Your Plan for Today, Tomorrow, and for Interruptions to Your Plan

Many of us are great at planning our day—and even planning for tomorrow—but how many of us can say we’re doing a great job of planning for interruptions to those well-laid plans?

Interruptions happen to all of us humans. They just do.

And, especially recently, in light of global events - the whole world has gotten interrupted.

The good news in all of this? We’ve currently been given the gift of time.

What we do with that time matters.

It’s so important that we learn to take that time and turn it into talents that will turn into more relationships which leads to credibility which leads to cash which leads to cash flow which leads to significance.

And it starts today.

Your Plan for Today

We all have 24 hours in a day. You got a new allotment of time just this morning. What if you woke up this morning and had another 1,440 dollars to “spend?” That sounds exciting, right?

Well, every day, we wake up with 1,440 new minutes to spend. That’s how I look at time.

Time is the most precious thing we all have. We have to think about how we’re using it.

When it comes to planning the day, one of the things that helps me consistently and tremendously is to take an entire year and break it down into 13 weeks at a time.

And, just a note for those of you tempted to say, “I’ll wait until Monday to make those goals” or “l will wait until January first.” No, a year is any 365-day period. Your year can start RIGHT NOW.

Develop the discipline to make goals 13 weeks at a time. Then look at those goals, and ask yourself: What’s the overarching theme here?

I write down that theme, that goal, every single day. Something about writing it down every day helps me focus on it and points me in the right direction.

Then I write down my top three objectives for the day.

Do you want to win every day? Write down those three things. When I write them down, I’m communicating to myself that, regardless of what happens today, as long as these three things get accomplished, I win the day.

Before finishing my actual schedule, I write down three things I’m grateful for. They can be anything. As an asthmatic, sometimes I’m just grateful I can breathe well.

The rest of my morning planning session is making sure I’m in sync with my calendar. I look for blocks of time where I can get things done.

For example: I know myself well, and I’m at my best with heavy, critical thinking before 8:00 am.

And here’s my biggest takeaway every evening: Every day, you either win or you learn.

“Learning” means something didn’t go well or as planned. Maybe I didn’t “win” at one of my goals. If not, what did I learn from it?

And then I end my day with three more things I’m grateful for. It’s a great way to end today and get ready for tomorrow.

Your Plan for Tomorrow

Tomorrow can mean the literal day after today; it can mean six months from now; or it can mean retirement. Tomorrow is any time you can point to in the future.

Each day you’re making an investment in your tomorrow. You can change the narrative, the direction, of your future.

I’ll often ask people: “Are you an investor?”

Many people tell me, “No, I’ve never invested.”

I respectfully disagree.

Every one of us is an investor.

All of us have taken a resource, invested it in some way, and hoped it would come back to us in a better way. Right?

So, we’re all investors.

The challenge is: have you earned the return you hoped for?

One way to make sure you’ll earn that hoped-for return six months from now, six years from now, is to ask yourself this question on a daily basis:

Am I doing something today that, six months from today, I would be proud of?

It’s a simple yes or no. If you answered yes, then keep going. You’re doing great.

If you answered no, then do something different. Change that narrative.

The seeds you plant today won’t show up as plants tomorrow—they’ll show up six months from now. Or even further in the future.

Like in retirement.

Let me take this time to ask you a pretty standard question: Do you have a retirement plan?

Most people would say yes. But they don’t really have a retirement PLAN; they have a retirement ACCOUNT.

They’re not the same.

Let’s say you’re planning a road trip. You don’t just have a road trip account; you have a plan.

Same with a wedding. It’s not enough to have a wedding fund. You have to have a wedding plan.

Yet, when it comes to retirement, many of us think we just need to save up a bunch of money.

But what’s our retirement destination? Where are we headed? If retirement is a destination, it starts with a definition.

Retirement is having enough money coming in that you don’t have to physically work.

A retirement plan should be to build, own, or control enough assets that produce income greater than your expenses without you working.

And you build those assets today, and tomorrow, and the day after that. Day in, day out, building those muscles.

Your Plan for Interruptions to Your Plan

Hopefully, you’re already starting to see why someone who has been disciplined at planning for their today and their tomorrow will have a distinct advantage when life gets interrupted.

And I’m talking about any kind of interruption: a job layoff, an illness, a global pandemic.

When we experience an interruption, our weaknesses get exposed. The time to build your discipline muscles, your resilience muscles, your interruption muscles is WAY BEFORE the interruption actually happens.

If you build those muscles every day, your weaknesses won’t be exposed during an interruption; your strengths will.

I plan for interruptions within my daily schedule. I’ve got a block of time already set aside for interruptions, so they’re no big deal.

So, each day, I’m actually planning for a time when my plans get interrupted. On a small scale, or on a huge scale.

Let’s make those plans and build those muscles, so we can win today, tomorrow, and even during a time of global interruption.

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Interested in starting your short term rental business and winning every day? If so, I’d love to have you join my free Facebook group, where I share the ins and outs of owning your own short term rental business so you can build assets and work toward a solid retirement plan.

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