My entrepreneurial Think Tank group recently initiated a weekly call to allow members of the group the opportunity to recap their previous week, and to set their intentions of what they were planning to complete in the upcoming week. I agreed to organize and facilitate the call, and behind the scenes, I’m using the call as an opportunity to do my own weekly planning—a great discipline to begin as we near the beginning of a new year.

A few weeks ago, I proudly shared my weekly plan with Cheryl Beth, who began asking questions about what I had set out to achieve in the upcoming week.  Her questions centered around a common theme that translates to “when are you planning to get these tasks done?”

When I could not answer her questions adequately, I realized that I had fallen again into the “wish list” trap.  I had boldly created a list of things that I had wanted to do that week (right brained activity), without taking the time to check my calendar and to allocate tasks to designated times during the week. Without allocating the time, the tasks (particularly the important tasks that were not urgent - thank you Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, habit 3 “Put First Things First”)  would invariably not have a chance to get done, and I would end the week frustrated that yet again, I couldn’t get all the things on my list done.

Great planning over any time period (daily, quarterly, annually) takes time and requires a balanced mix of right brained thinking (develop a creative/inspired list of tasks/projects that could get us to a better position), and specific, concrete left brained thinking (what are the priorities, who will complete them, when do they need to be done?). Without a healthy balance of both right and left brained thinking, the plan is flawed and far less likely to get completed.

Few people naturally do both left and right brained thinking well. We naturally prefer and excel at either right or left brained thinking – rarely both. Whichever mode of thinking we don’t prefer ends up weakening or undermining our plans. We either need to get someone to help us with that part of our planning, or we need to develop the disciplines required to learn and improve in that part of our planning efforts.

I am committing myself to improve my weekly planning in 2010. What changes in your planning process are you planning to make in 2010?

Let Business Improvement and CEO Think Tank help you with your 2010 planning process.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 7:07 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.