Prioritize and then go into attack mode.” This advice is a great way to set yourself up for success and ensure you are working on the right things at the right time. Jason Self, in his book, Organize Tomorrow Today, offers this advice: “Every day, spend three to five minutes listing your ‘3 Most Important’ tasks for tomorrow and your ‘1 Must-Do’ priority. Say NO to anything that gets in the way of meeting today’s execution challenge.ĭr.Schedule time (early in the day) to work on these most important tasks that lead toward the MILESTONE.Determine what you would need to do TODAY to get to the next MILESTONE.Break the GOAL into MILESTONES (think of these as gates you must walk through to get to the final destination).Reaffirm what precisely it is you are trying to accomplish call this your GOAL.If you struggle with knowing or doing the most important things, try this: When you combine these two lessons, “Big Rocks” and “Urgent and Important,” you have the tools you need to ensure you are investing your time in your most important tasks.
His point is that if you fill your time with small, non-priorities, you won’t have the time needed to focus on your most important tasks. And sand represents the hundreds of small things we do every day that eat away at our calendars. Big Rocks are your most important priorities. Covey who introduced us to the concept of Big Rocks First. If you or your team are focused solely on the urgent, at the expense of the important, it will be tough for you to meet or exceed your goals. Therefore, leaders need to be clear on their priorities, both for themselves and their teams. It was Stephen Covey who warned us, “The noise of the urgent creates the illusion of importance.” He used what is commonly known as the “Eisenhower Matrix” to show how you consider everything you could be doing on the 2×2 matrix of urgent versus important. The question to ask is, “Busy doing what?” Are you working on your highest priority activities right now, or are you being pulled away by noisy urgencies that always seem to be there? I know you are busy we are all busy.