Planning: When you fail to plan, you plan to fail

You’ve all heard the quote: when you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Planning, while tedious at times, is a must if you truly want to succeed – be it in a new lifestyle approach with food or exercise, calling in a new job, or even purchasing a new home or jet setting around the world.

Without a plan in place as to HOW you will approach these tasks, you can often feel like you are running blind. And that’s when stress builds up.
So, what is your planning style and how can you make it FUN?

The list-maker
My personal planning style of choice, lists are an easy, organised way to stay on top of things. Be it a ‘to do’ list for your daily working tasks (categorised from most important task to least important task if you are super on top of it), a shopping list so you don’t miss all the new healthy foods for your meal prep, or a weekly list of life-admin tasks to complete – lists ensure you capture all those ‘to dos’ running wild in your mind, by putting them on a piece of paper, or the notes in your phone, (or both) so you know there is no way you will forget anything.

It’s about ‘getting out of your head and onto the page’ – and the satisfaction that comes with ticking off a list is second to none!

The visionary
 For those of you who are more visual-oriented. The visionary plans goals out by literally visualising what the end result will be – be it a dream holiday destination, home or picture of health. Once you SEE it right in front of you, you are able top get to work.

This is where vision boarding can be extremely helpful – as it gives you a starting point to jot down your plans of action working back from the end result. Pinterest is a great online platform for those of us seeking a visual medium for our planning – or you can go totally old school and attack old magazines with scissors, sticking your goals on a cork board.
Check out on blog on goal setting here.

The numbers-gal
Where are my spread sheet lovers at? The numbers-planners LOVE all things budgets, equations and Excel. These planners enjoy sitting down at the beginning of the month and allocating where their money, and energy, will go. Driven by clean sums, and striving for a green tick at the end of the month, numbers planners are operationally driven and see things as black or white (not often space for the in betweens).

This is all about categorising and being straight to the point. Numbers planners make great Chief Operations Officers by the way.

The strategic mind
Strategic thinkers like to dabble in a little of all of the above – the lists, the numbers and the vision – creating a giant capture-all of planning. They are also partial to the odd pie-graph or chart, and are happy to analyse the HOW’s of things: exactly HOW are you going to lose those 5 kilos, or HOW are you going to make the exact amount of money to fund that next investment?

The key to this level of planning is breaking the giant tasks down into bite-sized chunks and chipping away at them, one at a time. 

The stationery fiend
Then, there’s those of us who love Kikki K, and will stock up on their latest stationery haul just to keep up to date with the latest planning trends.

Your desk is probably filled with printed calendars, different types of to dos lists, post it notes and a hand-held diary and note book, rather than working out of your phone. Because sometimes, technology just doesn’t do the job.
Read our blog on transitioning through change here.

You may be one of the above, or perhaps ALL of the above at times – regardless, remember that planning is a KEY component to living your best life without the stress or angst that comes with forgetting what it is you are working towards.

What’s your planning style?

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