Where I stand now - Organization

This is an area where I see a huge need for improvement, and I can tell that I’m holding out. From mapping out my “ideal week” or day to planning each day before the previous day is done, I am consistently NOT doing what I believe I should. I’m doing better in some areas, yes, but I’ve fallen short on doing what I know I must do to make my days work for me, instead of the other way around.

Mark Sturgell, my business coach, has told me several times that successful peoples PRIORITIZE THEIR SCHEDULE, as opposed to SCHEDULING THEIR PRIORITIES. (crap – or is it the other way around?) The point is that you don’t just throw something important on a calendar and that’s it; it will get done. You must know each day what’s important to get done, and THEN go about planning your day around that. That may mean some things get done first before anything else, or it may mean that the day can’t end until I finish what I set out to do.

Right now, that’s not happening as it should. I want it to, but it’s not. My schedule is so haphazard right now that it’s quite apparent that what my days look like right now is not what they looked like 3 months ago and is not what they’ll look 3 months from now. Change is definitely occurring, and I am in a better place than I was before – I at least know what IS important to do – so now we’re coming upon matters of choice, of habit development, and of true character development. Do the things I do match the person I claim to be? I want the answer to that to be YES, every time.

There are some specific things I want to work on here. Here’s a few:

• Develop an ideal week for my work day. I say “week” instead of “day” because my schedule DOES vary day by day right now, both because of the variety of hats I wear in the business and the nature of my schedule – 3 days in town, and 2 at home office, for instance.
• Develop a method of tracking what I do each day. I don’t feel the need to capture this detail every 15 minutes or so, but really, is that THAT hard? That’s only 30-40 times of taking note of what I’m doing during the work day, and that’s not too bad. There are other ways to keep track of it as well. The new time tracking software I’m using is a much need help in this area.
• Develop a good contact management system that works for both existing customers and tracking sales. I need something that helps me VISUALIZE my sales funnel and the state of potential customers. Reports and sheets of paper stacked on top of each other don’t work for me.
• Develop a method of prioritizing goals, and relating the small goals to the bigger ones that truly keep me motivated. Again – a stack of Goal Planning Sheets doesn’t work for me. I’ve thought of an outline of sorts, but don’t know how to make that work yet, because I’m not really sure of the deep motivators that are at the top of the chain.
• Fit other areas into my “work day” rather than just time spent serving customers of the business. Bookkeeping, Sales, Business Planning, Networking, all that stuff is pretty easy. But what about exercise, motivational reading or listening, use of commuting time, etc. This stuff relates to my business life in less tangible ways, but I want a way to work it ALL into an ideal week, including the personal time I have with myself and family (although possibly not as specific here).

So those are some organizational things I want to work on. I’ve identified several and they are doable. They need to be done. They MUST be done. It’s easy to say life doesn’t depend on it, but the life I want to live DOES, which makes them worth pursuing and achieving.