Getting Started on the Big Things

You have some big things and little things to do on Monday. I’ll take a guess at the big things that are on your list, or at least the things that should be on that list:

• Tighten your positioning?
• Build and then implement a marketing plan?
• Build out that new service offering?
• Tell Tom that you don’t need his services anymore?

The first two things on that list are big things that require a lot of effort, but some things (a RIF) don’t—they’re just hard. Regardless of how you categorize the things on your list, here’s the common denominator: you keep putting them off. Some of that comes from an elusive clarity that you’re waiting for, but mainly it’s this: you focus on things with an immediate payoff and keep putting off the things that will take a long time to show up. Me too.

A Personal Confession

Back when we all used day planners with real paper, and after I got tired of transferring all of my undone tasks forward to the next day’s page, I finally came up with a creative strategy to save time: just write my to-dos on a Post-It note, mark off the one or two things I actually got done, and then take the Post-It, with all the remaining undone things on it, and move it to the next day. That’s call efficient cheating.

Now, here’s what I should have done instead: had a realistic plan for what I could and could not get done. That way most of my items would have been crossed off by the end of the day, with maybe one or two things to transfer to the next day.

There’s another way to get more done, too, and I learned that in Toronto.

My Startling Realization

I was doing some personal development through the Strategic Coach program, and the next meeting was in Toronto. They shared one productivity suggestion at our quarterly gathering, and it’s stuck with me now for many years. I don’t remember anything else they said over those two days.

What they suggested was to divide your week into three kinds of days:

• Prep Days. Clear all the little things off your plate, with one purpose: to free you up for the second category, next. This might be spread across three days.
• Accomplishment Days. One or two big things, only, on each of two days. These are the days of deep work.
• Free Days. Nothing to do with work. Start with two (the typical weekend), but then expand this to three.

This has literally changed my work life.

You, my friend, must work on those big things that never show immediate results, but which will change the very trajectory of your firm. That won’t happen unless you actively set time aside. And that won’t happen unless you quit distracting yourself with all the shit that doesn’t honestly matter all that much.

Looking a Little Deeper

The biggest challenge I have, still, is assuming that I’ll get more done on any particular day than I actually will. But let’s put this in context and let me suggest how you might fix this (if you really want to):

1. Start dividing your week into those three kinds of days.
2. Seriously evaluate all of your regular, standing meetings. What can you eliminate? Where can you let other people step into leadership and just keep you informed? Are the meetings you’re in regularly expanding what’s in writing, ahead of time, or are they lazily filling in the blanks because people can’t be bothered to update the central data repository?
3. Pull yourself out of all project management and direct client relationships. If a client bumps into you at the coffee shop one morning and asks you about the status of a specific project, you should never know the answer. If I ask each of your firm’s clients who their day-to-day contact is, none of them should give me your name.
4. What are you dreading the most, and have simultaneously been putting off for the longest time? And if this is also the thing that no other team member can work on, let’s put that at the top of your list. Set aside one day to work on that one thing this week and do it. Maybe disconnect yourself and possibly go away to somewhere different. You don’t have to finish it this week, but you have to start it.

There are things that only you can do for the firm, and if you are instead working on things that other people can do, we aren’t getting what we can out of you, the principal.

I hope you’ll consider being more productive and bending your firm’s future by executing on your better instincts.