This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar.

What's your Wednesday plan?

Why Wednesday?  Well it's just as arbitrary as an other day of the week, and you already know why you're suppossed to have a plan on Monday.  The challenge is that you start out with the best of intentions on Monday morning, yet the interruptions and work-flow of the day can quickly derail your best laid plans.

It's easy to get off track, and let the demands of the moment interrupt your company and professional goals.  Before you know it, you're not making any progress towards them until you re-plan the following week and repeat this vicious cycle.

Here is a quick 5 step strategy you can implement to immediately change the course of your week and future:

1 - Schedule a meeting with yourself Tuesday afternoon or night for 20 minutes
2 - Do a quick assessment of where you're at, what you have on the schedule, & quickly review your goals.  By now you know what you can expect for the balance of the week
3 - Write out a list of 5 action items that will cause you to make progress achieving your goals
4 - Schedule them as meetings in open slots during the remainder of your week starting Wednesday morning - allowing for interuptions of course
5 - Share your plan with a colleague to hold yourself accountable

Having any plan beats no plan, but not taking action makes the plan worthless.  Set yourself up to succeed by having a Wednesday plan.  You still must work out the details on Sunday or Monday to make this happen.  But this simple and effective strategy will cause you to follow through regardless of what derails you on Monday morning.

We’ve all heard the expressions, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” or my favorite growing up from dad, “if you don’t have a plan for your life – someone else does and you won’t like it.” 

Nothing could be truer.  Talk to anyone of substance or success in life and you’ll find they have a detailed plan for every area of their lives.  Do you have a plan for your personal and professional life?

Your plans don’t have to be grandiose or beyond your wildest expectations.  But you do have to have results in mind and create actionable and measurable items to achieve your desired outcomes.  What areas should you have plans for at a minimum?  These aren’t the only areas of your life, and they will definitely get you started on the right path.

• Health
• Relationships
• Career development
• Job specific skills

Where are you going to end up if you don’t know where you want to be?  My guess is a life unfulfilled and empty of accomplishment.  So what's the secret to creating a plan.  Simple, write your plans out and review them regularly – not one time.  

Create your grand vision for your life and career and your plan of actionable items to get there.  Break them down by quarter, month, week, and then daily.  Review your objectives monthly and create a plan for each week of the month based on what you know you can manage?  You should.  Then as the weeks come up, take some quiet time on Sunday and plan out your week in more detail.  Then each night, plan out the next day for your daily movement towards your goal.  You'll find your days a whole lot less stressful by simply planning out the night before.

Again, you don’t have to have the perfect plan.  Your plans will get wrenches thrown in them all the time.  Be flexible in your approach, and have a plan though.  Measure and modify as needed.
Again, it’s about having a plan so you’re not living someone else’s.  Any plan beats no plan, and the act of creating one will start to set you free, change your life’s course, and lead to a more fulfilling and profitable future.