Planning for the New Year – Brainstorming and Scheduling the Time

This is related to my earlier post about scheduling time for non-billable tasks (you can read it here).  The same goes for any goal you’ve set for your business. 

Once you’ve decided on your goals, it’s time to start brainstorming ideas to achieve the outcome you envision.  Write down every way you can think of to achieve that outcome.  Don’t edit yourself while you’re brainstorming.  Sometimes, the ideas that seem the ‘craziest’ initially turn into the best new strategies.

After you’re done brainstorming, you can organize your ideas and evaluate which ones are feasible and which you want to try.  Then list the action steps that need to be taken based upon the strategies you’ve decided upon.  Sometimes it helps to list these action steps backwards – start from the outcome you want, and then figure out what you need to do just before that, then what needs to be done just before that, etc. 

But don’t stop there!  The next step is often the one that trips us up.  Many of us are good at coming up with ideas and strategies, but they never get implemented.  Why? Because ‘real life’ gets in the way.  A client calls, we get wrapped up in handling our ‘regular’ work, and we never get around to all of those great ideas.  That’s why scheduling time is such an important step.

Break your action steps into the smallest possible pieces and estimate the time it will take to accomplish each task. Then take out your calendar.  Schedule specific time every week to move toward your goal by writing your action steps as appointments on your calendar.  If something comes up and you must pre-empt your action step, reschedule it, just like you would any other appointment.

This is where having a strategic partner, whether it’s a coach, consultant or other ‘buddy’ can come in handy.  When you’ve communicated to someone else your intention to do something, especially when you know that they’re going to follow up with you, you’re much more likely to get it done, even if you do it at the ‘last minute’ before your strategic partner is scheduled to follow up.