Cut back on the busywork you do this week, and focus on impact instead.
We often fill our days with lots of little tasks — answering emails, checking social media, taking care of small computer tasks, sending texts, going to unproductive meetings, running errands and doing lots of other little things that make us feel productive and busy, but we actually do not get much accomplished.
We can spend our lives like this, or we can focus on the biggest impact that we can have with the time we invest in work.
How to make more impact?
- Begin thinking about how you can make the biggest impact on your career or business, on your life, on others. How much impact would you have writing an email (which might help one person) vs. writing a blog post (that might help many people), for example?
- Each day, make a short list of one to three things that can make a good impact. What will bring in more business over the long term? What will further your career? What will help the most people and do the most good? If you do not know the answers to these questions, it is best to just make your best guess — and over time, as you pay more attention to impact, you will get better at knowing the answers. For me, these three high-impact activities will be: writing and publishing a blog post, promoting that post on social media and recording a YouTube video based on this post. Nothing else matters.
- Start each day with one of the high-impact tasks, before you do any busy-work.
- Reserve a little time in the morning (not first thing) for busy-work, and a chunk of time at the end of your day for busy-work. Schedule time in the morning and early afternoon for high-impact work. Or, find the time when you have the most energy (for some people, it is not in the morning), and do your high-impact work during this time, and busy-work when you have less energy.
- Slow down. Breathe. Practice focus. Enjoy the high-impact work. Smile, and be happy.
If you do fewer things, you can do them at a more relaxed pace, instead of rushing to try to do everything within a set schedule. This rule applies not only to your work life, but to your life in general (do fewer errands, household chores, civic activities, etc.) in order to have a more relaxed schedule.
While many people think that civic activities are high-impact activities (and they may be), the important thing to remember is that you cannot do everything — cut back on how much you do overall, so you can focus on your impact.
