You’re not busy you're reactive

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You’re not busy you're reactive

I don’t think there’s anyone who wouldn’t appreciate a bit of extra time in the day but really, how good are you at planning?

Brian Tracey is famous for telling us:
“It takes only about 10 to 12 minutes for you to plan out your day, but this small investment of time will save you up to two hours (100 to 120 minutes) in wasted time and diffused effort through the day.”

Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

It’s no wonder then that we feel so busy.
In his article Time Management Facts and Figures Dr Donald E. Wetmore provides some interesting figures on how often we are interrupted during a day:

“The average person gets 1 interruption every 8 minutes, or approximately 7 an hour, or 50-60 per day. The average interruption takes 5 minutes, totalling about 4 hours or 50% of the average workday. 80% of those interruptions are typically rated as "little value" or "no value" creating approximately 3 hours of wasted time per day.


Many of us can relate to this reactive way of working. Even though we feel we have planned our day we can still end the day with a long to do list and feel as though we have been busy and unproductive all day.

Many of us are simply not that great at planning, turning up to work and hoping for the best. “Not me” I hear you cry, “I plan”, and good on you if you are blocking out time in your calendar to attend meetings and do key reporting tasks, but I wonder do you block out time to strategise, to delegate, to read and think?

I have used the Quadrant model in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People for many years now to help me decide which jobs I need to do myself and which I can comfortably delegate. 

More recently I have modified it, as I have started to give myself permission to be less than perfect and more decisive about what I will and won’t do. 
I now have four categories of task based on Stephen Coveys wonderful model.
Rather than think about which tasks are important and urgent etc., I now think about which tasks I can burn through, which tasks I can simply clear from my list without doing, which ones I can delegate and which ones I must be responsible for actioning.

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These are my ABCD tasks.  Let me explain….

AACTION

I must action these, they may be reactive or planned but I am responsible for them.  If they are able to be planned, then they go straight into the calendar.  If they are reactive I must make room in my day or plan for them based on urgency.  B and D tasks which can be moved are moved to accommodate any reactive tasks.

B – BURN

These tasks are my old to do list favourites. They take up a lot of space on the list and many of them can be eliminated quickly and with little effort. They often don’t need to be perfect, they just need to be done.  I set aside an hour in the morning to get through as many as I can.  Once my hour is up, I can keep going or plan another hour later in the day, or later in the week.  Getting through a chunk of these burn tasks sets me up for the day like a good workout.  Having started off feeling productive, I am encouraged to keep being productive.

C – CLEAR

These are my new favourite tasks because I neither have to action, burn or delegate them, I simply clear them from my life and move on.  I recently gave myself permission to do less of the things which don’t value my time or add value to the lives of my family.  

"A good example of C tasks is the myriad of ‘pinned’ emails in my inbox that I will get too later… and I never do. "

I now save these to a folder called Clear and once a week I delete everything in there that I haven’t looked at during the week.  It’s a very satisfying thing to do on a Friday afternoon (or whenever your week finishes). Beware not to be tempted to sift through them for another hour making sure you are safe to delete them, trust me, since starting this practice I have never deleted anything that was life or death.

D – DELEGATE

These tasks I delegate.  I understand that they are better done by someone else either because that someone else is more skilled than me, more patient than me, more SOMETHING than me……

I am careful to ensure I find the right person for the job, invest time explaining my expectations, be clear about the best way to design the process and then add in a measure for follow up.  Then I can step away.

How are you planning your day, your week, your life?  
Are you giving yourself permission to say no?
or do you have an ever expanding to do list?