Something needs to be done. Maybe a report needs writing or maybe you need to book a holiday. Whatever it is, a moment’s reflection before diving into the action might help you achieve whatever needs doing more efficiently or with less prevarication.
When the need for a simple task first arises, it is sometimes easy to dive straight in. However after some hard work you might realise that you’ve taken a wrong direction, misunderstood the brief or just gone off at half cock. In other situations it can happen that you start thinking about what the the finished article might be, what it might look like, where you might go or what people might think of what you’ve produced. Before you have even started on the task, its apparent difficulties or the effort that might be involved start to grow in your mind. The task then seems more complicated, risky or time consuming than at first thought and procrastination creeps in.
To help you focus its worth taking just a few minutes to devise a simple plan. This can be broken down into five steps:
- Decide the aim or goal – what needs to be achieved
- List the small steps you will take to achieve the goal
- List the obstacles that might get in your way
- Make a mini-plan of the small steps you will take to overcome each obstacle
- Consolidate all the small steps into a simple list and review the list.
Then do the first actions now. Make a start – you might not be able to book that holiday right away but you can take the first steps towards it – doing some research; deciding a budget; finding out where everyone wants to go; checking prices and so on.
The plan you produce can be as simple as list of things to do with some idea of the order in which to do them. Alternatively, you might want or need to set some dates against each item or note to whom you might delegate a step. Depending on what you come up with, you might set the steps as tasks in Outlook, for instance, or go even further and create a small Gantt chart or timeline.
You might not be able to identify everything you need to do at the first attempt but you will have enough to encourage you to make a start. Ideas for additional steps will arise naturally as you execute your simple plan.