August 3, 2011

low level planning: a few final points

Planning

Planning

In closing out the section on low level planning, the final few points I’d like to make touch on being specific when calendaring in your activities, making sure to look at your plan every day, creating a plan that allows for flexibility, and setting it up at the beginning of the week.

Be specific - Avoid being vague about what you need to get done when blocking out a task.  If you have three hours planned to do ‘keyword research’ what is that exactly? Brainstorming a list of keywords? Signing up for a word tracker account? Rolling around in the Google Keyword tool for an hour? Describe what it is you need to do in each task in as much detail as makes sense.

Look at your low level plan every day – Even if everything goes out the window, and you can’t do what you planned on doing, it helps to see what you wanted to do. You can always push the work out to another day or pick it up the following week.

Build in flexibility - One of the reasons I like a calendaring tool is that you can create activities as calendar ‘events’ and then move and drag them around to different days on the calendar, so that the work doesn’t get lost. It also makes me feel better if I wasn’t able to get something done, or was in the mood to do something else. I can always swap tasks around. You should also leave as much ‘air’ in your calendar as possible. It’s tempting to cram an activity into every bit of time, but the reality is we aren’t wired to be constantly producing; we need time to recharge.

It’s helpful to remember the expression ‘Life is what Happens while you’re busy making other plans.’

Life does, indeed, happen, and most of it won’t be stuff that you plotted on to your low-level plan, so leave some space for it.

Set it up at the beginning of the week – I find if I don’t do this, my entire week gets messed up because I begin the week feeling like I don’t know what I should be doing and feeling like everything is out of control(!) I try and make a habit of sitting down on Sunday evenings and doing the following to put together my low level plan for the upcoming week:

  • Reviewing my mid-level plan
  • Reviewing what I didn’t get done in the previous week
  • Looking through whatever notes or to-do’s I’ve jotted down
  • Talking to my husband about our social calendar for the upcoming week
  • Getting all cranky pants because there just isn’t enough &%*$& time
  • Accepting that it is saner to plan for half of the things I want to do, and that I will most likely only get half of that done!

Which reminds me, it might be a good idea to baseline in some daily meditation…

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July 20, 2011

Low Level Planning – Use a Calendar tool

Example of a paper-based low level plan

Example of a paper-based low level plan

In my last post one of the best practices I listed was to plan with some sort of calendar tool (this can be paper).

This is helpful because at this detailed level of planning it really helps to be able to see your activities and tasks plotted out against not only the day, but ideally the hour. Use whatever tool you prefer that allows you to do this.

Here is an example of how I set up my low level plan using Entourage (the mac version of Outlook). I convert all my activities into calendar events and color code them according to different projects or work areas (ex. product development, marketing, business administration, personal, health.)

Using this system I can drag and drop activities around. Some mornings I don’t feel like tackling product development tasks, so I move and swap tasks around according to my mood, with peace of mind that the item is still on my plan and won’t get forgotten.

Lastly, when I block out an activity against time, I don’t have to worry that it’s going to get lost. Each week when I review and create a new plan, I either move ahead what I didn’t get done the previous week or decide it’s not worth doing. Switching the color of the item to white let’s me immediately see what was accomplished and what still needs to be tackled.

The example above is from my friend, the artist Stephanie Levy, who used a clever combination of a calendar and post-its based on an approach from Jennifer Lee. True, this version doesn’t track time against the hour, but I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to do what works for you. Paper and post-its add just about all the same advantages as a digital calendar tool; you can break your activities down into discrete actions on each post-it, move each one around if your schedule or mood changes, as well as as have a visual reminder of what you need to do every day.

Another idea is to add a ‘done’ column on your paper plan where you can move post-its of items you have completed. Of course, you can throw these away too, but I like the idea of having a record somewhere. You can also make a paper-based calendar for the week with the hours of the day running down the side, and align your post-its to the hours. Whatever works.

In fact, today I think paper is a superior way to go, as my Entourage has ironically decided to die! Just when I was about to extol the benefits of using a digital calendar! God does have a sense of humor. But just as technology can throw cold water on our plans, paper can just as easily get lost. So either way, the lesson applies: make sure you have a means of preventing your plan from getting lost!

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July 13, 2011

Down in the Weeds – Low Level Planning

An Example Low Level Plan

An Example Low Level Plan

Low level planning is your day-to-day work planned out at the granular level, usually by the week, with activities blocked out by the hour. This is the plan that I find most important when it comes to really getting down to brass tacks and working.

A low level plan is where the rubber hits the road in terms of seeing what you have to do this week, today, right now – and doing it.

The example above illustrates one way a low level might be laid out. It illustrates the more granular break down of activities related to the original project item ‘Optimize the content on your site for related keywords and better Google rankings’ we identified in the scope definition process. This project was broken into subsequent activities, including ‘Keyword Research’ in the high level plan and ‘Buy and Read SEO Book’ and ‘Research SEO on web’ in the mid level pContinue Reading

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