This brief Growth Coach blog will focus on a few practical strategies any business owner or entrepreneur can use to help re-gain control of their day, tackle critical priorities, and avoid those low-value tasks screaming for their attention.
Forget about time management and instead focus on priority management. Make sure that you focus on and finish the vital few tasks every day and NOT the trivial many. Priority management need not be complicated. It comes down to a simple formula...identify and then stop doing the wrong type of tasks so you can free up valuable time, talent and energy to focus on the right type of tasks. Stated another way, do more money-making and less money-wasting tasks. Here are 3 simple business coaching steps to help you get more focused, effective, and productive.
STEP ONE: IDENTIFY the "wrong tasks" you are handling on a daily basis. At The Growth Coach, we call these wrong tasks "clutter". Clutter is that low-value, urgent, unimportant tasks that you routinely, reactively and mistakenly handle each day in your professional and personal life.
Unfortunately, most business owners excel at doing the wrong type of work. For some owners, clutter can be e-mail, social media, needless paperwork, web surfing, employee interruptions, pointless meetings, bookkeeping, trivial administration, busy work, excessive socializing, personal calls, putting out fires caused by others, doing other people's work, etc.
Clutter is different for each owner. But it generally involves an owner doing a task well below their pay grade and a task that should be handled by an employee or outsourced to a cheaper provider. For example, instead of hiring a bookkeeper, an owner choses to do that task himself/herself. That's an example of clutter, doing a $15/hr task instead of a $115/hr task (leading, planning, innovating, marketing, selling, keeping others accountable, etc.). That's like stealing $100 from your bottom-line results.
What low-value tasks are stealing your time and energy each and every day? Realize that 80% of your results come from only 20% of your talents and activities. Therefore, wake-up to the fact that 80% of your daily activities are truly not important. That's your clutter. Identify it and own up to it.
STEP TWO: STOP doing the wrong kind of work. After you identify your clutter, by task, commit to either delegate it, delete it, or outsource it. Here's a simple Growth Coach strategy to help you. Instead of creating a To-Do List each day, start creating a 90-day Not-To-Do List. List down all of your clutter on paper as Not-To-Do Items so they are clear and remain top-of-mind. Then, commit to eliminate, delegate or outsource at least half of this clutter in the next 90 days. Once and for all, get rid of such low-value activities that produce minimal results for your business or career. Get them off your plate and on to someone else's plate or simply throw them out. Unless you eliminate the clutter, you can't free up time and talent to do more meaningful, strategic, profitable work.
STEP THREE: START doing more of the right kind of work. Again, focus on the 20% of your talents and activities that drive the vast majority of your results and success. These tasks should be easy to identify and you already know them in your gut. They are those meaningful and important tasks that produce money, save money, or improve customer satisfaction. Put simply, pursue money-making, not money-wasting activities. To keep yourself honest, simply ask yourself, "Is this task making me money or costing me money?" Work smarter, not harder!
Here is a simple Growth Coach strategy to get more of the important and meaningful things done each and every day. Before you leave work for the day, simply jot down the 3 most important tasks you need to accomplish the next day. Again, these should make money, save money, or improve customer satisfaction. Then put the three items in order of importance. If you accomplish only those 3 critical tasks, the return (greater revenue, happier employees or customers, reduced costs, higher productivity, etc.) will be significant.
The next day, whip out your TOP 3 list and go to work ONLY on item #1. Once you complete #1, then and only then move to #2 and then to #3. Do NOT do anything else in the morning until you accomplish your TOP 3 List. Do not answer phones, check email, have employees interrupt you, play with paperwork, roam the halls, surf the Internet, etc. Put your head down and go about tackling your top 3 vital tasks, in order. Even if you only complete the top one or two vital tasks, you will be better off.
If you accomplish your vital few tasks each and every day, instead of the trivial many, you will have greater success and balance in your life. Work smarter, not harder. Identify the wrong tasks (clutter) you routinely handle, stop doing the wrong kind of work, and start doing more of the right kind of work. Simple priority management, Growth Coach style.
Daniel M. Murphy
President, Founder, Business Coach
The Growth Coach
Business Coaching Franchise System
Certified Business Coaches throughout North America