How Do Entrepreneurs Benefit by Planning Daily On Paper

Personal time and the ability to plan daily in my opinion is a source of power that cannot be leveraged. I am writing this at 11 AM today. I will get to experience another 11AM and that will be ONLY tomorrow. I can never get back this same moment. If personal time is so precious, should we not use it to our best advantage? Planning daily is one of the best ways to use your personal time effectively. Every minute spent in planning saves as many as 12 minutes in execution

As an entrepreneur, you must consider it very important to start planning your day on paper.When I say paper, for the purpose of this article, it could be a physical Note Book or any electronic device like laptop, iPhone, iPad, whatever. I personally prefer writing in a Notebook, because, Writing with a pen, gives me a feeling of literally picking up my nagging thoughts and transferring through my hand on to paper.It may seem too obvious, simple or even boring to plan your day on paper. In my experience I have found this process very valuable, not only for me but also for my clients.

Here are the sequence of how your thoughts and feelings work with each other to help you complete your daily task.

1. When you write your daily action plan on paper, you are LETTING GO of nagging thoughts from your brain and ALLOWING clean space. It is like de-fragmenting your Hard disk in a Computer. Your brain is clear to think about execution of the plan.
2. What was bothering you as nagging thoughts, is NOW visible to you as a list of things to be done. When you work from a LIST, it appears crystal clear for you to take action.
3. Now that it is clear, you are able schedule the tasks to be done, OR delete those tasks that seemed to be IMPORTANT and bothered you as a nagging thought. In other words you have overcome procrastination and have absolute clarity.
4. This act of Planning and overcoming procrastination unfolds your mental power. It is like clearing “cache” in your brain as you do with a computer and creating clean space/clarity. This clarity helps you give focused attention to each scheduled item in the list
5. Now that you have mastered the act of focused attention, that most of us struggle with, your physical and mental energies collaborate to help you accomplish the task easily and effortlessly.You become more creative, competent and look forward to doing tasks INSTEAD of avoiding them.

Action Exercises For Daily Plan

Here are two things you can consider doing:
For the next 5 days, before you begin your day, write down all the items you would like to accomplish that day and create a brief action plan. Don’t spend too much time. Its OK even if you do not complete the tasks at the end of the day. Check off the items completed. On a scale of 1 to 10 (1-high and 10-low) write down your rating on procrastination, creative thinking, physical energy, emotions, self esteem and competence.

Again for the next 5 days repeat the same exercise, starting your day WITHOUT writing your action plan and then rate yourself. Do you NOW feel the difference? The key is, to become AWARE that your personal time is important and plan on paper daily.