Proactive Planning: Escape Crisis Mode and Take Control of Your Day (#2)
This episode is available in blog format here.
Have you ever started your day feeling disorganized, worried about constantly putting out fires, or deadlines? If so this episode is for you.
We’re going to explore why proactive planning is essential and how it can transform your workday from chaos to calm.
SELECTED LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE
SHOW NOTES
[00:0:49] The Time Mastery System
[00:01:20] To-Do List Overview
[00:02:42] Follow me on Instagram - @RyanLloydCoaching
[00:03:03] 3 Tips for Proactive Planning
[00:04:52] Your Action Items
[00:05:40] Free Mini Course - Escape Business Overwhelm: Plan Your Optimal Week in 15 Minutes
TRANSCRIPT
Hey business owners, welcome to the Business Time Mastery podcast, where we reduce overwhelm, reclaiming ten plus hours of your week and increasing your business revenue. I'm Ryan Loyd. I've been a time management coach and QB for 25 plus years. Here's the question for today. Have you ever started your day feeling disorganized, worried about constantly putting out fires or deadlines?
If so, this episode is for you. We're going to explore why proactive planning is essential and how it can transform your workday. And just get you to that feeling of calm. By the end, I'm going to share three actionable steps you can take today in your business to help with this. This is all part of what I call the Time Mastery System.
It's building a system for your time that's intentional so that you can focus on the things that really matter and increase that business revenue.
There are six parts to this system. Planning is one of the first parts. We talked about vision values and goals in the last episode and episode one. So if you missed that, go take a look. So let's dive into planning.
Okay, so first, why is planning so important? So for many business owners, the day begins with good intentions, but it quickly derails into putting out fires, answering emails, reacting to urgent tasks. I think we can all relate to that. We go into our day without a clear plan. It's easy to feel overwhelmed, missed deadlines, and wonder if we're making progress towards those big business goals that we have.
Proactive planning shifts that from reactive to intentional. It allows you to (1) Start your day with a clear focus (2) ensure you're prioritizing the tasks that move your business forward and working on the right things (3) it helps us meet deadlines consistently without that last minute scramble.
And this is not about controlling every minute of your day, but it's about creating a framework that gives you structure and flexibility and yes, it is possible to have both of those things.
So obviously from that description, not proactively planning costs you an awful lot in your mental state and in your business revenue. This not only affects your productivity, but can also impact your business growth. And like I said, your peace of mind. But there's good news with proactive planning. You can break this cycle.
And just before we move on, I would love for you to follow me on Instagram. My handle is @RyanLloydCoaching. Lloyd has two L's on my Instagram. I share all kinds of tips similar to this for business owners, specifically about how to manage your time and how to get that revenue up through time management.
Okay, so let's get into the how. So we've talked a lot about why we plan, why it's important, what the downfalls are. But how do we proactively plan? So my first tip is start with a daily preview. Each evening spend 5 to 10 minutes. This does not take a lot of time reviewing your priorities for the next day. We all probably have these really long to do lists and those are super overwhelming. So what you want to do is identify only the top three things or three priorities that you are going to get done the next day. Be realistic about what you can accomplish.
You want to accomplish a lot, but you don't want to pick too many things to focus on for the next day. Doing this ahead of time is a ninja skill that will turbocharge your productivity for the following day.
Tip number two is timeblock your schedule. You can do this the day before along with your daily preview, but divide your day into focused timeblocks where you're going to focus on those three things that you identified the night before. Protect this time. Turn off notifications. Step away from your email or your computer if that's going to distract you and really protect this time and get into the deep work sessions where you can really focus on doing the things that you need to get done.
My third tip is around midday take five minutes to adjust around lunchtime. Look at how your day has gone. Look at what you have left to do and if you're falling behind, adjust your plan. Focus on finishing the most important task rather than finishing all of the tasks, that's more important.
Okay, so that's it. Just three tips for today. So your action steps for today are (1) go and write down your top three priorities for tomorrow. Right now take five minutes and go and do that. Look at your to do list and get those top three priorities written down.
Number two (2) go and block out time to do those during the day tomorrow. Put it on your calendar so it's protected. Schedule it around meetings and things you already have scheduled, but block off and protect that time to get things done.
(3) And then number three, set yourself an alarm for midday. To have that midday check in to look at your calendar and see how you're doing, and then make adjustments midday. This is all about starting small.
Taking a step by step approach. And when you do that over time and you do that consistently, it's a powerful, powerful thing.
And as a gift to you, I have a free mini course at ryanlloydcoaching/freecourse that is called Escape Business Overwhelm. Plan Your Optimal Week in 15 minutes. The course content for this takes literally 15 minutes to go through, and it will provide you with an actionable framework that you can use from here on out to plan your entire week.
There are downloadable PDFs with it there to walk you through it. There are video modules. It's absolutely free. Go download it now. It's ryanlloyd.com/freecourse. And that's it for today's episode of Business Time Mastery. If you found this episode helpful, please subscribe, leave us a review or share it with a fellow business owner who you think might find it valuable.
Remember, time is your most valuable asset. Spend it wisely. We'll see you in the next episode.
