Seven is a great number. So here’s one for today – the 7 Ps of planning, (according to the military): ‘proper planning and preparation prevents piss poor performance.’
Of course, the more polite version reads: ‘If you fail to plan, you plan to fail’. Agreed? Let’s see… I’d like you to look straight ahead, tilt your head back, looking up toward the ceiling or sky, next tilt your head down so your chin comes down toward your chest – and repeat several times!
So there we have it. Planning matters.
If you read yesterday’s post, you will have seen me mention how important ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ has been on my personal journey. Well, it may come as no surprise if I again refer to that super book again today. You see, the habit: ‘begin with the end in mind’ has an awful lot to do with planning ahead.
Too often, you’re given a task to do, or you set yourself a goal and I bet you set off towards your goal without first taking a bit of time to think about the challenge at hand. Give yourself a better chance of succeeding by thinking ahead and mapping out a bit of a path for yourself and your team.
Picture the scene a little over a week ago. Walking back indoors from the garden, it suddenly hits me; “Jeepers, thirty days! How the hell am I going to come up with something to write about every day? Well, I suppose, if I can do the cold shower thing there’s hope. But what about… I dunno’ er, variety? How am I going to find something different to say each day?”
What I did next even surprised me! I sat down at the computer, loaded up my note-taking tool of choice, Evernote, pulled up a blank note and started a numbered list with ideas I could use for the blog challenge.
1, 2, 3, … “hmmm, not too bad, I’ve got a few down. This is great. It means I’ve not failed at the first hurdle.” I carried on for a few more minutes. Before long I was staring at a list with circa 20 points on it. “Keep going… you can do this, you can get to 30.” The excitement welled up inside me. I could see a way to get there. And suddenly I was staring at the screen and there in front of me were 32 ideas for blog posts around the theme of helping YOU be a better person and grow your business – or the business you’re working in.
A little bit of juggling and refinement and I decided to down tools for the day and leave the list as is, rather than perfecting it, which I’m included to do. “Let’s NOT over-rationalise this thing, let’s just do it and see what happens.”
So here we are. I’m in the flow. We’re 9 days in. I know I have a set of topics ahead that are going to appeal to you. They’re going to give you even more useful suggestions on practical steps you can take to keep moving forward and I’m confident we’re going to have a bit of fun along the way. All because I took a few minutes to do a bit of planning before diving right in.
Mean anything to you? Can you relate? Want to share?
Please leave a comment below and do join the discussion on Twitter. Remember to use the hashtag: #CHA30DayChallenge
Thanks for stopping by and see you for more tomorrow friends!
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