Time management tips
*) Many people concentrate on what I call “ant stomping” when they should concentrate on “elephant hunting.” When you focus on stomping ants you confuse activity with accomplishment.
*) You’re going for the small insignificant tasks that are easy to do. They can be done quickly, so you give yourself the illusion that you’re really accomplishing a lot, when in actuality you’re getting further and further behind because you’re overlooking the elephant hunting.
*) Elephant hunting means to pursue significant projects that have long-term payoffs for you. If you’re busy stomping ants all day long, you might not even be aware that you’re totally ignoring some of your elephants.
*) Solving problems is “fire fighting.” You’d be better off in the long run figuring out how to prevent fires in the first place instead of constantly reacting to problems. Preventing fires puts us ahead of the game–and saves us time.
*) Break high-payoff projects into sub-tasks and devote some time each day to work on at least one of those sub-tasks. Or break it down into simple pieces so others can help you with parts of it. Each day put an elephant, or a piece of an elephant, on your To-do List and then do it. That way you make progress on something significant every day.
*) Focus on being effective rather than simply being more efficient. Being efficient is getting something done fast, while being effective is getting the right thing done. It’s better to do the right thing slowly than the wrong thing quickly.
Imagine you’re walking down the street, for example, and you had a hundred $1.00 bills and two $100 bills in your hands and a whirlwind came along and blew them out of your grasp. What would be your strategy to get the money back? If it’d be to pick up the bills closest to you and work your way toward the rest, you’d save steps–you’d be efficient. But if your strategy would be to try to get the hundreds first, you’d be effective.
*) High-payoff activities are those that will provide a valuable payoff in the long run. Dealing with high-payoff activities is often difficult, because they are frequently large, complex or time-consuming tasks. Low-payoff activities are often short, quick and easy to do, hence they crowd out the high-payoff items.
*) Here is a quick test to determine whether you have been seduced by low-priority tasks. You begin to focus on efficiency at the expense of effectiveness, and begin to speed up, attempting to cram more into your busy schedule. An efficiency focus sounds like this:
- Can we speed up this process?
- It's faster to do it myself, so I will.
- This task needs to be perfect.
- Let's call a meeting about this issue.
- Meeting all deadlines is the goal.
- Doing things right.
An effectiveness focus sounds like this:
- Should we be doing this process at all?
- Who else can I train so I don't have to keep doing it?
- Is it worth the extra time and effort?
- Is there an alternative to a costly meeting?
- Achieving objectives.
- Doing the right things.
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