Just realize that it could be tougher than ever to get refocused when the
calendar flips over to Monday January 3, 2021…. especially if you’re still working
from home.
You may not like what you’re seeing when you finally confront your bathroom scale,
your credit card statement or your overflowing inbox, but eventually you must
pay the piper. You’re not going to reverse a month’s worth of letting your
guard down in one day. Don’t let that put you in a post-Holiday funk.
Hint: New Year’s Resolutions rarely work.
There is a better way.
Two of my unofficial
mentors--Randy Shattuck and Josh Patrick--have some great suggestions
for managing your re-entry back to the daily grind.
According to Patrick, founding partner of Stage
2 Planning Partners and host of The Sustainable Business
podcast, highly driven business owners and professionals try to get too many
things done at once. That’s because their boundless energy and determination
makes them feel invincible.
“When I was in younger, I would always have 20, 30, sometimes 40 projects that I
wanted to get done,” recalled Patrick. “I spent all my free strategic time
starting at this list, wondering what to do first. I would create one, then
start another, and then another with nothing ever getting finished.”
Sound familiar?
Ultimately Patrick discovered the
concept of “working on a backlog” in which you never allow yourself to
work on more than on one or two projects at a time. Everything else
should go into a backlog. According to Patrick, you take those 10, 15, 20
projects that you’re desperately trying to attack today, make a list, and score
each project on a scale of 1-10 based on importance. Then choose the one or
two projects with the highest score and you work only on those projects until
they’re done. Isn’t that a lot better than playing Task-List Whack-a-Mole?
Josh’s latest video has more
great prioritization tips.
Shattuck agreed. After years of working with leaders of
professional service firms, he said he’s learned a lot about what works and
what doesn’t work to produce growth. Turns out lack of focus--not lack of time--is
the real culprit.
“Most leaders of professional service firms can define their top priorities
with broad brush strokes, especially when establishing annual plans,” observed
Shattuck in a recent Forbes article. “But it’s the
stuff of everyday decisions and tasks that get in the way. Most people are so overcome
by the minutia of little tasks that the big ideas never get the time or
energy they deserve. This is a major problem because big ideas are the ones
that produce growth,” added the founder of The
Shattuck Group consultancy.
Randy
believes it all boils down to two things: Getting things done and Focusing on The One.
1.
GETTING THINGS DONE. With GTD, you write down everything rattling
around in your mind and then categorize the list according to three simple
criteria:
a)
Do it now, for simple tasks you can do right away. “These are gratifying
because it makes you feel really productive,” related Shattuck.
b)
Do it later, for longer-term tasks.
c)
Do more research, for tasks that are not quite actionable yet.
Shattuck
believes the real benefit of GTD is getting things out of your head so you can
fully focus on what really needs to get done right now. That requires a
different approach that he calls “The One.”
2. FOCUS ON THE ONE. Shattuck
admits he worked 80 hours a week when he first started
his firm and would immediately tackle every single task that popped up. But
after about five years of near-burnout his mindset shifted. Instead, Shattuck
said he started to look “very closely” at how certain activities produced
growth while others did not produce growth, even though each task on his
list was considered important. “That’s when I began to ask myself this
all-important question: ‘What is the one thing I need
to get done today to ensure we keep growing?’”
According to Shattuck,
the activities that produce growth are not necessarily more time-consuming or more
difficult to achieve than other tasks. “But if we don’t prioritize them, they
won’t get done or they will only get done at half the level of effectiveness
that we need.”
As our client Kyle Walters explained in a recent Accounting Today
article about The 64/4 Rule….a whopping two thirds
of our results (64%) come from just 1/25th (4%) of our time and
effort. Think about that when you feel overwhelmed by your ever-growing To-Do
list. Two-third of your results come from just 4 percent of time!
Conclusion
Most New Year’s resolutions fail because we set goals that are too
ambitious, too hard to measure or too easy to defer. And that stems from not being
honest with yourself. Take a page from Shattuck, Patrick, and Walters. Ask
yourself what absolutely must get done today and how much you can reasonably do
in a day--and do well. It won’t be an easy transition (trust me I know). But
you’ll eventually find yourself with a lot more clarity which will translate
into working fewer hours, while spending more time with the clients you like
and ultimately higher revenue.
What’s
your take? Please share. I’d like to
learn more
#practicemanagement,
#focus, #timemanagement
Posts
