"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, "This fellow began to build and was not able to finish." Luke 14:28-30.

Planning is the most important part of the formula we call time management. Planning will keep you on course in achieving your goals and objectives. Abraham Lincoln reportedly once said, “If I had 60 minutes to cut down a tree, I would spend 40 minutes sharpening the axe and 20 minutes cutting it down.” Dale Carnegie told a similar story of two men who were out chopping wood. One man worked hard all day, took no breaks, and only stopped briefly for lunch. The other chopper took several breaks during the day and a short nap at lunch. At the end of the day, the woodsman who had taken no breaks was quite disturbed to see that the other chopper had cut more wood than he had. He said, “I don’t understand. Every time I looked around, you were sitting down, yet you cut more wood than I did.” His companion asked, “Did you also notice that while I was sitting down, I was sharpening my axe?”
Thus, Steven Covey calls planning “sharpening the axe”. You have to take time to make time. Planning is the difference between being REACTIVE and PROACTIVE. When you don’t plan, you end up responding to the day’s events as they occur.

The solution is to learn to focus on the priorities of tasks and plan to accomplish them in order of importance. If you don’t, there is a severe danger that the trivial, time-consuming activities of the day will push the critical few entirely off the calendar.

Most of us look at our to-do list, determine which tasks we can knock out right away, and decide to start that important project “in a little while.” Then we go to lunch and say we will work on it this afternoon. Then what happens? You’re either too tired or a crisis comes up that demands your attention and you get nothing IMPORTANT accomplished that day. When “later” comes, there will always be something else you should be doing instead. If you always forego a little of something, a month later you will feel defeat for having accomplished so little. This is often referred to as the “TYRANNY OF THE URGENT.”

We operate daily in the tension of urgent and important things. The problem is that the “important” tasks seldom must be done today, but the “urgent” tasks call for instant action. Endless demands pressure every hour and every day. As we push the “important” back one more day, we slowly become slaves to the tyranny of the urgent.

The Pareto principle will generally apply—if you have 10 things to do, only 2 are really IMPORTANT. So to “leverage” your time, you should give less attention to activities that are urgent but unimportant and devote more time to those things that are important but not necessarily urgent. If left alone long enough, important things left undone will inevitably become crises. Important but not urgent tasks include contingency planning, training, marketing, writing performance reviews, developing new programs, networking, relationship building, exercise, long-term goal setting and long-range planning, project planning, writing a book, putting your finances on Quicken, etc.
You must learn to detach your sense of satisfaction and accomplishment from the number of check marks you have on your to-do list at the end of the day. In my opinion, you’ve been more productive on a day in which you’ve crossed off one thing out of ten, if it was the most important task, rather than nine things, leaving the most important still undone. I like Mark Twain’s quote, “If you eat a frog first thing in the morning, the rest of your day will be wonderful.” Identify the “frog” on your list each day and eat it first! You’ll feel great all day.

Some of you operate in an environment which witnesses one crisis after another. It is essential to not let the “crisis” or urgent tasks crowd out the important. There will always be a constant tension between these two priorities. One says you must get this done TODAY or this WEEK, the other says, “Get this done NOW!” New distractions seem to require our immediate attention and consume our focus and energy.
When urgent things act on you, you usually react to them. But you must be proactive rather than reactive to do the important, but not urgent. Only by saying no to the unimportant can you say yes to the important. If you plan daily instead of monthly and weekly, you will live in the urgent, where your “planning” will only prioritize your problems.

So the dilemma is NOT a shortage of time—it is a problem of PRIORITIES. Would a thirty-hour day solve your time problems? Not really. Soon your thirty-hour day would be just as full and leave you no less frustrated. You would still have a list of things you never got around to and a pile of unfinished books and projects. Do you have a “someday” pile at work? How about a “decide later” pile? Even if you did have more time, these would still exist because of habits you’ve developed. It’s more complex than not having enough time or not managing your time effectively. Instead, it becomes a lesson in managing priorities and being disciplined.

There will always be more things to do than time to do them. Sometimes you must forego something you would like to do in favor of something that has to be done to accomplish your objectives. Don’t fail to plan. If you do, you plan to fail.
A good sailor does not leave the shore without a destination in his mind. It is in his mind. He has not yet reached that destination. But it is in his mind. If he has a destination in his mind, he will drive the ship in the direction, towards his destination. In life, we should have a goal or aim. To find out that destination we need to ask some empowering questions like: What I need to achieve in the coming months or year? In which area of my life need improvement? Where should I reach in a time span of 3 months, 6 months or a year. How can I reach that destination? Your questions will give you the answer to reach that destination.

Your answers are the destination in your mind. With that destination in your mind you are starting a new journey in your life. A new beginning. That is the importance of planning the new year. A New Beginning! If we do not have a plan or desire, we are like a man driving in a circle. Every evening he reaches the starting point. Wake up in the morning, do the same things during the day and go to bed without achieving a thing. If you live a life like that, even after 10 years, your life would be almost same as today.

If you need a change, or progress in your life, you need to come out of that cycle life. The plans and goals we create for ourselves would help us to come out of that circle of events in our life. Now you are in the straight path. Changes are very painful, but it will pay off. It would change your financial situation. It will change our health. It will help people around us. It may give you enough spare time to spend on thing you love.
Success in any endeavor requires careful preparation and planning. Without proper planning and preparation, failure is almost guaranteed.
Anyone who has ever undertaken a complex task already has learned the importance of careful planning.
In sports we see many examples of the need to plan. Often this involves a "game plan." A game plan is simply a series of steps which the team must follow in order to be able to accomplish its goal of winning the game. In fact, most winning teams are able to win, because they plan to win. Losing teams are often the team that had no game plan, or a poor plan at best. Failing to plan to win is the same as planning to lose. Or put another way, "Failing to plan is planning to fail."

Good planning conserves resources, prevents wasted effort, and saves time and money. Good planning prevents small problems from becoming big problems.
[b]Bottom line: [/b]Plan your work and work your plan. Planning throws the searchlight of human wisdom, experience, and ingenuity into the darkness of the future.