The Four Ways of Thinking on Paper
-
officialhogi
Introduction
The most precious possession any person has is time. It’s something that no one can steal or take from you. Unfortunately, not many of us can effectively manage our time. The book ‘The 7 strategies for wealth and happiness by Jim Rohn’ describes many methods and ways to become an enlightened time manager.
One of these methods of managing your time is by thinking on paper. Like all good products in the world, it requires visualizing ideas, writing the plan down on paper, and acting. However, this great tool can be used for other purposes. It’s a powerful tool to manage your day, week, month, and year.
‘OPERATE FROM DOCUMENT, NOT FROM THOUGHT’
The best time to manage your day is not on the day itself, but the day before. Similar when you want to plan your week. The best time to plan your week is before the week begins. It’s already too late once the week starts.
According to Jim Rohn, there are four essential methods to plan your life. In this blog, we will discuss these methods to help you with your time management.
The Journal
A journal is a great tool that you can use to gather and collect good information and wisdom. Especially because great ideas and information come up unexpectedly in random places. These ideas might pop up when you are driving, on a train, or when you walk in a park. So, the point is; DON’T LET GOOD IDEAS ESCAPE YOU.’
Project Book
We are all very busy and work on many projects throughout our life. It’s not easy to work on multiple projects with various people. Sometimes, it’s overwhelming and you forget a thing or two. Therefore, one great tool to stay in control is a project book.
A project book centralizes all de data by categorizing items in projects. Its purpose is to let you focus on the project without wasting hours searching for forgotten information.
Let’s say that you deal with people in your business. A great way to use a project book is by analyzing and noting each individual’s performance, family history, goals, strengths, needs, and all the things that are relevant in the project book.
The noted information can be used for multiple purposes depending on your project. If you have a big project coming up, then you want the right people to work on your project. In this case, you can appoint people to your project based on the strengths and weaknesses of employees based on your project book.
However, you can also use a project book for personal use. For instance, you can use a project book to keep insight information about your acquaintances, family members, or friends. This will keep you up-to-date about their personal lives. It’s a great way to keep in touch with them, and you can use some topics for future conversations.
A calendar
Calendars are a well-known tool for time management. Everyone knows what it is, but most of us don’t even use it or use it effectively. It’s more than just a tool to write down your appointments or birthday dates of friends.
First, calendars can be bought in many forms, but what Jim Rohn recommends is calendars with lots of space to write down your appointments. A good calendar should contain enough space that can keep track of your daily meetings, To-do’s, and results.
Game Plan
Just like any sports game, your game strategy must be mapped before the match begins. Preparation is key to victory. Still, few of us take the time to make a game plan for our lives.
So here is a key thought;
‘DO START YOUR DAY UNTIL YOU HAVE IT FINISHED’
This means you must plan your days before it begins. A key thought is to begin planning today. Plan today what you will do tomorrow. Once tomorrow begins, you start working on these things and planning for the next day and the day after and so on.
Once you have mastered planning your days effectively, you can start planning your week before the week starts. And if you mastered the weeks, you can start planning your months. And so on.
So how does one prepare a game plan?
Well, there are two things that you should understand about the game plan. Firstly, a game plan lists activities. Secondly, the game plan can be used for a single project or a variety of projects.
To create a game plan, you should have a sheet of graph paper.
- On the graph paper, you make a vertical column of the number of days it takes to finish the project.
- On the left side of the paper make a heading called activities.
- Under the heading, you should list the activities to be performed and add the deadline on the sheet.
- Calculate the days it will take to accomplish the task and block them on your game plan sheet