A whiteboard weekly planner is a great strategising tool. Here’s how a weekly planner can help you and your business succeed.
Whiteboard weekly planners - helping you succeed
Whiteboard weekly planners play a big role in planning. And you already know that planning is crucial to the success of any endeavour, project or undertaking.
Any tool that can help you construct this essential foundation is one worth taking note of. With that in mind, we’re going to look at the whiteboard planner: what it is and how you can get the most out of one.
Whiteboard weekly planners - what are they?
A planner is simply a chart or list that helps you figure out and track the steps from where you are to where you want to be. If you already know your A and Z, then your planner is where you nut out and hold vigil over the B through Y.
They’re commonly found in schools: a student’s unique mix and schedule of classes is often organised in planner format. Planners also often pop up in homes and offices in the form of chore lists, calendars, meeting room schedules and more.
Planners help us assign jobs, set appointments, itemise to-do lists and plan the next quarter. They can be digital devices, notebooks, notice boards and - yep - whiteboards.
7 ways planners help your goal setting
What is a goal? A goal is a desired result envisioned, mapped out, and committed to by a person. Essentially, any planning you do for the future involves a “goal”. These can be as vague as committing to watching a TV show on the weekend or as structured as getting S.M.A.R.T. What’s that?
- S = Specific
- M = Measurable
- A = Attainable
- R = Realistic
- T = Timelined
SMART goals are the secret sauce used by many of the world’s top entrepreneurs. Stepping through this process, you encourage incremental strategic planning that results in concrete outcomes.
What does this have to do with planners? Well, good planner use wraps in three of the five letters:
- Specific: By writing your goal in a planner, you’re giving it specificity
- Measurable: By tracking progress in a planner, you’re measuring your actions
- Timelined: By setting due dates and writing them in a planner, you’re ensuring your goals are timelined.
Goal setting is essential for a few reasons:
1. IT GIVES CLARITY TO YOUR END VISION
If you don’t know your destination, you’re going to have a rough time getting there. Goal setting gives you aim and purpose by clarifying your end vision. When you know precisely where you want to be, the next step is planning how to get there.
2. IT GIVES YOU FOCUS
Goal setting gives you something to focus on. Anyone who’s ever wandered into the supermarket without a list will know the importance of focus. It keeps you from wasting time on non-critical tasks. And, when it is “mission time”, focus stops you getting distracted by the day-to-day minutiae of work and life.
3. IT GIVES YOU MOTIVATION
Goals don’t just give you direction, they can actively motivate you. This is because you have a clear end in sight with the promise of achievement waiting at the finish line.
4. IT INSTILS SELF-DISCIPLINE
The act of goal-setting itself is a form of self-discipline. After all, the first step to achieving your goals is to set them and the second step is simply starting them.
5. IT REMINDS YOU OF YOUR PRIORITIES
It can be all-too-easy to get distracted with mundane life tasks. Goal setting is a way to see what, in all the tides of life, matters in the minute. Basically, it reminds you of your priorities – the goals you’ve decided on and set for yourself.
6. IT HELPS YOU MANAGE YOUR TIME
Goal setting, particularly SMART goal setting, gives you a concrete timeline in which to achieve your goals. Nothing motivates like knowing exactly when the consequences will kick in if you don’t get something done!
7. IT GIVES YOU A SENSE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT
We humans are wired to like rewards. Goal setting essentially feeds the reward centre of your brain by giving you concrete, measurable achievements to aim for. Once you kick a goal that you have been striving for, you’re going to feel great.
Planners help you organise information
The words “planner” and “organiser” tend to be used interchangeably and for good reason: a great planner is also a great organisational tool. Specifically, planners help organise information through:
Indulging our love of patterns
We humans naturally seek patterns. Our penchant for pattern recognition is actually one thing we still have in our arsenal when up against artificial intelligence.
This natural urge to seek order within chaos is one of the reasons why many workers get more done when their desk isn’t cluttered and students learn better in organised classrooms.
The pull patterns have on us applies to planning as well. To-do lists, charts, calendars and schedules all take advantage of a very human inclination to break things down, group things together and lay things out in meaningful ways.
Graphically organising information
Planners also serve to graphically organise information. Tables and graphs might not seem that interesting, but our brains beg to differ. Your mind processes images 60,000 times faster than it does text. Further, over 90% of all the information your brain processes is visual.
This doesn’t mean text information is lost in translation. Far from it: tables are seen by the brain as catalogues of information that are able to be understood by the superpowered visual system and the ‘reading system’ in collaboration.
Planners essentially turbo-boost information processing.
Planners centralise information
If you work in an office or team, then centralising planning information can be crucial to an endeavour’s success. Centralisation ensures that:
- Everyone is working off the same information
- Goals and due dates are stated clearly
- Everyone is accountable.
Whiteboard planners are a great way to centralise information and ensure that said information is hard to miss. Not checking an email chain is a mistake easily made; walking past a whiteboard of due dates every day? Less so.
Why choose a WhiteboardsOnline whiteboard?
WhiteboardsOnline will help you find the answer you’re after. We offer Australia-wide delivery to your door. Contact us today on 1800 654 911 or info@whiteboardsonline.com.au