Do you feel sometimes that your business is like a plate of spaghetti? Everything is tangled up, hard to consume and really messy?
If you are an SMB owner/director/manager, you work in a non-profit organization or on your own, you might appreciate the proven best practices applied in rich corporations and enterprises. I strongly believe that you deserve to know these techniques, so you save time, money and amplify your positive impact.
In the next few articles, I share some of my stories and lessons learned that helped me to be a better manager and online entrepreneur. Of course, I'm still learning. So if you know better solutions to these situations, let me know, please.
Never Enough Time
Many times I found myself being frustrated and blocked by the number of emails to answer, articles to read, clients to answer, team members to coach and milestones to reach. Over the years I learned from successful entrepreneurs and managers and developed my own prioritisation framework. Here it is:
A Priority Actions
These are the ones that work like assets. If you collect and focus on them, they compound in value and you can leverage them.
These are both urgent and important actions only you can take and must take as soon as possible. The best way to deal with these is to block out time in the calendar urgently and deal with them in full. I try to use early morning hours when there is less distraction and my brain is fresh after a good sleep. Or at least before noon, so for the rest of the day they don’t make me feel guilty.
B Priority Actions
These are the urgent but not important things that keep us Busy. The ones I should do because someone expects to be done. Small favours, promises that others requested or yourself feel obligated to do.
Everyone suggests to not do these, be brave to say no. I agree in principle, but most of the time the promises are already made. So either renegotiate or do what was promised. These are the ones, which can be done quickly once, define them and ask someone else to do them repeatedly. If a human can do it for you, we call it delegation. If a system does it for you, we call it automation. The best strategy I found reduced (eliminate, renegotiate), reuse (automate), recycle (delegate).
C Priority Actions
These are the big rocks I could do, that is important but not urgent. Unfortunately, most of us procrastinate doing these. Although experts say put these in place first as you won’t have more time later, I believe they should be grouped together and solved offline and/or offsite in a dedicated time and place.
This method allows our brain to free up from the urgent rush on the right side of the diagram and deal with what's left, on the left side. After a bit of mental, emotional warm-up we can hide and seek. We can hide in a room, with a headphone on and give us enough time to sink into the flow zone. When we are in flow, our conscious mind works with the 100 times more capable subconscious mind. Then we can seek out the solutions for complex problems or define the best road to our goals.
D Priority Actions
These are the not urgent and not important ones. Many experts suggest ignoring, delete and burn them. I suggest collecting them in an online or offline list. These are the ones that disturb us from doing what we planned and if we ignore them they keep coming back to our minds.
Once we release them from our minds and let the paper/file hold them, we can move on with the rest that is of higher value. I found that these “ideas” that I wished for, opened up new ways of looking at situations or solving problems. So I suggest we give ourselves some time regularly to review these distracting ideas as we might find them useful later. It could be that the timing was not right when it occurred to us but later it can be a higher priority one.
Conclusion
Our brain acts as an antenna. It sends and receives signals on the frequency our brain and senses are tuned to. So if we collect all ideas and classify them they can attract attention and solve problems while we are having a shower or driving a car. I hope these tips help to reduce the anxiety and mental pressure you feel like an entrepreneur, manager or a busy person. If you know better ways of dealing with these situations, please let us know in the comments section.
About the Author
Laszlo Csite is a business/agile coach at lacix.co, who helps gifted and keen leaders and teams to be extraordinary and unlock their potential. He is also a digital/CRM product owner, who helps great ideas to grow into admired digital/physical products and brands.
If you enter a new field, want to grow, acquire, split, transform or want to exit - using proven methods can save you time and frustration.
When you are interested, Laszlo can show you how to put your business on AUTOPILOT, so you can enjoy the fun stuff. As the founder of lacix.co, Laszlo can share 25 years of consulting experience and his carefully selected network of professionals. Feel free to contact Laszlo Csite at lacix.co