In today’s hectic world, the daily planner tends to take a bit more precedence whenever we hear advice about how best to manage one’s time. There isa rather good reason for this – the future can often be uncertain.
The future over the course of only a single year can certainly be unsure and, in work and life, the tasks you need to see to can change by the day. That’s why so many people focus on daily planning, and there is nothing wrong with that in-and-of itself.
But you need long term goals too. Where do you see yourself at the end of the year? One long-term goalmight be to reduce the number of daily tasks you have to see to! This is in an important point. If you’re finding it difficult to meet your many tasks and commitments each day, you can set a long-term goal for things to become more manageable in time.
To that end, a yearly planner is an incredibly good idea. But how does a yearly planner work? After all, you will probably not know what you’ll be required to see to each day a few months hence. Therefore, a yearly planner needs to be flexible when it comes to time management; it also needs to guide you along clearly defined lines and towards clearly defined goals.
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How a Yearly and a Daily Planner Work Together
Next Level Daily, a company that has created a high performance planner, say that a yearly and a daily planner are not mutually exclusive. The way they can work together is to integrate elements of one into the other.
This is nothing more than the principle of achieving long term goals step by step. A yearly planner should include some rough information of what you need to do every day to achieve the long-term goals, and a daily planner should set out daily tasks whichwork towards the long-term goals.
The key is to understand prioritization. A clear hierarchy of importance is vital for all planners. Nevertheless, priority can be defined in different ways. A task could be especially important if it moves you towards the long-term goal, but it might not be the most urgent thing to see to that day. Therefore, you need to think of both urgency and more general importance.
Elements of a Great Yearly Planner
But what about the practicalities? For a great yearly planner, here follows a list of things that you should certainly include:
A List if Clearly Defined Long-Term Goals
These are the “tasks” that don’t exactly tell you what to do each day, but which you should never lose sight of. Accordingly, these should be in your planner – and they should be clearly visible.
Shorter Term Goals
These are tasks on monthly or weekly as far as timescales are concerned. You can consider daily tasks a small part of thesewhich, if all completed, should have you achieve this goal by this date – perhaps the end of the week or the end of the month.
Space for Revision
Things don’t always go exactly to plan or to schedule, and they certainly won’t over an entire year. Therefore, your planner should allow you to change direction or prioritize when it becomes necessary.
For example, you may not have completed the fifth chapter of you book by the end of October, so it should be possible to readjust the goals to aim for the end of November instead. In other words, you should be able to update as you go.
There’s no doubt that to create a successful yearly plan you should have a daily plan too. It’s all about integrating the two.
