Tasks can be seperated into those that are Urgent vs. Important and tasks that make us Efficient vs. Effective. All of this is supported by our goals and objectives.
So where do our goals and objectives come from? It all starts with the “Big Picture”: the company's strategy/goals. Your understanding of that strategy as well as what it means to your area of the organisation is vital. From that understanding you can:
Analyse Opportunities
Another way to look at it is through the word projects. These are often defined as a series of tasks which lead to the conclusion of a bigger piece of work. This means that you need to take care to do all of the smaller tasks as well as possible. Planning is a big part of this.
Explore Options
The next thing to do is to work out how to you are going to complete the smaller tasks. It is best to spend some time generating as many options as possible, even though it is tempting just to grasp the first idea that comes to mind. By taking a little time to generate as many ideas as possible you may come up with less obvious but better solutions. Just as likely, you may improve your best ideas with parts of other ideas.
Do Some Detailed Planning
Detailed planning is the process of working out the most efficient and effective way of achieving the aim that you have defined. It is the process of determining who will do what, when, where, how and why, and at what cost.
Plan Ahead
How far ahead you need to plan probably depends on how complex the project is and how pushed you are for time. In terms of detailed planning look a week ahead. If you try and plan further ahead than this you will need to build in a lot of contingency, as unexpected situations are sure to arise in the meantime.
Identify Problems
One of the most important aspects of good planning is that you can find out what problems you might face in the future. This means taking a bit of time to think about the tasks and anticipate what problems could arise. Doing this means that you can work out more accurately how long it might take you to resolve each problem.
Once you have completed all of this you will now break your plan down into tasks that need to be completed on a day-to-day basis in order to achieve the goal.