Planning is necessary because it is organized. If you you have never ‘multi-tasked’ – that is doing more than one important thing at a time, then it will help you if you can write down a plan of action.
You may have for example 10 steps that you need to do to accomplish one thing. Perhaps you can’t do all 10 at once, so you do as much as you have time to do, or have the necessary resources to complete. You can put it aside and go on to do something else that is pressing and make a note to remind yourself that you have not completed this item or that it is pending something that you are waiting for and when you can expect it.
In any case if you can organize a plan and make your plan like a ‘to do’ list, it will help you to stay on track. If you have a day planner or a good calendar with lots of space for each day, this will help you. Actually to spare the expense of buying a day planner, you could just take some plain paper and make yourself a calendar of sorts, ideally having a whole page for each day.
The way some planners work you would have space to put a list of things you want to do and then a lot of space below or beside it to make comments and keep track of what you did do and what still needs to be done. If you make these a week at a time you can then for example take something that you started Monday and make a note on Friday to check up on the status of this task.
If you are not organized as a rule, this activity will help you to become organized. Usually when you are starting anything new there are lots of different details – some purely informational and some that are tasks you need to do that are associated. It is good to have it all in one place so if you are making the planner yourself, you could get a few file folders to keep things in.
When starting an online business, you will have lots of different link addresses and associated usernames and passwords. Keeping these organized will save you lots of confusion, failed login attempts, tickets to helpdesks, and most importantly, time. If you start right out from the beginning by organizing your emails and etc into online folders that are labeled by company name; and keeping up your system every time you get something you need to save, it will be a lot easier to find things, especially 6 months from now.
Planning is the key to staying organized. If you are not organized, you can forget things, lose things and generally lose control of what you are doing. Many people starting to work from home also have ‘day jobs’ and so their time online to work on their business may be sporadic – for example a few hours a night, a few times a week, on weekends, or etc. This makes it particularly challenging to stay on top of everything.
Lists, calendars and logs (notes) really can help you not to waste any time or effort and prevent you from forgetting to do something that is important. It may seem like you are making more work for yourself by keeping your plan up-to-date, but it is necessary, at least until you get everything up and running.
