Dear friend,
It's Monday Morning Thought and Challenge (MMTC) time! 😊
I hope you had a great week coming back to school. If you have kids, that was probably an exciting time for them, and a busy one for you 😊
Hopefully you dedicated some time also to implement your "thinking forward time slots" and to define your 12-month growth plan, as we discussed in last week's MMTC.
Last week I briefly mentioned managing priorities and over the week I realized that this subject needed to be the theme of our next work together, to help you move forward in implementing your growth plan and reaching your goals.
I work the subject of priorities with my clients in our mastermind groups within the curriculum "Developing the leader within you", using John Maxwell's book. First thing we do is to acknowledge that everyday life is there to help us mess with our priorities, or at least to get us confused 😊
We realize that:
Most people overestimate the importance of most things
Having too many priorities paralyzes people
When small demands are given too much attention, big problems arise
Making everything a priority means nothing is a priority
Sometimes it takes an emergency to force people to prioritize
I learnt to use this last one many years ago, during a talent assessment I did within a high potential employee development program at Microsoft. I was asked to process an incredible long list of tasks in 60 minutes. The idea was to learn different techniques and make realizations that could help me as a leader in the future. First thing I got to understand is that something that is 80% good to my standards is already good enough for a working environment release. I talk more about it in the mastermind sessions, as we discuss the Pareto principle.
There are also some principles about priorities we discuss in the masterminds:
Working smarter has a higher return than working harder
You can't have it all. As a leader, you must make choices, prioritize.
The good is always the enemy of the best. Always have your highest purpose in mind when making decisions.
Proactive beats (always!!) reactive. Be an initiator, rather than a reactor
The important needs to take precedence over the urgent
So my challenge for you for this week is the following:
1. Take a moment to list all the things you should do this week. Classify in 4 quadrants and prioritize action:
High Importance / High Urgency: Tackle these tasks first
High Importance / Low Urgency: Set deadlines and schedule in your daily routine
Low Importance / High Urgency: Find efficient ways to get them done. Delegate if possible
Low Importance / Low Urgency: Delegate them. If you absolutely need to do them, schedule a time block per week out of your prime time to handle them.
2. After doing the previous exercise, ask yourself the following questions:
Where do I need to work smarter instead of harder?
What must I change to stop trying t have it all?
What good things can I stop doing in order to do the best?
What must I do to become more proactive instead of reactive?
What can I do to stop doing urgent buy unimportant things?
We go deeper in these and other principles of priorities in our mastermind sessions. There is a full session dedicated to it. If you would like to join our next mastermind group (in person or virtual) on "Developing the leader within you", don't hesitate to contact me (details below). Same thing if you would like to organize a dedicated mastermind for your team or inside your organisation. Or maybe if you have in mind helping your team with just a session about managing priorities. Let me help you and help them.
As usual, you can contact me if you want me to help you in any way. Like having a look to your priorities split and challenging it with you, for example.
Let me know how it goes. And don't hesitate to forward this message to anyone around you who may need it. They are very much welcome in our community!
Create an awesome week for you and those around you! 😊
Ezequiel
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