Success is NOT determined by talent. If you live long enough you will at some time look at a talented, intelligent person, shake you head and say "what a waste". Success is not determined by hard work. Good work ethic and the consistent application to the tasks at hand are important for success. But it is NOT the laborers, construction workers or farmers who control the wealth in any nation.
Success is about having big goals that are worth achieving and then taking control of the sequence of events that lead to the efficient and effective attainment of those goals.
The secret to the productivity of every important person in our time is an effective time management system; A 'system' by which you manage yourself so that you are able to accomplish that which you most desire to achieve in your life time or the current phase of your life.
Here are seven proven strategies guaranteed to help you increase performance and productivity in your professional and personal life. I have tried to sequence them for maximum effectiveness, but feel free to try them in any order that works best for you.
1. Think It And Ink It
Decide what your want and write it down. What do you really want to achieve in your business and/or life; one week from now, one month from now, one year from now. Just decide and write it down. Have some 3 year goals, some I year goals. Now how about The 52 goals that you will achieve every week this year that will feed into your on year
2. Make A Plan
Look at what you say you want to accomplish by the end of this year
What would that accomplishment look like?
What would that accomplishment FEEL like? What must occur just before realization? What must have to occur before that point? Work in steps back to the present.
Now make a project out of that plan.
What can you do alone, what resources will you need, who else should or could become involved, what would make that possible?
Detail those project steps. The further into the future you situate the things you wish to achieve, the less details you are likely to have, but don't settle for anything less than an outline.
Make your plans visible so that this can trigger your subconscious to be always on the look out for implementation mechanisms. A proven planning and implementation technique is called displayed thinking. This calls for the plans to be displayed on white boards, or as a story board.
Displaying your plan in this way facilitates
Fine tuning the plan by the changing and/or addition of information and
Checking off completed activities that move the plan towards attainment.
Burying your plans in a notebook, or a computer file folder could be a BIG mistake. What if it were not "rediscovered" until next year this time?
Apply the 10/90 rule. Spending the first 10 percent of your time planning and organizing your activities before you begin will save you as much as 90 percent of time in the implementation phase.
3. Organize Yourself For Maximum Time Productivity
Do you take business calls on the fly with no system to record the information, no prior planning, and conversation or follow up notes?
If you are writing - are all the background materials assembled and in a file on your desk?
Do you allow impromptu, 'no declared agenda' meetings?
Do you allow yourself be trapped in the hallway or doorway by the - 'got a quick minute?" request that leads to a full fledged debate on an important matter.
Begin to designate the area most conducive for specific key activities; meetings, telephone prospecting, writing and client follow up, etc. And make sure everything you will need for the task is in that space.
4. Know Your Key Results And Key Constraints
What are you trying to achieve?
What are you being held accountable for?
What activities that if you did and did well, even to the exclusion of all others would still have the greatest impact in moving you towards your goal?
What can be delegated even if done poorly at first?
What can you and only you do that will make a big difference in the outcome result?
What are the constraints likely to slow down or derail your progress?
Apply the 80/20 rule here. Focus on removing that significant 20% of constraints which could genuinely stop you in your tracks
5. Prepare Thoroughly Before You Begin
Do your home work - reference materials, past correspondences, addresses and telephone numbers, any special instruction or feature, uncluttered work area. Get everything ready then "sleep on it"
This is especially needed for large complex and critical tasks. Sleeping on it, helps to manage your energy and enlists the subconscious to help your preparation while you sleep. This will give enhanced effectiveness and implementation speed when you awake. Taking this preparation time actually give you more leveraged time in implementation.
6. Practice "Time Blocking"
Increasingly new evidence is bringing the curtain down on the value of your ability to multitask. Research shows that lack of a single minded focus or the tendency to stop and re-start a task has been estimated to extend completion time by as much as 500 percent.
The principle of Focus has been shown time and time again to be one of the greatest productivity leverage.
Develop the ability to choose the most important task for the moment, dig in and come up for breath when you have completed the task or the time you had blocked for it. Pushing on a task after the time you have allocated to it could endanger all your other scheduled task. Reschedule of just cut - "good is good enough". With time you will get better at estimating how much time is actually required for particular categories of tasks
Announce your plans to those you work with and treat potential violations as life threatening events. Encourage others to communicate in a written format and schedule all interaction. If you must have unscheduled interaction be very clear about focus and expected outcome
"John/Jane I only have 15 minutes right now"
Mary - I know you may have a long laundry list, but what is the most important thing that you would like to achieve in the 20 minutes that we now have.
Decide, do and cut off at 20 minutes even in mid sentence.
If you have ever been to a counseling professional you see the exactness with which this works.
7. Rest And Replenish
Down time and social interaction are vitally important to keep you physically and mentally recharged. Develop a personal learning and innovation plan to keep you at the cutting edge of your game - plan the seminars you will attend, books you will read and/or influential thinker you will follow. Block personal R &R time at the beginning of the year and make commitments that will be painful and or costly to renege on. Socialize to recharge, replenish and renew.
A word of caution: beware of overindulgence and tipping the scale too much towards R & R. The more developed your business and further advanced you personally are in years, the more R & R you can afford or need.
Marketing strategist Dr. Andrea Blackwood-Harriott is the creator of the 7-Steps "GetMarketAdvantage System" which helps entrepreneurs to identify leverage points to accelerate the growth of their business. Visit her website http://www.bigwinmarketing.com to receive FREE tips and strategies , subscribe to her ezine and learn more about her step by step system guaranteed to help you secure a BIG WIN in your market.
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