Picking up from my last post on time managment…

I got into some bad habits as to my own time management was concerned.

First, I started doing the small and or unimportant things early in the morning, rationalizing to myself that this would leave me some good blocks of time for my more difficult and also more strategic issues.

WRONG – the best time to work strategically (working on your business) is the first thing, this is when you are sharpest, when you are your most creative and when your concentration is highest.

Second, even though I do monthly, weekly and daily planning and schedules, I stopped reviewing them always at the end of the time frame. I was telling myself that there were good reasons for not reviewing them – heck, I am always productive, I always get things done.

WRONG – the lined out items became fewer and fewer which led to…

Third, I started pushing things to Saturday – “my free day” again rationalizing to myself that there were good reasons for this – I’m busy guy. And fourth I stopped using my accountability partner to check my progress.

WRONG on both counts… again! This caused a major upheaval in my household, my put her foot down about all work and no play.

My solution – go back to the basics:
1) I got back together with my accountability partner. It’s too easy to rationalize to yourself. It’s much harder to blow smoke at your accountability partner.
2) I started working on the strategic things first thing during the day – depending on coaching appointments.
3) At the end of each day I went back to reviewing my schedule to see what I got done and why.

The results are in, for the last month I have been more productive than I have been for at least six months. My sense of accomplishment and achievement were sky-high. My Saturdays became semi-free (I still have two major projects that I knew would take some Saturday time) and I am a much happier camper.

So, the moral of the story is – never, never, never get away from the sound fundamentals of any discipline. There is a reason they are sound fundamentals – THEY WORK!!!