There are times when most of us run the risk of being swept away into the “crisis of the moment” and disappear into that dark hole that gets described away with that famous comment: “Where did the day go?” The usual follow up comment is, “I’m beat and I have no idea if I accomplished anything.”
For those of you who are not sure what I’m describing and for those of you who don’t want to face up to the reality of the issues, consider if this scenario sounds familiar:
Do you find that during any given week you waste time and money and miss opportunities?
Do you find yourself involved in “fire-fighting” moving from crisis to crisis?
Are you very busy, running from task to task and meeting to meeting but still see no progress being made?
To stop distractions from taking your time and energy, use any of these 10 tactics:
You need to have clear and specific goals for your day, week, month or year. Without these goals, distractions will pull you in different directions, waste your time and you will have nothing to show for your effort. Next, without specific goals, there is no way you can determine what are the most important tasks; the ones you should be working on. If you’re expert at “fire-fighting”, it’s nothing to be proud of. You may actually be the cause of the flare ups. Make sure everyone on your team knows what they must do, why they do it and how to do it. Make sure your team is trained and proficient in their roles so they don’t bring you questions and problems that they really should be able to handle. Set performance expectations, communicate them and then hold your team accountable for meeting the standards you have set. Always have a daily plan, outlining what the top 1 to 3 things are that you must accomplish that day. Identify what barriers might stop you from achieving your goals for the day. Have ready a contingency plan if you get stalled. Do you find that nothing gets done, unless you do it? Are you properly delegating or are you just taking on other people’s problems? Schedule a 1-hour appointment each week with “yourself”. Put it on your calendar. You need the time to re-group and re-focus on the right things.
