It was one of the busiest times of the year, pre-pandemic but still a mess. Customer demands were high as this is usually the case in a business where your work can directly effect your valued customer's, customer. Like in most B2B's there will be a c-suite level, or regional account representative that has most of the communication responsibility with that business.

However, in some of businesses, the technician that works directly with the customer can fill that role of communication to the client.

We had a unique opportunity to make another great impression since our work will have a direct effect on the end user, our customers, customer. This required personal organization skills. Some of these would included: Strategic planning, Small project management, ordering and tracking, and best of all good time management.

So there I was needing to bring this altogether, like a jigsaw puzzle, but as a solution instead of a picture.

Many companies expect you to know personal time management, even without their involvement of providing direct training. It has only begun to gain traction at top and mid-tier businesses in recent years, as the value of time management is now recognized as a great return on investment within each level of the corporate structure.

Every employee will not invest the energy it takes to be a student of productivity, and if the need is somewhat small, due to many actions of employees are on a managed cycle or structure, I guess this is fine.

But what if every employee knew how to strategize, how to be the most efficient while keeping in line with the company's mission.

I studied, I listened to countless hours of podcasts, read books about time management, tried some processes.

I was ready for my journey; Or was I?

I now had one question first. Given the well-studied and known fact that capturing every detail was going to be crucial to having a workable solution, the following question had to be answered.

"Do I carry a pen and a planner everywhere I go, or go digital." I mean, we do always have our phones with us, right?

Now, a new opportunity came into play. There are dozens of productivity apps, as you well know, and like you, I have tried many of them. Some apps will focus on one aspect or the other and claim their the best; that might be true for a certain feature or two. However, trying to be everything to all people will leave the water a bit muddy and confusing.

I ended up crafting my own with Tables and Tasks through Evernote. Is Evernote perfect? It is not perfect, but with all of the capabilities baked into it, and building your own planner-dashboard (that has the look and feel of a paper planner layout) you can go deep on the planning journey that your customers expect; and with any link you put into your daily planner, you can be a digital nomad too.

If you decide to change your fonts and colors for a personal look, go ahead. I change things up regularly as a new process is developed within my workflow, or a system I use just needs to be tweaked a little.

So planning takes place anytime and always.

The Review of our plans should be at a minimum, the evening before, the morning of each day, and most importantly throughout the day.

The review that takes place the evening before is a great time to arrange in order of your priorities, the importance of that task, and the value that it brings to you, and your team.

Remember that the biggest gain in proper planning our tasks and to-do's, is to spend the time that will have the most impact on our One Thing that's "time blocked" out. These Time Blocks are a beautiful thing.

When we bring our phone notifications down to a minimum, it lets us focus on the task at hand, and without that feeling that we are working on the wrong thing, and going through our day without deliberate purpose. You can even set time blocks for having a cup of coffee and being creative.

Outside of the Time Blocks should remain scheduled but flexible.

My wife, being the careful planner she is, will find a way to gently remind me when I do forget something, however, there are a lot less of those then there used to be. I can attest that it is because I forgot to plan or jot down that note.

Throughout your planning journey, go easy on yourself. It wasn't until I re-made this planner many times, that I added the REFLECT, RE-EVALUATE, & RESTART because I needed a reminder that things do change throughout the day.

In the beginning I found there was a great amount of frustration because things didn't go as planned. The real peace came in when I accepted this and Restarted throughout the day, after Re-evaluating the priorities, after, Reflecting on what had just happened.

Tip: As your planning journey continues if you mark #INX for an Internal Expectation, or #EXX for an External Expectation next to a given task, then in Evernote you can simply search the #INX to see what tasks are primarily Internal Expectations or #EXX for External Expectations during your review at the end of the week. Having a custom record of where your time went for the most part is a valuable resource for future planning.

Three Things to Keep in Mind

First, your plan works better when it is unique to you and compliments your strengths according to the time of day. You must get to a point where you know generally, what your time is being spent on, as to be accountable for that time, to yourself and maybe even your management team. You also need to be flexible until you learn what works for you with time blocking.

Second, the medium you use is also custom to you. I'll tell you that I really enjoy paper style planners but they don't serve my needs in a connected world.

Third, you have to review on a daily, then weekly time frame. There is no better way to keep yourself on track then to evaluate your goals for the day and week, compared back to where your time was spent.

The Project Planner

After setting up your planner with all the customization you like; Get ready increase your productivity and enhance your workflow with Note Links. Your note links can be any color and will transform your planner into an awesome dashboard. Internal Evernote links can easily take you to your annual calendar, your project listing, your goals for the year, and even the daily tasks and rituals notes. Along with that, the links you set up can be to external sites you visit often such as: Weather Underground, Stock prices, NASA's image of the day, or your own Blog.

"The world does not know your purpose or priorities. It's up to you to protect them!"

From "The One Thing"

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If we adopt a self policing mentality we will be the most productive for our families, our business and ourselves.

They deserve it!

You deserve it!

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