60 minutes a week to hone your strategic vision, 10 minutes at the end of the day to tactically plan the next day in harmony with that vision. (It’s important to do the next day’s plan at the end of the previous day so you can sleep on it, allowing your creative subconscious to ponder on your behalf.)
“The best time-management thing I do is reflect an hour a week on the overall strategic plan for myself — what do I need to do to move my priorities forward? And then there are the 10 minutes a day that I spend thinking about, ‘O.K., so based on the priorities for the week, how am I going to prioritize my day tomorrow?’ I don’t know how I could do what I do without spending that time. I am obsessive about that system because the world seems to be moving faster and faster, so you have to figure out how to still drive things proactively instead of just becoming completely reactive.”
– Wendy Kopp, CEO, Teach for America (The New York Times, July 4, 2009)