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Recently, Kim Rodeffer Funk wrote a fantastic guest blog post for Artybuzz members called ‘Unyielding Vigor‘. In this post she mentioned about working hard and how this can pay off during difficult economic times especially. A very good point which i completely agree with.

It is worth considering though, before embarking on a whirlwind of activity, hard work and creativity, to stop… step back and think:

Stop

With all the excitement of getting started on something new, it can be very easy to dive into a project, situation, or problem solving process and start beavering away with your work. Doing this however is likely to be more time consuming in the long run, as you will lose focus, direction and most of all, from the outset you haven’t assessed things as well as you could have done.

Step Back

This concentrates on assessing the situation as mentioned above. Step back from the situation or task, mark out your goals, objectives, deadlines and everything else that you want to achieve at the end of completing whatever it is you are doing. This will give you a clear focus of what you need to do and achieve

Think

Based on what targets you have set yourself, you can then think of the best way to reach each of these. You can then plan out what you will do, set yourself milestones and once you are clear in your mind where you are going, you are then you are ready to…

Work

Now all you have to do is carry out what you have planned to do

The above is a very basic and simple planning process, so this is nothing new, but it’s something that you should always think about. People, myself included, often slip into doing work without proper planning, which is very unproductive in the long run. So take this simple formula on board and modify it to suit the way you work for the best results.