Planning your day, will keep you on your way!

First of all, I must admit I am one of those persons that loves to plan everything. I don’t know if that comes from years of working with marketing or if it’s just my personality. BUT,  I must admit that it has given me a lot of advantages over the years. Today I just want to share a great tip when doing planning.

I start my day with planning. I check what I need to get done, what I have to get done and what would be nice to get done this particular day. And if I have time left one day I will look at my priorities from tasks that I have identified earlier. I will get to that later in this post.

 Planning gives benefits

I truly believe that planning gives me the opportunity to:

• work efficiently,
• stay on track and being able to prioritize tasks (keep away from any deviations)
• keep focus on the purpose of the task and goal,
• structure my work and plan my day.
• say no when I have to and yes when I can
• keep away from being stressed,
• achieve my long term goals as well as my short term goals

So how do I do my planning?

I work with an spread sheet where I track all my tasks. The good thing about having it in a spread sheet is that I can sort the columns and only keep the current tasks visible. I take a look at my spread sheet every morning to see what is most important. I also look at the progress of each task as I keep track of tasks that are waiting for approvals or other feedback from others. In my spread sheet, I have different categories that I fill in the spread sheet when receiving a task or request.

The Categories include the following:

• who ordered/requested the task,
• purpose and goal,
• short description,
• Progress on the task with date and status
• prioritization among all current tasks,
• deadline and short goals within a set timeframe
• and the date when I received the request,
• contact person and/or people that might be involved in the project or task.
• when the task is completed
• estimated time

This spread sheet is also very much appreciated by your manager, which whom quickly can see what you are working on, your amount of work  done and what is in your pipeline and coming tasks. Remember, this is also good for yourself to look back at to identify what you have done and accomplished over a period of time, if you would ever question if you are doing the right things and keeping the correct focus to come closer to your goals.

You know, if you are employed by an organization, this can also be concrete examples and a basis of proof that you work hard and accomplish goals on set timelines i e a base for discussion of negotiating a pay raise. I have used this many times, being able to to give practical examples of great work that I have done for the organization – and I have always succeeded.

I hope that you can find something of value for your working life and that you can benefit from my tips and become successful with your planning.

All the best,

Carina Asp
Marketing Coach