How to improve your time investment?
How to improve your time investment?
This mini-mission comes from my performance coaching work with corporate executives. These clients wanted to improve and accelerate their performance. I didn't create the mini-mission and am not sure who did.
If you are reading this and know who I should attribute to to please let me know.
Onwards.
Mini-mission
You'll need you diary, a printer and three highlighter pens - red, orange, and green.
Print out the last six and next six months from your diary.
Red highlighter. Go through the last six months in your diary and highlight the things that were a waste of your and the company’s time. Things you wish you’d deleted.
Orange highlighter: Go through those last six months again and highlight the things that someone else could or should have done for you. Things you wish you’d delegated.
Calculate and write down the percentage of your time you’ve highlighted in red and orange. You’ll probably find that fifty percent or more of your time has been spent on things that should have been either deleted or delegated.
Yellow Highlighter: Now highlight the times during the last six month where you were developing, learning or preparing yourself (or your team coaching/feedback/communication) for the next stage. Even though these activities are your greatest source of leverage, you’ll probably find there only a few, if any, yellow highlighted items.
Green Highlighter: Finally highlight the times when you were playing to your strengths, using your unique abilities and were the only person in their organisation who really could have done what you were doing. These should be the times when you felt ‘in the zone’, work was effortless, and felt like fun. These times - when you were the only person in the organisation who could do what you did - are invariably the times when you’re adding the value for which you’re really being paid.
Ask yourself: If I could fill up my week with green highlights and delete or delegate all the other things, how much of a breakthrough would that achieve in my life and how would that impact on the results of the organisation?
Now look ahead at the next six months. Apply the same process, with the coloured pens, to the next six months of your schedule.
What do you notice that could be deleted, or delegated? How else could you use that time in ways that involve you playing to your strengths, or using your unique abilities?
That's it.