6 Ways To Make Sure You “Work Your Plan”

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A long time ago, I had a boss at what was then RPS tell me over and over, “Plan your work, then work your plan”!

Of course back then I didn’t realize the the importance of what he was trying to tell me. But now, I realize that there is nothing more fundamental to the success of your business than executing this phrase everyday because…guess what?  It works!

So it’s one thing to “Plan your work”. We learned in the first couple of posts in the series how to create and prioritize out to do list.

This is not actually that hard. The hard part is, “Working your plan”.

In this next post, we’ll look at some things to think about as you set out to “Work your plan”. If you take these things in, digest them and put them into practice, you won’t believe the results that will come from them.

6 Ways To Make Sure You Get Done What You’ve Planned

1)       You must be get in the habit of reviewing your plan once or twice a day. You must be committed to reviewing your plan and sticking to it. At the end of each day, you must then review your plan, take inventory of what got accomplished,  and the re-evaluate the things that did not. If something did not get completed, then you need to ask yourself if it was an item that aligned with your priorities and should have been on there to start with or not. If you track your progress in this way, you will get a good picture of whether or not you are completing tasks that align with your priorities.

2)      Fast forward to the accomplishment of the priority item or task and visualize it getting done. Then try tapping into the positive emotion that will come from the competed task. This is a tremendously powerful technique! You will be surprised by what will happen when you get good at using this type of visualization. Thinking about the task being completed will keep you going and will give you the energy and desire to keep on going to task completion, even when you get tempted to stray onto something else.

3)      Link the task to what is important to you. In our first couple of posts in this series we discussed this notion and here it is again. One of the greatest motivators of all time is linking what you do with what is important to you! If you can link the task to making a difference in what is important to you, then your motivation increases,  your action will follow and the task gets completed.

4)      Take action at the time you have the task scheduled. A great discipline of highly successful people is that they take action on the things they have scheduled when they have them scheduled. Procrastination is a stress increaser and an attitude decreaser.

5)      Get in the habit of making a short period of time at the end of the day to take a look back at your schedule to think and reflect on what got accomplished each day. Look at the things that happened that were in line with your priorities and with what you had set out to do. Look at things that happened that were not in line with your priorities. What you did wrong and what you did right. Then, take a look at the day ahead and use the lessons you learned from the present day so you can make the next day better.

6)      No matter what has happened at the end of the day, keep your attitude positive. If you look at some of the great athletes and watch their interviews at the end of whatever event they may have just lost, you will see them admit where they failed and what they did wrong. Then amazingly in the pain and suffering of defeat, they will tell you how they are then going to correct what they did and wrong and come out on top the next time. They are able to maintain a positive attitude when most other people would retreat and go into hiding. Your attitude is the lighthouse for your success.

Remember that tomorrow is up to you to shape. It is you who chooses how it will be formed and you who determines its results.

Now a few words about our biggest obstacle to “Working our plan”:

Procrastination

We all experience this. We all fight this monster everyday.

It can be defeated.

Here’s how:

-          Have faith in the future that you have envisioned for yourself. Ask yourself where you’d rather be. In the stress-filled world of the procrastinator or in the land of accomplishment and success?

-          Learn how to complete the task that is before you. For example, you might procrastinate recruiting new employees because you don’t know how to recruit, or, you are procrastinating learning a new way to take control of your business by using a new technology (eTruckBiz.com for example) because you don’t know how to get started using it.

-          Feel the momentum build  as you repeat an action that you just learned. For example, feel how easy it becomes to recruit employees after you learn how to do it. Once you learn how to use eTruckBiz.com, the more you’ll get into the habit of using it and the more organized and in control of your business you’ll be.

You can defeat procrastination. You just have to “want” to.