Ever had that experience where your day/week had flown by, you’ve been stressed running from one thing to another but when you go to tick off that to-do list, you find you haven’t accomplished much? We’ve all been there so here are some simple tips for managing busyness that we’ve used with our clients:
- Track your activities: planning and reality are 2 different things. Try keeping a logbook of the actual activities you do and the time spent- here’s a handy template and dashboard to help
- Schedule time to check updates: Our brains want to keep on top of things, so move away tempting devices which update regularly and cause distraction. Schedule time to check them. If something is that urgent, they will call you.
- Do not disturb: agree on a signal with colleagues that means you are available or unavailable for distraction. A subtle sign that you are ‘in the zone’.
- Get organized: if you organize your desk so that your stationery or paperwork is always in the same place, your brain will retrieve them without losing focus on the task at hand.
- Realistic meeting times: meetings rarely need to be an hour. Manage the time of you and your colleagues better by keeping meetings short, succinct and focused – start booking 15- or 30minute slots and see how much more gets done in that time.
Implementing these tricks will inevitably inspire others to do the same and might just result in a more productive team all round.
Takeaway activity:
- Build a habit. Individually or as a team, select one of these tricks to execute, remembering to add it to your strategic plan to make sure it’s documented and tracked
- For the next month, be conscious of actioning this priority- if you’re doing it as a team, don’t be afraid to call it out
- Do a retrospective to build momentum and the energy for change- after the 28-days, think about the before/after and the time/effort/wins you’ve had.
Further reading
