Does your day run away with you or do you know what it is you want to achieve?
Your time is limited and no doubt you’ll have people vying for your attention. Planning your day is vital if it’s not going to be a wasted one.
When you start the day, you know that it is going to be a busy one. You know that there will not be enough time to do all you want to do.
So, do you know what you’re going to focus your limited time on before you start your working day or do you often arrive at work and think, “What am I doing today?”
If the latter, it’s likely that you’ll not get everything done and you may even wonder at the end of the day what it is you actually achieved.
No firm idea of what you need to get done and you risk simply reacting to what’s in front of you, to picking easier tasks, to letting yourself be interrupted and having meetings that drag out far longer than they need to.
At the end you may have had a busy day but achieved little.
As your to-do list grows you end up working longer hours to catch up and your stress skyrockets.
On a day-to-day basis, the impact of not knowing what you are going to do today may not be noticeable. But accumulate this uncertainty over weeks and you will find your lack of planning having a huge impact on the successful running of your care home.
And key tasks that are crying out for your attention, like client fee reviews and compliance audits, risk being delayed by weeks or months to the detriment of your care business.
Right now, with the extraordinary rise in costs, what if the fees of half of your clients were so low they actually made a loss? If this wasn’t addressed for say six months, how much money would you lose?
And what of the impact on your people who need your help and guidance but who might find themselves waiting longer for it because you have a mountain of other stuff that you need to get through?
What you achieve – or don’t – today will impact what you achieve this week, which will impact what you achieve this month, this quarter, this year.
Knowing what you aim to achieve each day is vital. It’s also much easier to do if you have a bigger plan – a strategy and a strategic destination.
Know what you need to achieve so your care business runs how you want it to run and break it down into what that means quarterly, monthly and weekly.
Do that and you will have a clear idea of what you need to achieve this week and hence what you need to do today.
