Plan Your Actions to Be Intentional

If you want to live your best life, then you need to plan your actions. It takes intentional actions to reach specific BIG DREAM goals and intentional actions need planning.

#QuoteoftheDay

It takes
intentional actions
to reach
specific destinations.
– Kathryn Lang

You won’t get there by accident (and remember, if you don’t know where you are going then you won’t even know when you arrive).

Planning Your Actions

We are renting a home with a large yard, and lawn care wasn’t part of the package. Circumstances circumvented us from replacing our riding lawn mower, so my husband had the bright idea to get a push mower.

And then he started working 10 hours a day.

I’m not in the physical shape I was when we first hand cleared the 40 acres with bush hooks and rakes. I’m not even in the same zip code as that shape (at least at present). Mowing the yard in one go wasn’t even on the table.

I determined I could mow for thirty minutes a day and finish up in 5 days, just in time to start again. A bonus would be physical activity to go along with my morning sun stretches.

And then we were hit with a heat wave with temperatures soaring to 90 degrees F by the afternoon. I made the intentional choice of mowing first thing in the morning as soon as the grass was dry from the dew.

Things are going to happen. If you don’t have a plan then you will be left with finger crossing and star wishing to get what you need for your next step.

Take a Big Picture View

Set a theme (or anchor word as I call it) for the year that inspires you and ignites your enthusiasm. I’ve been doing this since 2013 and this year my anchor word is DARE. You can also set BIG DREAM goals that reach out five, ten, or even twenty years.

Break It Down

Make list of steps or accomplishments necessary to make that big picture view come into focus. Choose quarterly tasks, monthly tasks, or weekly tasks. Find what works for you. I have four parts to each of my BIG DREAM goals (and a BIG DREAM goal for each area of balance). I then break those parts into monthly tasks and weekly tasks so I have continuous mile markers to hold me accountable for the journey.

How Low Can You Go?

Once you have your goals broken into tasks, break those tasks up even smaller. Choose one of the many time management methods or blend several to create your own. I try to get most of my big tasks done in the morning because I know my energy wanes in the afternoon. I like to write in 15 to 30 minute stretches. I keep my focus with the Focused Flexibility Planner so I can use each of the different techniques that fit best for the day and the tasks at hand.

You define your goals and then you plan a system of steps to get there. It’s your way because your way is unique to you.

You were designed on purpose and for a purpose. It’s when we get out of purpose lane that we end up in a ditch (and often take others with us). Stick to your way because your way is the way for you!

Yes, it is that simple.

Defeating the Lie of Spontaneity

It’s not fun planning everything. Every now and then you just want to jump in your car and go.

The summer after my freshman year in college, I came home to work. One night, a girlfriend and I were getting gas and a group of friends pulled up. “Hey, we’re headed to Florida, do you want to come?”

Keep in mind, we were literally just getting gas for the car. We didn’t have a plan for the evening. We were just getting started with our running in the night.

“What do you think?” She asked.

“We don’t have any clothes.”

She pointed to the back seat where we had loaded up the clothes from her stint as a nanny that had just ended.

“But we don’t have any money.”

She waved the envelope that she had received for her final payday.

And just like that, we had a plan.

Granted, it wasn’t a very detailed plan. But we had a plan, so I finished pumping the gas and we were off to Florida.

Don’t get so caught up in the planning that you don’t ever go. Do have enough of a plan to know where you are going and to provide what you need to get there.

Spontaneity isn’t a lack of planning, despite what you may have been told.  Instead, it is the very act of planning that makes spontaneous a possibility.

Always be prepared.

We kept an extra set of clothing – summer and winter – in the car for the boys. If we wanted to take a “spontaneous” trip, we had what we needed to do it. I also kept defrost and eat meals in the freezer for just such an occasion. I could throw food in a cooler, and by the time we got to where we were going we’d have a meal ready.

Be open to the unexpected.

I went with a co-worker down to the local hangout after work to see who was around. A friend unexpectedly pulled up in a boat and invited us on a night trip. We went, and that experience is still one of the funniest stories I tell today (but definitely could have benefited from a little more planning on my part – although it probably wouldn’t have been as funny).

If you want to be spontaneous, develop the habit of planning. A flexible plan that focuses on preparation and unexpected possibilities will allow you to shift, pivot, and adjust in ways that will make you spontaneity royalty.

What Are You Planning?

I told my friend about my school schedule (back when I was home-schooling the three boys), and she scoffed at me. “I don’t like schedules. They’re too rigid for me.”

I never fully understood her complaint. If you followed my routine you would realize it wasn’t rigid. Half the time I felt like I was trying to herd squirrels hyped up on pixie sticks. But I had a plan, and that plan made the chaos more manageable.

There are days when I ignore my Focused Flexibility Planner. I am determined to just wing it – and instead, I end up ditching it (as in, I end up in a ditch). Is still have my ditch days, but I am learning that with even a plan of “we have clothes and money” then I can take the intentional actions I need to get things done.

Plan your actions so you can be intentional in your purpose.

How do you plan your intentional actions?