Great lessons can come ‘off the cuff’, but I would say that most are born of intention and planning.

This is a special look at how you can plan on a busy schedule. But not just plan – plan well.

Realize that you are the problem to your lack of time.  I’ve been reading and listening to a lot of information about personal accountability/responsibility these last few weeks, and one of the repeating lessons is that simply, we are the reasons why we don’t X better. In this case, plan.  John Maxwell said: “The lack of time is not the problem, it’s the lack of direction.” I totally agree with that, even though it’s a hard pill to swallow.  As soon as I realize that I’m in charge of my time, and what I choose to do with it, I’m one step closer to being able to make time for planning. I need to remember that if I choose to watch TV all evening, I’m not taking the time to plan. I’m using my time for something else.  (And I’m not saying that TV watching is wrong..sometimes it’s just a perfect way to relax.)

I guess it’s just important to reword the normal things we tell ourselves: “I didn’t have time to plan my lesson yesterday.”  Really? What did you do yesterday? What would happen if you took notes about what you did with your time. You’d likely find a few things that are ‘time sucks’ or ‘wasteful’ that you could redirect. So instead of saying “I didn’t have time…” a lot of times we simply should say: “I decided to do something different with my time than plan for my lesson.”  Own it. Prioritize it.

Enhance Your Planning: Get to know your students. Community matters. The better you respectfully know your students and what they do at work each day, and what is happening in their lives, the easier it will be to plan classes that are meaningful to your students. But let’s go one step further: Develop KRA’s for yourself with your students. Again: the more you know, the easier planning will become.

Become a wide reader/listener. Most of my lessons tend to be based on information (written, audio, and video) that I’ve come across previously. I use Google Reader to follow 50+ blogs/podcasts/youtube channels on a wide range of business, career and life topics. My strategy: I don’t check it everyday. Maybe I should read it more, but on average, I’ll dip into my reader account once or twice a week, and usually on purpose trying to find info on a specific topic. (The search function is gold if you have invested time in subscribing to strong sources!)

Today I checked in and I noticed that there were over 786 targeted posts waiting for me that could easily turn into source content for one of my classes. Targeted? Yes. I only subscribe to blogs or information sources that are either of intense interest to myself and what I’m trying to learn about, or targeted towards what I know my students are doing or wanting to develop in their careers/personal life.   That’s 786 chances for me to find something of value! Of course, not all those 786 posts will be valuable. In fact, I often just skim through the titles of each post until something catches my eye. In a matter of seconds I can skim through 10 or 20 posts. If I like the title, I’ll quickly pop it open in the reader (you can see the full article by clicking on the title.) If the article continues to grab my attention, I can jump right to the source site for deeper reading. If I decide it’s not as interesting as I thought, I just click the title again and off it goes, and on I go searching through titles.

Average time to find info of interest: sometimes a matter of seconds. Other times it can be tougher – 15 to 30 minutes. (And sometimes it doesn’t help at all, but that’s rare.)

Over to you.

What do you do to prioritize your time in order to make time for planning? How do you plan and what strategies do you employ?  I’d love to hear from you, so please leave a comment or two!

(Photo by woodleywonderworks)