The blog

Hav­ing fore­sight and a long-term plan is worth its weight in gold. If we have plen­ty of time to do the tasks we need to get done we will per­form them with greater suc­cess and high­er qual­i­ty since we are not stressed while doing them, and hence func­tion and oper­ate bet­ter and more effi­cient­ly. If there is plen­ty of time until dead­line we will be able to find an opti­mal oppor­tu­ni­ty to per­form the task. But if we are in a hur­ry, we are forced to do it imme­di­ate­ly even if we are already tired from a full day’s work and would like noth­ing more than to go home.

Plus, it sim­ply makes you feel good doing things well ahead of time.

A bet­ter alter­na­tive to the illu­sion on what we ​”must” do
From time to time I hear some­one tell me that ​“well, you know, I need to do things last-minute because I like feel­ing pres­sured”. I would say that it is prob­a­bly so that a per­son who thinks along these lines believes that it has to be this way for them since it is how he or she usu­al­ly gets things done. But, if it has not been expe­ri­enced pre­vi­ous­ly, the sweet­ness of hav­ing planned ahead, got­ten fore­sight and hence being well ahead of time and dead­lines must be expe­ri­enced. Once we have had a taste of it, we will def­i­nite­ly want it again.

It would be easy to say ​“Have bet­ter fore­sight!” to each oth­er, but how is it actu­al­ly real­ized and attained?

Here are six ways which I use myself from time to time to get bet­ter foresight. 

Do this

1. Look through the com­ing days, weeks or months in your cal­en­dar sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly once a week. Get an overview of which dead­lines are approach­ing and think about if you need to pri­or­i­tize (or per­haps even sched­ule time in your cal­en­dar so that you for cer­tain have time for) the com­ple­tion of tasks which will bring you clos­er to meet­ing these deadlines.


2. Cre­ate an overview of all your active and more exten­sive tasks (such as projects, change ini­tia­tives, process­es you are in the mid­dle of, and so on). Skim through this list a few times every month and take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to define a next step in the form of a to-do-task for each and every one of them. Set a due date for every task, sched­ule time in the cal­en­dar to do them in and/​or split the tasks into small­er steps if they tend to get post­poned due to how they are cur­rent­ly formulated.


3. Take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reflect and brain­storm freely as you are wait­ing in a tele­phone queue, as the fas­ten-seat­belt sign is lit or as you are wait­ing for a meet­ing to com­mence. Try to make note of all the things that now pop up in your mind which ​”you mustn’t for­get” such as to-do-tasks, and add them onto your to-do-list.


4. If you keep your to-do-list in a dig­i­tal for­mat, set the start­ing-date for the task well ahead of the due date. If you have set the views cor­rect­ly, the task will appear in your dai­ly to-do-list well in advance of its due date.


5. Cre­ate an ​”annu­al cycle” to depict and illus­trate the twelve months of the year and draw the most sig­nif­i­cant mile­stones, events and phas­es which will occur through­out the year onto the cycle. Add any­thing you will need to com­plete and do in order to attain these long-term goals onto your overview. Define the first step of each one of the more exten­sive tasks as a to-do-task and add it to your to-do-list. Set a due date if you feel it is necessary.


6. Make it a habit of choos­ing a task from your to-do-list which is not due for a long time every day. Even if you still have plen­ty of time to com­plete it, it will feel won­der­ful know­ing that it is already done lat­er on when the dead­line is fast approaching.

Feel great and per­form better
If you use a trick to help your­self get bet­ter fore­sight (such as one of the ones men­tioned above or per­haps some­thing entire­ly dif­fer­ent), you will con­tin­u­ous­ly feel as if you are a step ahead rather than one behind. In terms of our gen­er­al well­be­ing (as well as our busi­ness’ well­be­ing), this is cru­cial and makes a big difference.

What is your way?
These are some of my meth­ods. What are yours? Please share in a com­ment below.