319: The Way to Stop Spinning Your Wheels on Planning

Dave Stachowiak: Coaching for Leaders

I am often asked how I produce this show, facilitate the Coaching for Leaders Academy, and still manage to keep work-life balance in check. Like most people, it is a daily struggle and that I error on often. However, I have found a few systems that work well for me.

In this episode, I share why I’ve found quarterly planning to work well for me. In addition, I walk though my planning process in detail, so you can replicate the areas that align best with the context of your work.

Key Points

• Leaders need to both lead and plan.
• Planning takes discipline.
• Plan out quarterly in addition to, or even instead of, planning annually.
• Take the most important areas of your life and try to find an objective for each one that you can focus on during the quarter.
• Lagging indicators are the results, and leading indicators are the action steps you take to get the results.
• Your life will mostly fill up with day-to-day tasks, but the key is what you do with the remaining time.
• We tend to think we can do it all.
• Have a “next quarter list” easily accessible so you can get things out of your head and clear up mental space.
• Having a quarterly plan will help you make better decisions because you’ve already done the critical thinking about what’s important to you.

Resources Mentioned

• The 12-Week Year* by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington
• The Four Disciplines of Execution* by Chris McChesney and Sean Covey

Related Episodes

• Do This for a Productive Week (episode 180)
• How to Actually Move Numbers, with Chris McChesney (episode 294)
• How to Turn Goals Into Results (MemberCast 1)

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