.
Here are some guidelines to follow when using your planner. They are written in the form of an acronym, spelling out the word PLANNER.
Prioritize your entries. You prioritize your entries by scheduling the most important tasks early in the day and early in the week. Inevitably plans go astray, and if one of your priorities gets displaced, at least there will time to do it later. Another reason for scheduling priorities in the morning is that the time corresponds with most people's peak energy level.
Leave space for emergencies. Once you have scheduled time for your current priorities, other rush jobs and crises will invariably surface. By leaving spaces between your scheduled tasks, you will be able to handle them without a lot of rescheduling.
Allow more time than you think the tasks will take. Most people underestimate the time a task will take. Allow for unforeseen emergencies, delays and interruptions by scheduling more time than you think will be needed. The amount will vary depending on your job and work environment, but initially try a 50 percent float.
Never rely on your memory. Your first impulse might be not to bother writing down all the things you have to do, reminders or deadlines, thinking that you'll remember them. But the busyness, urgencies and constant pressures in most people's lives frequently push memories from their consciousness within hours. Don't take chances; write it in your planner.
Never let urgent items displace the important ones. Once you have scheduled time to work on the priorities, resist the temptation to change them. A schedule should be flexible. But resist changing your schedule simply to accommodate tasks of no greater importance than your originally planned activity. Say no more often.
Enter priorities in ink, not pencil. It may seem like a minor point, but writing in pencil makes it too easy to change. Until you put it in ink, it's still tentative as far as your mind is concerned. Make a mental commitment by using ink.
Review your planner each week. At the end of each week, compare your results with your actual plans. Are you allowing enough time for the tasks? Are you letting priorities be displaced? Are you scheduling far enough into the future to prevent others from controlling your time?
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