Right now, I have a monthly calendar with key milestones I want to hit, a ‘to do’ list for the week, a secondary list for all the calls I need to make this week, and a piece of paper following me around from room to room that includes everything I need to do today. You would think that it was getting smaller, but it is not. In fact, I keep checking and re-checking to see if there is something, anything that I can check off …nada!

Part of the problem is that I tell myself I have to do 5 of something and then get distracted after the third or fourth, only to realize that I just re-organized a cabinet for the last 20 minutes instead of finishing the 5th!

Just like writing out annual goals is effective to keep your company on track, writing out monthly, weekly and even daily goals is helpful when you are running a small business. Window cleaners can wear many, many hats, from the accounts receivable hard*ss to washing and folding the blue towels. (Yes, we always folded ours for maximum use and efficiency – to each their own!)

The key to these shorter goals is finding the right balance, somewhere in between shooting for the moon and couch potato. I once tried to get all my monthly ‘to do’ items on one piece of paper. I used three columns to get it to fit. Yet, when I had to shrink it down to a 7 font, I found I got too discouraged by the vast number of items. Go figure!

What do you do? Are you a ‘winging it’ kind of person, or a ‘list maker’? Do you like sheets of paper, an old-school Franklin planner, or your favorite electronic gadget?

And, more importantly, do you ever finish?

Psssst …. writing this blog post was on my list! Headed to cross something off now! Yea, me!

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