What Did You Do Today?

For consultants, sales professionals, partners and other highly compensated executives like yourself, you must have a clearly defined set of objectives you wish to complete by the end of the day in order to remain at the top in your field. Every day, over time, makes up a life time of frivolous activities, or a life time of accomplishing great goals.

The choices you make on a day-to-day basis determine your success or your failure in life.

Often, we go into the office or start the day from our hotel room, without a plan, without a set of objectives we wish to accomplish before 5PM rolls around. Now I say 5PM, knowing my day ends often after 7PM, and I assume your days do too. But the critical things we have to get done, like completing the proposal for a client, setting up our appointments with clients, or completing some project for a client, needs to be done before 5PM, largely because we are dependent on others in the office or others who do not have the same work ethic as us.

But we must decide BEFORE the day starts out, what it is we wish to achieve today. So every morning ask yourself; "What 5 to 10 items on are list of things to do today, will advance us to our success?"

This is the question you must ask at the beginning of the day. This question will focus your energies on the things that matter.

As series of questions that will help you stay on track, that you can ask at key points of the day are important as well.

The question you must ask at 12 noon is this; "Did I accomplish this morning what I intended to accomplish for the day yet?" And, "Did I even start on these?"

Asking these questions at the mid-point of the day will light a fire in your belly. Often we are at the mercy of everyone else's demands. We are doing meaningless tasks that suck up time and zap us of our energy. That is the real danger here. We feel like we are working, yet in reality we are slaves to the agendas of others. We take on tasks that are meaningless to our success. Soon, after months of doing someone else's work, we find ourselves behind the proverbial eight ball and scrambling to get back on track.

The 3PM question is to ask the same question as you did at 12 noon. This allows you to knock all the stuff that doesn't matter off your desk and laptop and focuses you on the results you need to accomplish.

So at 5PM, you have to ask yourself; "Did I accomplish the thing I set out to do today?"

The key times to focus on your list of things to be done are;

1. Before you start your day (preferably before 7AM and before you touch email!!!!)
2. A gut check at 12 Noon. This will provide you an hour of uninterrupted time if you have to catch up.
3. Another gut check at 3PM. This allows you to clear the deck and man the battle stations for two hours in order to catch up.
4. At 5PM - to review your list of objectives and see where you fell down or what obstacles got in your way today. And then taking the items off your today's "To Do List" and carry them over to tomorrow's "To Do List."

When you have this kind of focus, the results you will achieve will be tremendous in a short period of time. And your energy levels will skyrocket!

Good Luck! Joe

Productivity Gains - Ask Your Boss

In my previous posts, you should have gotten a process that not only increases your productivity by 25 percent - at minimum, but a process that allows you to do the RIGHT things at the expense of the WRONG things.

Writing things down forces you to think about the question: "How important is this?" And you may want to use this question, as it pertains directly to you and your performance: "Is this what I was hired to do?"

The last question is key. We may feel like we should do everything we are asked to do or comes by our desk (or email/blackberry/etc.), because that is what a team player does, but in fact, it may be the wrong thing to do, at the wrong time.

If you are stuck - and I mean you have too many "competing priorities" - you should take your list of 1-1's and 1-2's and your 2-1's and 2-2's to your boss. First, your boss will say, "Where did you get that system and how does it work?" So be prepared to explain it before you walk into his or her office.

Second, your boss will see that there are too many competing priorities. He or she will wonder how in the world are you doing what you should be doing. He will then - or should - think how can he keep you protected from all the requests you are getting.

Third, he will tell you what he feels is important. You will immediately see where you are out of sync and why you are having difficulty communicating some times.

Fourth, in his mind, he will see you as organized and wonder why his other people aren't as organized as you. This is not the reason you go down to his office however. This is a bad things to do, because your boss will smell out the sneakiness of such a move if you are insincere about asking for help.

So the list - the MASTER LIST and the DAILY TO DO LIST is key to getting things done.