Are You Doing What Needs To Be Done?

How to accomplish more in less time and with less effort

My high school typing teacher (yes, typing) would regularly chastise us for wasting time. Even if we finished all our assignments, she expected that we’d have a side project to immediately begin. The story she repeated, most often, to illustrate her expectation involved a sweater she knitted during lulls in one of her college classes.

She’s a nice lady, and she was a caring teacher; but being able to knit my own sweater in the final 4 remaining minutes of class always fell short of compelling me to change my habits.

While I understood the concept of “we only have so much time, so let’s be productive with it.” She seemed to be promoting staying busy for the pure virtue of “busy-ness.” The message I heard? Produce something, anything, but produce. Aimless effort.

Ok, admittedly, it’s still easy to take “potshots” at the typing teacher; but her line of thinking is prominent among leaders, though worded differently. It’s very common for a leader to begin a meeting with a humble brag about how busy he or she is, how long it’s been since their last day off, or how many hours they log each week.

The False Truth of Being Busy

Being “busy” is such a lousy metric. Essentially, we are reveling in our inefficiency and lack of focus. If it takes someone 40 hours to accomplish a 4-hour project because they don’t know how to focus – I refuse to be impressed. Poor delegation and coordination of your team because you neglected a couple hours to create direction and clarity is, plainly, a leadership fail. Being busy doesn’t equal meaningful progress.

I’m far more impressed with the leader who is consistently moving her team forward, yet finds ways to consistently increase her discretionary time – that time meant to be used as she desires. Time not dictated to by urgency or circumstances.

[ttshare]Leaders who are most effective at accomplishing meaningful goals and leveraging their people well aren’t constantly busy. [/ttshare]

As a rule, these leaders enjoy time with their family, engaging in hobbies, and downtime. They usually love their work and aren’t afraid to spend time at it; but it doesn’t own them.

How To Get More Done

There are two easy ways to get more done. In fact, you can begin to use them right now to end this year strong:

1. Have few, but clear, priorities.
2. Block time for those priorities.

Few, Clear Priorities

As the saying goes: “The man who chases two rabbits catches neither.”

Individually, as a daily practice, I identify one or two priorities for the day. I find if I choose more than two, I’m not focused and the entire list doesn’t get done. By narrowing my focus I get far more completed.

Organizationally, I’ve found that groups that set more than one or two main priorities tend to not get them done. It’s fine to have multiple goals. In fact, I’ll often work with leaders encouraging them to make a list of all their goals. Then, we work together to narrow them down to the top five. And then narrow them again to the top one or two.

You can do the same. Keep your entire list of goals; however, clearly delineate the top five priorities for the year, quarter, month, etc. Then, identify the top one or two: the ones that will make the biggest difference.

Then, focus on those. Once you’ve completed your top one or two priorities, you can always move other priorities up and target them for completion.

Block Time

Blocking time means setting aside specific time on your calendar for certain projects. For example, every Tuesday morning I block a couple of hours to write articles. I honor that time as if it was time with a client. Because of this, I always have time to write. I find that 90 minute chunks of time work best for most people.

Focus on blocking time for these three particular types of work:

• Regular tasks: Pay all your bills at once. Answer all your email messages at a scheduled time. Set aside time for regular meetings with staff in your calendar. I block regular, perpetual weekly time for: article writing, calling prospective clients, meeting with staff, etc. This way, I always have time to do those things.
• Major projects: When I’m working on major projects I find I’m more focused and productive when I plan the amount of time I will need and set that aside in my calendar. When those times arrive, I can focus on those projects without distraction. I do this with client work, in particular. This week I’ll be coaching, presenting and facilitating. Some of this takes more planning, so I’ll block time to focus on those tasks.
• Important, Not Urgent Goals: I want to write a book. I want to create online training programs. I want to expand some of my marketing capacity. None of those things are urgent. They can sit quietly in files in my mind or on my computer. However, if I block time to work on them, they’ll get done. Incidentally, completion of important, non-urgent goals tends to move leaders forward the furthest.

What’s Next For You?

Is there any one thing you’d really enjoy having completed by the end of 2015?

About how long would it take you to complete that goal?

When can you set aside blocks of time in your calendar to work on it?

Will you put those in your calendar now?