Finding Your Best Planning Style

Any entrepreneur will tell you that running a business is more than just following a model, it includes organizing the day-to-day details. This can feel pretty tedious, especially when there are meetings and orders piling up. It is essential that business owners remain on top of their ever-growing To Do lists while also working toward their business goals.

To achieve this, they need to set a plan that works with their planning style. To figure out what may work for you, here are some planning methods to help get you started:

Bullet Journal
We’ve written about Bullet Journals before, and what we love about them is their flexibility. This style of planning is perfect for the entrepreneur that doesn’t have one particular planning style. If you are someone that switches from To Do Lists, to Calendars, to Post-its, this planning method is for you.

Daily-Weekly-Monthly Break Down
This works well as a standard list for the regular tasks that don’t usually change. You simply lists goals that need to be achieved each day, each week, and each month.This is a great planning style for entrepreneurs who need to establish a routine, keep track of what post on social media, or schedule time to regroup and strategize for the upcoming quarter (or review results from the previous months).

30-60-90

This planning style works great to onboard new employees for your business, or while building new relationships with clients, but it can also help with general goal setting, too. Start with a vision of where you’d like your business to be by next quarter. Then, break down that goal into smaller steps that can be achieved in 60 or 30 days. This planning method benefits business owners who can see the big picture, but may work best with shorter termed goals.

Mind Mapping
If writing out a list is just not your thing, then mind mapping is another method to plan ways to meet your goals. It can be great for visualizing ways to achieve certain goals, as demonstrated in the Passion Planner. You can even include your staff in this process to get their input. Once you feel you’ve recorded all the necessary steps, then you can prioritize which tasks to get started on first. Just make sure to set an end date next to those steps on when you can realistically expect to complete them.

There are a many different planning styles, and these are just four ways to help get you started with strategizing the next big step for your business. If you have other planning methods that have worked for you, share them with us in the comments!

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