Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance

Everyone of us have an ideal in life whom we follow blindly. Whom we want to meet once in a lifetime, with whom we want to take a selfie and definitely upload on social media as well :-P

I observed a certain craze in people for meeting their ideals. People follow them, dress like them, talk like them and even copied their walk as well.

There is one habit of all those ideals of people, which majority of their followers don’t follow.

Wondered?

What’s that habit?

It’s “Time Management”

We often appraise the legends but didn’t follow their foot steps how they achieved that success?

Their are millions of celebrities around, in different parts of the world. All living in different countries, different societies and viewing the life with a different perspective. But all of them have 1 thing in common.

They plan their whole year before.

Yes, that’s true. They have a planning of their whole year ahead.

The rule followed by most of the successful people to enhance productivity is 10/90 rule. 10% of prior planning can save 90% of your time in accomplishing a task.

The successful people value their time because they know the worth of it. I still remember some 3 or 4 years back, I was watching the interview of a Bollywood actor (Shah Rukh Khan). There he said, he is 30 minutes late in his life. I was wondered at his statement first, because I didn’t get the actual meaning.

Then he shared a story that once he had to reached somewhere at time but he reached there 30 minutes late. From that time till today, he considered himself to be 30 minutes late in his life.

I would like to share another story and it’s from the cricket world. I was watching the interview of the Legendary Cricketer of Pakistan, Wasim Akram on Television. The anchor person asked him that most of the cricketers of his age are not working in field now. Instead of enjoying a life of retirement, how he managed to shift his career from cricket to commentary and then doing commercials and now hosting cricket shows?

I still remember his words, Proper Prior Planning.

All the renowned and influential people in the history have a habit of proper prior planning before work. Bill Gates in his interview drove the point that time is the only commodity that he can’t buy with money. He can buy anything but not more time. So, he invests his time wisely making sure to use each moment well.

“Action without planning is the cause of every failure” (Alex MacKenzie).

Let’s follow the footsteps of our ideals and make most of the time of our day productive and effective, just like they do.

First of all make a List to all the goals and targets you want to achieve during the next whole year.

Master List

It consists of all the major tasks and goals you want to achieve in near future. This list can cover your working of next 6 or 8 months or even whole year.

Monthly List

Sort out the things from the Master List for next month. It must be specific and clear.

Weekly List

Repeat the above process but this time for weekly list. Sort out the things you want to do during the week.

Daily List

Select the most specific things from monthly and weekly to-do-list to add in daily to-do-list. Be very specific and task oriented in selection of your daily tasks.

After making a daily to-do-list, we are moving forward to the most important step that will make sure to complete all the tasks of that day. That is 20/80 Rule.

Let’s suppose you are to complete 10 tasks today, what you will do is to find the 2 most important tasks from that day’s list. These tasks must be valuable and most worthy as compared to all the remaining items put together.

On your daily to-do-list, you can make a golden shiny star on the tasks which you have completed. As the day passes by, you will have more golden stars on your list that will gives you a sense of self esteem and self respect.

Making a To-Do-List and consistently working from that list can increase productivity by 25%.

According to research, the more time you spent on making a to-do-list, more effective and efficient you will be in your working. Making a list of all the important tasks at the end of the week for the next whole week reduces stress and results in increase of productivity dramatically.

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so you can do something about it now”(Alan Lakein).

I am going to make my To-Do-List now, when you will start…???