You can’t be productive unless you know exactly what you’re working on and what your end goal is. If you don’t know either, you’re doing busy work, not productive work. Every action you take and task you complete must be aimed at taking you closer to completing your plan. If it doesn’t take you closer to completing your plan; why are you doing it? I know there will be the odd time where you are helping somebody out but in general, you have to be dedicating the vast majority of each working day to completing tasks from your plan.
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Creating your plan
In this article, I am just going to focus on the big picture plan. The following steps will help you to create a plan that you can work from to create the life you are looking for.
1. Define your purpose
You may have spotted this already but a plan is not much use if it is not helping you to achieve the life you want. So, before you can create a plan, you must know what you want your life to be about.
Yes, it does not start with what you want to have. It starts with who you want to be and how you want to make the world a little bit better. When you focus on what you can give to the world, you will start to see the rewards.
You may be tempted to start with the small picture i.e. short-term goals but the only way that your goals can be effective is if they serve the big picture i.e. your purpose. Each goal you achieve should be helping you to live and fulfil your purpose.
Key point
Any great plan starts with the big picture. You must know what you are trying to achieve and why you are trying to achieve it. You can work on the smaller steps which help you bring that big picture into being.
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2. Know your values
Your values are your inner guidance for life. They are the rules by which you make your key decisions. If you truly value honesty, you are not going to lie or act dishonestly in order to get what you want from life. If you did, you would soon find that you might fool everybody else but you cannot fool yourself. You would never be able to be happy with what you achieved.
Being clear about your values will help you to design your plan in a way that is true to who you really are. This consistency with your values will make it easier to make the tough decisions and take the difficult actions needed to create the life you want.
A benefit of having clear values that is often overlooked is integrity. Your performance benefits from this integrity because you no longer agree to tasks/projects which you don’t really want to do or, you just don’t want to do. This gives you more time to work on the things which are important to you, reducing stress and conflict in the process.
Key point
Each day you are required to make many decisions. Some of these decisions can seem very difficult. But when you have clear values, you have clear criteria for making the difficult decisions. This ensures consistency and integrity; improving relationships and performance in the process.
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3. Set effective goals
Now that you are clear about who you want to be and how you want to behave; you can decide on the correct course of action to bring your plan to life. Your goals should be aimed at fulfilling your purpose and living your values. These goals should serve as stepping stones which take you all of the way from where you are to where you want to be.
This is why most people struggle with goal setting. They can’t set effective goals because they do not know where their goals are supposed to take them.
If I asked you to sit down and write a list of effective goals which serve you, could you do it? Or, would you just be writing a list of goals that you think you should be pursuing? Too many people waste their lives chasing goals they think they should want. If they had taken time to identify what they really want from life, by creating the big picture first, they would have saved themselves a great deal of stress and hardship.
It is much easier to set effective goals when they are shaped by a clear vision of what you want.
Note: In the workplace, you may also be referring to goals as projects.
Key point
Goals are a powerful tool for self-development but if you star with goals, you are starting too late in the process. First, you must create the big picture and sense of identity which your goals should help you achieve.
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4. A goal or project plan
Once you have set your goals, you then need to sit down and create a project plan for each goal. Most of your goals will be small enough to create a quick plan with pen and paper, simply outlining the steps you need to take to complete the goal. You should be able to create an effective plan for these goals in less than 30 minutes.
For the bigger goals, you need to do some serious project planning which I will discuss in future articles.
It is very important that you don’t use the planning phase as an excuse to procrastinate. You don’t have to have a 100% accurate plan before you take action. You simply need a set of actions you can take and, you can then learn from the results you achieve as you go along.
With bigger goals, some of the steps will only reveal themselves once you have started along the path to achieving the goal.
Key point
A plan is not about creating the perfect set of steps needed to move from where you are to where you want to be. It is about setting milestones along the way where you can measure progress and make any adjustments necessary.
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Conclusion
To have a proper plan for your life, you must have a clear purpose, know your values and set effective goals. When you do this, you are then able to make progress on the plan by managing your time effectively. Time management is an essential skill but without the plan; it’s not going to do a whole lot for you.