: How to Achieve All of Your Goals I. INTRODUCTION In your last e-class, you mapped out your Exit Vision so you can achieve it. Specifically, you wrote down your SMART goals for the next: Month Quarter, and Year In this e-class, you will learn the productivity techniques that will allow you to most effectively achieve these goals. II. LESSON/EXAMPLES There are 5 things you need to do to most effectively achieve all of your goals: 1. Create Your Overall To Do List In order to accomplish your goals, you clearly need to have a list of all the specific tasks you need to complete. As such, you need to create an Overall To Do List that includes ALL of theses tasks. Importantly, the process of creating and constantly adding to your Overall To Do List purges your brain of all the tasks that are nagging you. Writing these tasks down allows you to concentrate better on the tasks at hand. It also reduces your stress, and it clears your mind so you are much more creative and much more effective. For example, how many times have you been doing something and a to do thought like oh, I really need to email Joe Smith popped into your mind. These thoughts hurt your concentration and make you much less productive. By maintaining and constantly adding to your Overall To Do List, these mental interruptions occur less and less, and you get far more accomplished. Importantly, don t get overwhelmed by a really large Overall To Do List. In fact, in most cases, you will NEVER complete it. As you will constantly prioritize it, certain items will keep getting pushed down. This is ok, as these are generally items that you shouldn t be doing anyway! Page 1
2. Prioritize Your List Once you have your Overall To Do List, your next step is to constantly prioritize it. The best model for understanding how to prioritize is the four quadrants framework: In the top left quadrant are things that are important and urgent. These are typically the daily fire fighting exercises that most entrepreneurs and employees take care of. This is the upset client call. It s urgent, it s important, and you need to deal with it. And so a lot of people s time is spent in important and urgent issues. The top right quadrant is important and not urgent, and these should be your priorities. This is the area that is left undone more often than not. This is executing on your annual plan. This is conducting employee performance reviews. This is taking the productivity course. So I commend you right now that you are doing something (i.e., completing this e-class) that is important to you and yet not urgent but is going to massively improve your success and the success of your company. The bottom left quadrant is not important, yet urgent items. This is the telephone call from a prospective vendor. These are things that are not important but they are right in your face. This is the co-worker or employee saying, Hey, do you have a minute? I need a hand with something. That s not really important as it s not really going to get you closer to achieving your goals. And finally, the bottom right quadrant is not important and not urgent, which is taking a coffee break. Reading the paper. Etc. Page 2
The key point of the 4 quadrants is that you absolutely need to prioritize quadrant number two (top right quadrant) -- the important and not urgent tasks. You need to start judging all of the items in your Overall To Do List and prioritize these important tasks, as these are the tasks that move you closer to achieving your goals. 3. Breaking Down Your Priorities Into Smaller Tasks Once you have identified your top priorities, you need to break them down into small manageable tasks. As Mark Twain said: The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks and then starting on the first one. So, you need to break down your priority tasks into smaller tasks that can be completed more quickly. Obviously, no individual task should take more than 8 hours because you re working approximately an 8- hour day. And clearly, everyday is going to have interruptions unless you are working off site. And so you need to break down your tasks preferably into tasks that can be completed in two hours or less. For example, if you want to write a report, you could break it down into the following sub 2-hour tasks: Do research Create the draft table of contents Outline chapter 1 Write chapter 1 Proof chapter 1 Etc. 4. Create Weekly & Daily To Do Lists Each week you should create a list for yourself of the key tasks/priorities that you want to accomplish during the week. Having that list, and checking off items as you complete them is key to your success. Likewise, each day, you need to identify the To Dos from your weekly list that you need to accomplish that day. At the end of each day, see what you accomplished, and create your To Do list for the next day. Likewise at the end of each week, see what you accomplished, and create your To Do list for the next week. Page 3
5. Schedule Every Minute of Every Day This is perhaps that most important piece of achieving your goals. You must find a way to schedule every minute of every day. Let me explain. Parkinson s Law states that work expands to fill the time allotted to performing it. What that means is that is if you have three hours to complete a task, most likely, it s going to take you the full three hours to complete that task. And most people go through their day without a schedule - without a minute by minute, hour by hour schedule - and thus, they don t have these deadlines and they take a lot longer to complete a task. Parkinson s Law says that if you have to work on a report, and you allocate 3 hours to it, that you are going to work during that 3 hours, and you are always going to stress at the end and procrastinate a little bit and really work hard that last 15 minutes to accomplish that goal within the 3-hour period. Now if you only gave yourself an hour to accomplish the report, you are going to work harder during the hour. You will be much more focused. And you will complete virtually the same work or even better work - in that hour. By setting deadlines for tasks, you complete the tasks faster. You are much more focused on it. You are racing against the clock, but not in a bad way. I m not talking about creating stress here. Rather, it s a friendly competition against the clock. It is 3:19 - I have to complete this project by 4 o clock because by 4 o clock, I have to get to the next meeting. And you start thinking, what do I have to do to get this done? Your mind starts working and you accomplish it, and it s fun. You are much more successful. Most people cannot get work done at work since they are constantly getting pulled into meetings and conversations starting with do you have a minute to discuss this and that, or please respond to this email right away. Fortunately there is a solution to this madness. The solution is to have a set calendar and schedule every minute of every day. A set calendar allows you to focus on one task at a time and completely focus on that task so it gets completed faster and it gets completed better. Conversely, numerous studies have shown that multitasking actually reduces productivity and performance. So, on your calendar, you schedule all of your priorities that you have reduced to smaller 2-hour projects. These go on your calendar first, and you can t let anything interfere with them. And then any interruptions can only occur during set times. If Page 4
someone has a got a minute request, or a customer has an urgent issue, they will simply have to wait until you re free (note that you must also schedule free time on your calendar during which you handle these issues). Essentially you are creating meetings with yourself on your calendar. Which is what the most successful entrepreneurs in the world do! A final note here is that my specific strategy for achieving my goals is as follows. On Monday morning each week, I review my Overall To Do List and my monthly goals and decide what has to be accomplished during the week. I break those tasks into smaller tasks that never take more than 2 hours to complete. I then schedule my entire week s calendar with those smaller tasks. During those calendared times, I am unreachable. I will not answer the phone. I will not answer email. I will not allow myself to be interrupted with questions. Importantly, I DO schedule times on my calendar to answer emails, return phone calls, handle questions, etc. But I do so during set hours that I control. Scheduling your days and weeks like this ensures that you steadily accomplish both your short-term and long-term goals. III. EXERCISES TO COMPLETE 1. Create Your Overall To Do List. Start one if you don t already have one. If you do have one, really y purge your brain and get all your To Dos on that one list. Page 5
2. Go through your Overall To Do List and identify your priorities.. What are the key important but not urgent items that will allow you to achieve your goals? Maybe it s developing a new product, or re-training your staff? Whatever they are, move them to the top of your list. 3. Break Down Your Priorities Into Smaller Tasks. Take all of your key priorities and break them down into multiple tasks that can be completed in 2 hours or less. Page 6
4. Create Weekly & Daily To Do Lists. Before your week or day starts, have a specific list of tasks that you WILL complete that day/week. Write down the specific list of tasks that you WILL complete tomorrow and during the rest of this week: 5. Schedule Every Minute of Every Day. Get out your calendar every Monday morning and make sure you have ever minute of the week scheduled. Do include times to answer emails, answer and reply to phone calls, etc. But do not allow yourself to be interrupted. Treat meetings with yourself to accomplish key tasks like meetings with important business associates. You wouldn t take a phone call in the middle of a meeting with an important associate, so don t take it in the middle of a meeting with yourself. [My recommendation is to use an online calendaring system like Google Calendars which makes scheduling ever minute of every day extremely simple]. IV. CONCLUSION As you might imagine, it will take a lot of discipline at first to adhere to the productivity techniques laid out in this e-class. Particularly scheduling every minute of every day will be tough particularly at first (e.g., it will be hard to say no to got a minute meetings). But I assure you it gets MUCH easier over time (particularly as your employees become trained to NOT request got a minute meetings) and you will become MUCH more productive. In your next e-class, you will learn how to create & use a Financial Dashboard. This is KEY to your success. Stay tuned. Page 7