My client, Morgan, sent me a text 10 minutes before today’s session. It read, “Sorry, Anthony. I completely forgot about today’s coaching session. Can we reschedule, please?”
Morgan, it would seem, has an issue with planning.
After a brief conversation, we did meet for today’s session and we discussed his planning process. You won’t be surprised to read that he doesn’t have one.
So we developed one together that he is going to try over the next month. It’s relatively simple as most planning processes are. It looks like this:
- At the beginning of every month, Morgan is going to go through his calendar for that month and ask himself two questions:
- “What is happening this month?”
- “What do I want to achieve this month?”
- At the beginning of each week, Morgan is going to look at his calendar for that week and ask himself two questions:
- “What is happening this week?”
- “What do I want to achieve this week?”
This process might seem basic because it is. It is, however, more than what was happening before today.
Three additional elements that will assist Morgan are:
- Firstly, Morgan will set a reminder on his phone to do this each month/week. This alert will help him to impose a discipline around this process.
- Secondly, Morgan is going to write down his answers to the four questions above. Capturing his thoughts will reinforce his memory of what he is doing and needs to achieve and keep them front of mind.
- Finally, Morgan is going to monitor the process and capture what works and doesn’t work. With this information, he will refine the process and bring his learning to our next session.
Planning doesn’t need to be complicated.
What is your planning process?
My planning process is based around the Bullet Journal method and I have adapted it to meet my needs as I have figured out what works and what doesn’t.