Archive for Planning
Monitor your goals for Q2 of 2012
Posted by: | CommentsWow! It’s April already and I’m sitting here wondering where the first quarter of the year went. Only 9 months left to hit my goals for the year.
I find that the beginning of each quarter is a good time to pause for a moment and look at your goals and results so far this year. Are your goals still relevant or have you made a decision to go in another direction?
If your goals are still relevant, have you been working towards them or did you get distracted by the bright shiny object and forget about your main objectives? I’m convinced the majority of people who start a business are at least border-line ADD and we easily get distracted by something new.
If you found you did get off track, sit down and create a plan for the next 90 days: what are you going to do each week that will get you moving towards your goals. Write them on your calendar.
Too many times we lose track of our major goals because we become over focused on the day to day minutia of our businesses. But if you schedule your major goals on your calendar, you’re more likely to remember to work on them. Read More→
5 Reasons Why Imperfect Execution Is Better Than Perfect Planning
Posted by: | CommentsW
hy is it that some people seem to move ahead by leaps and bounds while other people who are perhaps more talented seem to be left behind in the dust? Seth Godin said it best in Linchpin: Are You Indispensable. He wrote: “Real artists ship.”
What did he mean? You don’t have to be the best to be successful. The people who get ahead don’t worry about being perfect. They get off their butts, take action and get their products to market.
So here are my thoughts on why imperfect execution is better than perfect planning
Work your plan
While I’m the first one to tell you that planning is important, I know that too often planning can be a form of procrastination. Rather than getting down to the work, you keep tweaking the plan. Get a plan in place and start working it. Over time you can tweak the plan as you see what works and what doesn’t.
Beating the competition
How many times have you seen a competitor release a new product that is just like the brilliant idea you had a year ago but is still in the planning stages? Don’t you kick yourself when that happens? I know I have. Let’s learn from our mistakes; when you have a brilliant idea quickly create a plan then work on execution so that someone else doesn’t beat you to the punch. Read More→
Planning and Organizing Ideas With OneNote and Dropbox
Posted by: | CommentsI suspect I’m not terribly different from most entrepreneurs. I’ve got a lot of balls that I’m trying to keep up in the air. Not only that, I continually get new ideas. Some of 
them are crap, but some of them are actually things that I plan to implement. I’ve tried a number of ways to keep my planning, my projects, and my new ideas organized.
One of the things I do is use binders. Each project has its own binder, as does planning. This has been a relatively useful way to keep track of ongoing work (when the labels don’t fall off the binders).
New ideas were little harder to track. For a while I was doing the Post-it note method. Every time I got a new idea I’d write it on a Post-it note and stick it up on the wall next to my desk.
This didn’t work for two reasons. One, after a while the Post-it notes just became visual noise; I just didn’t see them anymore. The second reason is the mental clutter they caused me. Although I can block out the content on the Post-it notes, I still knew they were there. Although I wasn’t consciously aware of it, it was causing me constant stress.
I moved away from the Post-it notes to whiteboards. Now whenever a garden idea I could just write it on the whiteboard. The nice thing about the whiteboard is it’s one continual surface so it’s less visually cluttering than Post-its.
However, the whiteboard method isn’t perfect either. It’s great for recording an idea as it occurs to me, but what do I do later? Eventually the whiteboard gets full. I needed some way to deal with the ideas.
Then I thought about Microsoft OneNote. This is a software program that comes as part of Microsoft office. I knew it was part of the package but hadn’t looked at it. Last week I decided to open it and take a look. I’m glad I did. Read More→
Post-It Note-itise: How One Entrepreneur Deals with Her ADD
Posted by: | CommentsLast week I was watching a documentary about living with ADD. There was one scene where the hosts were standing next to a large wall entirely covered with Post-It Notes. I nearly fell off my chair laughing because as you can see, I completely relate to that particular symptom of ADD. 
Here’s how Post-It Note-itise works. Each time you have an idea for a project or a task, write it on a Post-It Note so you don’t forget it. Each time you have a deadline, write it on a Post-It Note. Break major projects into smaller steps and put each step on a Post-It Note.
If you are particularly anal in your madness, you can take five different colours of Post-It Notes – each colour representing a specific task or category of tasks – and use the corresponding colour whenever you write a new Post-It Note. And of course, you will need to create a legend to remind yourself which colour responds to which category – created out of Post-It Notes of course.
On the surface Post-It Notes seem like a perfect solution to the ADDer’s fear of forgetting something important. Once it’s written down, it’s not going to get lost in your brain. And there is a certain satisfaction in ripping a Post-It Note off the wall once you’ve completed the task.
However, there is a dark side to using Post-It Notes as an organizational system. Read More→
Don’t Put it Off
Posted by: | CommentsWe’ve all heard the saying, “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”
This saying isn’t always applicable. I’ll never get the Martha Stewart good housekeeping award because I firmly believe vacuuming, dusting and laundry should always be put off as long as possible (unless I’m down to my emergency underwear).
But when it comes to business, this is a good adage to follow. There’s nothing worse then having a great idea for a new product or marketing strategy then seeing your competitor implement it.
Now I’ve noticed many entrepreneurs are “idea people”. They come up with far more ideas then they can possibly implement in one lifetime. So it’s inevitable that some of your ideas will be used by others first.
However, if you have an idea that you intend to implement, you create an action plan for this idea but you never Read More→
