31%

Proportion of employers who plan to provide more flexible work arrangements in 2009
Take advantage of your time.

Let’s take a look at a simple and direct process for getting things done and organizing your life. It is a combination of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Successful People and Leo Babauta’s ideas on living simply (www.zenhabits.net). By taking some key ideas from each method, I have come up with a simple, focused way of moving through your personal and professional life with a sense of direction and accomplishment.

Begin by collecting everything in one place.

Turn over every rock. Do you keep some projects hanging out there in the ether, because you hfave grown accustomed to always being behind in some part of your professional or personal life? After you have collected everything, whether it is the hanging chads in your email box, folders and projects on your desk, or other follow-up activities that need to be taken care of, begin to process and organize them, remembering the 80/20 rule.

Now ask yourself what projects, when completed, will give you the most mental freedom, and prioritize those. Really. Use mental freedom as the primary determinant, and then consider timelines. Some items have imminent deadlines, but I would like to challenge you to consider your Mental Freedom Factor first.

As you go through this process, remember the words of Stephen Covey: "Begin with the End in Mind." It is amazing how quickly priorities snap into focus when you consider the larger picture of your life and dreams. If you use this as a meter for what is important, you will find that even difficult or challenging days are enjoyable and worthwhile, because they further the goals that you have for your life.

This even works for the niggly details that you may be procrastinating about. Just think of the energy you spend not taking care of those tasks or not following up with people you have been avoiding. Now imagine that energy being spent on making a long term production plan for your department, designing a much needed workflow change, making strategic hiring decisions or going back to school to complete that degree.

The main message here is this: FREE YOURSELF.



Next, consider what your Most Important Tasks (MITs) are. This term, coined by Leo Babauta, the author of The Power of Less, gives us a way to categorize the things that really matter to you. So, with your life goals in mind, what is one of your MITs? Working out? Writing? Completing particular tasks at work? Designing fresh training material? Long-term planning for your department or company? Whatever it is, spend the first part of your day doing it. Block out the first 30 minutes (or more, if possible), before you even start to answer emails. By the time you begin your typical work day, you have already made headway in the area that is most important to you.

If you are following this plan, you will have isolated those tasks that will have the most impact on your life and prioritized them, and you are doing the MIT of your choice each day. Now it’s time to take a look at your week.

Review your list on a weekly basis.

I like a weekly status check, because a daily one often leaves you thinking that you are running behind. Let’s face it; there are many unexpected byways in a typical day. The weekly review gives you a chance to recover from those detours before reprimanding yourself for not accomplishing enough.

Finally, make next week’s list. Remember to begin with the end in mind. Are there some tasks that you didn’t accomplish which shouldn’t be moved to next week? Maybe it is time to peel them off of your “to-do” list for good. Others may warrant being transferred over to next week. Look at the things you accomplished and put the next action step for each one on your list for next week. In all of this, remember to keep the MIT at the beginning of every day, before you even begin to bite into your list.


By taking the simple steps we have talked about here, the window to your freedom will begin to crack open!