Get More Done in Less Time
“Simplicity boils down to two steps: Identify the essential. Eliminate the rest.”
–LEO BABAUTA
When you care about winning, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. There’s always more that you feel you should do, and there never seems to be time to get to all the tasks that matter. Winning Well managers recognize they can’t do it all and have a system to identify what matters most and know what to let go.
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“David, I just don’t have time. There is so much to do that some days I just want to give up!” Halisee was a midlevel manager in a large software company. She’d sought out coaching because the demands of her job were nearly unbearable. Between the needs of her team members and her supervisor’s expectations, she’d been working 60-hour weeks, and her health had deteriorated. She was not winning, and Winning Well seemed out of reach. She hated looking at her calendar with its wall-to-wall meetings, often with two or three appointments competing for the same window of time.
Perhaps you can empathize. Managers face an unending stream of information, problems to solve, decisions to make, fires to put out, interruptions from email, texts, phone calls, messaging apps—and that’s not to mention the projects they want to work on to build a better future. At times it can seem like you’ll never get ahead. Managers who win well focus their time and energy on the activities that produce results and build relationships.
ACKNOWLEDGE YOU CAN’T DO EVERYTHING
First, you must acknowledge that you cannot do everything. We talk with leaders all the time who are overwhelmed because they haven’t come to terms with this reality. We call this Winning Well approach to time “infinite need, finite me.” At any moment in time there are literally thousands of things you could be doing, but you get to do only one. That’s it. One.
Before you can focus your time and energy for results, you have to reach an understanding with yourself that you can do only one thing at any given moment. It’s foolish to believe you really make a difference on that muted conference call while you also try to help the employee who’s come in for a quick piece of advice. You’re not giving either situation the attention it needs. If the conference call isn’t productive, see Chapter 5. If the employee is coming to you with a problem she should be solving herself, see Chapter 14. If both are vital, do them separately.
After that, make peace with the fact that the work never ends. You know this intellectually, but when you truly internalize and make peace with the fact that there’s always another thing you could do but won’t, you will experience the freedom to focus on what is most important right now.
Infinite need, finite me.
KNOW WHAT MATTERS MOST IN YOUR ORGANIZATION
Once you’ve made peace with the reality of infinite need, finite me, it’s time to get crystal clear about WMM: what matters most. In your work, what are the two or three most important organizational values, and what are the most important outcomes that move your relationships and results forward? You may put together a long list, but do the work to trim it down to the two or three most critical values and activities. What really drives success for you and your team? You need this clarity in order to take the next steps.
IDENTIFY YOUR MOST IMPORTANT ACTIVITY
Once you know the values and outcomes that matter most to your organization and the success of your group, you’re ready to organize your day around your MIT—the most important thing. Your MIT is the single most important task you can do that day.
At the start of each day, look over your projects, tasks, and todos and select the one item that is the MIT for that day. Hint: It should align with your WMM values and activities. Your MIT will often change from day to day. Be clear about that one thing. Now you’re ready for the next step.
DO IT
Do your MIT first.
You will be distracted. Real issues will come up, you’ll face a change of direction, your boss will need something—life happens. Be clear about your MIT and do it first—before email, before voice mail, before checking in with your boss or your team. Whether it takes 30, 60, or 90 minutes, you’ll be done and ready to deal with everything else.
Think about a normal work year. If you work 50 weeks each year, that’s 250 work days, minus a few holidays. That makes 250 MITs. What would happen to your people, your results, and your career if you seriously accomplished 250 MITs each year? Most managers are shocked at what they can achieve.
And remember: While you’re focused on your MIT, be sure that your employees know theirs and that you are not the one to interrupt them or keep them from it.
RULE OF ONE
Focus your time and energy with the Rule of One. We mentioned earlier that you can do only one thing at a time. When you work on your MIT, turn off your phone, your email, your Facebook and Twitter notifications (unless like in some social media companies, your MIT really is to check Twitter), and focus on that MIT.
Brooke was vice president for a global education nonprofit. She chose to implement the Rule of One by designating 90 minutes in the morning and 90 minutes in the afternoon as “head down” time that could only be interrupted for true emergencies. She created the time so that she could focus on her daily MITs, but she discovered that the entire office’s productivity improved because everyone else did the same thing.
If you spend time with successful C-level executives, you’ll see that they do not multitask. They focus. They’re all in. Concentrating. They’re confident that their focus will make an impact. They’re humble enough to realize that their brain won’t offer great insights in scattered directions at the same time.
There’s almost nothing in life that can’t wait 90 minutes, and if it can’t wait, someone will come find you. The Rule of One means that you give one thing at a time your full attention. When you need to change focus, do so intentionally and fully.
Your brain and body function better with rest. This is why “infinite need, finite me” is the foundation to getting more done in less time. We’ve worked with countless User managers who haven’t come to terms with their own limitations. They run themselves ragged with little sleep and no vacation, and they don’t invest time in important personal relationships. Busy doesn’t mean productive. Be intentional with time to restore your productivity.
If this is difficult for you, we understand. David hates having to sleep. The world is so interesting and full of amazing things to learn and do that for many years he operated on five hours of sleep every night. But he paid a price. He got sick, gained weight, was irritable, and had less energy to make decisions. People vary, but most adults thrive with seven to eight hours of sleep. What do you need to renew your mind and physical health? If you are constantly tired and run down and can’t focus or hold an idea in your head for very long, do yourself and your people a favor: rest. You’ll get more done.
EXERCISE
Most managers we’ve worked with say they’re “too busy to exercise.” They just don’t know how they can fit it into their packed schedules.
It’s a paradox, but when you carve out time to exercise, that energy and time is returned to you many times over. Your thinking is clearer, your physical energy increases, you sleep better, and stress doesn’t bother you as much. Do walking meetings rather than sitting in a conference room. Exercise during your favorite TV show. Get your heart rate up every day and you’ll get more done in less time.
Know your “Why?” Why are you doing what you’re doing? This is the answer to many questions, especially when you don’t feel like doing it, and it genuinely takes real effort to manage. What is your purpose? Why did you take this role?
There are five reasons managers usually take their jobs. The five “Ps” of management motivation are:
Power
Prestige
Purse or Pennies
Purpose
People
When you work from the first three motivations, you often run out of steam because there’s never enough power, fame, or money for your sacrifice and work. When you lack motivation, come back to your big “Why?”—the people and purpose in your work. Let it ground you and motivate you.
KNOW YOURSELF
What gives you energy and what depletes it?
David is an introvert. He loves to be with people, but he also knows that extended time with people depletes his energy. If he goes too long without solitude, it can actually make him sick. When he conducts multiday workshops, he will often explain that he wants to be his best for the workshop and will forgo one night of fun with the participants in order to recharge his batteries. Karin’s an extrovert. She loves ideas and action. She shows up better after a night-of-fun energy exchange. When she spends too much time writing nonstop or on organizational details, it drains her. She can do it, but she is deliberate about when and how much, and she may need a nap.
Know your daily energy patterns and schedule activities that suit your energy. When do you do your best thinking? For many people, it’s in the morning while their brain and body are fresh. If you have an afternoon dip, can you use that time to do routine tasks that don’t require as much energy?
MAKE FEWER DECISIONS
You use energy to make decisions. The more decisions you make in a day, the more difficult it becomes to make the next one. Stop making decisions you don’t need to make.
• Insist that people on your team make decisions they should make.
• Unsubscribe from unhelpful email that saps your decision-making energy.
• Make low-risk decisions quickly. If the consequences are minimal, make decisions quickly and move on.
• Make decisions once. This is an old and essential productivity tool. Look at an email once, then either delete it, act on it, schedule it for future action, put it in a file related to its project, or put it in a “maybe read later” file.
NO MORE LOOSE ENDS
The final way to ensure that you get more done in less time is to ruthlessly deal with any activities that sap your time. We’ve given you tools to address the biggest culprits: meetings, decisions, problems, and delegation. End every meeting with the Winning Well Meeting Formula: Who does what, by when, and how will you know? Bring clarity and accountability to every meeting, every decision, and every delegated task so you don’t have to waste an ounce of energy chasing after unfinished work. Be consistent with your accountability. These little investments of time add up to weeks, if not months, of found time. They also free your mind from worry and anxiety, which in turn allows you to better focus on the task at hand.
YOUR WINNING WELL ACTION PLAN
1. Embrace “infinite need, finite me.” Identify one or two specific activities you could stop doing to free up time for more important work.
2. Look at your next three days. Right now, identify your MIT for each of those days. Write them down.
3. At the end of each of the next three days, give yourself a grade “A” to “F” on how well you spent your time on the MIT.
4. Take a piece of paper and make two columns. On the left side list all the things that make you feel more energetic and alive. On the right side list the things that deplete your energy. Now make a specific plan for how you can do more of at least two items in column one, and less of at least two items in column two.
5. Do you get the rest and exercise you need to be at your best on most days? If not, what is one change you can make to help yourself in this area?
6. Where do you need to be intentional about clarity and accountability with meetings, decisions, problems, and delegation? Are there any other frequent energy drains you need to address?