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In his recent article in
The Recruiter, Kelsey suggests the following top
10 tips to manage the process:
1) Strengthen your
resolve
Don’t give in to outside
pressures and then blame them when you are
rendered inefficient. MacKenzie concurs with
this – stating that such a surrender resides
within us. He uses the example of answering the
phone when we are busy and then blaming the
caller for the interruption.
2) Box our activities
Take a tip from
Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective
People and divide your every activity into one
of four boxes – marked 1: “urgent and
important”, 2: “urgent and unimportant, 3: “not
urgent and important” and 4: “not urgent and not
important”. Nearly always we are tripped up by
Box 2 interruptions, which kill our capacity for
dealing with the most important box for our
progress – Box 3 of not urgent but important
tasks.
3) Proactively manage
interruptions
Dealing with
Covey’s Box 2 interruptions is tricky but maybe
we can be proactive – timetabling them for
9am-til-10am and/or from 5pm-til-6pm. If we put
in a call to the usual suspects at 9am – asking
if they have all they need for the day because
“I need to knuckle down on a major project and
will be keen to minimise interruptions” – it may
work.
4) Realise the value
of time
“We may have
leisure time, but no one has such a thing as
free time,” says corporate consultant B. Eugene
Griessman in Time Tactics of Very Successful
People. All time should be given a value – both
in and outside work. He says we should mentally
double our hourly rate in order to help us
realize that – if we are in a meeting that’s
dragging on – there is a cost in terms of
productivity. Griessman suggests we keep a log
of our “daily ration of 24 hours” so that it
becomes apparent where the efficiencies are to
be had. Alternatively, we could go back to
school and draw a 24/7 timetable and allocate
activities against our weekly listed goals and
daily priorities.
5) Understand your
personal energy cycle
In The Time Trap
MacKenzie suggests we understand our personal
energy cycle before setting up our “ideal day”
with respect to timetabling. And be flexible.
Scheduling a brainstorming session last thing
Friday may be a stretch, although discussing
ideas in the pub with the team maybe exactly the
right thing to do.
6) Clear roadblocks
In Getting Things
Done, executive coach David Allen accepts that
creating the sense of control you need to be
efficient may require you to clear a major
roadblock (perhaps a stuck project). Start by
consolidating all the information in one place
(usually a physical folder) to get a sense of
its scale. Then list everything you need to do
to move that project forward before converting
that into a series of (chronological) action
points. If trapped by one, move to the next item
on the list.
7) Develop an intense
focus
In The Power of an Hour,
“business acceleration” consultant Dave Lakhani
discusses the “critical power hour” that allows
you to address major roadblocks by working out
what you need to change, what is the structure
of the change, what solutions are possible, what
are the next steps, and how you will reward
yourself once done. As the name of his book
suggests, Lakhani divides life’s tasks into
hours that have a “fearsome focus” with a
relaxing break at the end.
8) Sharpen the saw
This is another Covey
habit but what does it mean? It means setting
yourself up for execution. Spend time arranging
your desk sourcing the necessary furniture,
cabinets, intrays, files, folders and electronic
equipment – making sure it is arranged as you
want it, is configured and primed to your needs,
and is both efficient and pleasing to look at.
Then admire it – it is your cockpit for the
journey ahead.
9) “Learn to rely on
checklists”
Griessman insists we use
lists to schedule our activities but that we
must understand the difference between a
“checklist” – which is a list of things required
for a particular project (even if just packing
for a holiday) – and a “to do” list, which is
list of action points encompassing our worktime,
leisure time and future progress. Both lists
should be visible (not hidden on a computer or
phone) and both need to give Box 3 items equal
billing to Box 1 and 2.
10) Deal with the
worst thing first
A final Griessman
tip worth adopting is to deal with unpleasant
situations first. Immediately tackling the tasks
that give us least comfort can make them more
bearable. In Eat That Frog Brian Tracy suggests
that if you “eat a live frog each morning” you
will have already experienced the worst thing
that will happen to you that day. By frogs Tracy
means the largest and/or most important and/or
most difficult task facing you on your path
towards progress. Frogs are a “high-protein
diet” says Tracy that will give you the right
physique for dealing with all the other tasks.
Click here to read the full article
as featured in The Recruiter.
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