Managing Your Day

Peter Bregman starts out with “An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day” post like this:

“Yesterday started with the best of intentions. I walked into my office in the morning with a vague sense of what I wanted to accomplish. Then I sat down, turned on my computer and checked my e-mail. Two hours later, after fighting several fires, solving other people's problems and dealing with whatever happened to be thrown at me through my computer and phone, I could hardly remember what I had set out to accomplish when I first turned on my computer.”

I can relate too well to this as many of my days seem to silently and swiftly become pulled off my intended course. Sometimes it’s simply amazing to me where the time goes without me being aware of its passing or cognizant of what was accomplished!

To help us all stay on course, here are Bregman’s three steps for keeping focus throughout the day.

Step 1 (5 minutes) Set Plan for Day. Before turning on your computer, sit down with a blank piece of paper and decide what will make this day highly successful. What can you realistically accomplish that will further your goals and allow you to leave at the end of the day feeling like you've been productive and successful? Write those things down. Now, take your calendar and schedule those things into time slots, placing the hardest and most important items at the beginning of the day. And by the beginning of the day I mean, if possible, before even checking your e-mail. If your entire list does not fit into your calendar, reprioritize your list. If you want to get something done, decide when and where you're going to do it. Otherwise, take it off your list.

Step 2 (1 minute every hour) Refocus. Set your watch, phone or computer to ring every hour. When it rings, take a deep breath, look at your list and ask yourself if you spent your last hour productively. Then look at your calendar and deliberately recommit to how you are going to use the next hour. Manage your day hour by hour. Don't let the hours manage you.

Step 3 (5 minutes) Review. Shut off your computer and review your day.

• What worked?
• Where did you focus?
• Where did you get distracted?
• What did you learn that will help you be more productive tomorrow?
  

The power of implementing these simple steps into your daily flow is in their predictability. Doing the same thing repeatedly in the same way over and over again creates the habit of focus. By re-focusing throughout the day it allows you to adjust your course of action if you find yourself being pulled into “busy work” instead of “productive work.”

I’m going to give Bregman’s suggestions a try (they won’t take much time), how about you?