1. Set clear goals for your day, both professionally and personally If you do not have clear goals set for your day, then you will more likely fall for distractions and interruptions that may prevent or delay you from achieving the things that are most important to you. Without goals, it makes it difficult to make wise decisions on what should get your immediate attention and what can wait. It can also result in lots of wasted time, unnecessary stress and poor work/life balance. 2. Follow the 80/20 principle 20% of what you do produces 80% of your results. Schedule an hour and a half (20% of an 8 hour day) of uninterrupted time each day to work on what's most important to you. During this time, inform your staff that you are not to be disturbed. Close your door and then work, uninterrupted! Sometimes you may not be able to realistically accomplish everything you would like to do, but if you do make time to work on what's important to you, you can steadily achieve your goals. 3. Teach people how to use your time Tell people how you make decisions and how you prefer to receive information that requires a decision from you. This teaches people how to get the best from you. Be consistent and follow through on your word. 4. Every conversation should have a purpose Let your staff know what you expect of them when they meet with you. If they can't summarize what they need to tell you in one or two sentence, they are not ready to talk to you. 5. "Can that request wait?" Ask that question every time you are interrupted and asked to do an unexpected or unscheduled request. Most times we stop what we're doing and start working on the new request because we assume it needs to be done immediately. However, more times than not, the request is not an urgent matter and can wait. Be sure to add the new request to your to-do list and follow up with the person. If you don't then people will start to tell you everything is urgent. 6. Do not keep anything in your head Get all tasks, big or small, out of your head and on to a to-do list. The list can be electronic or paper-based. Choose what works best for you. You can work a lot faster and more efficiently if you only have one place to look for all your action items. It also makes it a lot easier to make decisions of incoming items and interruptions. If you can see all the things that you need to do in one place, when new or unexpected tasks come in, you can easily prioritize them. It's difficult to prioritize your work if you don't have a good handle of all that you need to do.
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