Performance Success Factor: Schedule Time To Focus on the Big Picture
Pareto’s Principle and Stephen Covey’s Quadrant II principle, as recorded in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- Am I taking time to focus on my relationships with the most important people in my life, including my business, my customers, my family, my best friends?
- Am I taking time to clarify my personal mission statement and my personal goals?
Performance Success Factor: Get Rid of Multi-Tasking
I am as guilty of this as the rest of you. But, as Douglas Merrill, former CIO for Google states,
“Clowns can ride a unicycle while juggling brightly colored balls. These are role tasks that don’t demand a lot of brain power. But in most cases, multitasking=lesstasking. When you make those shifts from one context to another, you risk dropping things from your short-term memory. Do one thing at a time, minimize context shifts, maximize brain power!”
Here are some suggestions to reduce multi-tasking and increase focus:
- Think of all the time that you want to spend relaxing, being on vacation, or spending time with your loved ones. Let that motivate you to work the whole time you are at work. The more you get done by focusing with single-minded purpose, the more time you will have to relax away from work.
- If you are weaning yourself off of multi-tasking, try the following exercise: set your timer (I use the free one from e.ggtimer.com) for 25 minutes and work on the most important task on your to-do list. At the end of 25 minutes, take a 5 minute stretch break. Work for another 25 minutes straight, followed by another 5 minute break. Then again. Then, on after the third set of segmented shorter cycles, reward yourself with 10-15 minutes’ break.
- Promise yourself a reward such as a bite of a cookie, or a sip of your cup of coffee. I think you get the picture
But remember: you need to finish one of your 25 minute stretches first.
Performance Success Factor: Always Save Time to Exercise
Working out clears the mind of mental stress build up that occurs throughout the day. Mike Cassidy, CEO of travel and tour site Ruba, makes it a point to work out almost every single day. When colleagues or employees approach him for a non work-related meeting, he suggests that they work out with him. He then eats lunch at his desk.
Performance Success Factor: Review Your Productivity at the End of the Day
This quote is from Bob Compton, CEO at Vontoo.
“The most difficult aspect of being a CEO is you driving your day, and not letting the day drive you. By looking through tasks each morning and resolving to allocate the time to concentrate on the CEO priorities, the actions only the CEO can take to move the company forward, you can keep your eye on moving the company forward. At the end of the day, I always checked whether I had taken action on my top three priorities. If the answer was “no,” I stayed in the office until I made progress on them.”
How can you apply this to your life as an employee or as a small business owner?
- Do you know what your own company or department’s mission and vision is for the year? What is the operational plan? If you don’t know it, you better find out! Schedule a 15 minute meeting with your boss to find out.
- After this, work on your performance plan, figure out your how you can formulate goals that will help you improve your performance and at the same time help your department meet it’s goals for the operational plan.
How can you apply this to your personal life?
- Do you know what your personal mission in life is? If not, take the time to figure it out!
- Do you know what your top 10 goals for the year are? If not, take the time to figure them out!
- Once you have figured out your personal mission and your goals, review them at the end of the day to see whether you have taken steps toward any one of them.
- Better yet, review your mission and goals at the beginning of the day, and take at least 3 actions toward those goals during the day. Work on action #1. Keep working at it. If you don’t get done, at least you will know that you got a very significant activity going. The next day, keep working at #1 until you finish. Then go to #2. And so on. By being this purposeful about your day, you will be sure to stay on target, just as a sea captain of old stayed the course by keeping his navigation system fixed on the North Star.
What have you found helpful in your quest to be more productive in a meaningful way? I hope you found these tips helpful. Let me know your thoughts!
photo credit: com2us
Twitter: martyinmaui
says:
Great article and tips Steve. My “thing” has always been to put as much thought and effort into scheduling personal time as work time. Too often people focus only on scheduling work and actions to achieve goals – leaving personal time to chance. That usually translates into “no-chance” for a break and over time danger of burn out. Thanks for the inspiration!
Marquita, you are a wise person! In addition to personal time, my biggest challenge is to make sure I schedule ‘quality relationship time’ into my schedule. Relationships need to come first, for me.
Great article Stephen! Owning our own business is being the CEO! We have to wear many hats and avoid multi-tasking by remaining focused. I like your reply above that says your biggest challenges to to make sure you schedule quality relationship time. That’s something I start my day with. Thankfully, my husband and I are in the same business. We wake and have our hour every morning before starting our day. We ease into it with a cup of coffee. During this time we find ourselves brainstorming. We fine tune our daily focus where he is in his office and I in mine. It works out so great!
It is a pleasure to be a follower on your blog,
Donna
Donna Merrill recently posted..Are You Focused?
Hello Stephen,
I gotta say I loved this post! You shared a lot of great tips and insights. I have to say when I was new to the online world, I was doing a lot of multi-tasking. I hated it and I really didn’t get much done. I had to think and evaluate which task is the most important to do and do them step by step. I saw better results and got more things done when I prioritized them. Also, at the end of the day, it’s definitely important to look back and see how the day went. Definitely something I do on a daily basis. Thanks for sharing this post! Keep it up!
Pj Zafra recently posted..What Do You See?
PJ, thank you for your input. One of my favorite posts on this topic is from the Duct Tape Marketing blog. John Jantsch revealed his daily productivity routine, and it inspired me quite a bit. Time is truly a valuable asset, so we must put it to good use.
More often than not, the more task you do at the same time, the lesser the quality of your output. Most of the time, if not all, it is still best to do one task at a time.
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Personally the key point most people dont get is the difference between being efficient and effective.
Everyone is to “busy” to be effective, but really truth is they are using their time on the wrong stuff…
I agree, Mads Singers. I found that I had to be busy as I learned more and more about internet business. As I have settled into a couple niches I enjoy, I am now able to hone down to become more effective versus too busy.
I especially like the tip about saving time to exercise. That is very important. Without some sort of physical release, I’d go nuts at work. Getting away from my desk to run or ride a bike is what keeps me at my highest level of efficiency.
John, one guy I respect quite a bit has a treadmill at his work station! He often walks on the treadmill while on conference calls or during other activities. I’m not sure I could do it, but this guy is pretty successful (he’s the author of Duct Tape Marketing)
i run a critique blog publishing opinions of the latest in stress reduction, that is in all probability going to be of appeal to readers of this post. nice post
Onita, thank you for stopping by! I appreciate the work you are doing to reduce stress in the world.