Why is it that some people seem to be able to achieve so much whereas many of us find it so hard to simply keep up with all the day-to-day stuff that needs to be done?
A key reason is that those that achieve a lot are very effective at prioritising their workload so that time is put aside for important tasks. However, this is just part of the answer, since prioritising is all well and good but action needs to be taken as a result.
As the Japanese proverb states: “Vision without action is a daydream, action without vision is a nightmare.”
A subtle point behind the second part of this proverb is that we better have a pretty clear idea of where we want to end up before we start doing anything and this is where the art of planning comes in.
Winston Churchill amongst many others recognised this when he said “he who fails to plan is planning to fail”.
Naturally, this starts with stating as clearly as possible what we want to achieve, by when, and writing this down.
Something magical happens when we take what is in our head and commit it to paper – it becomes more real, tangible and definitive and can then be readily shared with others who may also be involved in the activity.
The timeframe is really important here, since an objective without one is highly unlikely to ever complete.
The next step is to break our objective into all the tasks that need to be done to achieve it.
This is key to how big or complex objectives are achieved and starts to give a better sense of what is really involved.
Every task will require time and resources associated with it and there will necessarily be constraints associated with each.
Some tasks can only be done by certain people, and some tasks may need to complete before others, for example.
Understanding this at a high level, at least, is critical to ensuring that we don’t embark on an impossible task.
In projects, this is called a ‘feasibility study’.
With all the tasks identified (and assuming that the project is feasible!), the next step is to estimate the effort required for each task, define who will be responsible for doing it and identify dependencies between the tasks themselves.
It is not usually necessary to estimate each task to the minute (a ball park estimate is often good enough), but it is important to plan in time for stuff to go wrong.
This is where many plans can come unstuck since ‘sunny day’ planning (which assumes that everything goes right) very rarely actually happens, so plan in some time for the unexpected.
Once all this information is captured, now you are in a position to create a visual representation of your plan.
Imagine that this is captured in a table, then the rows should contain the tasks that need to be done in sequential order and the columns will be dates which could be days, weeks or months.
By simply drawing a horizontal line for each task where the start of the line corresponds to the start date column and the end of the line is where the task is supposed to complete (again visible in the associated column), you can visually see what needs to be done when and ensure that all these tasks can be completed before the end date.
If you do have other people that need to action tasks within your plan, it is a very good idea to share the plan with them so that you can get agreement for their availability in the timeframe that you require them.
There are many planning tools that can be used for this which you can find on the web and many of them will automatically create the visual representation for you based upon the information you provide for each of the tasks.
Ian Ash ACC AIECL AInstIB
Managing director, OrgMent Business Solutions – ombs.com.au
