We should each wonder to ourselves, how we can reach our highest level personally as a leader. How can we manage how we interact with family, customers, employees, media, the government, or other organizations with the best effort we can personally give for success. Reaching a level of personal development in this way will benefit our personal and professional lives. The way time and personal effort is used is crucial in meeting our goals in all the areas of our life.
If you have not yet asked yourself; how many hours of work and hard-effort am I willing to put into accomplishing my goals everyday? Just 8 hours, or am I also willing to work on weekends, or holidays? Do you have a work environment to work and how have you set up that environment to accommodate that or what other improvements could you make? Following work hours a day, how many hours a week are you willing to work? In your professional life, look to ways on how to provide direction, create alignment, win support, or gather info to help progress towards your goal. Spend time with other professionals and keep in touch, make friends to create a network of opportunities. Make effective use of decision making, not too excessive to micro-manage, but not too little to encourage initiative.
Time Well Spent
First, you will get no where without proper rest and fitness. Many CEO’s sleep between 6 and 8 hours a day, and have workout regimens that can last between 30 – 45 minutes. Could you devote only a quarter of your day or just 6 hours, for activities not involved in working? Will you have many small segments of free time or very few long segments of personal downtime, for reflection and thought? Even with your actions being heavily focused on your end goal, it is still important to perform activities typical of normal life to stay grounded. Measure how much time you keep to that agenda. An important tool to making progress on varying considerations is an audit of time spent, and progress made towards goals. Compare your agenda to your schedule compare how effective your schedule was to progress towards your goals. An additional temporary agenda could be made for changed circumstances. Become experienced at being able to shield from distractions and unnecessary activities.
Teamwork
How can you best manage organizational units, work streams and make varying important decisions. Create an agenda, to help coach coworkers to the opportunities when present. Spend time on who or what is important. Email and social media improves productivity, and speed of communication with time reduction, but is ineffective without thoughtful and introspective conversations. Electronic communications overuse is also an issue to be cautious of. What are the driving expectations or norms and are they all set up to help you be the best that you can be? Internalize the agenda and out from it create perspective for yourself and other users to approach the objective. When part of a team, be able to identify the opportunities to inform, support, encourage, and integrate the work of others.
How can you best manage organizational units, work streams and make varying important decisions. In order to be part of a meeting, you need to be essential. Personal time is important whether it is spending time with family, recharging or whether it is exercise helps maintain health. During a crisis be visible and personally involved, avoid defensiveness and show concern for those affected. Back-to-back appointments should not be a norm, they can be great to increase progress on specific projects, but should not be the norm. We may never be able to account the value of spontaneous interactions or self-reflection. Have an agenda listing top priorities and make sure to update that periodically.
Tools for the Job
When choosing your tools, you want to make sure to be ready to take down any information relevant to the end goal. Choose what items will be most important for shaping your perspective on the endeavor.
- Agendas – Item, Time Allotted / Executive
- Planners
- Organizers
- Journals
- Risk and Issue Log
- Budget Tasks Log
- Project Tasks Log
- Prioritized Tasks List
- Contacts
- Appointments / Time Roll
- Schedule List
- To-Do Lists
- Notes Section
- Countdown Form – Objective, Relevant Tasks and Time frames
New Creative Solution 