You're a really busy person I'm sure, most of us are right? You're probably too busy really, you don't have the time to spend on things you'd like to because of the urgent and important. What you must realize is you will never have a spare block of time waiting for you, and you could be filling your time in the wrong places. You need to prioritize, start focusing on the important instead of what you perceive to be urgent.
Let me help you prioritize your work life a little bit, assuming you fit one of the following demographics.
- Business owner
- Sales person
- Student
- Marketer
3 tips for being more effective, productive, and valuable to yourself and others
Tip #1 - set goals and determine what you need to do to achieve them
Getting from point A to B takes a concerted effort to improve and the persistence to perservere. You have to begin with the end in mind, it doesn't happen by accident. What do you want to accomplish? Where do you want to be? Write it down, review, revise.
Tip #2 - separate the urgent from the important, eliminate everything else
If you don't know about the time matrix it's time you did. The concept is simple, your entire waking life is spent in one of the quadrants. Your goal should be to focus on QI & QII, the best way to make time is to cut it out of QIII and QIV, although some time there is important if spent wisely. Track your time carefully week by week, you actually have plenty of time. You're wasting it with the super urgent and irrelevant actions as goals are concerned. Could you trade one hour of TV for reading a book related to your trade or goals? Yep.
graphic courtesy of lifetrainingonline - original concept by Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Tip #3 - schedule time for the important in advance, and keep the appointment
The key to reaching your goals and making time for the truly important is to schedule for it proactively. You'll never have enough time for QII time if you let QI rule your life. The fires will always be there. Schedule around them so you can maximize effectiveness when you've temporarily put them out. When you have to skip QII activities, don't cancel them. Move them to another free spot, no matter how far out you have to go. The key to this tip is keeping your appointments with yourself, not finding reasons to skip them. It's important afterall.
Takeaways
My intent wass to get you to understand that without sacrifice and prioritization you're simply not going to reach your goals. Quit selling yourself short with excuses and time wasters, take control of your destiny and GET TO WORK. If success were easy everyone would do it.
Here's a last piece of advice and a couple resources depending on who you are:
Business Owner - spend less time trying to do everyone else's job and micro managing your employees. Spend more time setting your goals, making plans to reach them, identifying the challenges that could cause you to fail, and defining the indicators and timeline for success. Do your GPCT for short, if you need help you should read Growing Your Business - Building Your GPCT
Salespeson - spend less time watching TV and crushing beers in the bar with colleagues complaining about your job/boss/pay. Spend your QII time researching your prospects extensively and perfecting your craft. Read everything you can about sales. Start with The Little Red Book of Selling and Sales Shift.
Student - spend less time in front of the mirror curling your hair and flirting with your professor. Spend more time becoming a digital citizen. Spend your QII time writing and publishing your work. Build yourself a stable of creative assets that will set you apart from the rest of the unemployable but educated potential workforce. Brand yourself already will you? If you need help check out Digital Marketing - Brand Yourself for some tips and tactics.
Marketer - your world is changing faster than most, technology is flipping the marketing world upside down with the rise of inbound marketing. spend less time watching Tosh.O and MNF with your buddies. Spend more time educating yourself, continued learning is your absolute key to success and subscribing to our marketing blog is a great place to start.
Spend time every single week writing beyond your job responsibilities My advice is to learn as many new skills as you can, then write about what you've learned in a blog article. There is no better way to retain what you just learned than to teach others in the process. Teach to learn, learn about it. Teach me something while you're at it, I need to further my education just as much as you do.
Like I said, it's time to get to work. Excuses time is over, just like recess and nap time. If you want to get where you want to go you're going to have to work while other people are sleeping. Go into the office an hour earlier for a month. Read for an hour every night before bed. Work an extra couple hours on your QII list after your kids go to bed. Skip a football game and attend a seminar instead.
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