The third group are your losers, or your “dogs.” No matter how much effort
you put into marketing and selling them, no matter how you repackage them
or reformulate them, they are still not making much of an impression in the
marketplace. They are a drain on funds and on time and energies of your key
people. These are the products and services that will die sooner or later
because, for whatever reason, the market doesn’t want them.
Focus Where Excellent Results Are Possible
Time Power
In setting priorities for your business, your winners represent the top 20% of
your business activities. You must never take them for granted. You must do
everything possible to upgrade and improve them and assure that they
continue to be good sellers and generators of cash.
Your potential “stars” are the products that have the potential of becoming
big sellers if you spend enough time, attention and money on them. They are
your potential winners for the future. Investing time and money in these
products and services is a high priority.
The products and services that will die anyway, no matter how much time or
money you invest in them, become your “posteriorities.” Especially in times
of reduced markets and profitability, you must have the courage and
decisiveness to accept that, although it seemed like a good idea at the time,
this product or service does not justify the expenditures necessary to make it
successful. It should be discontinued or abandoned so you can devote your
energies to those products and services that represent the future of the
business and the cash flow of tomorrow.
Priorize Your Personal Life
You can practice “personal triage” in your life, as well. There are some
things in your life that give you tremendous pleasure and satisfaction. These
are high priority uses of your time such as your family and your personal
activities. You should pay close attention to them and never take them for
granted.
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There are potential uses of your time, activities and money that represent the
possibilities of the future. These are areas where you need to invest more of
yourself and your time if you want to maximize everything that is possible
for you in those areas.
Finally, there are those people and activities in your life that, knowing what
you now know, you wouldn’t start up again today. These are the time traps
and activities that you should downsize, minimize and eliminate so that you
have more time for those few things that give you the greatest pleasure and
satisfaction.
Look Into the Future
A key part of personal time management is for you to take the time to look
into the future. Project forward five years and think about where you want to
be. Create a mental picture of your ideal future and then think about the
steps that you would have to take, starting today, to make it a reality.
Remember, “It doesn’t matter where you are coming from: all that really
matters is where you are going.’
Focus on the future rather than the past. Focus on opportunities rather than
problems. Think about solutions and what specific actions you could take
rather on things that have gone wrong, and who is to blame. Keep asking,
“Where do we go from here?” As John Maynard Keynes said, “We must
give a lot of thought to the future, because that is where we are going to
spend the rest of our lives.”
Time Power
In many companies, fully 80% of the time of senior people is spent on the
problems of yesterday rather than on the opportunities of tomorrow. Keep
thinking of ways that you can change the things that you are doing today to
assure that your future is consistent with what you desire.
Project Forward Five Years
Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahaled, the strategic planners who wrote the book
Competing for the Future, encourage decision makers to project forward
several years when they do strategic planning. They encourage them to
imagine that their company is the top company in the industry some years in
the future. They then identify the products, services, markets and especially
skills, talents and abilities that they will need to be industry leaders five
years from now. Finally, they encourage business leaders to begin
immediately to develop the core competencies they will need to be market
leaders in the future. You should do the same.
Focus On the First 20%
In setting priorities, remember that the first 20% of any task usually accounts
for 80% of the value of that task. The first 20% of time that you spend
planning and organizing the resources necessary to achieve the task usually
account for 80% of your success once you begin working on the task. In
setting priorities, always focus on the first 20% of the task. Get on with it
and get it done. The next 80% will tend to flow smoothly once the first 20%
is complete.
Time Power
If you are in sales, getting the initial appointment, getting face to face with
the decision maker, is the first 20% of the transaction. But it accounts for
80% of the value in the sales process. The presentation, the closing of the
sale, the follow-up, the delivery of the product or service, and so on, is the
second 80% that only accounts for 20% of the value.
Forget About the Small Things
In setting priorities, never give in to the temptation to clear up small things
first. Don’t start at the bottom of your list and work up to the important tasks
at the top. Don’t allow yourself to get bogged down in low priority activities.
Don’t major in minors. As Goethe said, “The things that matter most must
never be at the mercy of the things that matter least.”
The natural tendency of human nature is to follow the Law of Least
Resistance. In time management and personal work, this means that we have
a natural tendency to start on small tasks, thinking that as soon as we get
warmed up, we will launch into our big tasks and we will be more
productive.
Here is what we have found. When you start in on little tasks, they begin to
multiple, like rabbits in the springtime. When you begin clearing up your
small tasks, you seem to attract more and more small tasks to work on. The
longer and harder you work, the more small tasks seem to arise. By the end
of the day, you will be exhausted, and you will not have accomplished
anything of value. Start with your most important work first.
Time Power
Five Key Questions for Setting Priorities
There are five key questions that you can ask yourself regularly to assure
that you are working on your top priorities, and getting the very most done
that is possible for you.
Question one: “Why am I on the payroll?” Ask yourself if what you are
doing right now is the most important thing that you have been hired to do.
If your boss were sitting across from you watching you, what would you be
doing differently from what you are doing at this moment? Here is an
exercise. Make a list of everything you feel you have been hired to do and
take it to your boss. Ask your boss to organize this work list by priority.
Have him or her tell you what is most important and what is least important.
From that moment onward, work single-mindedly on those tasks that your
boss considers to be more important than anything else.
Question two: “What are my highest value activities?” Remember, there
are only three things that you do that account for most of the value of your
work. What are your activities that contribute the greatest value to your
company? If you are not sure, ask the people around you. Everyone knows
the most important things that other people should be doing.
Question three: “What are my key result areas?” What are the specific
results that you have to get in order to do your job in an excellent fashion?
Of all those key result areas, which are most important?
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Question four: “What can I, and only I do that if done well will make a real
difference?” What is the one thing, hour by hour, that only you can do, that
if you do it well will make a significant contribution to your business? This
is something that no one else can do for you. If you don’t do it, it won’t be
done. Doing this task, doing it well and doing it promptly, can have a major
impact on your career.
Question five: “What is the most valuable use of my time, right now?” This
is the key question in time management. Every time planning and
management skill is oriented around helping you to determine the correct
answer to this question at every moment of the day. What is the most
valuable use of your time right now?
The Law of Forced Efficiency
This law says that, when you are under tremendous pressure to get results,
you become more and more efficient at setting priorities and getting things
done.
Here is an exercise for you. Imagine that your boss came to you with two
first class tickets plus five days, all expenses paid, in a beautiful vacation
resort. It is Monday morning at 9 o’clock. Your boss won these tickets at a
raffle the night before but he cannot use them. He is willing to give them to
you if you can get all your work for the week done by 5 o’clock this
afternoon.
Time Power
If you received such an offer, and it was only valid if you could get your
week’s work done by the end of the day, how would that change your
method of working? What would be the first thing that you would want to be
sure to complete before you left? What would be the second task or activity?
How much of your time would you spend drinking coffee and chatting with
your coworkers under such a constraint? How would you do your work
differently if you only had one day to complete five days worth of work?
We encourage our seminar participants to set priorities by asking, “If I had
to leave town for a month, and I could only finish one task before I left
town, what one task would be the most important for me to get done?”
Put the pressure of priorities on yourself. Ask yourself these questions on a
regular basis. And whatever your answer set those key tasks as your highest
priorities. Go to work on them immediately, and concentrate singlemindedly
on those tasks until they are complete.
Aim for Maximum Payoff
Your time is your life. When you are working on your highest priority tasks,
you are using your life at the very highest level. Anything you do other than
your top priorities are a relative waste of time. They contribute less to your
life than other things that you could do.
The biggest pay off of all is that when you are working single-mindedly on
your highest priority task, you experience an unending flow of energy,
Time Power
enthusiasm and self-esteem. You feel more powerful and confident. You feel
terrific about yourself and your life.
If you work on low priority tasks, no matter how many hours you put in, you
get no sense of satisfaction or pleasure. You merely feel tired and stressed
out at the end of the day. You feel harried and overwhelmed. You feel
frustrated and unhappy.
Take Time to Think and Then Take Action
Take time before you begin work to think through and establish your
priorities, using the various ideas and techniques explained in this chapter.
Select the most valuable use of your time and get started on that one task.
Discipline yourself to stay with that task until it is complete. When you
repeatedly concentrate on your top priorities, you will soon develop the habit
of high performance. With this habit, you will get two or three times as
much done every day as anyone else who works around you. And you will
feel terrific about yourself.
“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out, without
ceasing.” (Robert Collier)
Action Exercises:
1. Resolve today that you are going to become excellent at thinking
through and working exclusively on your top priority tasks; never
allow exceptions until this becomes a habit.
Time Power
2. Make a list of activities each day before you begin, and set careful
priorities on your list. Divide the items by applying the ABCDE
method to each one before starting. Always work on you’re A-1 task.
3. Apply the 80/20 Rule to every part of your business and personal life;
identify the top 20% of activities, customers, products, services and
tasks that account for 80% of the value, and focus on them before
anything else.
4. Identify your key constraints to business and personal success; what
sets the speed at which you achieve a specific goal, and what could
you do to remove the limiting factor, either in yourself or in the
situation?
5. Think about the potential consequences of doing or not doing a
particular task; separate the urgent from the important and spend more
time doing those things that can have a major effect on your future.
6. Determine your personal areas of excellence, those jobs that you do
easily and well, faster and better than others. These activities are
where you can make the greatest contribution to your company.
7. Every hour of every day, ask yourself, “What is the most valuable use
of my time, right now?” Whatever the answer, be sure that you are
working on that task, the one that can make a greater difference than
anything else.
Time Power
Chapter Five
Getting Things Done
“Man is not the creature of circumstances; circumstances are the creatures
of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.”
(Benjamin Disraeli)
Good work habits go hand in hand with success in every area of endeavor.
There is nothing that will bring you to the attention of your superiors faster
than developing a reputation for being a good, dependable worker. How you
work determines the quality and quantity of your rewards. How you work
determines how much you earn, how effective you are, how much you are
respected in your organization and how much real satisfaction you get out of
your job.
Unfortunately, most people are poor workers. They are unorganized,
