Overcoming Overwhelm Part II

From Liz Uible Yesterday I wrote about how Christine and I developed our Strategic Plan for WomenforWealth.com. Now let's talk about how to apply those principles to our lives as a whole, business and personal. Beth Walkup told us "the point of strategic planning is to choose the 3-5 areas of business that will make the biggest difference in your business over the next 3-5 years and to focus your time and resources on those few areas." In an institution (or a life) in which the number of projects overshadow the amount of time to complete them, a true strategic plan can be a useful thing to have. It brings clarity to a list of stuff that needs to be done. It's not just about clarifying your vision for the future and creating a framework around it, but it is about seeing where the leverage points create the vision faster and with more joy. And that is something we can all do. Priorities differentiate successful people from those who are consistently 'overwhelmed.' Create a Strategic Plan (or Priorities) I invite you to take this challenge with me this today and over the weekend. This will take 30 minutes or so to create, but will be an invaluable tool in avoiding overwhelm. Remember, priorities allow us a level of sanity we don't get doing everything. Write out all the things you are spending time on (you can do this for our business and for your life in general). Do those activities fall in to a bunch of different categories? I came up with ten for me, including my relationship with my husband and family, growing my businesses and charitable works, and I am sure there are others. Now, what are your goals for each area and what are the leverage points to get there over the next 3-5 years? Do this for each area. (If you already have business and personal goals that are comprehensive, you may be able to use those 10 or so categories.) Take a look at this list you just made. What 3 or 4 specific areas will create the most result over the next 3 years? This is the beginning of your strategic plan. Put a star next to those 3 areas. If instead of trying to do everything, you instead focused your time and money on these 3 areas, your results will be achieved. Now let me be clear. I am not saying to ignore the rest of your life and business. As Beth taught Christine and me, the power of a strategic plan is that if you focus time on the leverage areas you get the greatest result. Then the less peak time, of other fragments of time can be spent on the areas that are not high leverage, but just 'need to be done.'. This allows us a set of clear priorities that we have set up in advance so that we can make choices about what to focus on in the moment- guilt-free. And that is a beautiful thing. On the Member Call Tuesday I am going to walk through this exercise further. We will identify choices you can make in advance to decrease overwhelm and allow you the feeling of freedom in pursuing your goals. The Member Call is Tuesday, June 26th at 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern.