When Life Works

What are your “Best Practices”?

Do you know what you were doing when life worked best this year?

I heard an interview with Sean Stevenson, author of Get Off Your Butt, within which he offered an idea I highly endorse.  He spoke of creating a "WLWL" - as he calls, a "When Life Works List".  What key actions or habits did you engage in when life seemed to be working best? This can be applied to life as a whole or a specific key part.  We are happiest and thereby, most productive, when we are pleased with our actions.  This is a great exercise for any individual or team strategic planning process. 

Fall is my favorite season of all!  I love the cool, crisp air, the color of the leaves and the promise of clean, white snow (the first snow is always the best!).

Fall is also planning time for me personally and professionally.  This is the time I usually take a day or two to slow down, think, reflect and begin to develop plans for the upcoming year.  What worked for me this year and why?  What was going on when life worked best for me? What do I want to accomplish – personally and professionally – in the coming year?  This starts with identifying the “big rocks”, then creating annual outcomes for each area – some will be more tangible than others, but I don’t sweat it too much. It’s most important to just get started toward something that will demonstrate progress in each specific “big rock”. 

This typically results in an overhauled “life plan” and a revised business/sales plan each year.  My ultimate goal is to be measurably better in the key areas of my life at the end of each year.  I know I cannot improve what I don’t measure, and it’s hard to measure what I don’t map.  Mapping is the strategy.

If you are responsible for sales, and you have not set your sales plan for the coming year, I encourage you to block out time to work through it.

A good sales plan, executed, measured and adjusted accordingly can be extremely fruitful.