Planning II: Your personal dashboard
Note: This is the second post of the two-series article about personal planning and goal setting. Find the first article, describing in detail my system for daily planning at this link.
If you recall the last article in angelsalinas.com, you already known deep down the system I use to plan my work days. I described it in detail, so you can mimic it and apply it starting today, so if you have not read it yet, do not miss the chance!
The first part of that article also served as an introduction for this two-series post, which this article is the second part of.
Coming back to the part where I sketched the full system, you will recall that we were combining two approaches:
- Your daily to-do list. The place where you put together a sequence of the tasks you have to accomplish in a given day and that, as their most, should bring you closer to the objectives defined in your personal dashboard.
- A tool (call it worksheet, paper or a blackboard) where you define the goals, outcomes and mid to long-term plans you want to reach in both, your personal and professional life. A roadmap, a place where you put white over black, what do you want to achieve and within what scope.
While we talked about daily planning in the former, I will cover the more strategic or goal-oriented part of the system here: what I happened to call, your personal dashboard.
I can imagine, as it happened to me at first, that it sounds like too much. Namely, describing goals and objectives and putting them in a written manner can look a bit snob and, in fact, is a difficult thing to do because it requires huge clarity of mind. But, once you can figure it out, it works. Studies have shown that putting your goals black over white and going back to them, can widely improve their likelihood to be attained because it subconsciously urges you to do the job, avoiding procrastination.
I will describe in the following lines, how i handle this part of the planning, and what tool do I use for it. Please, leave a comment in the section below if this topic is of your interest and let’s discuss about it.
1. The platform.
As an structured repository of objectives, goals and the roadmap to attain them, I strongly recommend the use of spreadsheet software as the go-to tool. No need of fancy stuff to do this, I personally use Google Sheets. Mainly because is free, online, accesible everywhere and on every device, and if it comes a time in which you have to share something with somebody (let’s imagine you create a dashboard with your girlfriend, family or virtual assistant) is the best sharing platform. Since you do not need advanced formulas or functionalities, any spreadsheet will do and, still, if you want to use a classic notebook, you will be just as fine simply recalling where it is and coming back to it appropriately.
Other tools you can use include, of course, Excel, Apple Numbers, Zoho Sheets (also in the cloud), or Calc from LibreOffice. The one you use are just a mather of personal preferences. By the way if you are into the pen and paper thing, do not miss the great Evernote Notebooks from Moleskine.
As we discussed in the daily planning article, just use the one you are most comfortable with and use it consistently. For you to have a good starting point, I prepared a template in Google Sheets you can access and duplicate in the following link. Is based in the dashboard I personally use, but you can easily adapt it to your needs.
2. The structure.
Although you can build your dashboard attending to your own preferences, I recommend a structured approach that can make it even more useful given that is adapted to the way the majority of the people think:
1. I use the first tab / sheet to list my big goals / objectives for the year. You can set objectives, as I do, that take more than a year, but is important to focus your efforts in a timely fashion. Because of that, if an objective takes more than a year to attain or is a lifetime goal, just keep it in the dashboard as you go.You can also set a different time interval, but given we are used to think in terms of years for mid-term goals, it comes as a more natural and easy way to plan.
As you will see in the template, the sheet consists in an easy-to-use table in which you can list 3 professional and 3 personal goals. Additionally, in the adjacent column, you can briefly describe the actions and routines to follow consistently to get the goal attained. To be compliant with the nature of a good objective, the most right column, allows to set a target completion date if is the case.
The reason why I set the dashboard to have only 3+3 big goals is simple: focus. It is easy, as it happens in the 1st of January, to set an unrealistic number of well-intentioned goals to achieve during the next 365 days (learn french, go to the gym, keep a healthy diet, grow your business by 100%, write 200 articles, read 100 books…). However, that is basically impossible. For that, as different productivity experts state (article) limiting the number of objectives to set allows to simplify, prioritize on focus on what matters. If you set more than that (which is already ambitious but attainable if worked consistently) you will not achieve any great result anyway.
2. The second tab is for time-planning. In the second tab, you will find a Gantt-Chart like sheet where the goals listed and described in the previous one are attached to a time plan. This way you list your objectives and activities and set the months planned for its consecution. You can either follow the same structure than in the objectives sheet or make it a bit different to make a bit more sense for you as I did (splitting the professional part in 2 pieces, job and side project, made more sense for me).
To use it, write the activities related to each of the objectives or areas and fill the columns colored in blue (start date, duration and percentage of completion). The Gannt chart will be automatically filled and you will get a very visual and time related way to look at your goals.
3. The third sheet is a super simple table meant to contain the structure of a normal day, namely, your daily habits. The same way that with the objectives, writting them down will allow you to have them clear in your mind and, more importantly, not allowing for excuses. Keeping a consistent course of action it is the best recipe to get to your goals. Just be sure that your regular agenda fits the objectives you set to pursue.
There are some pre-defined slots in the template, but you can of course adapt them to your regular schedule. Just write on the right column the activity and you are good to go.
4. The rest of the tabs: Finance, Learning, Books, Fitness and Experiences are samples that were created to cover different aspects of your life that are likely to be important in the consecution of either your goals or a good way of living. They are meant to be the place where you explicitly define what are your financial allocations when income goes in and what you will do with your money that will get you closer to your goals. The place where you list and describe the courses and seminars you want to attend and follow to get you the knowledge that require your career goals. The sheet where you list the books you want to read and its order, the fitness routines you are looking to follow or the traveling and life experiences you want to live.
You can use the defined tabs, covering each area or you can delete or add the ones that you consider as more important. That is up to each one of you.
The value that your personal dashboard provides will be linked to how much thought you put on it, the time you dedicate to the initial filling and how you mantain it and keep track of your progress.
3. How to use it
The way I use the tool, and the one I believe you can get more profit from, it is right at the time when you plan your day. Meaning, the time of the day when you prepare your to-do list.
We already discussed in the previous article the best times to prep your daily to-do list but indepentently of the time when you prepare it, coming back to the repository that contains your goals will give you a real perspective on what kind of tasks should you perform and the position in the scale they should have in your work day.
So, when you open Todoist, or any other task management tool you use, open your dashboard too and make sure the majority of the things prioritized in the To-Do list are related to your personal and professional long-term objectives.
Another great time to make use of it, is when finding yourself procrastinating. Taking a look back at your objectives and goals will remind clearly why you put this task in the list in the first place, and why you need to perform it. Research shows that this is a really effective way to boost your productivity.
4. Start using the template
I could have make it more complicated or fancy, but the point in the simplicity of the platform is that you will not be dreaded to use it. The ubiquity of Google Sheets allows for checking and tracking everywhere and in every device
Please find at the link below the Google Sheets template. Change it, complete it, play with it adapt it entirely to your needs and, the most important, make a constant use of it.
