The more observant of you will have realised that for the last few weeks there have been no blogs. The reason for this is simple. I have not been taking my own advice. Two large projects have come along which I have allowed to hijack my overall objective and despite all my best intentions the short term has taken priority over the long term. I am firefighting. Time to take a dose of my own medicine. I need to work out how to get back on track effectively.
If I were trying to be clever I could claim that the last four weeks have been a deliberate experiment to show how quickly the day to day can overtake the important long term stuff. I would tell you that the train has been deliberately derailed in order to demonstrate how to get back on track effectively. The truth is that I have suffered from the same fate as so many. In other words I lost the long term plot.
Enough self flagellation, what are we going to do about it?
The book the Twelve Week Year by Brian P Moran and Michael Lennington is a big help here. We will look at the techniques in greater detail in later blogs but the gist is simple. We need to divide periods up into shorter ones than a year in order to achieve our goals. The problem with a year is that it is too long and many procrastinate for the best part of twelve months and then dash to achieve everything in the last few weeks, thus not only missing their goals but driving themselves and everyone around them crazy at the same time.
The plan here is to amend the twelve week year to suit the current situation.
As I write this there are just over thirty weeks left of 2023 and so the logic is to have three, ten week years (the last week of the year is always pretty much a waste of space). This puts the end of the first ten week year at 6th August. Now we have that, we can begin planning. Going back to the blog The Simplest Time Management System Ever the most important thing I can be doing right now is planning. If you don’t plan your way out of a situation don’t be surprised when either nothing changes or things get worse. In order to plan you need time, and in order to make time you must cancel some things that are less important which will probably cause some short term upset. My first task this morning was to postpone all my appointments for this afternoon. This gives me planning time. It wasn’t a popular decision but it was a necessary one. If you have a job where you are not allowed to postpone things then set aside time at the weekend. I’m working next weekend and so I can’t do that. Also, the sooner you take the medicine, the sooner you start to feel better.
So, Part One is complete. Recognising the problem, accepting things can’t continue the way they are and releasing time to do something about it.
When planning, I know there are certain day to day projects I can’t (and don’t want to) drop but I need to plan to deal with them properly whilst also ensuring there is enough time for those future projects that have been neglected.
There you have it then, phone off the hook, email on silent and begin planning. Tomorrow we look at how Part 2 has gone.
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