The secret of how to do everything on time

It seems to you that there are not enough hours in a day? Try to remove one item from your plan for the day to come. This will tell today Lisa Evans (Lisa Evans).

So, give the word to Lisa!

Looking at a long list of current affairs, we all dream about an extra hour in a day to cope with all the tasks. Maybe after that we will be able to strike a balance between work and personal life , which constantly evades us.
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In 2010, a coalition of Canadian women said that 24 hours is not enough for normal work and family life. They also spoke in favor of having 25 hours a day.

But since the extra hour is unlikely to appear in the future, an expert in the field of leadership and productivity, Tasha Eurich, argues that this is not required. In her new book “True Leadership: Happy People, High Performance, and How to Combine Them, ” Oyrich said: “The key to balancing work and personal life is not extending the day by an hour, but getting rid of one unnecessary task every day.”

Oyrich bases his idea, “One less task”, on the principle of diminishing productivity. “Investing more time in something does not provide the best result,” she notes.

She formulated her principle after the former boss said that in his company, he would have preferred even smarter lazy people to his clever workaholics.

"Lazy, not because they do not do something, but in the sense that they find the shortest way to accomplish the tasks set," explained Oyrich. “Awareness of the need to stop wasting time and energy is just as important as understanding the optimal time to get started.”

It’s not so easy to remove some tasks from the to-do list. To help with this, Oyrich advises to ask yourself 3 questions that will help in achieving the goal.

1. Can I spend less time on this task?

“About 64% of managers think that they have too many priorities,” says Oyrich.
Instead of grabbing at all things at the same time, the principle “One less task” requires taking a step back, reviewing each task and determining whether it has priority over the others. Limiting the number of priorities will allow you to focus on important things that will add value to the work as a whole.

“People are too overwhelmed, they become intellectually lazy,” notes Tasha Oyrich. "The bottom line is that they will have more room for thought if they ask themselves a couple of questions before work." Setting priorities in the task sheet will help not only to be more productive, but also more successful.

During her research, Oirih found out that a group of managers with a growing number of priorities showed less impact, while the team that focused on a small number of tasks achieved industry growth. Focusing mental and physical energy on key things, the absence of a waste of time to achieve results is the first step to performing only the necessary tasks.

2. Can I delegate this task to another person or group?

Oyrich notes that delegation of authority is one of the most important skills that we do not know how to successfully dispose of. Businessmen, in particular, often have difficulty reassigning complex tasks to others.

“To feel its worth is proud. It is more difficult to abandon the tasks that have become part of the entrepreneur’s personality, ”says Oirih, who herself faced with the difficulty in reassigning the tasks to her business partners. “As a rule, the tasks that we need to delegate are precisely those that we ourselves have little knowledge of.”

Hiring an accountant who saved her from spreadsheets, Oirih was able to focus on the things she really likes to do.

3. Should I do this task at all, or is it unnecessary for anyone?

In his book, Oirih mentions, as an example, one director, who spent 5 hours a quarter, compiling a report for her four-year period with her team. But in the last year, she noticed that no one in the company commented on her report. She decided not to do it at all, in order to understand whether anyone would notice it. What was the result? It turned out that business priorities have changed, and for the last 2 years no one has looked at this report.

The story described demonstrates an example that adding an item to the task list simply because “you always do it” can be ineffective in a specific period of time.

To understand whether to leave a task on the list or not, ask yourself whether it will justify the time spent on its execution. Weekly departmental meetings are exactly the thing that can be discarded. Ask team members if they consider the practice of such meetings effective, or meetings are held "by inertia." Understanding the usefulness of the task will allow either to keep it in the list, or to abandon it forever.

PS This topic is another article - How to achieve more by doing less . Recommended!

Translated by Vyacheslav Davidenko, founder of MBA Consult