Your Priorities aren’t only what you say they are. Your real priorities show up in how you live your life, the results you enjoy or long for.
After decades of working with business founders, project leaders and executives my experience tells me that you are the source of the best ideas about how to build your business momentum. But, you can still feel stuck, unfocused or moving too slow. Here are 5 of my favorite Tips and Traps - Tips to leverage your know-how and ways to get out of Traps you might fall into.
It’s time to get out of stagnation and into momentum by Amplifying Your Priorities. Your priorities say a lot about you. The actions you take either boost or diminish the quality of your life, and the level of contribution you are able to make.
While fulfilling your vision and making progress on key actions, you often know exactly what to do to get to the next level. But it’s easy to get off track when you lose sight of your primary priorities.
Remove a few of your obstacles as you work your way out of these 2 Traps. Build a momentum that lasts when you use these 3 Tips. You may be surprised at the results.
1. Trap - Poor Use of Time - Discover Your Traps with a Time and Energy Self Assessment. Track your time over a week or two. Chart it out on a pie chart or some other way to produce an image of your current time usage. How do you spend your time? How much is getting ready to work? on social media? How much answering low priority emails? Where do you feel stuck?
How much time do you spend actively working on your top priorities? How much time did you spend on that area this week? Last week?
Be objective. Spending time in self-judgment, worry, or frustration restricts your insights. Discover What is So, which research shows is the only place to initiate change.
2. Tip - How to Focus your Accurate Priorities – Fill a page with first draft answers to this question: What are my highest leverage, most important priorities to build my business momentum now? Write down all the should, could, would obligations and half made promises you carry around in your head. Write down what you’ve been yearning to do but just haven’t gotten to.
(Examples: My SHOULD today is to clean out past client files. My HIGHEST LEVERAGE PRIORITY is to follow up all the leads that have been given to me, inside my biggest commitment to make sure that our next public event is well attended.) Interesting note, once I finished my #1 priority, the files took just a couple of minutes from all the momentum I felt.
3. Tip - Focus and Choose your Priorities - Now is the tough and exhilarating task of deciding. What matters most to you? What makes you come alive? What will fulfill your biggest goal? Narrow them down to one or two, maybe three. Rank them. You don’t have time to do them all. Where is the leverage? Finalize your choice. Post them. Put time in your calendar to get them done.
Research shows that if you focus on your top priority first thing for an hour or two, that everything else falls in place with greater ease. Some tasks even fall off your to do list if the top priority is done and done well first.
4. Trap - Getting Off Track? – When and how do you get off track with your priorities? What happens just before you get off track? What thoughts keep you there? Be a sleuth and discover your patterns. One of mine is to say to myself “this will just take a minute…” when in reality those small tasks often take me down a low priority road.
5. Tip - How to Stay On Track to Complete Priorities - Identify what do you need to do to get back on track and when you will do that. What are the conditions for success? You might select a reward or set a timer to help get started in the right direction.
(Example: When I’m seriously off track, I need to get some extra rest and sleep, or work out, or spend quality time with myself, and/or have some quiet time at my desk to sort things out.)
Effectively accomplishing your priorities will accelerate business and personal success. Levels of happiness and satisfaction rise, both for you and for your team. Life becomes much more fun. Go for it!
Warmest regards,
Karen