Planning Time and Setting Goals 1

Today’s post ‘planning time and setting goals 1’ is greatly useful for everyone who is trying to efficiently manage time and balancing their life, work and family. The last paras are especially written for people going through depression or anxiety yet they are bravely trying to cope with life.

It is quite amazing to survive another year and so many years till now, it is such a blessing to be able to breath into a new year. Life is beautiful, it’s a gift from Allah but the real challenge is to live it fully. I learnt a great deal in 2019, my students and my colleagues have been wonderful and as usual they inspired me to become and learn more as a person. In order to accomplish my goals I realized that I needed to manage my life effectively. 

So with 2020 I would like to share with all of you some thoughts and ideas of what worked for me and how I plan to utilize the new information this year.

I have never been a planner because planning entails studying and organizing tomorrow, and future nervous me. I believed until 2019 that if I have no idea what the future holds for me, then there is no point to plan anything. It is best to close my eyes tightly, hold on to the handles and pass through the roller coaster of life.

I also never studied planning, organizing, or setting goals after completing my management semester in BBA because I never believed in any of the above. I mean, please! I am a lawyer and I have a great brain and I don’t need any goals or planning.

You could not even imagine the kind of dilemma I use to have at my employment interviews in companies where those Execs would ask: ‘What are your short-terms goals?’ or ‘Where do you see yourself ten years from now?’

I would memorize all the perfect answers I read from HR books, or suggestions given by my teachers or peers to come up with a perfect 10 years picture of myself. My answers mostly revolved around the company and not once those were my actual goals because I did not have any.

I know for sure that I am a truly blessed person and Allah has managed my life and career, He got me into the right positions with the right people where I learnt and grew, whether it was law practice or teaching. If you want to look at someone who had been clueless and without any game-plan, then I am the best Subject for your research.  

Last year when I wrote a post about buying planners for 2019, that was when it all began to change. My beautiful Day Designer-daily planner and Erin Condren- weekly planner turned out to be the seeds of the new chapter of my life. My mind used to be over-stimulated with thoughts, things to-do lists, creative ideas, study schedules/planning.

My brain was an over-zealous thought machine at bedtime, when trillion things rolled haphazardly. My over worked brain had to do it all, it should remember student’s test dates, special-case students, teaching content, grocery shopping, meeting timings, birthdays, anniversaries, reminder emails, important phone calls, payment of utility and net bills timely and the list goes on.

So much of my mental as well as physical energy was being wasted at remembering all those tasks, when simply writing them in planner changed it all. As soon as I stopped squandering my energy, the mind was free and light to think, to relax and enjoy and work.

Since I like to complete my tasks the best way I started to search for the gurus of tasking and time- management, and of course Stephen Covey appeared as my first teacher. I loved the exactness of his work which divided our lives in Four Quadrants.   

Quadrant 1 involves important and urgent items that must be dealt with immediately. Like making important calls, soothing a crying baby, urgent letter, reports.[1]

Quadrant 2 includes important items that are not urgent. These tasks need proper planning as they are the backbone of settled and focused life. This is a very important quadrant that needs dedicated focus to meet long-term goals. I work on this at the start of every week so I can organize the coming week along with the day-to-day tasks. Stephen Covey called this Sharpening the Saw which basically means to pursue continuous improvement and renewal at professional and personal level.

Sharpening the Saw means preserving and enhancing the greatest asset we have—ourselves. It means having a balanced program for self-renewal in the four areas of life: physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual[2]. Here are some examples of activities:

Physical:	Beneficial eating, exercising, and resting
Social & Emotional:	Making social and meaningful connections with others
Mental:	Learning, reading, writing, and teaching
Spiritual:	Spending time in nature, expanding spiritual self through meditation, music, art, prayer, or service

Quadrant 3 is described as urgent but unimportant tasks. These are the unavoidable interruptions and distractions. For instance, when you have guests at home realize there is no milk for tea and you have to run to the grocery store to get milk. Or when the boss or client asks you to drop a file at office immediately, just as you reach home.

Quadrant 4 incorporates unimportant and non-urgent items. These are time wasters and for me these include checking Instagram every 10 minutes.

I applied 4 Quadrants in December when I was checking the exam papers and miraculously it worked. So I had to check papers of four classes with 65-85 students in each class. I simply dedicated few days for every class, then divided the total number of copies with the days. I would only check the calculated number of copies on a given day, and that’s it. For the very first time I was organized and completed this task well before the submission deadlines, without the anxiety attacks or the excitement jolts.

I literally surprised myself just by becoming focused and following the time-management principles. I had time to relax, enjoy my vacations, go out, study, and do homes chores.

Moreover, I have decided to devote one day a week to learn something new and once/twice a month to complete a new book not related to work or law.

On the other hand, people can also get overwhelmed by the long lists of their daily planning, especially if someone is suffering from anxiety, depression or any other behavioural/ psychological issues. Depression can really put us down and there are days when walking out of bed becomes impossible let alone planning for the week.  

I have learned a trick to resolve this issue as well because the long lists also frightened me and my low mood days are really tough to deal with, so I write my tasks with pencil and instead of making only to-do- lists I make work-done list also. Each day being able to wake up on time, taking a bath, brushing teeth, eating break-fast, able to go to work, etc. are completed-tasks I write boldly in my planner and also give myself stars for completing these tasks. (Jessica Gimeno Tedtalk Please watch this video, as Jessica Gimeno is the real inspiration behind these techniques)

When you are experiencing depression or anxiety future planning is not easy and unfulfilled daily planned tasks can really discourage our progress. Therefore, we need to significantly focus on and be fabulously grateful for what we accomplish every day, this gives delightful motivation and rest of the tasks become achievable.   

And sometimes, it is OKAY to let it go and give yourself peace!

Have a wonderful, splendid, fabulous, dynamic, beautiful, fantastic, energetic and blessed 2020.

Lots of love,

Sonya Syed. (New Day)

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[1] Parker, Wayne. “Dads Can Master Work-Life Balance With Stephen Covey's Amazing Advice.”  

     The Balance Careers. The Balance Careers, June 3, 2018.     https://www.thebalancecareers.com/stephen-coveys-quadrants-work-life-balance-1271000.

[2] Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.franklincovey.com/the-7-  

     habits/habit-7.html.