Tip: How Best to Get Ready for Vacations!
This coming Monday (27-May) marks the unofficial beginning of summer. With Memorial Day we see the end of another school year, summer vacations and holidays, long weekends, and the normal summer slow down. For those of us that live in the Midwest, the summer season is met with a lot of enthusiasm. We boat, fish, golf, go outdoors, and get sunshine after being deprived for 6-months of Autumn and Winter. With this also comes a responsibility. One that many of us don’t even think about, but we handle it with a high degree of efficiency. The responsibility comes when we are taking that extra long-weekend, and seem to get 5-days worth of work done in 4-days. Not only do we do it once, some of us successfully do this several times throughout the summer. How on earth does this happen? All year long we say we are over-worked, and barely have enough time to get things done. Yet, during this 3-4 month period of nice weather, we can afford to leave an hour or so early once a week to get to our golf league, take 3 Friday’s off in a row to get to the summer cabin, or take a full week off and make sure there is nothing left on our desks for us to worry about AND if anything may happen, a contingency plan was put into effect. We do this because we are motivated. We plan every activity we are going to do, enthusiastically & efficiently move from task to task, and avoid non-productive behavior (water cooler discussions). It’s funny how people with nothing to do, want to do it with you, but during this period of motivation we avoid them.
How do we harness this motivation, enthusiasm, and efficiency into the rest of the year? What do you do different in these preparations that you can apply to your normal daily and weekly process? Here is a quick list of things that I recommend to make you more effective the rest of the year;
Before you go home every night, write out the things you want to do the next day
Prioritize each and every task
Batch similar tasks together
Allocate time for each task (gives you a mini-goal)
Question why you are doing every task
Is it relevant?
Is it important?
Can it be delegated, or avoided?
What is the value?
Avoid the water cooler discussions, walk through the hallways of your office like a man on a mission
Don’t look for excuses look for solutions
Think about it, if you can be that efficient a few days a year, what benefits would you have if you planned your entire life this way? If it’s a matter of success, how much more successful could you be? Or, how much more time would you have throughout the year to do things if you saved these wasted moments? We all feel much more satisfied at the end of a highly productive day. That is a goal worth planning for isn’t it? If Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance, how superior will you feel if you do it daily? If you are having trouble planning and getting things done, give us a call at Pinnacle Sales, LLC – We can help you get the most out of your day!
Michael Kole
(734) 325-6557