As I promised you at the end of my previous article How to become wiser, I am giving you some extension to it, or part two as I named it. I think that to make good working plan, you need to know what to plan and what don’t. And to help you to recognize that I have created this article. As well as, I think that if you want make your ideas which you might write down earlier real, you would need some plan. So without any longer : How to make a good plan?

Having your freedom is the purpose.

If you made decision to start writing your ideas or plans, congratulations! That’s perfect, because you are step closer to your dream being true. And the decision to start is the most important in process of achieving anything in life.But don’t forget that’s the first, but not final step.

At the very beginning I would like to warn you about the danger of falling down into very lined-up plans, so you could easily become to feel, that it is more tightening you up than freeing you up. The purpose here is to give you freedom and being productive, not becoming to have feeling that you are slave, locked into your daily routine or in into your lined up future.

There is nothing worse like to be locked up in your own plan. Not that you might feel like being in a cage, but there would be decreased creativity, the tool so important in being productive.

Also, you would need to have different approach at achieving your goals. The difference would be in size, and time needed for the particular one.Because something else is to achieve your target to earn 500 000 Euros/ year, for example, like by achieving your target to be healthier or to exercise regularly, or to wake up earlier, right?

Even though, there is one thing which would be important in any type of your plan you set up, and that’s persistence. If you won’t be persistent at following your plan, even the smaller change would not be successful.

Having the right emotions.

There is an important thing to know. And though if you will make plans without any emotions, you won’t achieve any success. What I mean with emotions is that, if you imagine the end result you want to achieve by following your plan, you must get totally juiced about it. You must be able to get excited about it so much, that even if I would wake you up in the middle of the night, you would be able to name the reason, why you want to achieve that and therefore why you want to follow the plan.

Maybe, it is a bit exaggerated, but you know what I mean, right?

Because there is no bigger killer of productivity, like working on the tasks, you don’t see any reason on.That is why many people would start their own companies, they just can not stand to be working on someone’s demand. I am not saying that we all have to do just activities we do like, or we do feel comfortable by doing them. Sometimes you would have to do the unpleasant stuff, maybe the stuff you even hate. But if the end result is bringing you enough strong reasons why you are doing it, you will find a way.

 How do I know what is really important?

So let’s say you find your targets or dreams you would like to achieve, you feel really enthusiastic about it and you have enough emotions towards the end result, but now you still don’t know where to start, or how to start, or better say, you just don’t know what to plan, in order to be productive and successful in the end.

In other places on my website, I am using a lot verb values. To know your values and from them created priorities, according which you would lead your life, would help you massively. That is point number one, important in organising your plan.

And point number two is your time management. Because, in order to make sufficient plans you would need to use your time wisely.

To recognise what is important, what less and what is unimportant for your time planning will help you the table which displayed Stephen R. Convey. I allowed myself to adjust it slightly.

[table id=2 /]

This particular table can help you to settle your daily or weekly plans. That way you might become much more productive. (If you will use the right proportion of activities from particular column). Use of it can prevent you from doing unimportant activities rather than those which are bringing you closer to the life you would like to have.

For the feeling of balance and for higher productivity it is generally better to spend the most time on activities out of Quadrant 2. And besides it will help you to avoid some activities out of  Quadrant 1. Things out of Quadrants 3 and 4   are having unfortunately the backing up effect. Some of them has to be done, but many of them don’t. Be strict on avoiding them as much as possible in order to be productive.

In my case, there were times when it also became a problem. I was too enthusiastic with the change I saw in my life after starting to make short term plans, that I was not concentrating on those, with higher priority. Only when I started to dividing activities according their level of priority I started to be really productive. So watch out please, that you don’t commit the same mistake.

Productivity arrow.

So, if you would like to know how to make a good plan, my advice would be, please use your imagination and creativity to find the right dreams, keep writing them down, define their priority, then set up the plan according your emotions(they must be high with knowing enough reasons why you want to achieve the particular thing )and be persistent at following your written plan and then eventually you might achieve it. The persistence would be very important if the eventuality would turn into actuality. But that way you are really closer to achieve anything you decided to.

Time management and general planning are very important, though there are very subtopics, as you go further, you might discover different tools, maybe more convenient for you, but for the beginning this could be perfect guide through your first steps into planning.

I hope after reading this article you got a bit brighter idea how to plan, which activities put into your planning and which, on the other hand, are not so important to be part of your plan.

If you know about any other way how to plan more efficiently, or if you have some special techniques how you plan the things, please write them below. I would be really happy to check it 😉

Idea at the end: Don’t forget that often we need to throw out the unimportant in order to achieve what we really want .

I wish you great success by making your plans and achieving your goals!

More next time.