This week, we’ll talk about our most precious resource: time.

Excellent time management is essential for getting the best out of life without burning out or losing motivation. 

We’ll break it down into four chunks: planning, execution, communication, and recharging. Today’s post starts us off with planning. 

Prioritize planning

Humans are great at just winging it. Our short-term instincts are well suited to dealing with random problems as they pop up. Indeed, such problems can extract heroic levels of effort from us. 

But in today’s world, working smart is substantially more important than working hard.

Those who do not invest the planning time needed for smart work run the risk of getting little or nothing out of their efforts. And that’s no fun whatsoever. 

In my experience, dedicating 10-20% of your productive time to planning is the sweet spot.  

In other words, for a standard 40 hour workweek, 4-8 hours should be spent deciding what to do instead of actually doing stuff. It sounds like a lot, but this investment will pay for itself many times over. 

Schedule planning time 

The three key planning events discussed last week should be regulars in any productive schedule:

1. Daily plan. Integrated tightly in a good morning routine and updated throughout the day. 
2. Monthly plan. An hour or two at the end of each month.
3. Life plan. Whenever you receive some divine inspiration regarding your purpose. 

Planning complex tasks

The scheduled planning sessions mentioned above are vital, but they actually take up quite little time – maybe 1-2 hours per week. 

Most planning time will actually happen before starting a new and reasonably complex task. 

Any task that requires a bit of brainpower and needs more than a day to complete can benefit from planning. The greater the complexity and time commitment, the greater the value of planning. 

Here are a few general guidelines:

• Always plan on (digital) paper. If a smart idea pops into your head while you’re away from your PC, note it down on your phone checklist and transfer it to paper later. 
• Be lazy and do proper research in the planning phase (it will save you a lot of work). Learn from the experience of others and make sure you have access to the best tools.
• Have a written record for any team planning. (Well organized) email works nicely for this, but you can also have a shared planning space in various cloud-based solutions. 

A great investment

Planning is an awesome investment. You don’t make any progress while planning, but it will greatly accelerate your progress and enhance you work satisfaction in the execution phase. 

Which is where we’ll pick this up tomorrow…