List, plan, goal and other four letter words.

If we are to succeed we need a PLAN. Uh, four letter word - I see the reaction on pupils' faces as soon as the word plan is mentioned!

You must plan this essay, make a plan, where's your plan...comments we've all heard, but so often they remain disconnected from what we're doing or from the apparent mystery of writing and living that we ignore them.

And then we wonder why things did not turn out as they did.

A plan is a vital important of civilised life. The emphasis is on the word vital. Without a plan we are rudderless and adrift a sea of temptations and then we wonder, after ten years have passed, what have we actually got done?

But what is a plan?

A plan begins with a goal. A goal is what you want to achieve.

I'm getting a few pupils and young adults I work with to write out what they want to do in life. Some of my younger clients are at a loss as to what they want to do, so we begin with the basics - where do you want to go, what things do you want to have, where do you want to live, what kind of car do you want to drive, what kind of partner do you want, how much money do you want in your bank account by the age of 30?

A list is then forthcoming - sometimes there are repetitions which are interesting to the client: one twenty year old repeated five times the desire to start a family! Something on his mind indeed. Another, a 16 year old, struggled to identify anything to aim for ... until we lighted upon a Mini Classic. Great! It's a start.

Then we look at the items on the list and go through each one at a time and analysing them according to SMART targets - are they SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE, ATTAINABLE, RELEVANT, and TIME CONSTRAINED?

For instance, when do you want the Mini by? Let's put a date on it - 18 years of age, so February 2017 let's say. Is it measurable and attainable? Let's look at the price - £12,000. Hmm, can you save that by 2017? Current earnings...zero. Ah, may be unattainable until you start earning. Okay, we may have to put the date back by a year or until we get some idea of how much money you can put aside for it. Otherwise, you could trade cheaper cars, flipping them for a profit until you make enough to buy the dream! Relevant - sure, he wants to be a mechanic.

So with some adjustments, the plan's now set but to get it going requires ACTION.

Once we have a method - say, saving £300 a month from savings for the holiday we want next year, then we must do as much as we can to automate the plan. In the case of putting money aside, you just need to set up a standing order from a checking account to pay into a savings account. Job done.

But if it's a more protracted goal requiring CONCERTED EFFORT and DISCIPLINE as well as ACTION then we need another four letter word. LIST

List what you need to do to achieve you goal. Break it down into monthly, weekly, and daily targets. Print of a sheet that you leave by your phone or computer so you can tick off what you need to do daily. That's how I get to write three blogs a week and work on a novel too.

And what's amazing about ticking off the list, daily, is that you feel better, you feel as if you're on track and ... the secret ... you get everything done much quicker! As I mentioned in a previous post, you can time yourself and see if you can beat your daily averages just to spur you on!

And as things get done quicker, you free up more time for other things you'd like to get done. More values and goals can then be entered onto the list.

Since starting my daily tasks list, I've managed to add in three other things to do each day, including, recently, an hour's daily tuition with my older son. (And I'm still on top of the ironing and banking duties I do each day!)

I feel good, feel as if I'm getting somewhere, have good targets ... and this is also affecting how I think about other issues in life too. Is X part of the plan? If not, why am I doing it? Can I delegate it if it does? As an adult who is stretched by many distractions - automating many of them so they become daily habits - has enabled me to concentrate on thinking about the deeper values that I want to secure and enjoy. It also keeps me from being distracted by the non-essentials.

So when I sit down with a pupil and we sketch out a plan for an essay, I explain how this relates to their life - about how, if we automate the plan (thesis, exposition, conclusion trio) then that frees our minds up to write more creatively ... and frees our time up to live more creatively when we apply it to the bigger picture of our life.

Peace and prosperity,
Alex