Make the Best Use of Your Time Now!
January 21st, 2008 by Liz Fuller
Last week I mentioned that I was going to take a look at the bottom of my to do list for the things that get carried over day after day to see what they said about my challenges with time management.
I determined that I wasn’t deleting them because they were things that were actually important. But then, again, I wasn’t doing them because they didn’t have a looming deadline.
I knew that I would do them when they became urgent. But in the meantime, I was feeling burdened every day having them hanging over my head.
In reality I had two options to stop carrying them around every day.
1) I could have taken them off my list until they became urgent, at which point I would add them and do them.
2) I could go ahead and do them now, before they became urgent and get them off my list.
I chose option two and completed a little over half of my list last week.
And I realized something - not only did it feel good to get these things done before they became urgent, it also reminded me that this is where I want to spend more of my time this year.
Steven Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
And guess what? Most of us spend a lot of our time on the urgent items, whether they are important or not.
Examples of urgent and important - meeting a work deadline, handling a crisis.
Example of urgent and not important - some text messaging, email, phonecalls, and other interruptions.
When we are not working on the urgent stuff, guess where we spend the rest of our time?
Most likely on the items that are Not urgent and Not important - surfing the internet, responding to unimportant email or phone calls, redesigning our business cards, etc.
Where we are least likely to spend our time is on the items that are important but not urgent.
Why?
Most likely because they are hard, complicated, unclear or stressful. We want to do a good job on them. We are not sure how to start. We are not convinced we are up to the task.
So, we put them off.
Because we can.
When do we do them?
When they have managed to migrate up the list and have become urgent.
Then we jump in and do them. If we don’t know exactly how, we make it up, because afterall we’re under a deadline and it can’t be helped. If we don’t do them as well as we should, we overlook it, because there’s no time to do a better job.
What types of things fall in the category of important but not urgent?
- designing a new seminar or product
- networking with new clients
- following up on current contacts
- tracking our finances
- taking care of our health
- spending time with our family
- catching up with our friends
I’ll write more about this topic next week. But in the meantime, take a look at your list - is it upside down?
Are the really important things hanging around at the bottom until they become urgent?
What’s on the bottom of your list that you could be doing right now??
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This entry was posted on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 2:58 pm and is filed under goal setting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:50 pm
I greatly enjoyed this post; I feel very passionate about this topic.
One thing that, as Women Entrepreneurs and small business owners, we should be doing with our “To Do” lists is to prioritize the business activities as to their revenue-generating importance.
I agree that you have to take into consideration the deadline factor for many items on your list but the real focus should be on the items that will ultimately keep money coming in to your business.
If it’s not revenue-generating, then in most cases, those activities should be the ones that are deleted, delegated or moved to the bottom of the list - until the urgency deadline approaches.
Sharon Marsh, Ph.D.
The Biz Accountability Coach
www.sharonmarsh.com
“Helping women entrepreneurs structure their business for success, wealth and balance.”
January 21st, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Hi Sharon
It’s a great point about structuring your activities around revenue generation.
I think there needs to be a balance between activities that will generate revenue now, mid-term and long-term. Marketing and networking are two examples of activities that need time to build a foundation for future growth.
Laying the pipe for future income streams is important, and often relegated to second place because of the urgent matters of today.
We’ll be discussing this more next week - so please stop by and contribute!
Liz
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Hi Liz,
I agree with you on the balancing of things - some activities will take longer than others.
I highly recommend that people put together a strategic plan (even a simple one) so they know what they are working towards. That way it’s easier to focus on those activities that meet your strategic goals. Of course, this is a lot easier said than done!
I look forward to the discussion next week.
Sharon
January 23rd, 2008 at 9:11 am
I think most people aren’t clear about what their REAL priorities are, and are therefore trying to juggle too many things at once… instead of making choices about what is truly important to them, and then focusing totally on the tasks that will help those goals become reality.
Online marketer James Brausch recently made a post where he states that 98% of people are fooling themselves with being “busy” — yet without knowing where they truly want to go, or the steps to take to get there.
In case anyone’s interested in reading it, it’s here:
http://www.jamesbrausch.com/98-are-kidding-themselves/
Most people have become used to following the easy path… which always leads to mediocrity… Yet then they’re surprised that they can never attain the true success they hope for.
Cheers,
Jim
January 25th, 2008 at 7:51 am
I agree Jim - it’s easy to mistake busy-ness for productivity. They are not the same. That’s why it’s good to periodically take a look at whether our activities are aligned with our goals.
Liz