The weekly planning hacks are geared to get you into immediate action. The tagline for PlanDoTrack, and Coaching Business Builder is “Daily Steps + Consistent Action = Momentum”. Things are easier to get done when in process. Think about how much energy it takes to get things going.
​
Part of this approach is to plan first. To take bigger tasks and break them down into manageable parts. For example, let’s say as a business owner you want to write a book. Planning can be key to success with a project like this.

1. First, what will the book be about? Spend time brainstorming all your ideas. Capture these in a MindMap or a set of index cards.
2. Next, identify what different areas you have. These may form your chapters.
3. From there, note the chapters, and if it’s useful, make an outline of each chapter. I will often write these on their own index card, or on a new piece of paper which I then place into a new binder with sections.
4. Looking at the number of chapters can help me then identify other resources I may need (i.e. research, illustrations etc). It can also help to start earmarking time windows. Perhaps I dedicate a week for writing each initial draft, OR as I do during NANOWRIMO’s Writing Months of November, a day or two for pumping out the first draft.

While “pumping out the first draft” may sound overwhelming, remember, you’ve got items in your MindMap and/or outline to start writing from. As we know in writing, it’s often through the process that the words come!

As you consider current projects you want to undertake, what does PLANNING first mean for you? What can it look like?

Best,
​Jennifer

Week 43 Focus — Delegation
Focus Question: What are the tasks which you need to let go of and have others complete? 

Description
There’s usually never enough time to get things done in our work. One area which most professionals struggle with is delegation. This is particularly challenging when working in the remote space as we need to be even more specific and strategic in what we can delegate, to whom and what it can look like.
 
Delegation is successful when we are clear about the task that needs to be completed, when we ensure that the person doing has the resources and authority to get it done, and that we also follow up regularly with the task.
 
Throughout the last three decades of my career, in teams large and small, intact and remote, I’ve found delegation to be a growth edge for everyone – leaders and team members alike.
​
In the spirit of keeping things simple, I have had people reflect on the 5Ws and an H of delegation as they think about:

• WHAT they want to delegate?
• WHO has the skills to do it?
• WHEN can they do it? What are key milestones towards project completion? When will you get things done?
• WHERE can the person being delegated to go for information and resources?
• WHY? What’s important about this task? What does the person need to know about WHY the task needs to be completed on time, with accuracy etc. Provide context around this.
• HOW can they do it? What are some of the key steps and resources required? Are there specific decision points they need to be aware of?

Using these questions as a conversation prompter can be valuable in terms of making sure that delegation is successful for everyone.
 
Activity
In this week’s post, I’m inviting you to take stock of all the things that are on your plate. As you consider past focus areas like the 80/20 Rule, what do you notice about where you are getting your impact and results in your work? You may recall that the 80/20 Rule – also known as Pareto’s Principle - indicates that we tend to get 80% of our impact from approximately 20% of our efforts.

Key Tasks I need to do (or delegate): _____________________________
 
Identify one or two tasks you would consider delegating. Using the following chart, work through the associated questions:

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
Delegation is covered in Section 4 of the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack. Review the sections in either these.

Review your current Monthly To Do List – you’ll find 12 of them in the Planner Section at the back. Each month be sure to make a list of all the tasks, projects and activities you have on your plate. While this can feel overwhelming you may get good at “triaging” the list early in the month, so that there is ample time to delegate tasks, schedule and defer others.

Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Plan, Do and Track here.

Best wishes, 
Jennifer

Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Plan, Do and Track

​This week’s Weekly Planning Hack gets you to think about reframing. Reframing issues may mean that you step into a new perspective around it, look at it through a different lens, or take a different time frame around it.

Let’s look at a couple of examples. If you are a business owner, remote worker or leader it’s likely that you have a number of different issues which are creating some challenge and/or tension for the team. With one of these challenges in mind, consider these questions to help reframe the situation:

• The challenge is ______
• Another way to look at this might be:
• An alternative solution to what we are doing right now is _________________
• The flip side is ____________________
• If I were to have more resources around this issue, I would add _______________. It would help to ______________
• If I were to take a long-term view around this challenge, I would notice ___________________
• The opposite approach to what we are doing is _____________________. If I/we took this it would help to _____________________
• The 30,000-foot view around this issue is _________________________
• If I were to look at it from the top of a hill or mountain, I would notice:
• Alternative perspectives we could take around this issue area_____________
• Alternative steps we could take around this issue are _____________________

There are some excellent facilitation tools which can help us with reframing including DeBono’s Six Thinking Hats. Read more about this from the DeBono Group here.
​
What other questions can help you to reframe your current challenge?

What new insights have you gleaned from working through these questions?

All the best,
​Jennifer

​Week 42 Focus – Prioritization
Focus Question: What do you want to focus on today?

Description
There are many competing priorities in a business. What are the things you want to focus on today? This week?
 
As solopreneurs, it’s unlikely that our To-Do list will ever be complete. We can overwork ourselves to the point of burn out.
 
As virtual and remote professionals the issue of prioritization takes on immense significance given that we are likely to be part of multiple teams, working across different time zones, with each team and leader having different priorities. Having to work more autonomously, and independently, we also can benefit from prioritizing what’s important from the “bigger picture” of what’s on our desk at any given moment of time.
 
In Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack, I share four different prioritization tools which will help you identify what is going to give you more focus:

1. The Strategic Issues Mapping
2. The SWOT
3. Covey’s Urgent/Important Matrix
4. Urgency/Importance Matrix

 
Activity
Work through the relevant tools for your work and business right now. If you are doing some longer-term planning, refer to the SWOT and/or Strategic Issues Mapping. If you are feeling overwhelmed, stuck or working on immediate priorities consider using the other prioritization tools.
 
Connection to the Workbook and Planner
You will find the prioritization tools listed on pages 114 to 119. You might consider exploring:

1. The Strategic Issues Mapping
2. The SWOT
3. Covey’s Urgent/Important Matrix
4. Urgency/Importance Matrix

Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Plan, Do and Track here.

Best wishes, 
Jennifer

Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Plan, Do and Track

​Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019),  Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Pick up a copy of any of her books at Amazon
Book Jennifer for a coaching session to explore productivity, teamwork and business issues.
Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326
Check out the new 19 Productivity Tips on-demand program. Explore this video based program at  your own pace, and join Jennifer for bi-weekly calls as part of your course.
Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram

This week’s Weekly Planning Hack, gets you to consider the question “If not now, WHEN”? Many of us have a list of items that sits there. While it is invaluable to get these ideas out of our head and onto a resting place, these lists can grow to be unmanageable and can create a sense of overwhelm in and of themselves.
​
This week pull out any lists you have been creating and ask the question – If not now, WHEN?
​
Some items may naturally fall into your calendar (Schedule them!), some may go back onto a new list to immediate To Dos, and others may gravitate to a new long-term list.

In exploring this question, you may find yourself at the end of the process, with yet another long list. Two different frameworks you might apply then:
1. The 4 D Model. Going through that list and further refining it into:
     Do it – And give it a time frame.
     Dump it – Let go of it.
     Defer it – Put it off to another time. (And schedule this in your calendar/planning        system.)
     Delegate it – Consider who to delegate it to, and when they will do it
 
2. Prioritization – Using the impact/likelihood matrix (see section 4 of PlanDoTrack or Coaching Business Builder), assign each (or most) of the items a priority. Schedule these in accordingly.

​Enjoy your prioritization!

Best,
​Jennifer

​Week 41 Focus – Chunk It Down to Gain Momentum
​Focus Question: As you consider your big tasks right now, what are the chunks, or discrete packets, at the core?

Description
There are many different models of time management and one of them is about chunking. Chunking invites us to break tasks down. In chunking we may put tasks of a similar nature together. Chunking can create momentum so we may be able to quickly get those items off our list.
 
One of the other areas that I've touched on in this book already is the notion of finding the times of day that work best for you. What does momentum mean for you? What are the top 6 you can get off your list quickly? What are the things that will help you gain some momentum and get things done on a consistent basis?
 
Businesses are often built in spurts.
 
Parkinson’s Rule asserts that tasks expand to the amount of time we give them. Sometimes it can be useful to “corral” a task, giving it a very fixed timeline in order to ensure that it gets one. Here are some examples of what you might do in spurts or by chunking:

• Accounting – rather than doing this daily, you could schedule time every month for data entry, invoicing, review etc.
• Writing – while writing daily can be a great practice, you could do this for multiple projects. Think – blog, book, articles, podcasts, scripts for courses. One of the most useful spurt processes I have engaged in for several years now is the writing support I receive from NANOWRIMO – November’s month of daily writing. This process helped to birth several of my books Effective Virtual Conversations (my 2017 book), the Coaching Business Builder. It also laid the seeds for future publications by getting me into the habit of regular writing spurts.

Activity
What are the elements you need to break down?

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
In your monthly planning process, break down your activities and projects into smaller chunks – tasks, activities. Use the To-Do pages to start drilling into the core packets of work.

Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Plan, Do and Track here.

Best wishes, 
Jennifer

Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Plan, Do and Track

​Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019),  Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Pick up a copy of any of her books at Amazon
Book Jennifer for a coaching session to explore productivity, teamwork and business issues.
Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326
Check out the new 19 Productivity Tips on-demand program. Explore this video based program at  your own pace, and join Jennifer for bi-weekly calls as part of your course.
Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram

​This week’s planning hack gets you to touch things ONLY once. This hack originally derived from the realm of paper management, where many organizers encourage sorters to make decisions as they go. For example, if you were to sort through a pile of papers you would make a decision around where each of the items would go, actioning it right away.

For example, professional organizer, Helen Buttigieg, recommends that papers are sorted via RAFT – Things that need to be READ (R), Actioned (A), Filed (F), Tossed (T). Rather than reading something and putting it back in the main pile, it would be read and then filed or recycled. 
​
This week you will want to consider applying this tip by tackling a pile (or box) of paper which has been sitting there. Apply the RAFT and/or sort it for once and all! I have a pile of file papers which have been accumulating for many months now that are going to get this 15-minute treatment. I’ll set a timer for 15 minutes and see how far I get. Rather than thinking I need “oodles” of time, 15 minutes is doable TODAY.

Enjoy this week’s prompt.

Best,
​Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019),  Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Pick up a copy of any of her books at Amazon
Book Jennifer for a coaching session to explore productivity, teamwork and business issues.
Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326
Check out the new 19 Productivity Tips on-demand program. Explore this video based program at  your own pace, and join Jennifer for bi-weekly calls as part of your course.
Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram

​Week 40 Focus – Team Development – Building Your Team 
Focus Question: What is going to help your team excel? What does building your team look like? When are you dedicating time to this process?

Description
Team development is a process. It is not something that happens overnight. It’s not a one-off. Teams are like elephants – big and bold. They take time to move and shift.
Teams need several elements to perform at their peak. I commonly call these the Six Factors of high performing teams. From different research (Katzenbach and Smith, Hackman and Wageman, Carr and Peters) we know that teams require:

1. Shared purpose or mission (Your WHY)
2. Shared behavioral norms (How you do things? What is acceptable and unacceptable on the team?)
3. Shared commitment (What are team members committed to?)
4. Shared performance goals (How are people measured? How do your goals align? Overlap?)
5. Shared team practices (Teams that work together effectively share common practices such as a Monday morning huddle, a Thursday night out or some other regular event)
6. Clear roles (How our roles overlap, align and connect)

https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-307-revisiting-the-six-factors-of-high-performing-teams
 
Activity
As a team, consider where you are on a scale of 1-10 (1 being low and 10 being high) around each of the Six Factors? What needs attention?
Be sure to schedule in time for your team development activities. (Note the S in activities. Team development is not just a one-off! It’s a process.)

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
Share resources with you team from the workbook plan. Could they benefit from having a copy themselves?
 
Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Plan, Do and Track here.

Best wishes, 
Jennifer

Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Plan, Do and Track

​Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019),  Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Pick up a copy of any of her books at Amazon
Book Jennifer for a coaching session to explore productivity, teamwork and business issues.
Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326
Check out the new 19 Productivity Tips on-demand program. Explore this video based program at  your own pace, and join Jennifer for bi-weekly calls as part of your course.
Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram

​Being able to create a micro-pause within your working context can help support focus, clarity and momentum. In our work as coaches, we often create a “micro-pause” with the organizations we work with. In my research around the value of group and team coaching, I continued to hear about the value of the “pause”, the fact that a coaching conversation would provide a pause for people to stop and think and look around.

This is something we all can be doing in our work – stopping to see what is working well, and what’s not. What needs to be tweaked, and what needs to be overhauled.
We often need to “Slow down, in order to speed up”.
 
Here’s a great article for entrepreneurs who feel like they may need to always be “on” by Jules Schroeder entitled “The Slow Hustle: Why Every Entrepreneur Needs to Slow down In Order to Speed Up”.

Questions to consider this week:

• What value would there be in having more pauses in your schedule or work day?
• What are the micro-pauses you want to create?

Best,
​Jennifer