In the 16 years I have been self-employed I have tried most every piece of planning, contact management, and sales software I have been able to get my hands on all with the hope that I would find the "Holy Grail" of tools to help me get organized and stay focused.

Getting organized and staying focused has been a continual challenge for me and my clients. Back in 1995 I designed and printed my own "Life Management system' for myself and my business owner clients that were participating in my business development and entrepreneurial training program. My clients loved it because it helped them stay organized and focused anywhere their business took them. Since then my needs changed and so did my clients.

Solving My Organization and Focus Challenge

The other day I was looking at my desk and became quite frustrated and agitated with all the stacks of paper and garbage on my desk. I sat down to design a new tool, it had to satisfy three criteria:

1) Everything had to fit on one 8.5" X 11" page.
2) I wanted to improve on the 'Life Management System'
3) It had to be easy and intuitive to use.

As a Result I Created "The Effective Entrepreneur"...

Let me walk you through the design of the page. The page is split into three sections. The top left corner is a blank area for keeping notes (I draw mind maps) and keeping track of 'What's on My Mind'. The top right corner is split into three blocks:

1) Focus: I use this area to track those things that I need 'to do'. Here is the legend I use: Do It [+] Date It [?] Delegate It [-] Dump It [X]

2) Routine: I have regular daily tasks that I need to track. I use it to track my writing projects and blogging. This can be used to track any important daily routines from bookkeeping, invoicing, making sales calls, or collecting over due accounts.

3) What's Next: this is my personal adaptation of David Allen's book Getting Things Done which 'sorts' information and tasks as "Next To Do's" which are tasks that cannot be done in two minutes or less.

Here is the legend I use: Or=Organize, Re=Resource, Im=Implement, Pl=Plan




The bottom of the page is a week-at-a-glance calendar to track your appointments, meetings and time specific appointments. You will notice at the bottom of the page four boxes. Each is labeled using the following codes:

• Si=Simple: How did I do at keeping it simple today?


• Des=Desperation: How much urgency or desperation did I have today?


• Sol=Solutions: How well did I focus on solutions to my problems?


• Pro=Profitable: How profitable was it today?

I then score myself (between 1-25) for each of the four qualities. I got this idea from the story of an street person turned entrepreneur and millionaire. He said that living on the streets you either had a sense of desperation or you would die and he wanted to keep that sense of urgency and focus. You can read more about this concept Forget About Business Productivity - Focus on Business Effectiveness.

Download

If you would like to try this tool download The Effective Entrepreneur. It is a PDF file which should open automatically by double clicking it once downloaded and then print as many copies as you need.

If you do not have the Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download it here. Apple users should be able to open it using Preview.

Let me know your thoughts and suggestions on how it could be improved.

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Greg Balanko-Dickson is a Business Performance Coach, Author and Entrepreneur.