No I haven’t lost my mind.
Yesterday I spoke about choosing one thing and doing just that.
I felt remiss in not offering a solution to help with this selection process.
So here we go!
You have to turn off the internet (computers and phones).
Now for anyone that knows me, you would know that this is probably the worst thing that could happen to me.
But – how are you supposed to focus on doing the one thing (or even 3 if that is the best you have got your list too) with pings and beeps coming through constantly?
Every time your phone pings do you stop what you doing and pick it up?
It’s rhetorical.
When the notification on your Mac pings do you look up?
I know we can’t totally disconnect and go live in a cave. I am not suggesting this as a permanent thing I am suggesting one day a week or fort nightly or even just once a month!
This is a day where you will have to yourself, with undivided attention, to work on the task or project that you need to do.
Now this is not a day to do admin (unless that is your project) or schedule coffee and lunch catch-ups.
This is a day about winning and smashing a goal!
As you are part of the modern world – you will need to do some prep and take some action for this day.
For instance, you will need to set Out of Office on your email and phone. This is critical for two reasons.
First off, you know that everyone knows you are ok but just not contactable. Secondly, if there is a life or death situation, they have another person or contact to get hold of (because you put this info in the auto-responder).
Chose the right day – I would recommend a Tuesday or Wednesday.
Why?
Well Monday is the catch up from what happened over the weekend and Thursday is finish what needs to be done knowing that Friday is usually a disrupted weekend planning day. Also – if anything serious happens while you are incommunicado, you still have a few days in the week to sort it out.
Lastly – inform your front line staff so that when customers engage them they know that you are not available and need to be your buffer, equally, they still need to do that which they do so remind them that they are responsible for their own deliverables and that you are not there to help.
Most important of all; Don’t waste the day! The idea of using this to focus on a deliverable not to watch Netflix (unless your job is a film critic), it is even worse to waste the day and not only not achieve the goal but now find yourself even more under pressure due to this wasted day.
BL
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