By: Dr. Sanjay Kumar Agarwal, Sr. Associate Editor, ICN Group
(In the past article, we know about advance planning. Today, we will further discuss about the benefits of advance planning.)
Advance planning (cont..)
NOIDA: The most powerful utilisation of the time is for planning your work beforehand, as every minute spent in planning will increase your productivity and you will save lot of time while executing your plans, so that you may get more & more time for the things, you want to do, as per your own choices. You can plan your next day before leaving the office in the evening or before going to sleep or while commuting to workplace or before starting a new day at the office. The most ideal time is to plan the next day before leaving your workplace in the evening.
Benefits of advance planning
- It provides a readymade compendium of all the works you have to do during upcoming days/ weeks/ months/ years.
- It provides a rough estimate of time required for each work.
- It reveals the areas, where we can consider delegation of work or outsourcing.
- If a clear-cut plan is chalked out for a team, every team member will have an idea, what is expected from whom and in what time duration?
- You will not feel overwhelmed due to multiple tasks at your hand, as you will be comfortable due to prior planning.
- You will have a better image of an organised person in the eyes of your boss, colleagues as well as your subordinates.
- You will attend one task once only and it will avoid duplication of work.
Plan your next week in advance, preferably before start of the new week i.e. Sunday night. Similarly, plan your next day beforehand on the previous night before going to sleep. When you decide the list of your works to be done next day before going to sleep, the message goes to your sub-conscious mind and your sub-conscious mind starts working upon the list. In the morning, you feel fresh and energetic and are away from chaos of your work life, as you have already planned your day. If you plan your week in advance, your important works will not suffer at the hands of less important works. When you start neglecting important things for long, they can be converted into urgent and may result into crisis or missing deadlines.
For example, we all know the last date for filing of our Income Tax Return. If we postpone filing of return to the last week before the deadline, the normal situation may be converted into crisis situation. You may fall ill; or may face any unavoidable engagement; your Chartered Accountant may be pre-occupied in other works etc. You can always expect an unexpected exigency to become most important task for you to do immediately, which may consume even days. In this manner, normal filing of return will result into possible missing of deadlines and facing penalties. Missing deadlines in this example is not severe, but we all know that sometimes, missing deadlines may cost you a fortune.
Before learning the techniques of effective time management, first of all, you should do some introspection about your time utilisation habits. You have to first observe your habits of time utilisation by maintaining a time log book. You also have to identify your power hours when your productivity is maximum, so that you can accordingly schedule your time table for the day. I hope you have already analysed your time log, as suggested in earlier articles.
(In the next article, I will share 2 productivity tips to save yourself from petty distractions. I believe that you are enjoying the journey towards the future of your dreams with me. If yes, please stay tuned. Happy G.O.P.T.A.)
Dr. Sanjay Kumar Agarwal, Creator & copyright holder of the concept G.O.P.T.A.© is an Author, Certified NLP Lifestyle Trainer, Strategic Interventionist, Corporate Trainer & Motivational Speaker ( http://bit.ly/Signature-Workshops-Sanjay-Kumar-Agarwal ) and recipient of Honorary Doctorate of Excellence (Management) by prestigious Young Scientist University, California, USA. He is Founder of ‘Read, Learn & Earn Movement’ and is popularly known among his fans & followers across the globe as ‘Time and Goal Guru’.
