This week’s Weekly Planning Hack is all about taking consistent action, starting out in 15-minute bursts. The tagline for my Workbook Planners, PlanDoTrack and the Coaching Business Builder, is that business success in today’s disruptive environment is about taking consistent action on a daily basis, in order to generate the momentum needed around projects. A key challenge of today’s VUCA and ever-changing context is that things are occurring so fast many times we are abandoning long term projects in trade-off of short-term creation. We still need to get our big projects done. For leaders, these are the strategic issues that are going to move the business forward. For business owners, these are the big projects - like writing a book or creating something else – that is going to keep the business moving. The challenge is finding the space to work on projects. As Thoreau wrote “I love a broad margin to my life”. I have been enamored of his writing on Walden Pond since my early 20s when I was a grad student in Environmental Studies. As many of you know, each summer I retreat and work remote out of my cottage in the solitude of nature. Even with that, the margins of my life are compressed most of the time – as a business owner, author, mom and primary support to my aging parents. Finding huge swaths of time for creative projects is always a challenge. Two years ago, after my return to the city, I didn’t return to watching TV or Netflix. I still have ample screen time in my line of work, but it created a bit more margin for creative and strategic thinking. Even with this, I started finding that some projects really could only have 15-30 minutes dedicated to it at any given time. Great examples of this are this series – the Weekly Journaling Prompts which have been created in 15 – 30-minute windows of writing, posting and recording throughout the year, as well as a lot of my writing on the Teams365 blog. You might not think 15 minutes a day adds up, but it does. Take a look at the volume of content generated over at the Teams365 blog which has now shaped not only one, but three of my books. What are the key strategic and long-term goals you want to work towards? How might 15 minutes a day of focused effort, and consistent action on a daily (or regular) basis help you? Experiment with it. See what happens. AND – Let us know! 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 Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram
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This week’s Weekly Planning Hack gets you to consider the question “What’s the season?”. Just like weather seasons, there may be different seasons for us throughout the year, and throughout our life span. As I share in this week's Facebook Live, every November I enjoy carving some time out for writing. My November focus has led to the creation of new bodies of work including my 2017 book, Effective Virtual Conversations, and this year, it's supported me in creating time for the Remote Pathways 90 Day Guide for New Remote Professionals. I plan to make this available in 2020. With the support of the virtual community, it's an added push I need to get creative work out. As you think about your annual rhythms: What season are you in right now? What season are you yearning for? Like the weather seasons there may be different rhythms you may want to follow. For example, longer work days, and shorter work days. What is the pace of work you are looking forward to? Enjoy your reflection! Jennifer PS - As I mention in this week's Facebook Live the Remote Pathways Podcast is now live. I'd love for you to subscribe and follow. It's a bi-weekly podcast around the people, places and pathways for remote work, which I co-host with Michelle Mullins. Join us on our remote adventures! 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 Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram This week’s Weekly Planning Hack gets you thinking about batching your tasks. Perhaps you are a business owner. If writing is a key activity for you, could you earmark one day a week to tackle your writing tasks, or if getting organized is key in the financial area, could you block off a chunk of time (i.e. 90 minutes or more) on one day to tackle to receipts? You might also earmark part of a day (or an entire day) to meetings and calls, and one to work. Consider this and what impact that would have in terms of your levels of satisfaction and FOCUS. When we have to switch tasks that use different parts of our brain – for example, moving from writing which may require synthesis and creativity, to mathematics – numbers and details – there is a certain energy, called “cognitive load” when we switch between tasks. When our brains are taxed or in overwhelm, this cognitive load of switching can be more significant. This week consider:
Enjoy the exploration! 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 This week’s Weekly Planning Hack gets you to think about your relationships and who you have in your web, who can help you with a major project or task that isn’t getting done. We do not operate in isolation and reaching out to others for support and collaboration can be important in getting things done. A few weeks ago, I wrote about planning first, and writing a book. There may be some people in your network who could help you with this. For other projects, like the paper management organizing mentioned in week 35, you may need to enroll family members like a spouse or kids to wade your way through the paper. What is important to note about relationships this week? Each February I often put a spotlight around relationship management issues. In PlanDoTrack, I also zoom into this topic area and invite business owners and remote workers to take stock of the Top 20 people in your network. Knowing who you can reach out to is important, especially in times of urgency. If you have not yet completed the exercise, be sure to check out the Top 20 Exercise on page 87 of PlanDoTrack. Enjoy your exploration! 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 Looking to the long haul, long term or big picture can really support us when we go to plan, schedule and execute. Looking to the long haul, can be applied at all three stages of PlanDoTrack. Consider these: Planning – How often are you taking time to review or reconnect with your annual vision? Do you have an annual vision? If you haven’t created your vision for this year, check out the questions on page 101 of PlanDoTrack or 99 of Coaching Business Builder. Do you have strategic goals in your work or business for the next 3 – 5 years? As you look at your vision and/or strategic issues, what do you notice? Along another vein, as you consider your longer-term planning, consider jumping up to the 30,000-foot view, as if you were in an airplane. As you look out at the landscape below (and far ahead on the horizon) what do you notice? Take time to review your long-term plans and visions this week, make additions to your weekly and monthly plans accordingly. Doing – Consider the tasks you are working on right now. How are they supporting long term action and impact? How are current actions supporting your longer-term vision? If current actions are not supporting long-term vision steps, what do you want to build into your schedule? Keeping in mind Consistent Action + Daily Steps = Momentum, what 15 minutes could you earmark for longer term DAILY Action? Does anything (i.e. TV Time) need to go or be condensed so you have time to do this? What else will support you in action around your long-term goals? Schedule this in now. Tracking – As you review your metrics (financials, monthly trackers etc.), what do you notice about trends? How do these metrics connect with your bigger vision and longer term goals? What changes you do you want to make based on what you see? What do you want to keep doing, and/or magnify? Enjoy the exploration! 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 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.
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 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 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:
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 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 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 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:
Best, Jennifer Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Check out the Weekly Planning Hack Facebook Live each Wednesday or Thursday here. Be sure to like our page to be updated each week! Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013) |
AuthorJennifer Britton is the blogger behind the popular Teams365 blog, a daily,blog for team leaders and members since 2014. Her latest publication is the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner. Pick up a copy at Amazon. Pick Up a CopyUpcoming Programs
Join us for the 21 For 21 Virtual Co-working Sprints - $21 US. Want to access the recordings and bonus worksheets? Join us at the Booster Pack $79 US early bird rate. Sign up at 21for21 Virtual Co-working - STAND OUT VIRTUALLY! Stand Out Virtually - Incubator - Running an online, virtual or digital business and want to get the word out to organizations? Join us for the 8 week Stand Out Virtually Incubator. Next group starts April 2021. Build out your brand, offers and proposals. Virtual Facilitation Essentials (8.5 CCEs)- Expand your toolkit for better remote and virtual conversations. This is a virtual train-the-trainer - 5 weeks: Fall 2021 programming starts in October $495 US Learn more and register. Coaches! Register for the 60 Day Coaching Business Builder Accelerator. Join us for 60 Days support and ACTION for coaches wanting to grow their businesses. On-Demand Course. PlanDoTrack Facilitator Training Program (24 CCEs) - Starts again in October. Contact Jennifer to discuss. Month-End/Quarterly Planning Session: Thursday September 30th - 8 -9 am ET Archives
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