A great planning strategy book is the “12-week Year” by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington. The essentials of their approach is to chart plans for 12 weeks – putting the focus on the immediacy of results versus the traditional 10 month plan. For me, it has been a wonderful tool to being more productive, and it has helped me stay focused and enjoy the benefit of marking progress.

Here’s what I really like about this approach – it comes with a parking lot! This is where you ‘park’ all the great ideas, penetrating thoughts, concepts and ideas that warrant attention – just not right now. You want to capture these ideas for a later time, so you put them in your Parking Lot. However, it wasn’t long before I needed a bigger parking lot – and then realization set in. With all the creative points I wanted to ‘park’ I suddenly needed a multi-level parking structure! When sharing this with a dear friend, she quickly saw that I needed to add a valet for my multi-level parking lot! Too funny!

Not only has my productivity improved using the planning strategies of the “12-week Year” plan, idea generation has catapulted me into creating new jobs!