Plan to Succeed

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree,
and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
Abraham Lincoln

One of my mentors, Dan Sullivan, founder of the Strategic Coach, says that one hour of planning is worth ten hours of activity. I love that and the quotation above because, from my experience, an hour of planning is nearly priceless.

I used to start my day at seven-thirty each morning, often with a phone or face-to-face appointment. This year, we changed that, and my first appointment now begins at nine am. I still get in at seven-thirty, but now I spend that first hour and a half, every day, working on implementing my business plan with my staff. That’s six hours a week of strategic planning that came out of a single decision to slightly modify my day.

Everyone in my office participates in the fulfillment of our plan, and we know exactly what to focus on each and every day. And we can all feel the increased rate of progress towards our goals. Working together on this as a team is more fun too.

Might this approach, or something similar work for you too?

A brief announcement: I am working on three new books. In order to bring them to life sooner, I have decided to temporarily suspend my Wednesday post. I will continue writing The Saturday Morning Post each week. And you are correct if you guessed that this idea came from spending more time planning my course.

Thank you so much for your support, comments and sharing my posts with others. I really appreciate it.