Battle Planning: Additional Thoughts
After I published yesterday’s post I realize I kind of whiffed it. I had intended to offer some practical battle planning advice, but I went all philosophical. Not only that, I’m getting lazy.
Lazy? Publishing 3,000 words per week? Yes, lazy. I publish 3,000 words per week because I haven’t been putting in the effort to produce only about 2,000. Everything is rushed and editing is a quick scrub, not a second or third round of chiseling. Why? Poor planning.
I’m working on it. Some thoughts:
Battle Plan Essentials
Bring the Energy.
This is easily overlooked. When you undertake whatever creative effort, whether artistic or entrepreneurial, you need to light that fire. Seems like you need to save the energy for the actual work, right? No - you need to be able to think clearly and realistically about the objective and all the little pieces that go toward achieving it. If you don’t, you’ll end up making a plan around whatever you think you can get away with, or what is “possible” - and you’ll likely quit at the first push of Resistance.
We don’t accomplish anything great or meaningful by merely flowing around the rocks - we want to surge through them, especially if we’re moving upstream.
How do you get the energy? The same old boring things that have always worked - eat healthy, be active, and control your mind. Take my opinion for what it’s worth, but I’d say that whatever you’re doing, install prayer, exercise and grocery shopping right into the code of your plan from the get-go.
Reduce the Quantity.
In an earlier post I noted, “how I failed.” My business foundered in large part because I was doing all the things, and I had many, many things. With the help of radioactive hindsight, I now focus on just a few things at a time. This is nothing new, and you can find it all over the self-improvement space. I just want to add my +1 to it. Multitasking is a slow, tedious and aggravating death.
I get it, though. You have more than one important thing to work on. Maybe you have three or four or even more. Especially if you’re digging yourself out of some kind of crisis - everything is critical. The dashboard of your life is nothing but flashing red lights and buttons. Nonetheless, YOU NEED TO FOCUS. One thing at a time. Set ‘em up, knock ‘em down.
Saw this on a friend’s feed this morning. St. Francis would have had a heck of a Twitter following.
Have a system (that actually works FOR you)
Your system should be easy to manage and actually useful. Avoid falling into the trap of spending more time on your system than the work it’s supposed to govern.
After literally decades of trial-and-error, I finally settled on something that works for me. It’s still too complicated, and still filled with the detritus of years of multitasking, but it works - when I use it.
It’s basically a combination of Evernote and Trello. I use Evernote to capture ideas and file them away for future action or reference. Author and productivity guy Michael Hyatt calls Evernote his “brain.” I have to say that it’s becoming my brain too. It has a beautiful interface that leaves plenty of room for tracking down loose thoughts and putting them into their places.
I use Trello for project management. It’s much-better suited for that than Evernote.
I’m about three quarters of the way through an ebook on that. (I intend to use it as a lead magnet or even just a giveaway. I’m a huge fan of Trello). Here’s the super high-level overview of how I use it:
In Trello, you have Boards, Lists and Cards. Boards contain the Lists, Lists contain the cards. Each Board contains projects pertaining to some project or job of mine (see the pic below). Each one of these projects has multiple facets. For example, for my leather working hobby, I have “Active Projects,” “Marketing,” “Admin To Do,” “Website tweaks,” etc. These are buckets of To Dos. Each List has multiple things that need to get done.
It sounds like it violates the “Principle of Simplicity,” but it really doesn’t, especially with the automation features. For example, if I move a card to a new list it is automatically assigned a due date. Once it reaches X number of days before the due date, it gets moved to the Daily Action Board. When the due date arrives, it moves to the list, “Tasks Today.”
I don’t even need to think about it - I just have to do the things on one simple list.
The trick is to be realistic. I can’t schedule too many things because if anything throws me off, I’ll end up with a daily agenda clogged with lots of angry red labels. (In Version 5.0 I’ll build automation into it that moves overdue items back to their appropriate Boards, labels them as “high priority,” and if possible, creates a backlog report or something.)
My point with all that is this: I created something that actually works for me. With this system, it literally does the work FOR me and gives me back a ton of time by funneling all of the To Dos into one simple, easy-to-accomplish list.
And speaking of time and agendas, it’s time for the next thing!
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Thanks for reading! This is still very much a work-in-progress, but if you find the content useful, let me know. Or better yet, tell a friend. Thanks again.