In this article, I will show you exactly how to write a 90-day and empower you to get put together a short-term strategy for getting things done. As an owner of two businesses and somebody who is obsessed with efficiency, I have always had a passion for productivity. I used to ask myself the same questions I imagine you have asked yourself a hundred times. How can I manage my time effectively? How can I focus on the important things and not get caught up in unimportant distractions?
There are many different tools out there for planning your time or projects and some of them are really good. The one I have always found the most effective is the 90-day plan. I’m not going to go into the in’s and out’s of what is a 90-day plan, you can read more about that here. This article is more about how to write a 90-day plan.
When sitting down to write a 90-day plan I would always with a much broader outlook of what I wanted to achieve. Think about the things you want to achieve in the next twelve months. If you were to hit your long-term goals, where would you need to be in the next three months to be on track? What can I do that will make the most impact in driving me towards my goals? This is will be your focus for the next 90 days.
Now write down a list of all the tasks you would need to perform to hit your 3-month goals. The next thing to do is to try and break those tasks down into achievable timeframes. Where do I need to be in 1 month, 2 months and 3 months?
TIP: try to spread your tasks out evenly over the next 3 months. When you come to write a 90-day plan, you are going to be in a good proactive frame of mind, eager to get things done, just be careful not to over-commit yourself.
There will need to be some logic to this planning, as some tasks will be dependent on other tasks getting done. Now you have your tasks spread evenly over the next three months, let’s take a look at the first month, in particular, the first two weeks.
Have a think about what your diary looks like for the next month and if it is fairly consistent and you are working for the next four weeks, then take half of the tasks you have in your 1-month list and pop them into a new 2-week list. Try focus on the most important tasks, or the tasks that will make the most difference. Now take the 2-week list and split it in half again, creating two lists. These will be your 1-week and 2-week lists.
Again get the jobs that will make the most impact in nice and early. This will make you feel really good about your progress and keep you motivated.
A quick Google image search will bring up loads of downloadable templates that you can use. It’s in my content plan to create a resources page for you to use the format I use, but in the meantime, you should find something suitable here. I use Trello and create a board, it’s so easy to move stuff around and for me is an essential tool, to write a 90-day plan.
Well, hopefully, you now have everything you need to write a 90-day plan, and as always please feel free to get in touch and share your experiences.
