It's a cliche of executive life: you don't have time to do everything. Whether you use little slips of paper, a planner, scheduling software or a Palm Pilot, all attempts at time management fail. Rather than throwing in the towel, I suggest that you need a new frame of reference. Change your focus from time management to priority management.
Create a list of priorities
Your strategic plan
should highlight your business priorities. If you don't have one, take a look
at my articles on the subject. Answer the question, "What is most
important to accomplish in this time frame?" Make those priorities
explicit, write them out. Keep a list prominently posted by your desk.
About priorities
The word priority
is derived from prior, meaning before, and related to the Latin primus, meaning
first. And while some things are more important than others, your list of
priorities should contain all the items of first importance - Only the items
critical to developing your business, and nothing else.
Rethinking your to-do list
If you are like
most people, your to-do list is a long hodgepodge of everything you have
thought to do now and, in the future, ordered simply by when you thought it.
Perhaps you write little letters or numbers next to each "task" and
cross out what's done. Your list grows and grows - you re-write it only when it
becomes unreadable. Throw it away!
The List of Seven
Start fresh every
day. Today's list, written today for today, should contain no more than seven
items. Based on your priorities, list today's most important item first, and so
on. Each item on the list must advance a critical issue in your business. If it
doesn't, why are you doing it? Remove it from your list. If you still think
it's important, but not that important, delegate it to someone else.
Planning and Reality
Each day brings
scheduled and ad-hoc meetings, walk-ins, sit-downs, and emergencies. Plus, you
have daily rituals - answering email, your half-hour reading, or reviewing
sales figures. Each meeting and each ritual should be evaluated against your
highest priorities. If it doesn't address your priorities, don't do it. Don't
participate. Give it up. Delegate it away. The time remaining after meetings
and rituals is available for your to-do list. Don't squander it!
Using the list
Put your energies
into doing the first task on your list until it's complete. Only then, move on
to the second item. You may not complete today's list today - you may not even
complete item one - but if you've spent the day advancing your highest
priority, you've been productive.
Tomorrow, make a
fresh list on a fresh sheet of paper or its computer equivalent. Don't
automatically carry anything over. This will give you a sense of completion and
force you to freshly evaluate what's important. If you have multiple
"highest priority" tracks to follow, break up the available time into
fixed time slots, and advance several priorities at once.
Evaluation and balance
At the end of each
week, match your accomplishments against your list of strategic priorities.
Check to see that you are making progress with all your objectives - that all
your priorities are moving forward. Don't let key areas in your business
languish. Evaluate your progress against the list provided in New Year's
Planning.
There may still not
be enough time for everything, but the things that are critical to your
business will get done. Everything else can wait.
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