“If only I had more time to get things done …” If this is a lament you say to yourself more often than not then it’s clear you need a new strategy. I’m not judging because I’ve caught myself saying this more than I care to admit but it got to a point at the beginning of this year when I had enough!
I had all these big goals for the summer that included:
- Studying Irish (ag staidéar na Gaeilge)
- Completing a 52Km ultramarthon
- Completing a 10Km swim in Lake Taupō
- Building a vegetable garden
- Completing my second book – Now, Lead Others
Do you know how many I actually completed in the time frame I allotted? As my old maths teacher, Mr Burns would say, “a big duck egg!” I couldn’t figure it out. I had the time but I lacked the focus. Now you might find yourself in a situation where you’ve got no extra time and you’ve got so much to do, right?
Let me share with you something that works for either situation. It’s the discipline to ask your self this question every morning: What’s the most important thing I can do today such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?
Now, putting it into practice I reduced it to: What’s the most important thing I can do today? and expanded on it:
- What’s the most important thing I can today for my business?
- What’s the most important thing I can today for my personal life?
You can make it more specific too for the different areas of your life:
- What’s the most important thing I can today for my project?
- What’s the most important thing I can today for my customers?
- What’s the most important thing I can today for my health?
- What’s the most important thing I can today for my family?
- What’s the most important thing I can today for my diet?
- There’s a lot of power in this question because, I’ve no doubt, that when you ask yourself these questions, even just reading them as you are now, your mind is jumping to an answer.
But here’s the trick to making this work. Have ONE big thing that you’re working on and then two or three smaller things. Time box the most important thing so you make sure it gets done and fit the others in around your BAU (business as usual) and your LAU (life as usual).
This way you’re always going to be making progress on the most important projects going on in your life.
So, what have I accomplished since implementing this approach? I’ve completed my book (it’s now with the printers), I’m back ag staidéar na Gaeilge, my vegetable garden is built and we are getting to enjoy the ‘fruits’ of our labour, and I’m working my way back to running and swimming after torn hamstrings, shoulder impingement syndrome and a bad back – 80% there!
Having the answer to this question filters out the noise and enables us to get much more focused. It’s such a simple tool but highly effective.
I wonder what answers you might get from your team if you did this collectively? In leadership it’s important for us to pass on these scaffolding tools and ideas to help our teams thrive, and to coach them to better solutions for their problems, a big one often being time management.
So, here’s my question to you: What’s the most important thing you can do today?
If you’re interested in hearing more tips about how you can Unleash Your Potential or that of your team, please feel free to subscribe below or drop me a note. I’m always happy to share ideas and help where I can.
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