A Simple Handbook for Achieving Maximum at Work

A Simple Handbook for Achieving Maximum at Work Külli Koort weekdone.com

The Ultimate Guide for Making Time for the Work That Matters Copyright © 2014 Weekdone, LLC All Rights Reserved You are welcome to email, tweet, blog, and pass this Ebook around the web, but please don’t change any of its contents when you do. Thanks! weekdone.com 2 weekdone.com

The Ultimate Guide for Making Time for the Work That Matters 4 5 Table of Contents 5 5 Eisenhower Principles of Productivity 5 Quadrant #1: Urgent and Important 6 Quadrant #2: Urgent but Not Important 6 Quadrant #3: Not Urgent but Important 6 Quadrant #4: Not Urgent and Not Important 6 Finding time for tasks that really matter 7 Limit the number of your plans 7 Focus hard on one thing only and don’t give up until it’s done 7 List your progress and reflect on it at the end of the week 7 If you feel stuck, communicate the problem 7 Say no 8 Plan your next week on Friday 8 Focus on outcomes and results, not on process or actions 9 Share plans with others and let them know what you’re working on 9 Divide your week into regular functional area days Don’t overload others with information Finally, get the ‘week done’ Are you ready to finally get the maximum out of your time? 3 weekdone.com

The Ultimate Guide for Making Time for the Work That Matters Eisenhower Did you know? “Many historians feel Principles of that Dwight D. Eisenhower was the last Productivity great US President. An extraordinary military leader and strategist, he served „Efficiency is doing things two low-profile terms during which he right; Effectiveness is doing established the lasting US policy on the the right things“ mid-east, fathered the US inter-state - Peter Drucker highway system, expanded Social Security, and integrated the military services and southern universities, among other accomplishments.” The biggest challenges we face today are often associated with prioritizing: How much time should be allocated to one task? Which task should be done first? Is my activity even connected to the company goals? Unfortunately, not enough people The Matrix is a simple 4-square grid ask these questions on a daily basis. with axis indicating the task urgency Employees around the world are and importance. You can use this struggling with huge workloads. There method for your time planning as is no doubt that questioning every well, preferably as part of a weekly single activity takes time and energy. planning tool, such as Weekdone.com. To find out what you should be doing, There is one time management review all your tasks and divide them process that sets out to answer among these 4 squares. all of the questions above. This time management process is the Eisenhower Matrix, which originates from Dwight D. Eisenhower. 4 weekdone.com

The Ultimate Guide for Making Time for the Work That Matters Quadrant #1: Urgent and These items are distractions. Ignore Important them or drop them. Or, decline the request. Not everything that can be Items you could not foresee and those done must be done – or even planned. that have been left to the last minute. Simplify and declutter your to-do list should be combined here. When by throwing these straight into the using weekdone.com for your weekly dustbin. planning, try to enter the Urgent/ Important plans first as much as “Remember, the Eisenhower possible and focus on those. matrix expedites time man- agement when used daily.” Plan to handle the unexpected or reschedule some other item. You list all the tasks for your day in one or another of the boxes. As you Debrief when complete to determine list them in the box, do so by priority. how you will respond next time. When finished, address the Urgent/ Important Tasks immediately Quadrant #2: Urgent but Not and dismiss the Not Urgent/Not Important Important tasks. Items listed here stop you from getting If possible, delegate the items in the your work done. Delegate them or Urgent/Not Important box or leave reschedule them. them for the future, when there are no more important tasks. The Non Just say “NO!” or coach people to solve Urgent/Important tasks should be their own problems. assigned a completion date, but they should never take priority over Quadrant #3: Not Urgent but Urgent/Important tasks. Important The key benefit to the Matrix is its Complete the items in Quadrant #3 to elegance. It lends itself so easily achieve your goals. to accessibility and function. The template is easy enough to draw and Allow enough time to do these things photocopy and you are able to achieve right, or they will become Urgent. the maximum benefit when you use it When planning the week, have also along with weekly planning tool. few Non Urgent /Important tasks in your weekly status report. After figuring out what really matters and which issues need to be addressed, Quadrant #4: Not Urgent and you need to find the time to deal with Not Important these tasks. 5 weekdone.com

The Ultimate Guide for Making Time for the Work That Matters Finding time Focus hard on one thing only for tasks that and don’t give up until it’s really matter done “80% of people don’t want Too much choice is bad. It’s human to go to work on Monday to choose the small and easy-to- mornings.” accomplish tasks, not important strategic ones. Achieving many small Two common things they say on goals gives us an illusion of progress. Monday mornings are “I have too many At the same time multitasking lowers things to do” and “There’s not enough time IQ by 10 points and kills productivity to do it all”. If you look at your task list by 40%, according to Harvard Business and have no idea where to start it will Review. lead to procastination. If you listed your 5 key goals for the There is no reason to get demotivated, week, choose the most important one because if you know your priorities of them and start working on it. Not and have created a weekly plan, then two or three. Just one. you are already half way there. Here are 10 best tips to be productive By not having multiple options, and enjoy your week. It’s all about you can’t choose the path of least achieving more by doing less: resistance. Keep grinding until the plan is accomplished and you can Limit the number of your report it as progress. plans List your progress and reflect Start with weekly planning. It’s crucial on it at the end of the week to focus on what’s important and to do those selected things really well. Choosing a few key plans for the Usually only a few of the dozens of week is not easy at first. What helps is items on our to-do lists are tied to reflection at the end of each week. big crucial goals and high-impact objectives. Was what you did important and worth one full week of work? It’s ideal to limit the number of weekly plans you absolutely have to achieve During the week, whenever something to a maximum of 5 per week. That’s gets done, don’t just delete it or tick it one big hairy goal that you have to as done, but write it down as progress. achieve per day, whatever it takes. On Friday, look at your progress list and study each item. Have you cheated a bit? Could you have done something else instead? 6 weekdone.com

The Ultimate Guide for Making Time for the Work That Matters Repeat the process weekly, learn and Plan your next week on iterate. You’ll soon get pretty good at Friday listing your key goals. Reflection each Friday is important. If you feel stuck, Planning your next week on Friday communicate the problem evening before leaving work is even better. You’ll keep your weekend Not everything you plan gets done. worry-free and you can start right Quite often there are external reasons. away on Monday morning. Things get stuck or delayed. Don’t procrastinate on things you can’t Focus on outcomes and solve yourself. Ask for help from your results, not on process or manager, your team mates, advisors actions or anyone else. Looking at our to-do lists, we often Companies like Skype have used write down not measurable results to the 3-part PPP (progress, plans and be achieved but actions or processes. problems) process for their team Furthermore, quite often it is hard to communication and planning for say if the task has been achieved or years. Some companies call it ROC: not. results, objectives and challenges. There are other names, but the logic If possible, try to focus on results is the same. You set a goal and it either instead. This way it will be much easier gets done in a week or there must to declare a goal accomplished and be a serious reason why it did not move on to next big weekly objective. move ahead. A plan always becomes a progress or a problem. Share plans with others and let them know what you’re Say no working on Be picky. Because something can In a team environment, always explain be done, does not mean it must be to others, why you have chosen one done. Be mindful of your goals. Take goal over another and how your a minute or two to think whenever resources are divided. When your someone asks you to do something or plans get accomplished, communicate you start writing something down as the progress. Expect the others to do a to-do. the same. Start saying no to many of the things Whenever a challenge comes up, and focus only on selected plans. share that as well. It helps both with Leave out unimportant things. Do getting feedback from others as well only the big things. as keeping the team on the same page. 7 weekdone.com

The Ultimate Guide for Making Time for the Work That Matters A weekly paradigm is often ideal for Don’t overload others with these three – not too often, like daily information e-mails and not too seldom, like monthly reports. Use either e-mail, You would not want others to Google Docs, intranet or a specialized disturb you and waste your time. tool like Weekdone, whatever works Being interrupted, be it via e-mail for you. or meetings, is an annoying waste of time in any team. Be nice to others Divide your week into regular and whenever possible, do not e-mail functional area days them, do not call for another meeting. People who have different All in all, you can enjoy your daily responsibilities can divide their work much more by limiting yourself week into 5 days of different work to a smaller number of important areas. Then stick to them each week. goals and executing those really well. Communicate your days’ focus to Keep it simple. Declutter. You’ll do your co-workers as well. more by doing less. When Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and CEO of Square was doing 80-hour work weeks between the 2 companies, he was very strict about his daily planning. So he themed his 5 days like this: • Monday: Management meetings and “running the company” work • Tuesday: Product development • Wednesday: Marketing, commu- nications and growth • Thursday: Developers and part- nerships • Friday: The company and its cul- ture 8 weekdone.com

The Ultimate Guide for Making Time for the Work That Matters Finally, get the So, when you walk into work on ‘week done’ Monday, you need to sit down and look at everything you need to do “1 hour of planning will save throughout the week. Write all of this 10 hours of doing” down either in weekdone.com Plans section or your other favorite task No matter what products your manager. Then for each task think company sells or what kind of services what kind of impact it has and move it you provide, at the end of the day, to the top of your priority list. You are you need to get things done. The best going to see some of the smaller tasks chances this happening is to prioritize you need to complete are actually your tasks, find out which need your going to have a substantial impact on immediate attention and which ones some of the longer tasks. you need to delegate now. Write down most crucial plans and work Are you ready to finally get productively throughout the week. the maximum out of your time? While you are doing the best you can, remember the Pareto principle: The Keep this handbook near and Pareto analysis technique is all about come back to it whenever you feel doing 20 percent of the work with a unproductive or overwhelmed. Stop, direct impact on the 80 percent of the reflect and stay positive. Success is results. never easy, but it is achievable. Try out the winning combination of the This is going to help you out, Eisenhower matrix, Pareto principle especially if you are able to complete and the weekly planning tool. the majority of the 20 percent early on. You’ll be amazed as although you are completing less work during the week and are less busy, you are actually finishing more and able to move ahead with your weekly work schedule. Did you know? “Vilfredo Pareto observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population; he developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.” 9 weekdone.com

The Ultimate Guide for Making Time for the Work That Matters Often we find ourselves too Have some questions about weekly immersed in task management planning? Do not hesitate to send and productivity applications. your feedback, thoughts or questions We don’t seem to be able to step to Külli at [email protected] and back a bit. We need to look at the she will find time for you. bigger picture. Our mission at Weekdone You can find us at: is to make you, the user, weekdone.com understand your data and make twitter.com/weekdone it actionable. We give you a facebook.com/weekdone visual, easy, yet comprehensive google.com/+weekdone overview of your team’s productivity. To plan your weekly goals and monitor Jüri Kaljundi progress, try out Weekdone. The status CEO & Chief Productivity report service is free for individual Officer use and teams of up to 3 people. For Weekdone weekly reporting others there’s a 30 days free trial. [email protected] 10 weekdone.com