Creating Your School Owners To-Do List

In the martial arts industry, it can be easy to feel like there is way too much on the to-do list. Sometimes things can stack up and even the most organized people can get a little overwhelmed.  Whenever this happens to me, I do an exercise I call "Plan, Act, Review, Renew."

This is a great exercise for martial arts school owners and instructors for identifying top priorities and getting them accomplished.

Here's how it works:

1. Plan. Write down 10 things or tasks you would like to get done in your martial arts school. Don't take any more than five minutes to do this. Write down even the most outrageous ideas that might pop in your head.

Next, prioritize, in order of importance, everything you wrote down, using a number one for the highest priority items through 10 for the least important. You need to have two or three priority one items.  Go ahead and rewrite all of the priority one items on a separate piece of paper.

2. Action. Your assignments for the next week are to make a plan of action for all of your number one priorities and take the first steps toward accomplishing these goals.

3. Review. At the end of the week, take some time out of your day to look over your plan and acknowledge everything you accomplished. It helps to do this with your team so you can all hold each other accountable to your to-do lists. Set up a time to review your progress on a regular basis (maybe during your staff meeting) so you can stay on track.

4. Renew. The final step is to renew your goals. Look over your original list every so often and re-prioritize. Are all 10 items still important? Have any been fully accomplished.  If you decide one of your goals isn't as important as it used to be, put it lower on the list. If it has been achieved, cross it off the list and start back at the planning step.