Why you must plan in advance
Imagine this: It’s game day for a football team. They get to the stadium, suit up, and jog out to the sidelines. When the whistle blows to start the game, that’s when they frantically decide who will be in the lineup, what their offensive and defensive strategy is going to be, and what plays they are going to run. Disaster, right? At best, they might salvage the 2nd half of the game. No one would operate this way and expect to be successful. Of course the coach has a plan for all of this in advance.
Yet this is exactly how most people approach their day. They simply show up to start their day without any plan. And just like the fictional football team that doesn’t plan in advance, at best, they salvage the 2nd half of their day! For many people, they won’t even salvage half their day – they’ll just fritter away each day in reactive mode, answering emails and messages, knocking out trivial tasks, and procrastinating with their favorite distraction (social media, online news, sports, Reddit, etc.).
This is why you MUST plan in advance. It’s really very simple. If you want to make progress and be successful in anything in your life:
Every weekend, you must make your plan for the next week.
Every evening, you must make your plan for the next day.
This way, when you start your work in the morning, you know exactly what you should be doing. This is a key part of the Happiful system. We go into much greater detail in our upcoming course, The Ultimate Planning System (launching soon!) and in a free Quarterly Planning Workshop on March 25th. You can register for the free Workshop here.
In the Workshop, I’ll show you the full planning system, including how you work from your Vision of your Ideal Future Life through 1-Year Goals, Quarterly Planning, Weekly Planning, and Daily Planning. You’ll be working through this during the Workshop so you’ll end the 60 minutes with tangible results: you’ll have part of your Quarterly Plan done, and a framework to follow to complete your Quarterly Plan, and you’ll know how to use that Plan to drive your Weekly Plan and your Daily Plan.
There is more we teach in the course, but here are some basic rules to get you started even before the Workshop:
Weekly Planning: Each weekend, write down the 5 most important actions you can take the next week. These are driven by your Quarterly Plan, which comes from your Annual Plan, which comes from your Vision. The Weekly Plan is where you translate your Vision into the specific actions you’re going to take.
Daily Planning: Each evening, write down the 5 most important actions you can take the next day, and number them in order of importance. These 5 actions will include those you specified in your Weekly Plan.
You can implement this immediately, and you’ll see massive change in making progress towards your goals. You’ll feel more clarity throughout the day and more satisfaction at the end of each day knowing that you accomplished your most important tasks.
I hope to see you at the Quarterly Planning Workshop.
