You could buy the grooviest software, the smartest phone and the most expensive day planner and hire a willing-and-able personal assistant. None of those actions will do anything for your productivity.
Unless you change your relationship to time, time will slip away from you. If you don’t plan your day, your day will be planned for you – by your family, customers and team members.
Here are a dozen techniques I teach and practice to be more productive and get more out of life:
- You’ll need a calendar. My vote: Use Outlook or Google Calendar. It will sync with your smart phone.
- Put a “Meeting with you” on your calendar, with a weekly recurrence – forever. Put it on Sunday or Monday early, before the week kicks in. Schedule an hour for this meeting. Have your business plan, your master to-do list and your calendar with you.
- At this meeting, page through your business plan. Remind yourself of the big picture, and get inspired. Recommit to your mission and your goals. Read through your master to-do list. Notice what needs to be done now and what can wait.
- Assemble a list of top projects. Based on the business plan, and your master to-do list, select a few – no more than five. The items that don’t make it to the top projects list stay on the master to-do list.
- Plan the week ahead. You’ll use one calendar for all aspects of your life.
- Put in personal and family appointments first.
- Put in regular work appointments. If you run service calls, or sales calls, schedule the time you will be available to do that. Schedule an appointment to visit with the dispatcher each Monday to make sure he knows your availability.
- Make sure that a few of your top projects have work times scheduled on your calendar. Unless you schedule the time, the projects won’t get done. Yes, you can schedule time after the team goes home, or on Saturday, but remember, the point is not to work more.
- Schedule meetings with the people who report to you directly. Jot down their project assignments and commitments right in the appointment notes. That’s a good way to hold them accountable. Put the meeting agendas in the appointment, too.
- Remember travel and transition time. Build it into the calendar.
- Schedule a day off. This is a day you don’t plug in or connect with anything that plugs in.
- Consciously plan your week. Don’t schedule time for things you don’t want to do or low results-to-effort activities. It’s your life and your calendar. See yourself living each day. Imagine how enjoyable, productive and profitable the days and the weeks will be.
Then, you must be consistent. Every day, report in to the calendar.
Do what you committed to do. Of course, stuff happens. At the end of each day, acknowledge achievements, and move, delegate or dump items you didn’t get to. Move it, dump it or delegate it.
Did you complete a top project? Celebrate it! And select another project to replace it on the list.
The cycle restarts when you regroup at the next weekly “Meeting with you.”
Are you willing to change? Are you willing to drop the limiting thoughts and baggage that is keeping you down? Are you ready to plan the life you really want to live?
Yes. Yes, you are.
Ellen Rohr is an author and business consultant who offers systems for getting focused and organized, making money and having fun in business. Her books include “Where Did the Money Go?” and “The Bare Bones Weekend Biz Plan.” She can be reached at ellen@barebonesbiz.com.[[In-content Ad]]
