A while ago I wrote a post about long-term planning and now it’s about time to learn more about short-term planning for a business. Having a plan is always extremely important when running a business. You need to see the big picture and know where you’re going. However, you also must know what’s coming up next and what your following steps have to be.
Today Matters
Of course, having a long-term plan is great but the fact is that today is the day which is part of that long-term plan. To make this day count, you need to make it part of your plan and here comes the short-term plan. And this is when you must move from one point to another.
In order to have a strong short-term plan, you must have a long-term plan first. If you don’t have one, read the post about long-term planning and then come back to this post.
From A to B to C
So, now when you have a long-term plan, let’s make a plan for short-term! First, we need to name the stages of your long-term plan. I’ll call them A, B, C, etc.
Now, we need to plan the first part of your journey towards your goal. It will be the journey from A to B. You already know what in general needs to be done at this stage. What you need to do is to think strategically and logically and to write down all the small steps that you need to take to go from A to B.
What you need to do is to think strategically and logically and to write down all the small steps that you need to take to go from A to B. It would be great if each step would take around a day or few.
The goal of a short-term plan is to make it easy for you to work on your goals daily. Therefore, when creating a short-term plan you don’t need to be as particular as writing down call partner 1, call partner 2, send an email, etc. This would be a to-do list. Instead, you can simply write contact prospect partners and that would be enough.
Also, don’t even try to make a short-term plan for the whole A-Z journey. It’s impossible to predict all the things that might happen and how your plans can change. Keep it short, just A to B is all you need.
Once you’re done with the first part of your journey towards your goals, it’s time to start working! Short-term plans make it much easier to follow your path and to stay on track. They also help a lot on moody days when you don’t feel like you gonna make your goals come true. You just need to keep working, stick to the short-term plan and eventually, you’ll get wherever you want to!