One of the most common questions ever asked is, “How are you today?” When you interact with people throughout the day, that question comes up quite a bit. And some of the most common answers include, “I’m good” or “I’m fine.” However, there’s another increasingly common answer that’s crept up in the last 5-10 years. That answer is, “I’m busy.” The responder might go on to say how overwhelmed and slammed they are, and how much they despise their hectic schedule. But, is this the way it has to be forever? Certainly not! You can always solve this situation by improving your Personal Strategic Planning.
Optimizing your Personal Strategic planning can help you achieve your goals without all the confusion and overwhelm, saving you time and money as well. That way, you can regain control
While you may already have a plan, feeling overwhelmed indicates that you need to rethink your personal strategic planning and employ some techniques to pace yourself and stay on top of your day.
This article is more specific to business development professionals, although anyone can benefit from it.
Here are my 8 tips for best personal strategic planning:
1. Fire bad clients and prospects for better results
Even if it seems contradictory, clients who consume the majority of your time are the ones who generate the least amount of profit. This isn’t always true, but it is in most cases. Get rid of those clients and prospects, they will drain your energy and time. This will give you more time to find better clients and leads.
2. Hire a part-time or full-time assistant
People in business development do not always think in this manner. They believe that in order to hire their own assistant, they must be the company’s owner.
This is simply not true. Anyone can hire an assistant to help them with the menial tasks they don’t want to do or don’t have time to do. You can then structure your personal strategic plan around more business development tasks, which is especially important if you are paid on a commission basis.
3. Spend 15 minutes a day to perfect your personal strategic plan
Don’t just make a list of tasks. Schedule those tasks and spread them out over the course of the day. Moreover, try to focus on – at least – one higher-level strategic task throughout the day. People who plan for a few minutes each day end up saving a lot of time in the long run.
4. Make your schedule more efficient by eliminating gaps
Do you have a 10-11 am appointment but your next appointment isn’t until 11:30? Gaps like this waste your time and you require more strategic planning. If you can arrange your schedule so you have back-to-back meetings, you can free up a significant amount of time at the end of the day.
For instance, if you have five meetings scheduled with 30-minute breaks in between, eliminating those breaks would save you two hours, which is enough time to add a new productive task.
5. Let people know your timeframe for chitchats
If you let them, friends and family will frequently talk your ear off. Therefore, set some boundaries when talking to people and let them know that you expect them to respect your personal plan to avoid wasting time. Don’t be afraid to say, “Hey, great to talk to you today. I have about five minutes to chat. What’s up?”.
6. Meet in groups rather than one-on-one
If you have the possibility to gather a group of the people you need to talk to and meet, it is preferable to meet in groups rather than one-on-one. I’m not saying that one-on-ones are bad, but groups can be very beneficial if you want to leverage some time and opt for better strategic planning.
7. Plan short, consistent meetings as opposed to endless emails back-and-forth
If you can talk to someone every day for 5-10 minutes instead of spending 30 minutes typing up emails to them and reading their responses, then consider switching to meetings as your primary method of communication.
8. Set personal boundaries and protect your personal planning
Consider taking off 24 straight hours from work. During that time, you will stop typing reports, checking emails, or calling clients. Basically, nothing work-related. If you can’t commit to this, set more manageable boundaries, such as twelve hours.
In fact, protecting your personal planning and setting personal boundaries gives you the impression that you have more time, and promotes a healthy balance between work and life.
What will happen then?
These techniques will contribute to the development of your personal strategic planning. Work your way through applying them one by one, and your next response to someone who asks, ”How are you today?”, would be something like, “Oh, I’m feeling RELAXED and BALANCED!”
If you have a preference for any of these techniques or would like to discuss them, please share your thoughts with us!
And, have a better than amazing day!
