How Can A Story About Rocks Help You Manage Your Business?

How can a story about rocks help you manage your business?

So often you talk to people and time management comes up. I prefer to manage my priorities because I believe when you do, you're actually more productive.

I once worked with a guy who came into the office at 8am each day. And proudly told everyone, but what he didn't tell them was that from 8am - 8.50am he ate his breakfast and read the paper (true story). At 8.50 he would start his computer so that at 9am when everyone rolled in he 'looked like' he was already working.

My question is - do he achieve any of his business priorities from 8am - 9am? Of course he didn't.

Do you manage your time or priorities?
In my corporate life I lead large teams of people. I worked with the management teams on the difference between managing time and managing priorities. And when they got it, productivity soared because they were working on activities that mattered rather than just doing stuff.

Time management is about having a plan of things to do each day and ticking the list off as you go. At the end of the day you have a sense of achievement but have you completed activities that will help you drive your business strategy forward.

As Stephen Covey put "is your ladder against the right wall?"

What does managing priorities mean?
When you manage to time it is all about just doing stuff, but some of the stuff might not be helping you to move your business forward. It is easy to work on fun stuff, and distractions have quite often take over as we find ourselves following one thread to another, procrastination wins!. One of the worst inventions I think is email notifier as all it does is distract you from what you are doing to go and do something else, perhaps less important.

So at the end of the day you may have ticked off a number of items on your 'To Do' list but were they areas that you should have been spending your time on?

Managing your priorities is more about having a very clear strategy and vision for your business. Then marshaling all of your resources around achieving the goals that you have set for your business within the timeframe you require.

The story about rocks and business
I promised you a story about rocks and business!

Now imagine an empty glass jar and an array of big rocks and little rocks. If you start putting all the little rocks in the jar, it will quickly fill up and there won't be any room for the big rocks to fit.

But if you start the other way around and put all the big rocks in first you will have room for the little rocks and some sand as well.

So if you think of your diary as the jar, your business imperatives as the big rocks and all other activities as little rocks and sand you can start to take this analogy into managing your business to achieve your business priorities.

How do you start to manage priorities?
1. Make sure you have a plan for your business with specific time bound goals.
2. Spend some time each week (I do it Sunday night) looking at the roles you need to play in order to achieve your goals i.e researcher, content writer, being social, learning new things, site maintainer, business development for example. All of these roles will help you move your business forward
3. Assign value added activities to each of the roles and estimate how much time you will need to complete them
4. Look at your diary over a week instead of a day and assign these value added activities a timeslot. Looking at your diary over a week will show that you have all the time you need to get all the important things done
5. Now assign time to doing the day to day business requirements but which are necessary but less important - for example assign time to do emails so that you are not stopping and starting all day.
6. You now have a plan of attack for the week and stick to it.

TIP only assign 85% of your time as that will enable you to move things around in Urgent BUT Important tasks arise.
TIP I have a post it note pad on my desk all the time so that it I remember I need to do something I write it on a post it and do it later, I don't stop to do it then.

These tips will enable you to get the important things done as well as all the day to day activities as well. It is not easy when you start working for yourself to figure out a plan of attack but this will get you started on the right foot but you do want to have your ladder against the wall that will make you money $$

What do you do to manage your priorities?

Hope it helps. Let me know what you do to manage your priorities?
Gai