Are you struggling to get all your work done on time? Are you feeling burnt out because you have too much on your plate? Are you so overwhelmed that you’re not sure what to do next? Here are four steps to get your time and energy back so you can focus on what matters most and be more productive.
#1: Figure out what is most important for you be working on
This can be tricky, since you’re likely being bombarded by requests from your team, boss, peers, and partners. You may be so busy that you don’t have the headspace to figure out what your personal work priorities are.
Carve out some uninterrupted time to define your goals and priorities. Put this time on your calendar and protect it. Move away from the running to-do list and instead, block time on your calendar for working on these priorities each day. This will help you become more intentional with your time and will protect your time from others who think you’re not busy!
Your priorities will likely be a cross section of what is expected from you and your team with what you are personally best placed to do and what energizes you. As you think through your priorities, decide which is a priority based on when you need them done. What can wait? What needs to happen near-term? Think through why each priority is important. If you’re feeling stuck getting started here, begin with the Stephen Covey Urgent Vs. Important Matrix.
As a functional or mid-level leader, spend most of your task time on strategic work (as opposed to tactical). If you’ve just been promoted from an individual contributor to manager level, this can be a difficult mindset transition. You should be less in the weeds now and more at the top of the tree. Think of yourself as an orchestrator, guiding the team to where it needs to get to next and helping them prioritize, creating processes for things to run efficiently now and save time/energy in the future, gathering resources, nurturing critical high-level relationships, and enabling the team to function at its best.
As a leader, think about how to grow you and your team’s influence, visibility, and impact. Put time on your calendar to maintain your strategic network. Seek out opportunities to raise your own visibility and that of your team members within your organization and externally.
#2: Eliminate and Say No
Once you know what your priorities are, it becomes more clear what you should stop doing. Go through your calendar and cull the meetings and tasks that are not important for you to do. Be ruthless! But at the same time, make sure to bow out of these gracefully (and double-check with your stakeholders if there is some reason you really should be there). You can also put things off that are less important and urgent. Sometimes, these tasks just magically disappear. Finally, learn how to say no. I love this brief video on how to say no at work.
#3: Automate
Do you get asked the same questions over and over? Are you taking meetings and calls on stuff you’ve already explained somewhere? Well, stop! Think about what parts of your work, and your teams work, can be automated. As a start, try auto-responder emails and voicemails, boilerplate power-points, shared talking points by issue, FAQs, and a CRM to manage stakeholders/partners/customers/clients. You don’t have to come up with all of this on your own: tap into the power of your team to find ingenious ways to automate.
#4 Delegate
For the remainder of the tasks, think about what you can hand off to someone on your team, a peer, or a contractor where you have budget. Tasks that you don’t like doing, shouldn’t be doing, don’t have time to do, or aren’t good at could be someone else’s growth opportunity or in their zone of genius. See this recent blog on how to delegate effectively.
By following these steps, you will save yourself a lot of time and energy so that you can be more productive and do that which is truly most important.
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