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Blog: Life Management
 How Do You Eat An Elephant...to get Organized?
Bite 3 - Daily Planning
(To catch up on the first bites of this elephant start at my first blog from October 3.)
Have you ever had back pain? If so, you know that it affects absolutely everything you do! You can't take a step without pain. You can't sit down without pain. You can't drive without pain. You can't sleep without pain. To have a strong, healthy, and pain free back makes everything you do go much better. The same is true with daily planning. It, too, affects everything you do. Daily planning is the backbone of time management and organization. So I place this bite on the back of the elephant. The backbone holds up your whole body and daily planning holds up the body of your day – or it should! Daily planning is the most important time management and organizing concept.
It's really so simple – it's 3 to 10 non-routine things on a To-Do List. It's your own personal agenda or road map for each day. Most people don't take time to plan much of anything. Oh they may make a random list here or there and, if they can find it again, it may help them navigate through a grocery store or on a shopping trip. Many experts say to make a list every day of the week. I like to temper that with six days shall you labor and do all your work – give yourself a day of Sabbath rest. Jesus said that man was not made for the Sabbath but the Sabbath was made for man (and woman, too, of course.) Do you realize this is the 4th of the 10 Commandments? Check out Exodus 20. They're not the 10 Suggestions. It's so vital that the good Lord commanded that we take one day out of seven to rest. We are not machines. We need to have R and R or we're going to fall apart. That reminds me of a saying I once heard – come apart before you come apart!
Some tips and techniques for this list of things to do are:
- Put only items on your list that are not done routinely. For example, I wouldn't expect to see "feed the baby" on a list. I would hope that is routine – if not that baby could get mighty hungry if you get behind on your list. Not to male bash, but I did hear author, speaker, and radio personality Kevin Lehman admit that one day when he was left parenting their four young children when he suddenly realized at 7pm that the two year old hadn't been fed all day! To cut Kevin some slack I'll say that for most men it's not going to be routine since most mothers have this as their routine. When I used to leave my husband in charge of our children for the day I'd leave a long list for him. I often wondered, however, if he ever looked at it!
- Organize your list either by A's being top priority, B's being important, and C's being somewhat optional. My preferred method is to make a list by the time of day you need or want to do something. For example, various appointments will have a time of day or evening. Put the time you need to leave for that appointment on your list so that you're not late. Figure out the time it will take to drive there and then add 15 minutes to that time frame. You know Murphy's Law will come in to play every time. By the way, Murphy's Law is: Nothing is as easy as it looks. Everything takes longer than you expect. And, if anything can go wrong it will at the worst possible moment.
- Cross off things as you complete them. It feels so good to take a pencil and scratch off what you've accomplished. By the way, do your planning in pencil because you know that old say, "The plan changed!" For those of you with electronic planners you can cross off or delete according to your program.
- Speaking of planners, it doesn't matter what you use - palm pilot, PDA, Black Berry, or a good old tangible notebook type planner. Don't feel like you're a third class citizen because you're still using a manual type planner. Studies have found that not all brains work well with the electronic type planner. Personally I don't like that you can't see the whole month-at-a-glance easily on the small screen of a palm pilot. I've seen too many people making mistakes with their planning because they couldn't see ahead easily so they wing it and get themselves into a conflict. And, I'm finding that many people are using combinations of PDA's and manual planners. So, it doesn't matter what you use the point here is to use something to house your lists.
In conclusion of Bite 3, ancient Chinese proverb says, "Short pencil better than long memory!" Write it down! Make your plan and work your plan. Then, keep your plan in your daily planner. So, where do you store those pencils mentioned in the proverb? Meet me here next week when we'll cover Bite 4 – Home Office. Don't panic! I'm not going to tell you to begin construction to build a home office. You'll see what I suggest when you check out my blog next Tuesday. See you then!
Note: A great resource book that will help with your Daily Planning is Organizing Plain and Simple by Donna Smallin. It's what I call a guilt free book. It's not meant to be read cover to cover. This is a resource book. Put it on the bookshelf. When you're ready for another aspect of time management and getting organized take it down, find the information, put the book back on the shelf, and get to work!
posted on: 10/23/2007 12:00:00 PM by Judy Warmington
category: The Mental Side
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Life Management
by Judy Warmington
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About Judy:
Judy Warmington, Woman Time Management (owner) -- Busy wife, mother of three adult/married children, grandmother of 10 (5 boys and 5 girls!), former high school teacher (M.A. from W.M.U.), Speaker, Author, Radio Personality, and Trainer of Professional Organizers.
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