At the end of many days, you may feel like you sorted gravel instead of focusing on your big rocks. In the previous article, we learned about the 5 choices you have and how they can move you and your team to extraordinary productivity. Choice one was acting on the important and not reacting to the urgent with choice two about reaching for the extraordinary.
Now it's time to consider the next two choices you can make:
Choice 3: Schedule the big rocks. Don’t sort gravel. This video will give you an overview of the whole Franklin/Covey program. It’s about 11 minutes. In this choice, you take which choices you made in one and two, then schedule your weeks and days in such a way that you can focus your precious attention and energy on those things first.
Important and not urgent items MUST be scheduled or the urgent will always win if they are competing. You don’t want to get more done; you want to get the RIGHT THINGS done.
Planning properly, around your most important outcomes, increases your success rate by 200-300% according to a leading researcher.
Choice 4: Rule Your Technology. Don’t let it rule you. Have you become addicted to technology? How many hours a day is your phone or computer turned off? According to a Mobile Mindset Study, 58% of US smartphone users check their phones at least every hour and for most it is the first thing they check when they wake up and the last thing when they go to bed.
Your technology should be an aid to help you spend less time on tasks, not more. The average executive sends and receives an average of 121 emails A DAY. Every one of those emails is a DECISION.
My suggestion: create no technology zones and get others to agree. Our attention to the important will determine how many deeply satisfying accomplishments we are able to experience in this lifetime.
Team Development Opportunity this week:
During your next meeting with your team members discuss the most important items on your team’s list. Do a “round” to talk about ways you could use technology to your advantage and more effectively as a team. Are there free or inexpensive apps that will help you create more time to innovate or connect with clients in a more meaningful way? What are going to be your “no tech zones” in the coming week? Are there rules that the team can agree to in regard to technology like not using email as a vehicle for conversation when it is designed for documentation?
Are you having weekly or monthly development sessions with your team with these articles? Are they helping to remind you to have those sessions and is the information helpful in focusing the conversation around the outcomes you want to achieve? I want these weekly articles to be as helpful as possible. Let me know how I can improve them for you and your team.
Keep at it! Not every day or week feels like a win. I know. You can create what you envision if you first base your direction on current reality. Be rigorously honest with yourself as you look at the facts and data in front of you. Be committed to the extraordinary. What you believe and can see you can achieve.
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