Planning can be a long and tedious project. But you’re unlikely to get to where you want to be without a solid plan. Here are 5 things to do to come up with the perfect plan to get you where you want to be:
Begin with the end in mind
The first thing you need to do is to decide what you want to achieve. You can’t form a strong plan without a clear vision of what the final result should look like. Before you start planning take time to think about the final result and decide what you really want. For example, do you want to make $1,000,000 in the next year, or do you just want to be financially stable? If financial stability is your goal, what figure would get you to financially stable? And how many hours would that require you to work each week? Are you OK with that or would you really rather a slightly lower income with more time to spend with your family? The clearer you are about what you want to achieve the more likely it is that you’ll be able to create a perfect plan to get you there.
Brainstorm
You won’t be able to get everything down in a neat plan initially. So it’s important to get everything on paper (or computer). Then you can visualise the plan; see any missing steps; find ways to avoid duplicating actions; and solve any other problems you might see as you start to get everything laid out. Do this in a way you find easy to visualise. So use words if that’s your thing; to-do lists if they make everything clear for you; mind maps are great if you like seeing things in colour and a more illustrative layout; even create a vision board with all the steps visualised so you can see the whole process laid out in front of you.
Chunk it down
Now that you’ve got a clear picture, chunk your plan into a few key milestones. You probably don’t need more than 3 or 4 major milestones that will give you something to aim for. It will also allow you to check on your progress and re-evaluate along the way. Refining your plan as necessary to keep up with changes in business, life and what you’re really wanting to achieve. The milestones should be easy to recognise, easy to define and be relatively important points in your plan. For example: If your plan is to grow your business by a certain amount in the year, your milestones might be at 25%, 50% and 75% of your total. If you’re aiming to create a new product. The milestones could be related to finalisation of the concept / creation of a prototype, close of a market testing phase, finalisation of marketing material and product launch.
Split chunks into manageable tasks
Once you’ve set a few key milestones, break them down into manageable tasks. Breaking your milestones into distinct tasks gives a better idea of what needs to be done. And how long it should take. Make the tasks as detailed as necessary. And don’t be afraid to document them in the way that is most logical to you. This isn’t a to-do list, it’s a task list. So you’ll probably find that you’ll have tasks that have multiple steps required to complete it. If you need to list the steps to get a clear picture, by all means do – but they don’t NEED to be included in the final plan unless you particularly want them to be. In fact a perfect plan will probably be clearer without them included.
Create realistic time frames
Set time frames that are short enough to give you a sense of urgency and push you to complete them in a timely manner, but make sure that they are achievable as part of your daily routine. If you have to drop a major task to be able to find time to complete them, you’ll eventually give up or find your business suffers in other areas. Creating time frames with too big a time period for completion means you won’t feel any pressure to work on them and the plan will just get pushed to the back burner as day-to-day business takes over. It’s really important to prioritise, if you don’t have a clear idea of the importance of your plan, then you’ll find it hard to decide what gives to make room for it. And unless you’re spending part of your day sitting around doing nothing, something will have to give. It’s up to you to make sure it’s the right things that give, rather than something more important like, say the invoicing.
If you’d like some more ideas, check out my previous posts on planning
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