What have you done today?
At the end of the day, can you honestly look back and confidently state 2 or 3 things that transformed your team, department, or organization? Or, did you feel really busy, but in retrospect didn’t really accomplish much?
It’s easy to get caught up in busy. Busy feels productive. Checking email. Meetings that spawn additional meetings without decisions being made. Responding to the current crisis of the day. Interruptions and phone calls. Checking social media streams also fall into this bucket.
But busy doesn’t move your organization forward.
Two tips that have worked for me:
- Plan your day the night before
- Be realistic. A good rule of thumb is to only schedule 60% of your day as you never know what interruptions and unforeseen opportunities and problems will occur.
- Prioritize your lists with the biggest impact to you and your organization. Focus attention where it matters most.
- Planning earlier allows you to begin each day by completing priorities as opposed to trying to plan during daily distractions.
- Your daily actions should move priorities/projects forward even if only by a small drip.
- Strive to complete each day’s priorities before the end of the day. Have a finite completion date.
- Block out 90 minute chunks of time to plan
- Shut off all distractions during this time. No social media. No phone. No email. Use this time to think and strategize.
- In his book, The Effective Executive, well-known management guru Peter Drucker stated “even one quarter of the working day, if consolidated in large time units, is usually enough to get the important things done.”
Stop getting caught up in excuses. Do the work that matters, don’t just look like you are.