Stay ahead of the curve
To get ahead of the curve, start at the beginning of the day rather than working longer at the end. Get up half an hour earlier. Get some work done in the morning before you head into the office. It’s quieter and calmer. You’ll have more focused time to think. Get a head start on your day.
One thing you can do early in the day is to sort out all the work that needs to be done. Write down all the tasks that are on your plate. Identify the easy ones. Identify the hard ones. Identify the important ones. Apply a rough ranking to the important tasks (we’ll have more to say on prioritizing tasks in an upcoming post).
Build momentum by doing easy tasks first
Unlike organizational momentum that needs to be built up in waves, your personal momentum moves in a straight line — when you get things done, it’s easier to get more things done. Identify a couple of your easiest tasks and get them done first — regardless of the priority or value to the organization. You’re looking for some quick wins for the day so you can get yourself into the right frame of mind for doing more. Getting a couple of things done early in the day is like warming-up for your workday.
Do a significant task early in the day
After you get a couple of easy tasks out of the way, attack your most important task next. Since you only have so much mental capacity each day, it’s best to apply it to your most important work first.
Making progress is key here. If the task is too big to be done at once. Draw a conceptual picture of it and identify smaller pieces. Figure out what can be done first. If there are several pieces, do the easiest ones first. Try to get these chunks small enough that you can fit them into 25 minute time slots. If you can get a number of these slots lined up, you should be able to make some good progress (more on this in an upcoming post).
Field issues in the afternoon
By lunch, you should have gotten some easy things done and made headway through some of your most important work. You would have applied your mental capacity to some of your toughest problems. It’s a great motivator to have done some real work when you’re only halfway through your day.
Devote the rest of your day to things that don’t require as much mental energy. Field issues or answer emails. Fill out your expense reports. Fill out your time sheets. Approve your employees’ timesheets. Do the mundane things about your job that you can’t really automate but have to be done.
If you have a spare 25 minutes, view it as a bonus for doing more of your important work. If you have trouble focusing enough to get through it, then stop and find something easier to do instead. It’s best to match your mental energy with the task at hand. You’ll get more done that way.
Carve out some breathing room
The point in all of this is to carve out some breathing room in your day. If you can apply more of your mental capacity to important, tough problems, you will get through them quicker. If you can get through them quick enough, you will carve out some breathing room in your work. Once you have some breathing room, you’ll be able to expand it. This is the key to getting ahead of the curve. You will have more options to figure out how to get things done. There will be more flexibility in your schedule. When the unexpected happens, you’ll be able to adjust. This is the key to staying ahead of the curve.
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