When you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Importance of planning for successful leadership and management

The month of resolutions post 2 of 3...

I have found in my many discussions with leaders of my organization that many of them do the below 5 things on a daily basis, and many of them do it before 10 a.m.

Clockwise: 
Full view of my planner: I have post-its, business cards, small to-do list
Weekly goals post-it page: This is where I write my goals for the week on post-its
Inspiration page: Any quote that inspires me in either my personal or professional endeavors
(you can see my tabs on the Weekly goals post-it page Calendar, Meetings, To Do, Inspiration, Addresses)

1. Exercise

2. Map out The Day

3. Eat a Health Breakfast

4. Visualization

5. Make the Day Top Heavy

(highlighting denotes parallel to planning)

There is a natural and innate ability (or need) that some people have to planning their days. Some people need others to do it for them and some just simply just go with the flow. Now whether this is paper planner or a digital planner, 3 of the top 5 things that successful leaders and people do BEFORE they start their day are deal with planning.

Now for this blog post I will tackle each of the 3 of the top 5 things that successful leaders and people do BEFORE they start their day individually, relating them back to planning and explain the rationale behind the importance of these 3 planning devices.

Map Out the Day

I map out my day in either the day prior or first thing in the morning. I map out everything from the route I will take to my daughter’s school and work to what I have to accomplish when I get off work. I map out the events of task of the day at work that I must accomplish to maintain high levels of performance.

Visualization

Sit back, close your eyes, take a deep breath and see yourself accomplishing everything that needs to be accomplished that day – successfully. This requires a person to know what is occurring during the day and planning can make this task in the morning much easier.

When I am able to open my planner and know where I am supposed to be, why I am supposed to be there, what I may need while I am there and at what time and location am supposed to be there I can visualize myself conquering that meeting, that event, that assignment and/or that customer request.

Make the Day Top Heavy

Now we all know that during the course of the day that there are thing that must be done that we do not necessarily want to do or are not looking forward to doing it. These are those tasks that can be put off ad put off, until it becomes detrimental to do it. By this point much time and energy has been wasted on not wanting to complete this task that must inevitably be done. This is where great planning skills come into effect. Tackle those skills first, plan to do the things that you do not want to do before all the “fun” stuff.

My planner in sense is my life on paper. It is everything that I am thinking, everything that I have going on in both my personal and professional live in a single accessible simple place.