OK, so have you ever heard how important TIME MANAGEMENT is? Well it’s not; it’s not even possible to manage time. If any of you have figured out how to manage time, get with me immediately so we can make some huge bucks together. At last look there were 60 seconds in every minute, 60 minutes in every hour and 24 hours in every day. Time, unlike money, is a non-renewable resource - use it or lose it. You can run out of money and find a way to get more. Run out of time? Gone, finished, it’s not coming back, ever! So that's the point; we all get the exact same increments of time no matter who or where we are. The increments cannot be managed, they are what they are. The good news is that the events that occur within those increments can and need to be managed in order to be productive, be in the top 3%, and be successful.
Make sure you get the BIG, MOST IMPORTANT STUFF completed and fill in with the less important stuff as you go.
So how do you get this done? There are four simple steps that you need to make sure happen every day, week and month.
- Create a list of action items. These should be very quantifiable action steps that absolutely need to get done, whether are driven by your plan, customer follow-up, to do’s from the person you report to, whatever. List them all, not just the ones you want to do.
- Prioritize the list making sure you accomplish the most important, impactful items. There are a couple of ways to do this. There are action items that need to be done at certain times of the day due to time zones or associate availability. Make sure that the items that are do or die (the BIG, MOST IMPORTANT STUFF) are at the top of your list. I’ll talk about those items that you just don’t want to do for one reason or another.
- Execute. Knock out each item and get the satisfaction to check it off when it is complete.
- Review. If you accomplished all of the planned items for the day, you did not have enough to do. A friend of mine, the President and owner of Pacesetter Sales in Canada, once told me that, “If you think you are busy then take on more. You will find that the less important things fall off the table and you will begin to focus on the right things." Take the items that you did not get to, add the new items that surfaced and go back to step one. Note: if an action item is not completed five straight days in a row, then you may consider dropping it from your list as it just can’t be that important; just make sure it's not the ‘ugly frog’. And what in the world is an ‘ugly frog’?
HINT: You know that task that absolutely needs to get done and you don’t want to do it, as mentioned above? Well, “If you have to eat an ‘ugly frog’, then eat the ‘ugly frog’ FIRST”. Get it over with, why worry about it all day long? It will negatively impact your performance on other key items.
We all know people who run fast, bounce all over the place, are always exhausted and just never seem to accomplish anything. Then there are those who always seem calm, cool and collected and they always seem to be on top of things - top producers. There you go. It’s all about identifying and doing the most important things within your allotted time.
Now that you have your attitude in order, and you are implementing a plan to manage events, you are well on your way to becoming a top producer.
Your feedback on my last blog was awesome - thanks for that. I encourage you to do the same on Time Management. Also, please feel free to share with your friends and associates.
Have a super week!