Tag Archives: time management

the Big 2′s

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Whole days can pass by very easily without accomplishing much if anything at all. The stress of your work load can lock you up. It is natural to slip into the ‘doing what is easiest or convenient’ mode. Here are some quick tools to help you… and yes, I have stolen or borrowed most of these suggestions.

Boil your job down to the 2 most important things that you are being paid to accomplish. I am quite confident that you have more assigned to you than just 2 things, BUT there are very few things that keep you employed and that only you are being counted on to do. So what are those? Keep them right in front of you ALL of the time! Be excellent at those things. Be the best. Knock these items out of the park and you will get paid and you will get raises and you will get better projects and responsibilities.

Each day know what the 2 most mission critical big tasks or projects you must work on are. Do NOT let anything else get in front of them. Rarely, if ever, is a meeting one of these 2 things unless your leading someone else is 1 of your 2 top responsibilities.

Give your Big 2′s your undivided attention for 2 hours everyday! Turn off everything. Tune out everyone. Sequester yourself in your office, you bedroom, your car, your hole, your _______, until you get them done. Don’t read email. Don’t twitter or facebook. Don’t talk to anyone not directly related to getting these done – not even your wife/husband, mom or your hot date for the night. Be an ass if you have, but get really focused! You will be amazed (and so will others) what you can accomplish with just 2 focused hours on your most important responsibilities.

Do your other assignments, meetings, conversations, and errands with your other 6-8 hours —

time suckers

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I have heard just about EVERY young leader at one time or another complain that their job requires more of them than they have time to give (myself included). A few years ago, while reading Getting Things Done, I started to pay attention to “time suckers” – things that take time away from productivity in my day. Here are a few of them; my hunch is that they are affecting your work world too! My point is that you will find a TON of time inside of every day where you can be more productive, not so that you can add more work to your hours but so that you can add more hours to your life. (I don’t want to work all of the time!)

EMAIL - every single person I know if guilty of checking their email too much and then being drawn into ‘urgent’ items that they find awaiting them in the in-box rather than staying focused on items that are at hand right now or that are due sometime very soon. TURN OFF your email and block out some planned for work time. I promise that the email will still be there when you come back to it. EMAIL is not IM and it is not the phone, so stop treating it like such.

PHONE CALLS – these, along with text messages, also suck tons of high impact time out of your day. Believe it or not, there was an era where people couldn’t be reached or interupted every second of every day.

FACEBOOK, TWITTER & their posse – Mark Cuban has an interesting post on this; I agree with him. While usable networking tools, you have to admit they more often than not are a distraction to your work.

CERTAIN  INDIVIDUALS - you know who they are… when you see them come up on caller ID or walk down the hallway or send you a meeting request for an hour but you know it really means 2. Work hard to put parameters on these certain individuals so that they don’t suck your time.

MEETINGS - I know, they are unavoidable. But, going out on a limb here, I think that 50% of the meetings that exist out there in our worlds are largely ineffective, inefficient or just straight up bogus. Most people leading them haven’t even read a single article let alone a book on how to lead an effective meeting. Way too many meetings involve needless chit-chat. Please, read Death By Meeting and then start giving it out as gifts for Christmas.

Get it done!

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Who wants to hear anyone frustrated at them for not getting stuff done on time? Not one of us, but yet, it seems that for some of us as the work load is piling up, we have a hard time just “getting it done”. Here are some basics to consider and integrate into your work life when you need to just get some crap done, out the door and delivered.

  • Get alone – Find a quiet place (don’t tell me you work best at Starbucks) where NO ONE will bother you; politely tell the nosy person next to you to be quiet if you aren’t allowed to leave your work space. When you are done you can go out for drinks and make up later.
  • Set aside a chunk of time - More than you realize, most everyone has a hard time sitting still and just doing some work. Before prioritizing your list, schedule your next isolated work time right away on your calendar. Block it out as an appointment to yourself and make every effort to keep it as though you were meeting with your boss.
  • Turn off your email & cell phone - Seriously… you are wasting more time there than you realize and it distracts your focus.
  • Brainstorm your tasks - Everything you need to accomplish should be in one master list. Yes, it must be digital! Don’t tell me your notebook works, your grandparents didn’t have to hold onto as many details as you do today. Don’t worry about sorting yet, just get it ALL done on a list… think through every aspect of your life: work, projects, home, personal goals, honey-do’s, etc.
  • Most important stuff first - Use the #’s 1, 2 & 3 to prioritize your list; #1′s being urgent items, #2′s being important & #3′s being items that you would someday like to get to.  Since it is on the computer you will be able to sort it (see the genius now?).
  • Do it NOW! - If there is a project that is due today, the get to work on it now! make a sub-list for the project of the things associated with it that you need to get going on. enjoy the victory of checking things off.
  • Easy stuff 2nd – There might be more projects to do, but with you next allotment of time (now or that time you set aside) use it to clear a bunch of easy things off your plate. you will feel much better.

Tech info. - if you run on a PC, then just use the Outlook task pad; I used it for years and it is VERY robust. if you are MAC, you can use Wunderlist, Things, Task Paper, or OMNI Focus.