The importance of planning

 I had to take a few weeks break, and away from posting as I had a lot going on. As a Registered Nutritionist, and being part of the Association For Nutrition, I need to submit my work to the organisation over the last 12 months. This went into detail including what I delivered, what it contained, and how I can learn from this moving forward. I had to admit this procedure had completely slipped my mind, and I had to spend a few weeks literally locating all the evidence, as well as submit each of the reports. It was one of the most stressful situations I had to deal with, why? because I did not plan for this, and it hit me like a ton of bricks, as they say. That was a definitely a lesson learnt for me. 

This is the topic of my post, planning, but then again sometimes things happen when we dont expect it, ( for example covid-19 pandemic) and we all pull through dont we? But what if we had a situation where we had the opportunity to plan things? How will we do this? will it work etc? 

When I am making my first consultation with a client, the first question I ask is "what do you want out of this?" then I plan how I  would go forward with this. For example the client might say "vegan/vegetarian options" I then ask more questions. I would use this information to help the client, devise a weekly meal plan, have regular video calls, back and forth emails. These are booked on the calendar, the emails are responded to at a certain time, the meal plans are prepared and sent within a certain date and time (depending on when the client needs this) all of these processes I do takes planning. If I do not plan for this, the client will end up missing bits of information, or not even receiving this. If this did not happen, then I will have to take a look at why? and how this can be improved. 

In another context, say I would like to save some money for a holiday. I have to make a plan into how I want to do this. I would look at my outgoings and see where I can save, or maybe make a money saving jar etc. 

But also there is another aspect in our life where we do things but we do not realise that there was planning behind the scenes, however we only see the "final version" . I watched a really interesting documentary called  "Who made Britain Fat?" It was looking at the Government's different initiatives to tackle obesity over the last 15 years. Views were from people involved in tackling this, including Jamie Oliver, as well as ex chancellor George Osborne. I would recommended this, it is on the on demand channel All 4: Who made Britain Fat

What really fascinated me about the documentary was Jamie Oliver and George Osborne discussing the backlash they received whilst trying to force the changes including the change for life campaigns, the ban of unhealthy food on the television before 9pm, GDA and traffic light labelling, as well as others. All this takes alot of planning and thought, especially the challenges that will be faced. This is why planning is so important, as the saying goes "failing to plan, is a plan to fail" 

Finally still on the subject of planning, I have been following on You Tube an influencer called Aaliayh's Face, which I would recommend, she has produced some great content, including how she plans her day, see the video below: 

 

She really goes into detail using the apps, and the tools she uses, and I found this very useful, so dont forget to check this out!