What do you need?
The first thing we start with planning is to know what we need.
Every person has his own responsibilities, dreams and life goals. When you know your priorities in life, you realise what kind of goals you have. Then you will brainstorm on what need to be done in order to achieve these goals.
It is a good practice to eliminate ideas that you personally do not agree with.
Action Plan
After developing the list of things you need to complete, we then need to convert the list into action plans. Actions plan is a high level overview on how a goal is going to be achieved.
Here are the key areas to be focused on:
- Goals and Deliverables
- Priorities
- Schedule
- People and Resources Allocation
Act
Once the action plans are crafted, we then start producing the work as planned in our action plans.
Our action plan should be reviewed regularly. And review frequency should depend on how fast the environment is changing. What was true 6 months ago may not be valid anymore. That is why we need to re-examine whether our ways of working are still valid.
More ...
Planning is a good and essential exercise. We should always learn to master it in our life. I have included John C. Maxwell's article on 7 planning principles to enhance your planning experience. And there are many more resources that will help you on planning. I hope that you will enjoy planning and the fruits that are produced by your good plans.
References and Suggested Readings
The Theory of the Business (1994) Peter F. Drucker
What Makes an Effective Executive (2004) Peter F. Drucker
Principle Centered Planning (2009) John C. Maxwell
