Today is a big day. We are going to take your compass direction and your list of possibilities and turn them into a plan!!
Wait a minute! Didn’t I say yesterday that planning doesn’t work? Well, I did and I stand by that. Specifically, long term planning doesn’t work. However, I have found that it’s a lot easier to move forward in the short term if you have a realistic, flexible plan to work off of.
In this post, I’m going to show you how to select item(s) from your list of possibilities and turn those into a 7 day action plan. More importantly, we’re going to start working on these plans today. Not tomorrow, not Monday, but today. Because seriously, it’s January 7 as a write this and your New Year’s momentum is already starting to wane, isn’t it?
In yesterday’s post I asked you to make a list of possible actions you could take to turn your theme into a to-do list. For my theme of “Reach Out” I came up with the following list:
- Guest post on other blogs
- Become more active in forums
- Host a teleseminar or UStream event
- Join a group exercise class
- Lead a community service project
- Call one close friend every week
- Send a handwritten letter every week
- Network with a new group
- Travel to 2 new places
If you didn’t make a list yet, go back and do that now. Do you have a list now? Good.
Now your job is going to be selecting one or more items from the list and making a commitment to turn that into an action plan for this week.
When it comes to change, there are two schools of thought. One is the extreme changers, who suggest that you go all out at the beginning of the change process to make quick progress. For example, the South Beach Diet has a two week phase to begin the diet that is extremely low in carbs. Following this plan will help you loose weight quickly. This might keep you motivated to stay on the diet, but it isn’t very sustainable over a long period.
The second school of thought is the more moderate changers. These people suggest that you set a sustainable pace by working on a change for as little as 10 minutes per day. Just keep moving forward a little bit and you’ll eventually make a lot of progress. This pace can be demotivating for people who don’t have a lot of patience, but it appeals to people with more measured personalities.
Before you put your plan together, ask yourself the following questions:
- Do I need to see quick progress to stay on track?
- Do I tend to go all out on a new project only to get burned out in a week?
- Do I have a burning desire to put all my effort into this?
- Do I need to conserve energy for everything else going on in my life?
If you need more help deciding your ideal pace of change, read my post Sliding Scales – Rapid vs. Gradual Change .
If you’ve decided that you need to go all out to stay motivated, craft your weekly plan around a lot of time and activity. Choose at least one thing on your list to work on every day. Lock yourself in the house this weekend and devote all of your energy to your list and try to check off as many things as you can. Keep sprinting until the end of the week, and then take a breather day if needed.
Looking at my list, a weekly plan that goes all out might look like this:
- Today: Go to the gym and join a group exercise class. Work out and talk to 3 people after class.
- Tomorrow: Sign up for BlogTalkRadio, schedule a weekly show and start marketing it on Twitter , Facebook and everywhere else I can think of.
- Weekend: Call 5 friends I haven’t connected with. Go out Friday and Saturday. Talk to 3 new people each night. Write a huge ebook to attract more blog readers.
- Monday: Join a local networking group and go to their meeting. Talk to 5 new people.
- Tuesday: Write handwritten letters to 5 friends to make up for not sending Christmas cards!
- Wednesday: Rest day
This total immersion plan obviously doesn’t leave time for anything else, but it will help me make a ton of progress if I can stick to it.
A more measured approach would include anywhere from 10-30 minutes of activity off your list every day. This might mean that you can only work on one item, depending on how big the project is. Choose something that’s really interesting, otherwise you might get bored and loose motivation. A plan for me might look like:
- Today: Go to the gym and pick up a group exercise schedule. Read through schedule and select a class.
- Tomorrow: Go back to gym and sign up for the class I choose.
- Saturday: Attend my class. Smile and say “Hello” to classmates, but don’t seek major contact.
- Sunday: Research teleseminar providers for 30 minutes.
- Monday: Work on topic for future teleseminar.
- Tuesday: Post a poll on blog about interest in teleseminars. If interest is high enough, pick a date and time.
- Wednesday: Keep on trucking…
As you can see, this plan helps me make progress, but it’s at a fairly slow pace. If I followed this one, I could continue to catch my favorite TV shows and spend 3 hours making a pot of soup on Sunday if I want.
Ultimately you have to decide how much time and energy you can devote to traveling in your compass direction. Just keep your theme in mind and you’ll never go wrong!!
Your exercise for today is to make a one week plan and commit to doing your chosen activities for those days, starting now.
When you’re finished, share a day or two of your plan in the comments section. Also, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter . I’m tweeting a couple of tips per day to help you through this process.
Photo by Kriss Szkurlatowski
Wait a minute! Didn’t I say yesterday that planning doesn’t work? Well, I did and I stand by that. Specifically, long term planning doesn’t work. However, I have found that it’s a lot easier to move forward in the short term if you have a realistic, flexible plan to work off of.
In this post, I’m going to show you how to select item(s) from your list of possibilities and turn those into a 7 day action plan. More importantly, we’re going to start working on these plans today. Not tomorrow, not Monday, but today. Because seriously, it’s January 7 as a write this and your New Year’s momentum is already starting to wane, isn’t it?
In yesterday’s post I asked you to make a list of possible actions you could take to turn your theme into a to-do list. For my theme of “Reach Out” I came up with the following list:
If you didn’t make a list yet, go back and do that now. Do you have a list now? Good.
Now your job is going to be selecting one or more items from the list and making a commitment to turn that into an action plan for this week.
When it comes to change, there are two schools of thought. One is the extreme changers, who suggest that you go all out at the beginning of the change process to make quick progress. For example, the South Beach Diet has a two week phase to begin the diet that is extremely low in carbs. Following this plan will help you loose weight quickly. This might keep you motivated to stay on the diet, but it isn’t very sustainable over a long period.
The second school of thought is the more moderate changers. These people suggest that you set a sustainable pace by working on a change for as little as 10 minutes per day. Just keep moving forward a little bit and you’ll eventually make a lot of progress. This pace can be demotivating for people who don’t have a lot of patience, but it appeals to people with more measured personalities.
Before you put your plan together, ask yourself the following questions:
If you need more help deciding your ideal pace of change, read my post Sliding Scales – Rapid vs. Gradual Change .
If you’ve decided that you need to go all out to stay motivated, craft your weekly plan around a lot of time and activity. Choose at least one thing on your list to work on every day. Lock yourself in the house this weekend and devote all of your energy to your list and try to check off as many things as you can. Keep sprinting until the end of the week, and then take a breather day if needed.
Looking at my list, a weekly plan that goes all out might look like this:
This total immersion plan obviously doesn’t leave time for anything else, but it will help me make a ton of progress if I can stick to it.
A more measured approach would include anywhere from 10-30 minutes of activity off your list every day. This might mean that you can only work on one item, depending on how big the project is. Choose something that’s really interesting, otherwise you might get bored and loose motivation. A plan for me might look like:
As you can see, this plan helps me make progress, but it’s at a fairly slow pace. If I followed this one, I could continue to catch my favorite TV shows and spend 3 hours making a pot of soup on Sunday if I want.
Ultimately you have to decide how much time and energy you can devote to traveling in your compass direction. Just keep your theme in mind and you’ll never go wrong!!
Your exercise for today is to make a one week plan and commit to doing your chosen activities for those days, starting now.
When you’re finished, share a day or two of your plan in the comments section. Also, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter . I’m tweeting a couple of tips per day to help you through this process.
Photo by Kriss Szkurlatowski