Developing Action Plans

Progressively, you have....

Now that you have achieved the proper mind set - you have achieved the proper mind set, haven't you - and you have some indication of where you're going, it's time to develop a plan of action. Think about it; you've already taken control of your time in several respects: You know how your time is being spent or wasted and who is really controlling your time. You've also taken other steps as noted in the bullet points above. Now is the time for some personal planning. Click on to the Project Record for just a moment. I'd tell you to print it out, but it doesn't seem to work. Therefore, you'll have to copy it, paste it into a Word Document and then print it out. I advise you to save it because, as you'll see, the project record is a work in progress. You will continuously add new entries and cross out others as they are completed.

Since I don't know you, I cannot possibly tell you what your projects might be, but let me try to help you out. If you're in business, it might be to complete a sales report, set up a series of meetings, get computer training on a new software program, or whatever. If you're a college student, it might be that you would write down term papers to be completed this semester, term, or quarter, or whatever you have to do to get the grade you desire in a course you are taking. Personal projects might include starting a diet, quitting smoking, getting a birthday gift or card by a certain time, getting the brakes fixed on the car. Your projects do not have to be work or school-related. As far as I know, we don't get a certain amount of time for one and another amount of time for the other. Everything, business or pleasure, goes into the same pot. Figuring that out now will save many headaches in the future. Since you're just beginning, you may wish to print out a couple of sheets. Do not try to put projects in any order. Just put them on paper as fast as you can. Then just start writing...go ahead; I'll wait.

By now, at least an hour has passed, perhaps more since you began to list all of the projects that you have to complete. Have you been writing all of that time? I hope not; however, I hope that it has been a combination of thinking as well as writing. In addition, despite your best intentions, you did try to put them in some order...shame on you.

Once you have listed all of the projects that you would like to complete or have to complete during this current period - you could have things on there that have to be completed tomorrow, next week, or next month; you have great flexibility here. However, once you have gone as far as you believe reasonable, you then have to prioritize your projects. We've already touched on prioritization in time use analysis, but before going on, let me digress and talk about another reason prioritizing is so important.

Some of you may have heard of Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto; some may not. Pareto was an Italian economist. In 1906 he postulated that twenty percent of the population in Italy owned eighty percent of the property. This later become known as the 80/20 rule or Pareto's Principle. What this means to you is that twenty percent of the projects on your list will provide eighty percent of the benefit to you. This doesn't mean that they will bring you the greatest enjoyment; it means they will be of the greatest benefit to you. For instance, if you had 20 projects or things to be done on your project record, four of them would bring the greatest benefit to you. Does it always work that way? No, of course not; a principle such as this or almost any other postulation is never an absolute. I'm merely saying remember it as you begin to prioritize. If you were to apply Pareto's Principle to your house, you might agree that 80% of the dirt is in 20% of the house. In school, 80% of the answers are generally given by 20% of the class. Applied to business situations, you might say that 80% of your interruptions come from the same 20% of people. In terms of human resources, 80% of the problems come from 20% of the work force. If you're a senior manager, it probably hasn't escaped you that 80% of the good ideas come from 20% of your subordinates or that 80% of sales are generated by 20% of your sales force. It just seems to work out. Therefore, when you begin to prioritize your project list, there are two things to keep in mind: (1) What governs whether or not a project is an A, B, or C priority, and (2) which of these projects is going to provide the greatest benefit to you.

You'll notice that one of the columns is headed "time required." One of the very interesting things about this column is that it will also serve to identify which projects you plan to procrastinate. You will allot so much time to that or those projects that you'll always be tempted to think, "Oh, that's going to take me..... I don't have that kind of time to spend on that now." You should add, "or ever" and be done with it.

End of Developing Action Plans section.