Success Hack: How to focus on what's important

I could never make a todo list work. It seemed all I was doing was making lists and remaking lists as priorities changed.

And I learned a long time ago that software won't solve any problem for you. If you don't have a system, a way that works for YOU, automating it with an app is simply adding a layer of waste. Design your system so it works old school first. Only then should you automate it to make it better. Never expect something to work just because it's on the computer.

When I started consulting, I ran across the Eisenhower principle. Have you heard of it? It worked for me in the same way 10/4 voting works for teams and time blocking works for getting things done. I thought I'd share it here, as I was sharing it with the members of my fast track success group. Sometimes the best solutions are the old school, tried and true methods.

In 1954, former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave a speech, where he outlined this "Eisenhower Principle" to organize his workload and priorities. He said: "I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent."

He recognized that time management is more about being effective than being efficient.

Important activities have an outcome that leads to us achieving our own personal or professional goals. Urgent activities are those that demand attention and action, but are usually someone else's goals. By rationalizing which activities are important and which ones are urgent, we can overcome the tendency to focus on unimportant urgent activities (who is yelling the loudest). Then we can block out enough time to do what's important to achieve our own goals. We can move from constant "firefighting" to a position where we can grow our businesses, our careers and manifest our own success.

Start by listing each of your tasks on a separate sticky note. This simple act can be very liberating. Clearing your mind of details by writing them down and putting them into a system can be quite a stress releaser. Once your mind accepts that you won't forget the details, it relaxes, slows down and lowers your blood pressure. You likely know this already and that's a good reason to create a todo list in the first place.

 The next step is to take each one of those stickies and place them on a grid. Less urgent goes on the left, more urgent goes on the right. More important goes on the top, less important goes on the bottom.

Now it's time to get to work. First things first; Do what is both urgent and important. The fewer things you have to do, the easier it is to get them done. Forget multi-tasking. Do one thing at a time. Single tasking is extremely powerful and so is being able to filter out tasks and work on what will have the greatest impact in this moment of time.

According to the Pareto Principle, 80% of your results come from 20% of the things you do. If you apply that 80/20 rule to itself, you'll discover that 64% of your results come from just 4% of your actions. This is the vital few. When you focus your actions on the right things, and you do them well, the results manifest themselves.

The stuff that is NOT urgent but IS important should be scheduled. Block out some time in the next few days schedule to do these tasks. These items are important to achieving your personal or professional goals so they need to be done. Make the time for them.

The stuff that IS urgent but IS NOT important to achieving your goals should be delegated. Who can do these tasks for you? Set up a followup system appropriate for the person you assign the task to. At first, set a reminder to check in on their progress. As the person demonstrates that they will reliably perform the tasks you delegate, you can back off on your own followup activities. Have them take the initiative to report back to you when the task is done (and set a reminder to call them if it is not done by the due date). The key to effective delegation is to clearly demonstrate that YOU will never drop the ball and it is incumbent on THEM to initiate followup communication BEFORE you do. If they can't (or won't) make that commitment, it's time to find more reliable support staff.

Things that are not urgent and are not important quite simply will not be done. These are just distractions. It's ok to say NO. Don't accept responsibility for completing tasks that fall in this category. When people see that you are clear about your objectives and boundaries  , they will often avoid asking you to do "not important", "non urgent" activities in the future.

Did you find this helpful? I use a web based task manager called On The List that has this functionality built in. Visit onthelist.ca to give it a try.

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Norm www.normbain.com