Tag Archives: goals

Planning Sessions – a summary & final thoughts

Posted on by acrystelle
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For my final ‘Planning Sessions’ post, I’d like to share some final thoughts, benefits I’ve experienced and describe how my planning tools come together in the form of the ‘Weekly Review’.

In my first planning session, I identified five tools to use to assist my planning and keeping on track.

  • Diary
  • Task manager
  • Year Planner
  • Quarterly Planner
  • Checklist

At this point, I haven’t completed the quarterly planner, I’m feeling little need to do so. Perhaps I don’t need one? Though I suspect I’ll do a planner for the university semester.
For the other four tools, they’re serving their purpose beautifully. And I’ve been strict with myself to stick to the purpose for each tool. The result is not only minimising clutter, but I also know which tool to go to retrieve information about something. For example, I don’t record my exercise in my diary, it goes on the checklist. When I’d like to know how I’m tracking with my exercise goals, I don’t need to sort through appointments and due dates to find this information. I can view my progress with a glance at the checklist.

Possibly the single most important part of maintaining my capturing and processing system has been the ‘Weekly Review’. Last week I had a brief thought to do away with my ‘weekly review’ because I had other things calling for my attention. My recommendation is to ignore those urges. I kept my ‘weekly review appointment’ and glad I did. The ‘weekly review’ keeps me on top of my commitments and provides me with a clear idea of what I need to do. I’d fall behind and induce feelings of being overwhelmed if I missed a ‘weekly review’. It is a process where all the tools and their functions come together. The general process involves going through each ‘inbox’ and deciding each item’s next action (or inaction). Tasks are input into the task manager. I identify, from my year planner, which projects I’m currently working on and their next action. I then go through each task and assign a due date.

A challenge I’ve faced in developing trust in the system is recording tasks, ideas, etc as soon as possible, when it comes to mind. If something is on my mind, my mind isn’t clear and restricts thinking and ideas. When something is on your mind, before it starts to bug you, write it down, capture it in the system. Even if it’s a scribble on a piece of paper and placed in a physical in-tray. Come to the ‘weekly review’, the item will be dealt with.

By going through the process of planning and setting up a system, I’ve certainly honed my personal learning environment (PLE) tools used for capturing and processing – naturally I’ve stuck with what’s handy and meshes with how I like to record and retrieve things.

So here’s an idea: Record or pay attention to what you grab when writing down an idea or task. Do this for a week or two. Do you always have Evernote open? Do you grab whatever scrap of paper you find? This exercise will help determine which tools work for you and will be handy to incorporate into your processing system.

Final thoughts….

Plans and planning is guided by a direction or goals. I’ve discovered two approaches to planning. One is to plan to prepare for opportunities, the other is to plan towards set goals. So it doesn’t matter if you have set goals or not, planning is useful to everyone.

Planning doesn’t mean to imply being rigid or taking a rigid approach to following plans. Instead, I believe planning is key to being flexible. By knowing what projects are happening, commitments, essentially the big picture, at any one time actually allows for flexibility. Since implementing my planning tools and system I’ve identified an opportunity I’d like to take on. I can refer to my year planner, be reminded of my priorities and focus areas, and perhaps find a way I can work it in. Or I won’t be able to. But by having a planner, I can save myself from, well, myself and re-affirm where my energies are to be directed.

Remember, the only constant in life is change.

Planning Session 4 – the Checklist

Posted on by acrystelle
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There are two more posts in this “planning session” series which has detailed the process and approach I have taken to organising and planning the year ahead – the checklist and a summary, pulling all the planning tools together. I would’ve liked to have shared my thoughts on goal setting, but I’m still trying to work the process out. It’s been tough. After a three hour session, I’d made progress but I need to re-think my approach. Suffice to say, there is no one method, template…..any right or sure way to set goals. I have short to mid term goals, absolutely, however these are yet to make it to a piece of paper or be well defined enough to be able to tackle each element of them.

In this post, I will focus on the development of a ‘checklist’ I now use to tick off regular tasks, including habits I wish to establish.

I may have said this before, but not only am I a visual person, I’m also results driven. I like to see progress being made, as well as seeing when to celebrate successes and little wins. I didn’t want to clog up my task manager, this would be too overwhelming. I didn’t want to set aside a block of time for regular tasks and habits in my diary or calendar, such as exercise. I found last year this didn’t work for me. I became immune to those scheduled time blocks, I ended up booking appointments over the top, studied, etc. Self imposed due dates also became useless to me. I set too many tasks for myself and saw the due dates rush past in a flurry. No wonder I felt swamped, guilty (for not exercising or completing a task), trapped and buried in ‘have to’s’.

Primarily, the idea behind the checklist is habit development. Other uses include regular tasks, such as blog posts, professional readings, and also drawing my focus to the projects I’m currently working on. I initially thought to create a fortnightly checklist, but have now opted for a monthly. I’ve used (Kikki K) A4 monthly planners. A spreadsheet or table would also be effective, they were in my undergrad years. :) The purpose of the checklist is to visually see progress, and also see when it is not made or identify which area (or habit) is falling behind.

I’ve noted my goals on the bottom of the planners. One of them is to do physical exercise four times a week, three times as a minimum. By not ‘booking’ in exercise, I free myself to achieve those three to four workouts at any time during the week. If I don’t feel like exercising one day, no matter, I have the week to complete my quota. Flexibility in my schedule is also realised and achieved this way. I am satisfied when I see the ‘ticks’ at the end of the week and end of the month.

I can say, more than a month in using the systems I have put in place, the plans I have made and the tools I have used, it’s all working for me. I can elaborate more on the benefits of my planning sessions in my summary post. So for now, here are some additional resources for establishing habits.

5 Steps to create a new habit – zenhabits

How to not change a habit: 7 common mistakes – The Positivity Blog

What rituals do you include in your work life? – The Bamboo Project

A compact guide to creating the fitness habit – zenhabits

The two-headed beast of successful habit change – zenhabits

Planning Session 1 – Get it all out!

Posted on by acrystelle
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I couldn’t wait to plan my fresh start. It was difficult to know where to begin, but with pen, paper and a whole lot of ideas jumping round my head, one way was to just write. Here, I detail my first planning session, kicking off 2012.

Write, list, draw, whatever, all commitments for the year. For example, I have subjects to complete towards my Masters degree, ALIA NewGrads and writing here at Flight Path. Some times I can’t do things (or think) in any coherent order, so I’ve written all over a piece of paper. Whatever came to mind, seemingly random items. Questions which assisted my thought process included: -

  • What did I learn from last year?
  • What worked? What didn’t work?
  • What area/s of life do I want to work on?
  • What area/s of life need working on?
  • What behaviours or habits do I need to look out for?
  • What is stopping me from achieving goals?
  • What projects/events will I have on this year?
  • (for me) What will be my research/exploration focus?

Write down everything. I mean, EVERYTHING.

Guidance may need to be sought during this process. I looked to position descriptions (for jobs I’d like to aim for) and ideas of mid to long term plans and goals. I then highlighted items of particular importance, my focus areas – fitness, writing, well-being – with a bubble. But whatever takes your fancy.

I wrote down everything from what I definitely knew I had on, to what I’d like to do, such as learning Mandarin. As projects and commitments jump onto the page, this process may seem quite overwhelming, and it was. It’s supposed to. For me, it was like some sort of shock therapy to bring some perspective and realise I can’t achieve and do everything that’s landed on the page. Believe me, without established priorities and planning, if I attempted to pursue everything on that piece of paper, I’d most likely end up burnt out again, or on a bathroom floor, literally.

The second activity in this session was to identify what planning tools I’ll need to help me see the year ahead. Planning tools I’ve chosen are: -

  • Diary – for what’s on and due
  • Task manager – to be an inbox for tasks and managing next actions for projects
  • Year planner – to view all projects for the year on a Gantt chart-like spreadsheet
  • Quarterly planner – for a closer look at projects and due dates, particularly for the university semester
  • Checklist – to tick off regular tasks, such as reading, blog posts and exercising.

Each tool will be assigned a function. For example, my checklist is for habit development and repeating tasks. I will not be writing in due dates, events or appointments. This is what my diary is for. And this way my repeating tasks won’t bulk up my task manager.

I also started to think about my personal learning environment, systems and processes I need to have in place. I’m a systematic type of person. I like to plan and set in place whatever I can to free my mind from mundane, day-to-day processes, and time-wasting moments like ‘where did I file away my last bank statement?’ and the hunt that proceeds. Systems and simple processes that become routine and habit can save time and allows for focus on other, more complex tasks. I’ve already proven this to myself.

Some questions to ask are: -

  • Where and what tools serve as in-trays or inboxes?
  • How are day-to-day things processed?
  • Where can efficiency by improved so I can routinely capture the information and tasks I need?

For example, work emails, Gmail, physical in-tray, Evernote and Google Reader are probably most places where I’ll find tasks to action and ideas to organise; inboxes for things ranging from mobile phone invoices to blog post ideas and professional reading. For this first session though, I didn’t think too much about this and I still haven’t. At this point I figured once the projects and goals are set, I’ll have a better picture about what tools and processes I’ll put in place to facilitate them.

At the end of my first session, I had a piece of paper with scribbles, a rough list of planning tools and began to co ordinate regular events, like study, beach volleyball seasons and ALIA NewGrads, into a year planner. Details of said planner will come….however at this point I needed a boost of inspiration, so I spent an afternoon starting on my vision board by painting decorations.

For another example of conducting annual reviews and planning, see post from The Act of Non-Conformity.

 

Setting the Scene – 2012 Planning Part 1

Posted on by acrystelle
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Ah, new year resolutions. A new year, a fresh start. Goals seem to be flying about all over the place, and not without every tip under the sun about how to keep them. Well, I believe there is no point in having resolutions and goals without accompanying those with a plan to achieve them.

I achieved a lot last year, but at an expense to my well-being. It was a fabulous year for me professionally, but I didn’t set myself some boundaries. Without boundaries I tend to have no sense of when enough is enough; I didn’t consistently recognise limitations to my time and energy and I didn’t set any goals for the year. Funny that. I didn’t set any goals, yet I’ve accomplished more than what I remotely thought to be possible. I just went all out, hard, with no real defined direction. I took up every opportunity that came my way. Of course, my projects and writing this blog had purpose, but I did not deliberately say to myself, “Hey, let’s aim to present at a conference this year”. Basically I saw opportunities then did whatever I could manage to seize them.

This year will be much the same, but strategically and aligned with plans, focus, direction and goals. Seizing opportunities as they are created or presented is a great trait to have, but I believe I need to reign that tendency in a little, so to not jeopardise the efforts I plan to invest in other parts of my life which I also consider important and are very dear to me.

My lessons learnt from last year has inspired me to do some planning for next year, sorry, this year. Even before the new year began, I had my first planning session. I started tweeting my planning sessions, where a request arose that I blog about my process. This introductory post, as well as in a few posts to follow, I will detail what I have done to develop to a big picture view, down to a week-to-week system of keeping projects (and new habits) on track. Plus, I’m thinking it’s a good idea to document my planning process for reference at a later date.

Now, to return to the topic of new year resolutions and goals, here are some of my thoughts. Where goals arise, a balance needs to be struck between the efforts planned to be invested into those goals and the rest of life itself. There can be more time dedicated to writing, for example, but which part of life is going to be sacrificed in order to achieve related goals?

I’ve come to understand that I can’t achieve a goal without taking time away from another part of my life. This is where determining a (very) few focus areas, I’ve found to be important. These areas are what I’ll place above all else, when push comes to shove. I need to know what my priorities are, regardless of the goals I wish to achieve.

The purpose of my planning is to define focus areas for myself, determine when my projects are and identify any times I could pursue things I’d like to.

I define or use the term ‘project’ loosely in this context, to mean any series of tasks toward a completion of something. Projects could be completing a unit in my Masters course, organising an ALIA NewGrads event, research I’d like to do and even planning my travels.

My planning aims to: -

  • Look at what I can realistically achieve
  • Prompt strategic thinking
  • Break down goals by identifying building blocks (stepping stone projects and achievements)
  • Apply lessons learnt from last year.

A Joy of Organising

Posted on by acrystelle
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I love to organise. Depending on what needs to be organised, I’ll organise to the very last detail. I enjoy planning, seeing a project take shape, understand what I need to do to achieve or complete a task. I guess you could say that planning and organising, at least for me, is a way of getting the process of organising and using planning tools, out of my head so I don’t have to stress so much about completing things. I’m also a visual person, and have a need to see progress is being made.

 

This year – oops, allow me to correct that – last year I did away with my usual diary and went completely electronic, with a task manager and iCal on my iPhone to manage every day. Guess what? It took the joy I had out of organising and being organised. Electronic formats did not get me excited about an upcoming event or project completion. My commitments and appointments didn’t seem as real. I side-stepped a lot of my Pilates time and replaced it with work, even though I had blocked out time in my ‘diary’.

 

Towards the end of last year, I bought myself I diary. Yes, I’m going back to a good ‘ol paper diary. I’m bringing back the joy I have in organising. Already I’m loving it.

 

In my new diary I record my exercise, appointments, due dates and, inspired by the Bun-Toting Librarian, I’ve started to write down my mood, succinctly of course. At the beginning of each month I have room to make a list of focus areas and projects, as well as goals and what I’m grateful for. I’ll still use a task manager to manage the finer tasks for projects, but my diary is a small private space for me, away from my work and other commitments on the iPhone.

 

Over the last year however, I have developed a habit of entering appointments into iCal. I have my iPhone with me wherever I go. Like the shift to electronic organising, returning to a paper format will take some adjustment. Say or think what you will. So what if I appear to be going backwards? There are a number of great looking apps in the App Store right now I could download and use. Perhaps my position will change once I have a tablet; maybe I perceive the iPhone as not big enough to comfortably record what I need to. I like trying out new tools to facilitate organising and planning, but nothing beats a paper diary……at least for now.