[Womble]

There are many of us on TAS whose smallholdings will require a great deal of work over many years to bring them up to standard. In our case, that's sorting out an old house and putting in fences, or as others are doing, even moving country and building houses and barns from scratch.

I've been using something called "Transformation Maps" at work for a while now, but it never occured to me until now to do one for the smallholding.



Basically the idea is that you have various 'streams' of activity (in the example above: Service, Process Improvement, Organisation Design etc), and then show the activity in each of those streams converging towards a future goal in the top-right of the diagram.

You can then plot all your various activities or milestones on the diagram, showing the key things you have to achieve each year to stay on track to meet your future goal.

So in our case for the smallholding, I've got the streams as Smallholding, House, Career, Holidays and Free Time, and we are converging on a goal of total self sufficiency, featuring in Ideal Homes magazine, debt freedom, a two-day working week and general Utopia by 2017  .




So, I don't know if this is useful to anybody else, but if you like the idea I'd encourage you to give it a go. It's certainly helping us to feel a bit clearer on our future direction! 

[Womble]

Oh, and by the way, if anybody's using some other way to plan and get inspiration, do share!

[Steph Hen]

Really like this, food for thought. Thanks for sharing.

[Bex]

I like it too.

Thanks Womble!

 

[mowhaugh]

Super idea, thanks for sharing

[john and helen]

mine is a little different…more of a jobs to do, things to buy

[Daisys Mum]

I like both ideas, perhaps if I did something like Wombles I wouldn't get so bogged down and depressed. Definitely worth a try 

[Rosemary]

I have a list of lists on spreadsheets. I like that one of Womble's though - if we'd had tat five years ago I might not have spent so much time feeling a bit overwhelmed 

I think the key to whatever plannng system you use is that everyone affected is genuinely involved in making and reviewing the plan and agreeing priorities. My problem is that *I* have the plan and I don't always share it, then blow a gasket because no-one's working to it 

[john and helen]

what i like about wombles is, it does not put so much pressure as mine does, but for me it wouldn't work, simply because, if i let it a job go for one month, that would extend to two, … i love working within time frames, not always possible, but great to get jobs out the way…

i guess its why i hate business plans too 

i had to have a little chuckle when a guy from the council told me how important business plans where….i simply asked how all the cut backs they where supposed to achieve affected their business plan 

[Womble]

I think the key to this is just having the really important stuff on it, that's moving you forwards towards your long term goals (There's actually not much space on the diagram, so that forces you to prioritise). I've got lists elsewhere hen houses that need cleaning out, hay that must be bought etc etc. However, this is one place that shows just the development stuff, and that's what usually gets lost in all the other day to day hassles.

I plan to colour projects in as they get done. That way it should serve as a nice reminder of what we have actually achieved, but will also remind us of the bits we're falling behind on.

I'm glad this is proving useful folks! 

[claire]

they look a good idea and could be used for any long term goal. thanks for sharing

[pgkevet]

I use fractal planning and chaos theory with a little thermodynamics.

It sound svery fancy but really means - trying to keep up with the repetative jobs, do other stuff while forgetting stuff and end up burned out

[marka]

I think im with pgkevet on this one with a little bit of Rosemary's working to a plan but not sharing it thrown in for good measure !

[devonlady]

My plans get drawn up on the back of an old envelope during optimistic times/ bad weather or the middle of the night when I can't sleep.