Plan Your Month

We’re going to introduce you to a practice that has saved businesses, and some have said it’s saved their lives or their sanity.

Whether you are over-burdened with “stuff” that you have to do or overwhelmed by the amount of chaos, you have managed to accumulate, or feeling like you’re not getting anywhere…

This strategy can help sort you out if you are willing to engage with — the practice simply and honestly (thinking about it won’t do a thing).

I did not originate the core strategy, having seen references to it or similar ideas from over 100 years of people reporting on their hacks and tactics but I have done some specific tinkering and fine tuning for you to make it work as a habit hack at several levels:

1. It’s an excellent strategy for targeting your activities to get things done or make things better.
2. It imposes MINIMAL requirements regarding additional time (with practice, I have it down to 10 minutes per day total, and 20-30 minutes on a Saturday).
   It can’t be overstated how important this is. Once you get the form of how it works and its benefits, it gives you a speedy start on making more of your life, your business and your time.
3. Its activities are stacked in such a way that it requires you to learn to use “connected thinking” that extends your ability to plan over longer time periods, and increase your ability to output in the easiest possible manner.

The bottom-line is that the strategy is training in deeper habit hacks, while you enjoy the benefits day to day.

Here it is – part 1 of The 3-3-3 process — each month you will craft three major outputs for your bigger and more important projects.

You start by asking “THE BIG QUESTION”:

“What do I want this month to be about?”

From your considerations, choose three projects that will be worthwhile and realistic for you.

At first, this requires a bit of time to think through and specify the differences you want to see regarding outputs between the beginning of the month and the end of the month in each of these three areas.

A bigger project will have bigger outputs, and so you’ll have to think carefully about what you can realistically accomplish over the month.

Think through the processes and resources, and break it down into smaller sub-outputs, until you can guesstimate a week by week series of outputs for each of your chosen three, focuses for the month.

Put your target outputs into your diary or planner – use a separate sheet of paper if you wish, or a separate file but make sure that you always are looking at your bigger targets whenever you look at or use your planner.

You have to be brave to take this step, but it is a step worth taking.

We’ll look at the rest of the process in the next post.

For the moment, ask yourself THE BIG QUESTION, choose your three major outputs, and break the project down to four weeks’ worth of outputs.

The first time you do this, you may initially choose something too big or too small.

This is part of the process – calibrating your mind and teaching yourself to adjust to bigger or smaller frames on the fly.

Whether you get it right the first time or need several attempts to get it to the right size for realistic accomplishment; it’s just information for you to work with.

I’ll leave you here to ponder THE BIG QUESTION.