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When it Comes To Your Professional Development, Are You Efficient or Effective?
- By Wayne Messick
- Published 12/17/2008
- Time Management
- Unrated
Not that I can tell anyway. In fact the more efficient I try to be the less effective I often am. According to the legendary Peter Drucker - as the story goes, efficiency is doing things right and effectiveness is doing the right things. That would mean then that maximum effectiveness, what I always strive for - sometimes more successfully than others, would be doing the right things right every time.
What is working better for me than ever before is to make a list of things that I have to do, and then ask myself, "If I were called up by the Army Reserves (been there, done that) and were put on active duty for a month" and I could only finish one thing on my list - what one thing would that be? What is really the most important thing on the list?
Try it, it's not as easy as you might think. Because nothing seems to stand alone - everything is part of one process or another, which one thing would you do today, before you went to bed, that would leave you feeling that you actually got the most important thing on your list done?
Then ask yourself, so what if I could get only two things done? What would be the second thing on the list? Go through this process for the first 3-5 things - you aren't likely to get through them all today but at least you can go to sleep knowing that you got the most important things done.
I am a list person. I have gotten into the habit of setting my daily priorities by making a list on a legal pad before I go to bed at night. What are the top five things I must get through tomorrow. I order them 1-5 and then when I get up I look at the list just to see if the order should be changed before I start working.
By the way, I have all sorts of digital stuff that can and is used to keep my schedules and to-do lists. For me this is critical for those things that I might (would) forget before it was time to do them. But for my daily priorities I write them on a legal pad and cross them off when the get done.
There is a great feeling striking through a completed task. And a lesson to be learned when I look at the list and see numbers four and five crossed off, but not 1-3. Were they not as important or did the other things seem more urgent or easier to accomplish?
OK so I have the list - now I am ready to begin working with maximum effectiveness. If I do not succeed I have only myself to blame.
In order to make sure I am doing the important things, not the urgent I take the priority list to another level. You see I have set in stone objectives, my goals are always front and center, and like you I only have a limited amount of time energy and money with which to accomplish them.
So I use the A, B, C, D, E process I heard about at a seminar 20 years ago. It is simplicity itself, otherwise I could not sustain it over time. I just put one of those letters in front of each task. This helps me determine what, who, and how each should be addressed.
A means that this is very important, something that must be done and will cause bad things to happen if it isn't accomplished. Typically, not always, this is something only I can do.
B items are also important, meaning they should be done, and have less dire consequences if they are not completed.
C things are the "nice to do" things that I have to fight down on the list to where they belong. They are important but definitely take a back seat to the above categories.
D stands for "delegate" - something I can get somebody else to do for me. We all make choices here, but we usually don't think about them critically - so we find ourselves delegating things that we don't want to do, A & B category things that we do not like to do we delegate and do the C things ourselves. This is the road to delayed success if not disaster itself.
E items are eliminated. There are lots of ways to do that. I find that if I ignore E items long enough they will just disappear.
OK so now that you can clearly see than 1-5 things you should be doing and use the above tags - the final step is to "just say no" to every other distraction and focus single mindedly on the accomplishment of your highest priorities.
What is working better for me than ever before is to make a list of things that I have to do, and then ask myself, "If I were called up by the Army Reserves (been there, done that) and were put on active duty for a month" and I could only finish one thing on my list - what one thing would that be? What is really the most important thing on the list?
Try it, it's not as easy as you might think. Because nothing seems to stand alone - everything is part of one process or another, which one thing would you do today, before you went to bed, that would leave you feeling that you actually got the most important thing on your list done?
Then ask yourself, so what if I could get only two things done? What would be the second thing on the list? Go through this process for the first 3-5 things - you aren't likely to get through them all today but at least you can go to sleep knowing that you got the most important things done.
I am a list person. I have gotten into the habit of setting my daily priorities by making a list on a legal pad before I go to bed at night. What are the top five things I must get through tomorrow. I order them 1-5 and then when I get up I look at the list just to see if the order should be changed before I start working.
By the way, I have all sorts of digital stuff that can and is used to keep my schedules and to-do lists. For me this is critical for those things that I might (would) forget before it was time to do them. But for my daily priorities I write them on a legal pad and cross them off when the get done.
There is a great feeling striking through a completed task. And a lesson to be learned when I look at the list and see numbers four and five crossed off, but not 1-3. Were they not as important or did the other things seem more urgent or easier to accomplish?
OK so I have the list - now I am ready to begin working with maximum effectiveness. If I do not succeed I have only myself to blame.
In order to make sure I am doing the important things, not the urgent I take the priority list to another level. You see I have set in stone objectives, my goals are always front and center, and like you I only have a limited amount of time energy and money with which to accomplish them.
So I use the A, B, C, D, E process I heard about at a seminar 20 years ago. It is simplicity itself, otherwise I could not sustain it over time. I just put one of those letters in front of each task. This helps me determine what, who, and how each should be addressed.
A means that this is very important, something that must be done and will cause bad things to happen if it isn't accomplished. Typically, not always, this is something only I can do.
B items are also important, meaning they should be done, and have less dire consequences if they are not completed.
C things are the "nice to do" things that I have to fight down on the list to where they belong. They are important but definitely take a back seat to the above categories.
D stands for "delegate" - something I can get somebody else to do for me. We all make choices here, but we usually don't think about them critically - so we find ourselves delegating things that we don't want to do, A & B category things that we do not like to do we delegate and do the C things ourselves. This is the road to delayed success if not disaster itself.
E items are eliminated. There are lots of ways to do that. I find that if I ignore E items long enough they will just disappear.
OK so now that you can clearly see than 1-5 things you should be doing and use the above tags - the final step is to "just say no" to every other distraction and focus single mindedly on the accomplishment of your highest priorities.
Wayne Messick
Wayne Messick is the author of dozens of articles for mainstream businesses, emerging professionals and association executives and now in phase III of his career spends hours each week creating articles from his experiences. Visit his web site to receive them at http://www.WayneMessick.com Professionals should http://www.familybusinessadvisors.biz join the brand new directory of professionals.
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