A depressing statistic because it implies that we’re wasting 80% of our time!
When you’ve got so much to do you feel like shouting “shall I shove a broom up it and sweep up on the way as well?”
And you’re wondering why the hell you’re paying people if they’re not prepared to work as hard as you are.
That sense of frustration, of having no-one who’ll help with the overwhelming list of things to do that only you can take care of spills into every area of life, making it all feel just. too. bloody. Hard!
The good news is that you can do something about it.
The bad news is that it’s going to take some effort.
But (I like to end with good news!) the effort will be worth it!
I’m not going to lie and tell you this is a 10 minute job and you’ll be transformed.
It takes a bit longer than that so set aside an hour and make sure that it’s uninterrupted time away from any notifications or calls.
Get a notebook and write out all the things you’ve got going on, just brainstorm it, get it on paper and don’t worry about how messy it is just yet, it’s not going to stay like that
Now it’s time to look at all the rough notes and take that disorganized brain dump and list them in an orderly manner on a blank page.
Then really consider each of the things on that list – do you really need to do it and does it need to be done right now?
For anything that isn’t really urgent or important to be done soon, put that on a park it list – you can come back to it later, it’s not going anywhere!
Then go through the list again and mark next to every task Do, Ditch and Delegate.
- Do’s are things that only you can do and have to be done soon
- Ditch is anything that is a nice to have, not really that important in the grand scheme of things but these are often the ones that we just don’t want to let go of – be ruthless!
- Delegate anything that doesn’t really have to be done by you and you can ask someone else in your team to do it.
Then do another pass on the list and take all the Do’s and prioritise them.
Which one needs to be done first or are dependant on other tasks being done?
So, this sounds like a load of work or a load of bollocks, depending on just how stressed out you are right now.
And doing it once is helpful but in a couple of weeks time, you’ll be back in the same place, tearing your hair out and wondering whether you could actually be an employee anymore!
The best tools are ones that you use again and again and again.
So the best tip I can give you is to make it a habit to do this.
Every time you sit down to plan (or if you’ve not got a planning process in place, then set aside 30 mins at the beginning or end of every week to plan it out), create the list and go through the same steps.
Once you get into the habit of doing this, it will become automatic, you’ll be knocking things off your list before they even get on there!
