Your ‘To Don’t’ List – Time Management For The New Year

So, at the very outset of business coaching we invariably clarify the client’s goals and elicit their priorities. Next, we start clearing their decks so that there is room in which they can think, plan and then begin the process of change that will get them what they want. Effective Time Management is one of the fundamentals of any successful business.
Since we’re at the beginning of a New Year, let me share with you a useful little exercise for ‘clearing the decks’, and it begins by drawing up your own “To Don’t List”.

Fixate on Your Vision

Using a Focus Template like the one I have offered in the past, make sure that you are crystal clear on where you want to arrive, personally and professionally, in three-five years’ time. Once you have that Vision crystal clear, you’ll find yourself looking to it repeatedly in the following steps.

1. Don’t do stuff that doesn’t align with your Vision. If your latest bright idea doesn’t move you strongly toward your Vision, ask yourself why you would do it. That’s going to save some of you a huge amount of time!
2. Don’t do stuff that does not pass the WB@ Test. If you can’t become “World Best @” whatever it is that you are proposing to do, why would you do it? (Now, don’t get all frustrated; instead, work out what you could be “world’s best at”, and do that instead!)
3. Don’t be cool: Instead, be excited! Catch your team doing things right (ie, doing expertly things that move the business strongly towards the Vision that you so persuasively sold them), then make a fuss! Praise them, loudly, in the most un-cool fashion. Keep doing this when you discover behaviour that moves you towards the Vision, and you’ll find everyone in the business starting to focus on that type of behaviour. Don’t work with people who aren’t passionate about the Vision and their role in bringing it about. Working with people who aren’t passionate is hard; working with passionate people is easy and uplifting and exciting – but only if you ask for their commitment, give them authority, monitor their performance and provide timely feedback.
4. Don’t start the day until you’ve planned it. Invest the first one minute of every day focussing on your Vision, the next minute on the point at which you have to arrive by the end of the day, and the next eight minutes planning the things that must be achieved that day to make that happen.
5. Don’t plan your whole day. Leave 40% of your available time free, to handle the unscheduled tasks that will happen: team seeking clarification; opportunity analysis; client contact; stuff. Planning 100% of your day is counter-productive, as it springs from the belief that you can organise the universe so it won’t find, and interrupt you. Be realistic, and leave 40% of your time fluid to handle what happens in great style.
6. Don’t do immediate stuff before you do urgent stuff. Immediate things are emails, phone calls, customer-initiated contacts, drop-ins – an accidental fire in your waste paper basket or an unexpected compliance matter. Urgent things include planning, strategic thinking, meetings with and coordination of your team, development of systems, customer relationship development, and so on. Get these backwards (as most people do) and your productive time will drastically decline.
7. Don’t open emails. There, there (I can hear the sharp intake of breath), it’s alright. What I mean is, “Don’t open your emails until you have planned your day and until you’ve had your five-minute stand-up meeting or teleconference with your key people so that the whole team is off and running in the direction of your Vision. Then (and only then) you can open your emails. (They don’t call them “crackberries” for nothing, do they?)
8. Don’t do low priority tasks. Until you’ve done the highest priority task of the day (the second highest actually after planning your day, which is the highest). Watch what happens to your personal productivity if you set priorities at the beginning of the day and then discipline yourself to hold to those priorities as the day grows busier. Get this right and you’ll get more of what matters, done!
9. Don’t put up with timewasters. If something or someone in your business wastes time, make them or it an item on your Task List, assign it a priority and fix it – if not today, then this week, this month or this quarter. That may entail investing scarce time in training; or in pulling out of the bustle and sitting quietly to design a better system for doing something that repeatedly wastes time or resources. This could take in the adoption or integration of new technology that you have been avoiding up until now.
10. Don’t do $5 an hour work. Look at your time as being worth $100 an hour or $1,000 an hour to your business. Install that perspective and sooner or later you’re going to start asking yourself, “Why am I spending $500 on cleaning up, when I can hire someone else to do it for a fraction of that?” Put an hourly rate on all of your people then take a look at what some of their activities are costing you. If they looked at themselves the same way, do you think they’d find a better solution, and improve their return on your investment in them?
11. Don’t settle for less than business mastery. Anyone can become an expert in anything within five years – if they set a goal to achieve that, and if they are prepared to devote time, resources and priority to doing the things that are needed to learn and grow every day. If you want to fast-track this one, talk to me about Coaching and I’ll show you how you can get there faster, more certainly, and with less pain and risk than you’ll do on your own.
12. Don’t just read this. Start writing out your To Don’t List today. The Universe rewards action, and the mere fact of your writing out your To Don’ts will have an influence on how you work thereafter. Writing out your Vision will be a much bigger influence, however, so why not start with that?!