Your efficiency margin
Each of us, managers, thinks: how much can we increase labor productivity? Data obtained empirically in my company showed that after the introduction of daily planning and reporting, the team’s labor efficiency increased by ~ 40%.
It is no secret that in the average Russian company, employees spend at best 3-4 hours out of 8 hours a day on work. However, everyone pretends that this is how it should be. The manager is content to stage a flurry of activity as soon as he looks into someone's office.
And the subordinates... And what about the subordinates? They are more than happy with this state of affairs: during working hours they can solve a bunch of personal problems, place orders in online stores, communicate by phone and on social networks with friends and family. It is not without reason that they say that 80% of people work as effectively as they are competently managed.
The conclusion is banal and at the same time terrible in its simplicity: in order to increase the efficiency of a company by 40%, it is enough to ensure that employees work at least 6.5 - 7 hours a day (yes, eight is already aerobatics!).
Daily plan and report - a continuous test of professional suitability for employees
But how do you understand: which of the employees chats on social networks, and which continuously produces results? Constantly stand behind your back? Impossible! This is where daily plans and progress reports that are mandatory for every employee come to the rescue.
To put it very briefly, the meaning of daily plans and reports is as follows: an employee draws up a work plan for each day based on an 8-hour day and reports at the end of the working day for each completed task (time spent, result, etc.).
Any good technology has benefits for both parties. Let's talk about it.
For employees to earn more and be more effective, they need both motivation and coercion.
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Benefits of a daily plan for a company
- Problems are solved by employees according to accepted priorities (taking into account the company’s business requirements), and not according to the principle of “wants”, “easier” and “more interesting”.
- The probability of employee “downtime” tends to zero. There are always tasks in stock. If “downtime” does occur, it will be visible in advance.
- Having looked at the plans, you can immediately remove the “failed” tasks and replace them with useful, topical and relevant ones.
- When a person plans things based on 8 working hours and knows that during this time there will be demand, the likelihood of “wasting time” is noticeably reduced.
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Benefits of a daily plan for an employee
- Major Personal and Professional Upgrade: Planning skills are essential in all areas, and life outside of work is no exception.
- The manager will be pleased with you, because... all high-priority technology tasks are included in your daily plan. And “being in good standing” opens up additional opportunities in a vertical career.
- Abolition of “slavery”, when a person sits at work until “night” (now 8 hours are allocated to complete tasks, therefore, the manager will no longer plan them for twelve hours).
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Agenda
In the future, we will only talk about the principles of daily and weekly planning and requirements for plans. Separate articles are devoted to:
- The technology for a manager to review the daily and weekly plans of his subordinates is an article in development.
- Requirements for working reports, methods for creating them - article in development.
- Technology for the manager to analyze daily and weekly reports of subordinates. See the article “How to evaluate the performance of employees based on the results of the working day using daily reports: the “analysis and comments” method.”
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Jedi techniques: help in correctly drawing up a plan for the day
If you feel like you don’t have time to do anything, at the end of the evening you feel like a squeezed lemon, and every day you feel overwhelmed both in your work and in your personal life, then something is definitely going wrong. Your day will not be perfect without time for yourself and relaxation, without a feeling of satisfaction before bed.
How to close this problem? There are many methods, one of them is the use of “Jedi techniques”. And this is not about the battle on light beams with disorder, but real working techniques from the book of the same name. Before I discovered this method, I didn’t think about how often we use the expression “not enough time.” Now I realized that what we lack is not time, but intelligence. If we learn to set clear and achievable goals for ourselves, will we really struggle with this?
The main idea is this:
- We take on tasks that “seem to be burning,” but in fact nothing will happen if we postpone them until later or don’t complete them at all
- We do the little things and the routine, but don’t have enough energy for the important things. Perhaps you should start delegating?
- We don’t set aside at least 1 hour in the morning for an important, focused task. I emphasize: IN THE MORNING, before all matters, first of all. Otherwise, the routine will shift it again and the task will remain on your waiting list.
- Be sure to set aside a time when no one should disturb you and vice versa, when you can be available to everyone.
Personal effectiveness of the leader
I also use daily planning and reporting technology in my work. I report to myself - take this into account if you have no one to report to. Thanks to this, my personal effectiveness has doubled (no joke!). Including due to the completion of higher priority tasks, because before I took on those that came to mind first.
And a very useful insight. When you start planning, it’s much easier to think at the planning stage: is this your task, isn’t it better to delegate it? When you have already started a task and halfway through its implementation you understand that it would be good to delegate, it is much more difficult to “let go” of it.
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Technology for implementing and implementing daily plans
Please note that it is necessary to monitor the implementation of the plan, the timing of completed tasks and the quality of the results.
Quite a few managers have “broken their teeth” when trying to implement daily plans and reports, and here’s why:
- The implementation will meet with fierce resistance from office employees. Accept it, it’s natural, but you need to prepare for it. The book “System Management in Practice: 50 Stories from the Experience of Managers for the Development of Management Skills” will help with this. It contains not only options for overcoming resistance, but also how to step-by-step implement daily plans and other system management technologies into practice.
- The implementation of daily plans and reports, as well as further work to maintain the technology in operation, requires an investment of time, money, management efforts and the will of the manager. And most importantly, a lightning-fast reaction to any violation by employees.
- The implementation will additionally bring total transparency of plans and reports. A manager at any higher level should be able to view the report of any subordinate manager and his subordinates. The immediate manager is responsible for the plans of his subordinates. Why won't employees like this? Not every middle manager is interested in having the “all-seeing eye” of top management.
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Recommendations for organizing daily planning: ready-made regulations for implementation
Systematization allows you to move from chaotic actions to organized and scalable technology
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Organizing the process of processing the incoming flow of tasks on the part of the employee
- As soon as a task appears, it is entered into the work plan for the current or subsequent days (regardless of the form in which it was set) with an approximate date of planned completion.
- If a task belongs to the “non-urgent and unimportant” category, it is entered into the so-called STACK task storage. An employee turns to STACK when planning his next week, or when he has downtime at work.
- The assigned task, which takes more than 3 hours (except for participation in events and meetings), is divided into smaller ones, which are assigned the original one as the base one.
- For each task from the standard list, a priority is selected and set
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Bonus: example of a table with priorities for employees
To get an example of a priority table that helps employees cope with self-scheduling, follow 2 simple steps :
1) Write a detailed comment on the article (the comment form is located at the very bottom of the article, see screenshot https://disk.yandex.ru/i/i0xklaGVfl3zFg). Share your experience of implementing planning for subordinates (not necessarily successful). What worked, what didn’t work and for what reason.
2) Send a request for an example of a “priority table” through my personal accounts on social networks (via a private message) + attach a link to this article (so I will understand what bonus you are talking about):
vkontakte: https://vk.com/eugene.sevastyanov
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eugene.sevastyanov
Requirements for the format for entering tasks into the plan
- Each employee adds an indicative list of his tasks to the plan (brief description of the task + planned time for completion). The plan includes the following tasks:
- Planned within projects;
- Previously received in the form of individual tasks (orally, by mail, Skype, etc.). If the task is in an external task setting system, then you need to add a URL link to this task; When you receive a task (orally, by mail, Skype), you must add it to your work plan yourself. In this case, all requirements for the format of entering tasks apply.
- Planned by the employee for implementation on his own initiative.
- Task name . It should reflect what actions need to be performed with what object. For this purpose, it is advisable to use the nominative case and the imperative mood of the verb for nouns. This greatly simplifies the subsequent search among all tasks. Example: Develop regulations: planning (“develop” – imperative mood; “regulations: planning” – nominative case).
- Planned completion time . Example: Make a commercial offer: 2 hours 30 minutes
- Deadline (the deadline by which the task must be completed). If you cannot determine the deadline for a task, contact your immediate supervisor.
- A brief plan for completing this task . Add links to the algorithms you plan to follow and/or a short action plan. The absence of a brief plan in the body of the task gives rise to a bunch of questions when discussing the work plan and the risk that the task will be done in an ineffective/suboptimal way or not done 100% and/or will require rework.
- A priority . The performer determines it independently according to separately formalized rules. If you can’t determine it, you need to contact your immediate supervisor.
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Daily work plan
- The plan must be created based on the weekly plan and incoming operational tasks (before implementing weekly planning: based on the tasks known for that day).
- The plan for the next day is drawn up before the end of the current working day.
- The planned time for daily tasks is calculated:
- for office employees based on 8 hours minus the usual time for solving operational and force majeure tasks (for project managers: 7 hours - planned; 1 hour - for solving incoming tasks). The time planned for tasks may vary depending on the day of the week and other conditions.
- for freelance specialists - a daily time limit agreed upon when discussing the terms of cooperation.
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Example of a daily plan (screenshot from Bitrix24)
The example shows a plan that an employee creates in the Bitrix24 system. The screenshot shows only the first six tasks, the rest did not fit on the screen. Selected columns: 1 - task name; 2 - deadline; 3 - planned execution time.
Ideally, use one system for planning, end-to-end time tracking for tasks and reporting
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Calendar and thematic planning for the day
Elena Andreeva
Calendar and thematic planning for the day
Day
weeks,
topic of the week
GCD
Educational activities in special moments Creating a developmental environment for children’s independent activities
Interaction with parents
November 18 – Friday.
Topic of the week: “Toys”
.
MORNING:
Conversation with children about toys. Form a culture of speech. And a culture of communication with adults and peers. Develop thinking and memory. Examination of illustrations in children's books. Improve knowledge about the heroes of stories from books. Develop memory and speech.
Work assignments. Planting onions on greens. Develop hard work and a desire to improve your health.
Didactic game: “Shape, color, size”
. Improve knowledge about sensory standards.
Individual work on artistic and aesthetic development. With Masha S., Lisa T. - practice evenly painting contour images of toys. Develop orientation on a sheet of paper and creative abilities.
WALK 1:
Frost monitoring. Identify the changes that occurred with the arrival of late autumn. Develop observation skills. Activate children's attention to inanimate objects.
Individual work to develop balance and spatial orientation: “jumping on one leg”
. With Gosha, Sasha K. - develop balance.
Labor: clear benches and tables of frost. Involve children in carrying out work assignments.
Role-playing game: “Family”
. Improve communication skills. Play together, agree on the division of roles. Learn to use substitute toys in your play.
Outdoor games: “Two Frosts”
,
"Find a pair"
. Intensify physical activity of children. Develop auditory perception. Learn to act on a signal and perform movements in accordance with the text.
EVENING:
Perception of fiction: V. Bianchi “The Owl”
.
Improve auditory perception. To cultivate love and respect for nature and its inhabitants through the works of Russian writers. Final event: “Matryoshka”
. Improve the ability to stroke in the right direction in a confined space, following the instructions.
WALK 2:
Soil monitoring. To form ideas about the soil and its condition in the cold season. Improve children's cognitive abilities.
Individual work on developing balance and spatial orientation: “measuring distance in steps”
. With Sofia S., Roma K.
Labor: collect small twigs from the area. Encourage children to carry out work assignments. Develop aesthetic taste. Let's make the area clean.
Games with external material at the request of the children. Outdoor games: “Empty Space”
,
"Mousetrap"
. Increase motor activity, develop endurance and orientation in space.
Toys in the group, toys brought by children from home, children's books with illustrations, A4 sheets with outline images of toys, color. pencils, a box of soil, onions, a watering can with water.
Buckets, dolls, handbags, cars, scoops, ribbons in red and blue.
Collection of stories by V. Bianchi, outline image of nesting dolls for each child, simple pencils.
Cars, dolls, buckets, skittles, hoops. Together with the children, write a story about a favorite toy that children play at home.
Day
weeks,
topic of the week
GCD
Educational activities in special moments Creating a developmental environment for children’s independent activities
Interaction with parents
November 25 – Friday.
Topic of the week: “Fedora’s week”
(dishes)
.
MORNING:
Conversation with children based on their interests. Form a culture of speech. And a culture of communication with adults and peers. Develop communication skills. Examination of illustrations depicting dishes. Improve knowledge about dishes, their appearance, what materials they can be made from. Develop thinking and speech.
Work assignments. Watering plants in a tray. Cultivate a caring attitude towards indoor plants. Learn to care for them.
Educational game: “Geometric Shapes”
. Develop sensory standards. Reinforces the name of the geometric shapes.
Individual work on artistic and aesthetic development. With Gosha A., Lisa T. - practice evenly coloring images of dishes with colored pencils. Develop orientation on a sheet of paper and creative abilities.
WALK 1:
Observing ice on puddles. Identify changes in nature with the onset of frost. Develop observation skills. Activate children's attention to inanimate objects.
Individual work to develop balance and spatial orientation: “walking with obstacles”
. With Alyosha F., Arseny R.
Labor: remove dry twigs from the area. Involve children in carrying out work assignments. Develop aesthetic qualities. Keep the area clean.
Role-playing game: “Family”
. Improve communication skills. Play together, agree on the division of roles.
Outdoor games: “Two frosts”
,
"Wolf in the Moat"
. Intensify physical activity of children. Develop auditory perception, learn to act on a signal.
EVENING:
Perception of fiction: reading the encyclopedia “The Past World of Crockery”
.
Develop curiosity. Replenish children's vocabulary with outdated words (Jug, jug, kumgan)
. Final event:
. ” Improve creative abilities,
Practice drawing a plant pattern on a plane.
WALK 2:
Observing the work of a janitor. Cultivate a respectful attitude towards the work of other people. Individual work on developing balance and spatial orientation: “measuring distance in steps”
. With Sasha K., Nastya G.
Labor: clear the sides of the sandbox from sand. Encourage children to carry out work assignments.
Games with external material at the request of the children. Outdoor games: “Sly Fox”
,
“Draw a figure”
. Increase motor activity and develop endurance.
Illustrations depicting dishes, watering cans with water, cardboard gems. Figures, outline images of dishes, color. pencils.
Dolls, steering wheels, buckets, red and blue ribbons, skittles, hoop, handbags, wolf mask.
Encyclopedia “The Past World of Crockery”
, mug templates, color. pencils.
Scoops, dolls, steering wheels, skittles, fox mask.
Consider specialized utensils at home and find out what they are intended for. (steamer, pressure cooker, fryer, etc.)
Transition to weekly planning
After mastering daily plans, employees are transferred to weekly planning. At the same time, daily planning remains the same, but is greatly simplified, because In a weekly plan, tasks are divided into days. If you don't do daily planning with your employees, they may be planning their week like the image below.
Grief and losses threaten the company if employees plan their week, as in this picture
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Where is the right place to make a plan for the day?
You can plan your day anywhere you want. But if you want it to be truly detailed and functional, then it is better to opt for a diary.
Diary notebook
Binding:
gluing
Designed for:
3 months
Price:
590₽ View
Diary on a spring
Binding:
spring
Durable:
4 months
Price:
990₽ View
Key benefits of weekly scheduling:
- longer planning horizon compared to one day
- Saving employee time and significant savings of manager time
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Weekly work plan
- How to make a plan?
- Go through all monthly project plans, take from them a list of tasks with a deadline by the end of the week + 5 days.
- Open your monthly work plan and write out some of the work from there.
- Include operational tasks (previously known or set by the manager) into the weekly plan.
- Tasks must be planned for the entire work week, taking into account the time reserve for introductory tasks (determined for each position individually).
- after all, that’s why the tasks and “unforeseen” ones may or may NOT exist.
- if the plan was not completed due to the fact that newly received tasks were being completed, then some of the tasks from the plan can be transferred to the next week.
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Automation of daily and weekly plans
The most popular question: “In what form should subordinates make plans?”
Ideally, you need to make plans in the form of tasks in the system, where in the future the execution time will be kept track of them and reports will be generated. In my opinion, today the Bitrix24 system is most suitable for this.
What if your company has a different system for setting tasks? Think about how to organize planning with its help based on the requirements for plans that I formulated. And even if you don’t have a system for setting and accounting for tasks at all, it doesn’t matter. In my company, for a long time, plans for the day and week were made in separate text files in GoogleDocs format (very convenient to edit and discuss). And only after some time we switched completely to working in Bitrix24.
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Print weekly planner template
Well, we have learned the basics of planning, time to expand our capabilities. This time we will try to plan the entire upcoming week at once. Yes, it is difficult, we don’t argue, but the skill is very useful and necessary.
In general, we would recommend putting a piece of paper next to the weekly planner template and writing down all the main tasks for the next 7 days. Directly in a row without breaking them down by day. Then determine which of these tasks are urgent and important and try to get rid of them right away. They are counterproductive, as many time management experts have been saying for 100 years or more.
By the way, the distribution of your tasks according to such parameters is very competently implemented in the time management tool “Eisenhower Matrix”. I won’t go into too much detail about this technique—it’s better to read about it separately at this link.
This is what a template for printing a weekly planner looks like:
Download it in Microsoft Word or PDF format. If you need to place the planner on A5 size paper, then select the appropriate option when setting up printing.
Want this printable template? Click on the “Download template” button:
Frequently asked questions about daily plans
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How to set tasks if the performing employee is not a direct subordinate to the manager?
Either obtain the authority to set such tasks within the framework of project subordination, or agree on the addition of a task with the immediate supervisor of the performer.
It is important to remember: time is not rubber. When a new task arrives, it “pushes” another task out of the plan. Priorities in setting tasks are a matter of competence of the immediate manager.
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It turns out that this system introduces “total control” over the work of a subordinate? This should be done by his leader. Should this manager be controlled by his manager?
The manager controls the preparation of plans for his direct subordinates (example: the head of a department reviews the plans of department employees), but not necessarily every day. For loyal employees (1 year after the start of implementing regular management, there will be no others left in your company), the frequency of checks can be once every 3 days, once a week.
If one of your employees needs constant “total control,” ask yourself the question: “Do you need such an employee?”
A lot depends on the position and experience of a particular employee. And also on the type of planning that is used in addition to daily and weekly plans: monthly planning for projects, strategic plans for projects. If one of your employees needs constant “total control,” ask yourself the question: “Do you need such an employee?”
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Some managers themselves do not want to control on a daily basis because... it takes time and attention
Planning work for your subordinates and monitoring its implementation are the direct responsibilities of the manager. In order to master this function, I recommend that you “pump up” your management competencies. I recommend your online course, which contains all the necessary techniques for implementing daily plans and reports - “Work reports and plans: How to increase employee productivity by 2 times and get rid of manual control” (all practical lessons on working with tasks are shown in the example work with the Bitrix24 service).
It is important to assess whether in your company there is a “bias” for managers in working to “produce results”. First of all, the manager must allocate time for managing subordinates , and producing results - in the second place and according to the residual principle of time. If you allocate enough time to the manager to manage, and at the same time he still strives to produce results with his own hands, while his subordinates are lazy, he is a good specialist, but a bad leader.
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It's never too late to learn to plan.
I never knew how to plan - neither at school, nor at university, nor when I worked in an office. This matter seemed boring and unnecessary, because everything is perfectly remembered anyway. Now I have two children, work from home, housekeeping, and hobbies. AND A DAILY, because it has become impossible to keep everything in your head. At the senior circle at different times and in different places - I drop them off and pick them up. Work – I’ve been learning a new profession on my own for a year now in order to help my husband with his business. This takes a lot of time and even more mental strength. Housekeeping - the last six months were spent under the banners of Marie Kondo and the Fly Lady, because I could no longer tolerate the trash and dirt. I signed up for Fly Lady’s courses, where I learned to plan things on paper - fly girls have a lot of them.
And then a miracle happened: I began to keep up. Not everything, but a lot. The house has become clean, and there is an understanding of what I must do every day so that it does not turn into a stable. Children and work - I plan things so that I have time to work while the children are in the garden for several hours. Then - their legitimate time: we walk, attend clubs and go to visit.
Thanks to planning, I gained confidence in myself. The result is that you are reading this article. At the end of last year, I saw an advertisement on Instagram “Everything is Local” that they were looking for authors for a blog. The theme is organization of order, and this is exactly what I have been stewing in over the past few months. I’ve always loved writing, but if it weren’t for a clear understanding of how much time I have every day for certain things, I would never have responded to this ad.
A simple and convenient method of planning the day - in blocks.
At the Fly Lady courses, in addition to learning how to do daily cleaning “a little bit at a time,” I went through a real school of planning. But I won’t claim that I have become a planning professional and know many techniques. We were taught to divide the day into blocks and apply contextual planning (for upcoming tasks, we need to think through several options for events depending on external circumstances). Contextual planning never caught on with me, but dividing the day into blocks and distributing tasks among them, without tying them to a specific time, turned out to be very convenient.
I analyzed my day and identified blocks, distributing work and household chores between them, depending on the workload. The trick is that a certain task is not tied to a specific time, but only to a period of time - a block. You choose the time convenient for completing the task yourself, trying to focus on the time boundaries of the block. I allocated a column for planning work, household chores and “time” matters: when to drop off and pick up the children, the time of the eldest daughter’s clubs, appointments with doctors, other institutions, etc.
Accordingly, the entries in the diary look something like this:
I also got into the habit of long-term planning: I make notes of affairs for the whole year if they become known in advance. For each month there are the following tables, which are constantly updated:
These are, for example, birthdays, dates of mandatory payments, reminders that you need to make an appointment with the dentist and do large annual household chores (wash the windows, the chandelier in the living room), etc.
But. All the records I keep are mine. The diary is mine. And I'm not happy when someone grabs it. At the same time, I appreciated daily planning and I understand that my daughters will someday be grateful if I can instill this skill in them. Therefore, when “Everything is Local” invited me to test their magnetic planner, I realized that this was a chance to involve the whole family in planning!
What is a magnetic planner?
The magnetic planner is a glossy sheet with a printed planner, on the other side it has a magnetic layer. It can be attached to metal surfaces (for example, a refrigerator) or to any other surface using double-sided tape. This is a ready-made planning system that is suitable for almost everyone who wants to keep up with everything, set goals and achieve them. Planners vary in size and purpose. There are universal planners for the whole family, for scheduling medications, for making notes on cleaning the house, for planning menus, shopping, and more.
many, many others.
You need to write on planners with special markers that can be erased after the entries become irrelevant. I’ll tell you right away about my experience so that you get the correct picture. Before I had magnetic planners in my house, I already had a set of flip chart markers. But I understood that with the number of things that I would need to transfer to the planner, the thickness of these markers would not allow this to be realized. Therefore, I immediately asked to attach a marker for magnetic boards with a thin rod . And I was not mistaken.
The peculiarity of this marker is that the notes stick quite “firmly” to the surface. A dry cloth will not take it. At first I wrote this down as a “cons” (it seemed that the entries should be easy to correct). But then, as I had to add things to the planner, I radically changed my attitude.
Imagine that you have to write a case into a box that already has entries around it. What will happen to them if you start moving your hand over the surface while writing? If the marker was erased with one movement of the hand, that would be a problem. This is exactly what happens with regular thick markers - they are easily erased. And if this happens by accident (you hit it with your hand), then it eventually starts to infuriate you.
Over time, of course, thick markers “dry” to the surface and cannot be easily erased. A general recommendation for all markers is that the notes made by them are erased with a damp cloth. No special products or any aggressive liquids are needed. Wet a cloth, take a damp napkin, or drop some water on a paper one, and you can easily erase or correct your notes.
My planners
I chose three planners for my needs:
- Weekly planner for the whole family "Flora" size A3
- Checklist “House order” size A4
- Monthly planner “Slope” size A3
There are many other cute designs in the store, but these are the ones we liked: “Flora” is calm and self-possessed, and “Slope” is a tribute to our family’s passion for snowboarding.
When choosing “Flora” and “House Order” I was also guided by how I was used to planning in my diary. But the linear planner "Slope" - a new product in the "Everything in Place" store - interested me for another reason. I'll tell you more about each one.
Weekly planner for the whole family “Flora”
As soon as I saw this planner on the website, I realized that it was IT :) Pictures with use cases flashed through my head. The planner is a table of 8*6 cells with written days of the week, a field for notes and a place for a shopping list.
The place I chose for it was the refrigerator in the kitchen. The kitchen is the most visited place in the house, and the refrigerator gets hundreds of views per day :)
The first assignment is a schedule for the whole family for the week.
When the “Everything in Places” team created this planner, this is exactly the planning method they envisioned, I think. The left column is suitable for entering the names of family members. The remaining columns by day of the week will take into their cells the schedule of all your household members. I grabbed two lines so that, in addition to the main things related to children, work and other responsibilities, I could plan things to keep the house in order (in the leftmost cell in this line is the zone for the current week).
The second purpose is a monthly to-do calendar.
I have already mentioned that I keep records of affairs for future months: birthdays, concerts, doctor’s visits, mandatory payments, etc. Why shouldn't the family be aware of everything that's going on for the next 30 days? This planner is perfect for this type of recording.
By the way, on the right it is convenient to keep a list of products that you need to buy. Take a photo and send it to your spouse who tends to forget at home or lose paper lists.
The third purpose is a housework planner.
After learning the Fly Lady system, planning homework became a habit. Yes, there are people who clean the house easily and effortlessly, as they go along. But this is not about me. Any movement towards purity is overcoming oneself and one’s laziness. Therefore, you have to plan and write down.
You can plan the entire month at once or fill it out every week. In the leftmost column I write down the work areas. Day cells contain tasks (in addition to daily routines that have already become a habit and do not need control): work in the zone, weekly plan (WP), “Floors and dust” routine (W&D; new premises every day). Some time after the photo was taken, I added laundry chores to my planner.
You can enter your business there, and you don’t have to use the Fly Lady system. Just write down what you think will keep your home in order.
To completely close the topic of planning things according to Fly, I will say that such a planner would be very useful for me during training. In those days, I scheduled tasks daily in blocks, planning almost every step of cleaning.
Now such detailed planning is not necessary, since many things have become habits. But if at that time I had this glider, I would have written all over it “in both tail and mane.”
The fourth purpose is a planner for children.
She suggested that her eldest daughter make a schedule for the week. She is 6 years old, goes to kindergarten and attends several clubs and sports activities. We discussed a typical weekday and identified several blocks (far left column).
Then they immediately filled out the first two lines from Monday to Friday: the time when she should be in kindergarten. And then they began to include her classes in blocks. Wherever it was necessary to record the start time of the lesson, we drew a clock - she is just learning to understand the time by the clock.
Another use case was suggested to me by a colleague who jokingly sent me a photo of her magnetic planner:
The young space explorer definitely did his best here :) But I came up with an idea that the children took up with pleasure: a lesson on graphomotor skills. I filled out the first column, and they completed the drawing. But, I believe, in the future the glider will be used only for its intended purpose.
Checklist “Order in the House”
I ordered the “House in Order” planner to transfer a similar checklist from paper to a magnetic planner. I run it to track the frequency with which it is necessary to clean a particular place in the house. I used to print out a new one every month. And the planner is practically eternal, especially since I have somewhere to attach it next to my workplace. It's a great reminder of what hasn't been done yet. And if it’s not done, then the house is already halfway to the Apocalypse (and the children and the cat are its riders:).
I transferred my usual activities to it. I didn’t paint the ones that are being done in the zone, so as not to clutter them up.
For example, this week I had a sore throat and for the first three days I was unable to do anything, only minimal routines - a clean sink and floors in the hallway and kitchen. The result was that by Thursday the house was filthy! Having recovered a little from my illness, I caught up with the routines related to the floors and partly the work in the “Bedroom” area.
This planner is very flexible in terms of scheduling things. It is not necessary to clean according to some system. Analyze what you usually do, write it down, and then plan a little more. Then from maintaining cleanliness you will move on to putting it where your hands have never reached before. And the planner will remind and stimulate with its empty circles.
Monthly planner “Slope”
The “Slope” planner is a new product in the “Everything is in Place” store. Previously, there were only tabular schedulers, but this one is linear. It’s more convenient for me to plan in a spreadsheet, but I decided to work with this one.
Linear to-do lists
I remembered, firstly, about the article that was published on our blog in December last year - “Systems for organizing order .
There was mention of the Autofocus system, when things are recorded in a large list in a row, without dividing into types. And they are performed in any order, depending on what time or resources you currently have. If you are used to planning your affairs in this way, this planner is ideal for you. Write down and cross out things, and when you run out of lines, erase the crossed out entries and group unfinished things on the top lines. And keep going :)
Monthly planner
But the original purpose of the “Slope” planner is still planning things for the month. Write down any of your affairs; you can divide them according to criteria convenient for you into two columns. For me, for example, these are “time-based” things that are not tied to a specific time.
Challenge calendar.
A trendy name that hides a to-do list for preparing for an event. This planner is great for those needs.
I filled it out as an example with my activities in December. A month before the New Year, I set myself the goal of celebrating the holiday in a clean house without grueling general cleaning a few days before December 31st. The second goal is for gifts to be purchased and wrapped for all members of our extended family and friends. And not in the last days of the month, when there are 10-point traffic jams on the streets and in shops, but in advance.
Thanks to planning, everything worked out for me: on December 31 I didn’t feel like a cornered horse, my mood was 100%! Then I didn’t have such a planner and all the notes were kept on sheets, but this year I know how I will plan preparations for the holiday.
And besides the New Year, there are a million other events for which we begin to prepare in advance - birthdays, Easter, September 1... Take this planner as your assistant and you will easily and step by step solve all the issues.
What else? I thought that this glider would be suitable for many other tasks:
Calendar of activities with children for a month.
Nowadays you can find many methods for developing young children on the Internet. Select activities that interest you, plan them for every day of the month, separately prepare and sign educational materials. And then you won’t “slow down” when you decide to work with your baby. After all, this is what usually stops us: we understand that the child’s attention will last for 15-20 minutes, and therefore we are too lazy to prepare specially every day. Try it! In addition to the benefits for the child (communication with the mother and development), this raises the mother’s self-esteem by several points :)
Habit implementation calendar.
Everyone has already set their teeth on edge with the advice that any action becomes a habit after 21 days. Believe it or not, I tested this statement on myself and I can say with confidence that it works. But only when you really want an action to become a habit. A habit that I managed to implement through cosmic efforts is a clean sink before bed. It took a month to overcome evening fatigue and laziness, so that now my hands themselves reach for the sink in the evening and put the kitchen in order.
Have you been wanting to implement a healthy habit for a long time, but lack the motivation? The planner, attached in a visible place, will remind you to repeat a certain action. Give yourself pluses at the end of the day, write comments about how you feel. Missed a day? Erase what you've done and start again.
Calendar of eating habits.
If you are planning a diet, detox, or cutting, you need an ally. A planner can become it! Write down the menu, count calories. I’m not an expert in this, but analyzing the experience of my friends, I see that the glider has all the tools to help you.
Do you plan your affairs? What methods do you use and what tools do you use? Share your experience in discussions in our VKontakte , Facebook and Instagram groups!
