TPMusings

I subscribe to HBR Blog posts on management and marketing, and today's blog from  

Peter Bregman, captures some terrific ideas on how to assure that your day doesn’t slip into a fire-fighting melt-down of what once was your “to do list.” 

 

We all begin the day with a sinking feeling that we won’t get it all done. And the best of us focus on how we can strategically address the often conflicting events and still strategically survive. Our to do list is the typical survival tool.  But at day’s end, is yours still sitting pristinely on your computer, or hanging on the bulletin board in front of you? Without a mark on it? 

 

Yeah, been there. Peter shares a handy trick to maintain focus, and manage more strategically. The image he suggests is the fitness guru Jack LaLanne. He uses RITUAL as his trick: at 94, he still spends the first two hours of his day exercising.  He is fond of saying, "I cannot afford to die. It will ruin my image." He cares about his fitness and he's built it into his schedule.

 

Managing our time needs to become a ritual too. Not simply a list or a vague sense of our priorities. That's not consistent or deliberate. It needs to be an ongoing process we follow no matter what to keep us focused on our priorities throughout the day. He outlines three suggested steps, involving only a few minutes over the course of a day:

STEP 1 (5 Minutes) Set a Plan for Day. Before turning on your computer, sit down with a blank piece of paper and decide what will make this day highly successful. He details some ideas to help, but the gist is “…What can you realistically accomplish that will further your goals and allow you to leave at the end of the day feeling like you've been productive and successful?” Write those things down.

 

Now, most importantly, SCHEDULE those things into your calendar. Put the hardest tasks at the beginning of the day. You may realize that certain things need to be moved into the next day, in order to fit everything into this structure.  This top view will help you re-prioritize those items. He outlines some studies and statistics if you need more convincing. In short: If you want to get something done, decide when and where you're going to do it. Otherwise, take it off your list.

STEP 2 (1 minute every hour) Refocus. Set your watch, phone, or computer to ring every hour. When it rings, look at your list and ask yourself if you spent your last hour productively. Then look at your calendar and deliberately recommit to how you are going to use the next hour. Manage your day hour by hour. Don't let the hours manage you.

STEP 3 (5 minutes) Review. Shut off your computer and review your day. What worked? Where did you focus? When did you lose focus? Where did you get distracted? What did you learn that will help you be more productive tomorrow? The power of rituals is their predictability. You do the same thing in the same way over and over again. And so the outcome of a ritual is predictable too. If you choose your focus deliberately and wisely and consistently remind yourself of that focus, you will stay focused. It's simple.

 

A final tip. With the availability of computerized calendars, it is now easy to move and shift tasks and appointments around just by dragging and dropping. Don’t allow that ease to lull you into constant re-prioritizing. In fact, I would suggest you go OLD SKOOL and WRITE IT ALL OUT. Easy to follow --- and more importantly --- harder to change. And at the end of the day, isn't that a higher priority?