When you have goals you want to achieve, success starts in your planning and scheduling.

As many of you know I am an entrepreneur, so I am always thinking of ways to get more bang for my time. I want to get the most amount of work done in as little time as possible.

With that being said, I looked at how I run my day to day business and realized I have some real bad strategic and efficiency issues.  I don’t know why I didn’t realize this before.  There are a lot of times I have completed a project for a client and then sit back in my chair and think ok so what’s next.  Meaning what is my next step but really only looking for next fire that I need to put out or deadline I’m running to close to not being able to meet.

It is rather challenging to say the least or mentally tiring trying to run a start-up business based on fires and never getting to the next step up on the journey to grow the business.

This morning I woke up with a new idea.  I really don’t know if it is actually new or if anybody has ever done it before but I wanted to share it with you guys.  Hopefully you can apply this to your life also and start seeing success.

Disclaimer: This is an idea / theory so I haven’t tested it yet but it is a great idea. (in my mind)

I remembered I had a white dry erase board from back in the day we used to do presentations with so I pulled it out.  Cleaned it off and began to make this simple chart.

I split the board in two halves.  Left side is the “Have to’s”, right side is “Need to’s”. You can call it whatever you want once you understand what each side is used for.

On the left side of the board I wrote 8 at the top left of the left side.  Going down I wrote 9 – 15. On the right side of the board I wrote 16 – 22 going down.  These numbers signify military time, I chose to use military time because I didn’t want to look at the board and to have to think to hard as to whether something was morning or night.  The whole intent of this is to be successful.  If your brain has to work to hard it defeats the purpose.  Make it simple.

I chose to break my day down into 1 hr segments.  This one hour segment of time is because I believe I can concentrate on anything for an hour.  If you break it down into 30 min segments it may not be enough time and you end up getting some good progress being made and then you need to switch to something else.  That also makes for something unproductive.

Have to’s

Let’s talk about the have to’s.  What does this mean.  This is (for me) things that I have to do to keep my business rolling. For an example:

  • 8 – Breakfast
  • 9 – Podcast Editing
  • 10 – Billing
  • 11 – Web Updates
  • 12 – Lunch
  • 13 – 15 etc.

So as you can see these are things I have to do regularly to maintain what is already going on. Understand these times are not rigid by no mean, I will explain more once we talk about the Need To’s.

Need To’s

These are the future of my businesses, personal aspirations, and assessments.  For example:

  • 18 – Workout
  • 19 – CC/ CR /US
  • 20 – FGA – Future Goal Assessment
  • 21 – JS
  • 22 – Foreign Language

These things are just examples, but can be a really good formula for success.  If you noticed I didn’t put anything from 14 – 17.  This is because I want to make sure I have space to revisit something I may have done or didn’t finish from the Have To’s or a client meeting or some time to take a quick power nap if needed. (Don’t tell Khadijahrbz)

The Jest

I know a lot of you maybe thinking I don’t want to have my day totally planned out and I have to stick to a rigid schedule.  I understand and I hear you because that is how I am.  I like to be flexible and able to go with the flow at times and that is what this does for you.  It gives you the ability to be flexible.  Let me explain.

There are times when I am sitting here in my home office wondering ok what do I do next.  This is one of the prime reason I put this on a big white board.  I would suggest you put it on anything that can stare you in the face daily.  Reason is when you are looking at your clock and wondering what is my next step and I want to make sure it is something that can move my business forward I can look at the time and say oh it’s 11, I can work on some web updates.  Or it’s 18 and I can  say ok well I can go workout.  If for some reason it’s the weekend and I worked out in the morning and it’s 18 I can say well I can workout again.

Do you see what I am getting at.  This works well to keep you progressing in the areas you have selected to fill in this board.  It is for when you want to progress but don’t know what you should work on.   It gives you a quick guide of things that can be done at certain times of frustration and you want to be productive.  Check the board and do that.

If you want to be rigid with this board you can and only work on these things during these time.  It is all up to you.  The only thing I hope you do is get better at planning for success.  So you can walk this journey with me.

Comment If you have any questions or suggestions about this Allotment Board.  Also, if you try to use it, let me know how it is working for you.