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Increase your Productivity with the 7P’s Rule

February 12th, 2008 · 3 Comments

7P's

 While serving in the military I picked up a good number of sayings and expressions that I still use today. One of them was the 7 P’s rule.

 What exactly is the 7 P’s rule. Well it stands for Proper Previous Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. This rule can apply to anything you are doing from blogging to taking a trip some where. A little bit of planning can prevent a lot of frustration later.

 Lets’ take a blog post for example and apply the rule of the 7P’s. So in order to write this post I first have to choose a topic, in this case the 7P rule. Then I gather or create any images that I will use. From there I write a brief out line of what I want to say in the post. Now I know we all disliked writing outlines in school but it does help. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just out line the points you want to cover. This is my outline for this post.

  • 7P rule - what is it?
  • Application of the 7P rule
  • Examples of productivity increases with the 7P rule
  • Summary

 By planning what I need and locating resources before I write I am able to just write. I have every thing at my finger tips and I do not waste time looking for things. I often times have a great idea for a post, so I will write it down and do a quick outline. That way I can be on the look out for relevant resources for that post while doing other things. When I am ready to write my research time has been minimized. To me there is nothing more valuable than time, it is the one resource than I cannot replace no matter how hard I try.

 When you save time you are indeed becoming more productive. For example let us just say that you want to build some shelves in your home. Now you could just go to the hardware store and buy the material that you think you need. But I am quite confident that this will result in you having to make additional trips to the hardware store. This costs you in time, fuel and wear and tear on your vehicle.

 Now lets build the same shelves and employ the 7P rule. First we would take measurements so we know how much material we will need. Then we would make a list of the mounting hardware, screws etc. From this list we could also determine if we will need any additional tools to install these shelves and add that to our list. Now list in hand off we go to the hardware store to buy our supplies. If the store has knowledgeable staff (this is becoming harder and harder to find) we could ask them to go over our list and suggest anything we missed. If we properly planned our project we should not have to make any additional trips to the hardware store. We save the time, fuel and other associated costs. Not to mention the frustration caused by not having everything we need at our disposal.

 A little bit of planning before hand can save time, money and most of frustration. When you start any project remember the 7 P rule.

  • Proper
  • Previous
  • Planning
  • Prevents
  • Piss
  • Poor
  • Performance



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Tags: Blogging · Creativity · Productivity · Tools

3 responses so far ↓

  • 1 hambo12 // Feb 12, 2008 at 1:31 pm

    I have also heard of the 7p’s.

    They really apply to everything in life, and blogging is not different. I see many bloggers just spamming their own blogs with irrelevant posts (I myself have done it too) rather than less posts that are informative. The 7p’s rule helps to do this.

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  • 2 Charlie Gilkey // Feb 29, 2008 at 6:39 pm

    Hey, just stopped by from rssHugger. Nice post. The way I’ve heard the 7P’s is “Piss Poor Planning Produces Piss Poor Performance.” But the principle is the same.

    I also think Ben Franklin said “failure to plan is planning to fail.” But the abbreviation F2P=P2F is not nearly as cool as 7P. Okay, I’m rambling.

    Keep on keeping on!

    Charlie Gilkey’s last blog post..Get more readers for your new blog with rssHugger

  • 3 Curt // Mar 29, 2008 at 6:45 pm

    There’s certainly a lot of truth in that.

    Looking back, I always no when I haven’t followed that rule. Even though I’ve never heard of it.

    It certainly pays to plan.

    I’ll have to use that rule around work on Monday!

    Curt’s last blog post..Makin’ Money On The Internet! Ain’t Life Grand?

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