PS - ​Tip #18 – What doesn’t get scheduled, doesn’t get done

“The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone.”- Oswald Chambers

Scheduling and tracking are key parts of business productivity. Time management in a virtual business includes:

• Discernment – Knowing what is, and what is not important. In the big picture, in the immediate. For you. For the business.
• Prioritizing – Being clear on your Top 3-5 activities. Today, this month, this quarter.
• Scheduling it in- Making sure the big tasks and smaller tasks are scheduled in, particularly those things which are important to you and the business (review time, planning time, renewal time, maintenance, systems etc). Some research has also started pointing to the need for significant enough blocks of time being required to help you focus. For some this may be 90 minutes, others 3 hours.
• Saying NO - tactfully!  Given that we are usually operating in isolation, negotiation skills are key. Being able to say “I can help you with this, however, that may not be feasible…”, being able to delegate, defer or even say no, are all key skills. It’s not surprising that training I deliver on Communicating and Negotiating for Impact is popular!
• Being ruthless with your time.  Time is non-renewable. How do you choose to spend it?

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Activity
Consider the questions listed above. What do you notice about Discernment? Priorities, Scheduling, saying no, being ruthless with time. What is important for you in staying the course?
Take 15 minutes to make sure your schedule is up to date and includes time for the important activities in the short, medium and long term.
Add an additional 10% of time to projects or tasks which are not yet visible but need to get done.
Consider what your line in the sand is around tasks and new requests. Are you operating at 100%? If you had a new request come in, what would you do? How could you defer other tasks?

• What your successes have been?
• Where your focus has been?
• What products or services have you been focusing on offering?

Schedule it in. If you have not left space now, it’s unlikely it will emerge on its own!

Conversation Sparkers

• What projects, tasks or activities are important to schedule this month?
• What is your line in the sand around what more you can take on?
• What are the Top 3-5 priorities for you today? This week? This month? This quarter?

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Best wishes,
Jennifer

PS - If you have enjoyed these tips, do be sure to check out the new on-demand, video based course I have created around these. The program can be taken at your own pace, You can stretch the tips out daily, weekly or monthly. Join me this year for bi-weekly calls as part of your registration. Cost: $129 US. Learn more and register here. 

​This week’s Thursday Team Building Tip #222 is the question “We need to say no to….”. While this may be a provocative question in some organizational contexts, it is an important one to ask in highly changing contexts.

Focus and priorities can become even more important in ever changing contexts. It is key to watch for the trap of trying to do it all or trying to respond to every new iteration. If we do, we may run into the danger of spreading ourselves too thin.

In rapidly changing contexts, priorities can also change just as fast. It is important to be able to discern what is truly important.
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Asking the question – We need to say no to…. – can help with FOCUS and PRIORITIES. 

Best wishes,
​Jennifer 

This week’s Journaling Prompt gets you to dream a little. To consider what’s possible for your work. In this week’s journaling prompt you are asked to consider “If we were given an additional $500,000 this year, I would…..”
Take a few minutes today to dream about what would be possible if money were more plentiful.
Consider:

• What would you focus on?
• What would you put attention around?
• What would you say yes to?
• What would you say no to?
• What are the elements you would let others do?
• Where would you place your attention?

As you complete your journaling, then take a look at what you have captured. What’s important about it?

Enjoy the conversation!
Jennifer

Tip #13 – Get the important stuff out of the way

“A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.”
— Jim Watkins
 
It is likely that even with the best planning, finding time to execute and get things done can be a challenge. Today’s business context of ongoing change and disruption, means that things can change on a regular basis, requiring ongoing learning and iteration.

Against this backdrop, it can also be important to focus in on items that are moving you, and the business, forward.
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With this in mind, what are the windows you have available (or can create) to get the important things out of the way? This might mean starting your day early, or working late into the night, to focus on projects that require quiet work spaces.

Activity

• Review your monthly or quarterly goals.
• Review your Top 3 or 5 Goals.
• What activities are not getting completed in a regular way?
• What needs to be focused on more?
• When will you schedule this in? For example, is this the first thing you want to do every day? Is it worth arriving at work 30 minutes earlier to make sure it gets completed? Could certain activities be delegated to someone else?
• Break larger tasks down to smaller chunks if you have not done so already. Consider what smaller milestones exist and put these in your schedule.
• What are the regular action steps you will undertake to make it happen? Work backwards noting additional mini-milestones.

Conversation Sparkers

• What are the most important tasks that are going to move your work or business forward?
• When are you scheduling in these?
• What habits are going to help you get the most important things done?

Best,
​Jennifer

This week for the FlashbackFriday post, I am reaching back to a post from last January – Teams365 1465 where I shared tip 4 of the Kickstart for 2018.

In that post I shared more about priorities, a key topic to help us keep on point for the year.

Here’s what I wrote:

"As a leader in my late 20s, responsible for global programming and leading an organization of more than 100 in South America, I learned very quickly that regardless of how many goals were on the place, priorities were critical. I was struck by the concept of Steven Covey’s Big Rocks – or how we need to attend to, and add our big rocks – or priorities first, therefore allowing us to fit in all the smaller things around them.

With this end in mind, I’d like for you to consider the goals you have set out for yourself for 2018.

​As we step into 2018, the first Teams365 series of the year is the Kickstart Your 2018 - 8 in 18. 8 days of reflective prompts to get you thinking about, and writing about what you want to create this year. Check out the other posts in this series here, and I hope you'll follow along by grabbing a pen and a journal (you can start at any time!):

Day 4 questions in the series get you to think about the most important priorities. Consider these questions today:
1. Looking at my list of goals (for the year, month, day), what is most important?
2. What time have I scheduled to get these done?
3. When will I be most effective on working on my priorities? 
4. What could get in the way of me attending to these priorities?
5. What do I need to say YES to, in order to knock these priorities out of the park?
6. What do I need to say NO to, in order to focus more on my top priorities?
7. Who can support me in being successful with these priorities?
8. What other resources do I need for my priorities?
9. What do I need to delegate, or defer, to get the priorities attended to?
10. What’s the hard end date to get these done? As we know, many tasks expand to the amount of time we give them. This is commonly known as Parkinson’s Rule."
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What are your top 5 priorities this month? This quarter? Where are these visible to you?
 
Enjoy your weekend,
Jennifer

We are moving onto productivity tips #8.

“One look at an email can rob you of 15 minutes of focus. One call on your cell phone, one tweet, one instant message can destroy your schedule, forcing you to move meetings, or blow off really important things, like love, and friendship.” -  Jacqueline Leo

The Front Blog has some provocative figures about 2018 email  - They write that in the amount of time we spend checking email in a year, someone could climb Everest twice!  Check out these statistics here!
Taming the inbox is an important part of efficiency in today’s work environment. Email is an essential communication vehicle, but it can disrupt our attention. Becoming more selective and more disciplined with email can go a long way in business success, especially in terms of getting more significant work completed (i.e. projects, new initiatives).
Consider these questions:

• How many emails do you get a day?
• How efficient are you at replying (i.e. how much time does it take to reply)?
• How does email disrupt your focus?

Several pointers around email management include:

• Notice where your email comes from. What emails do you receive? Are there any you want to unsubscribe from?
• Dedicate time to cull your email OR simply archive older ones.
• Consider what filters could support your focus and less time spent on email.
• Streamline. Can any things be batched (i.e. daily summary instead of regular alerts)?
• Turn it off for periods of the day. The disruption an email ping can make could significantly dilute your focus. Would it be useful to establish “check points” during the day?

Activity:

• Review the emails that you have received over the last two weeks. 
• What do you notice?
• How many of them are still outstanding?
• How many are no longer applicable and could be culled by unsubscribing?
• How many could be funneled to their own form?

Conversation Sparkers:

• What’s one tweak you could make to your inbox?
• When are you going to dedicate time for email review?

Enjoy!
​Jennifer

This week we’re taking a look back at the Teams365 January 2018 posts where I kicked off the year with the 2018 kickstart. Over the first month I included tips around creating momentum and boosting your productivity through 18 posts. January posts last year covered 8 days of focus on your goals.
Today we are going to take a look back at Teams 365 1469.

Here’s what I wrote:

“In today’s busy world, it’s very common to get on the treadmill of doing, without taking time to stop, and reflect on what’s working and what’s not. While we might not have a full day to dedicate to planning regularly “micro-bursts” of 5-15 minutes regularly can make a difference.

Peter Drucker wrote “Follow effective actions with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”  Peter Drucker

Over the last 8 days we have explored:
Take stock of your achievements and successes from the year that was – Day 1. Read it here.
Create a clear and compelling vision of your year – Day 2. Read it here
Be specific with your goals – Day 3. Read it here.
Identify and focus on priorities first – Day 4. Read it here.
Create habits and practices that will support you in what you want to achieve – Day 5. Read it here.
Be ruthless with your time and scheduling – Day 6
Develop a community of support around you – Day 7
In the same vein, building in time to celebrate is Day 8

Consider these questions for today’s prompts:
1. As you think back to the last 8 days, what have you achieved?
2. What needs a change from the original goals you mapped out last week?
3. What momentum have you created for yourself? 
4. What are you most surprised about?
5. What have you learned about yourself, your vision and your goals?
6. What have you noticed about your pace of action and reflection (i.e. when do you do this best – early morning? Late at night? In chunks?) 
7. What time do you want to build in to make planning, and “quiet reflection” a regular part of your world?
8. What will you do to celebrate your movement forward?
9. Complete this sentence, by the end of January I will have…..
10. By the end of the year I will have….

We will be continuing our journey through the 19 for 2019 Productivity tips.. Check out # 1 – 7 here.
 
Enjoy your first weekend of 2019,
Jennifer

​#5 – Know Where your Time Goes

Productivity Tip #4 was Ruthless Time Management, and an invitation to do some data generation around where you are really spending your time. If you have not yet completed this activity, do it now. You’ll need it for this week’s tip, which is to do some assessment on where your time is going.

In today’s busy world, it is very easy to get side-tracked with the “shiny red objects”. These often look very alluring – perhaps promising a quick return or getting things done more quickly. Many times however they become a “rabbit hole” taking you off-course and away from the most important things.

In most of the planning frameworks I have created for the PlanDoTrack and Coaching Business Builder Planners, I usually include a small box to be filled in with your Top 5 Goals for the month (or quarter). This is a prompt to consider what is most important for you at any given moment.

Where we spend our time should be aligned with our priorities, as well as our values and what’s important for us.

This week, take stock of how your time is being spent in service to your:
Immediate priorities – what is your top 5 for the month/quarter?
Values – What are the elements that are essential to you and your work? Is it excellence, quality, customer service? Note how much time you are spending in values-based activities.
Vision – What % of activities are being spent towards your big picture goals? Towards what is really important for you?

In the Teams365 series of Time Management workshops I share a Time Tracker resource. I’ll be offering this in 2019 as both an on-demand and live program for professionals of all levels. If you are interested in staying connected around all things planning and time management, do sign up for the PlanDoTrack newsletter list.

As you review your data, what are the adjustments you want to make in service to your priorities, values and vision?

Touchpoint with PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner.
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If you have not yet completed your Quarter 1 Goals, refer to the Quarterly  Planning Tools. There you will be encouraged to note your high-level goals and your Top 5. Next, lay them out across the first 3 months of the year. After doing this, you may then want to flip into the monthly pages, and start noting the key activities in the monthly calendars. Start breaking down each activity with smaller steps, adding them to the Monthly To-Dos or the Month in  Focus sheet.

Enjoy,
​Jennifer

As we start creeping to the close of the year, pressure ramps up to “Get it done!”. There may not seem to be enough hours in the day, or even the rest of the year, to get EVERY. THING. DONE!

Today’s post gets you thinking about a number of “year-end productivity hacks” which bring us back to some of the tried and true prioritization tools:

#1 – Understanding your Pareto Ratio – The 80/20 rule asserts that we get 80% of our results from 20% of our efforts. While it may not be truly 80% it can be very useful to think about the areas that provide the most impact in your work, and the results you are aiming towards.
It can be very useful to understand where we get our impact, particularly at crunch time, so that we know what to say yes to, and what we want to say no to.
 
#2 – Going back to Covey’s Urgent/Important Framework – I have written about how a five day training around Steven Covey’s work as a younger manager more than 15 years ago, still influences my thinking about time management. If you haven’t read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, do it now! With the volume of distractions at a peak (from social media, to tech, to diffuse focus):

• What’s really important to be focusing on now?
• What’s important in the mid-term so that you are setting yourself up for success in the new year?
• What are distractions and time wasters?
  

#3 – What can you delegate and defer?
Delegation continues to be a stretch area for most professionals today. Many times we feel we can’t delegate or we have no one to delegate to? What are the tasks that only you can do? What are the tasks that could be chunked down/broken down, so others might be able to complete?
For more on delegation – check out this LinkedIn article “Your Key To Success: Effective Delegation” I wrote on delegation.

#4 – What is absolutely essential?
Sometimes we really need to get ruthless with  our time, asking “what’s absolutely essential?”. As we get into crunch time, what are the things we need to move to the finish line this year, no matter what? What are the elements that can carry over? What elements need to be put on hold?
 
For more on these prioritization tools, take a look at what I wrote in Teams365 #951 on prioritization.

As we step into the end of the year, scheduling key activities for your team is important before the year comes to a close. Some of the key activities you may want to include for your team are:
A review session of accomplishments, lessons learned, based on what worked well, and didn’t work well.
Planning sessions for 2019, with an annual and quarterly focus. Is every team member clear on what key priorities are? What key activities need to be accomplished? By when? What’s expected of them? How their work links with others on the team?
Celebration sessions to acknowledge what you’ve accomplished during the year.
One-on-one time with each team member supporting them in some review of the year and visioning and planning for the year ahead.

Be sure to check out these other Teams365 posts regarding year end activities:
Year-end reflection and planning questions.

You may also want to check out the 10 Year End Activities Video I created last year. View it HERE.

As well as the 4 Best Practices for Year End Retreats.
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Best, 
Jennifer