Have you heard the expression, “The good things in life are the enemy of the best things?” The principles found within this statement have application to every area of our lives, but especially to our professional careers.
Time is a commodity of which we have a fixed amount each day. There are pressures related to your time. How many times have we used the phrase, “If I only have a few extra hours in the day?” Unfortunately, no matter how many times we’ve uttered these words, we haven’t received any extra time with which to work.
A great evaluation activity is to write down all the good things you are doing. Then determine if those good, mostly immediate, things that need attention are keeping you away from the most critical things you need to do to be successful in your business or career.
One of the hardest “good” time wasters to unhook from is email. Do you absolutely have to know about – and respond to – email the moment it hits your inbox? Instead, consider checking your email before you get your day started and then not checking it again until noon. Try it. You’ll be amazed in this step alone how much more productive you become. Then check it after 4 p.m.
Enter the concept of “benign neglect”: Each day (or the night before), we should determine the most important things we need to accomplish in the time we have available to us the next day. Anything that doesn’t fit in that plan has to be gently sacrificed to the “gods of maybe tomorrow.”
How else are we to get it all done? If we spend time on the immediate and easy, we will always fail to accomplish the critical and best things.
Hopefully you are renewed in your resolve to tackle the really important issues and tasks that will help you achieve your goals of revenue generation and return on investment. Here is to your success!
