FOUNDATION BRICK #2: Focus Your TIME

STRATEGY #5 Block Out Your Not Negotiable Time

If staff book appointments into your calendar and you find you're just spending your day with back to back meetings and no time to eat, let along breathe; then this is a must for you.

Everyone in your business (not just you) needs uninterrupted time to think, to catch up on things, to plan what needs to be done.

But when calendars have lots of free meeting times, they undoubtedly get filled.

So the simple way to change this is for everyone to block out uninterrupted time in calendars to do XYZ.  And it needs to be at a time when they're most productive and at their peak eg morning or afternoon.  This then becomes a not negotiable meeting which cannot be moved except for a family emergency.

I suggested this to one of my coaching clients who took a while to implement the strategy. But once she did, her response was 'I didn't think something so simple would work but after blocking out 2 hours every afternoon, I get so much done and I leave on time because staff know not to interrupt me and I'm focused on my tasks'.

So grab your diary and implement this strategy right now.

STRATEGY #6 Review Meetings

How many times do you attend a meeting which starts and finishes late, has no agenda or you realise you didn't need to be there at all?

If your answer is 'most' or 'too many', then isn't it time to re-look at the meetings you either call, chair or attend to ensure they are serving a purpose?

Because if they're not, what's the point?

Things to consider include:
• Start and finish on time – one of my 'not negotiables'

• Purpose

• Participants

• Frequency

• Agenda

• Pre-reading or work to be done beforehand

• Minutes – which could be recorded on a phone and transcribed

• Medium – face to face, Zoom, phone

• Tracking of actions to be completed

If you want some help with this, check out Daniel Pink's book When because he advocates meetings should be held for only 3 reasons: Discussion, Decisions and Information.

STRATEGY #7 Stop Using Email To Track Tasks and Communicate With Staff

When email first came into our lives, its purpose was actually external communication – a way for people outside of our organisation to send us documents, ideas etc in a quicker and more user friendly way than a fax machine.

Unfortunately, many of us have forgotten this and use email for EVERYTHING including telling staff what tasks to do, advising everyone of updates and my personal pet hate - ccing everyone into them instead of just who needs to know etc.

Result: Too many emails in the inbox – many of which could be communicated in a different and better way.

So if you're still using email to communicate with your team and track tasks, I would highly recommend you look at cloud based alternatives like Slack, Asana, Monday.com or one of the many other task tracking/communication tools available as a better alternative to using email.

Not only will your inbox reduce dramatically but you'll be able to manage tasks and communication within your team much more easily and transparently.