Listen to this AudioBlog Download audio file (Taking-Initiative-Audio-MIX.mp3)

In almost all situations in the workplace there is a value placed on the idea of taking initiative, defined as “one’s personal, responsible decision to act”.  It is often seen as the ability to get something done, solve problems or make a decision on a course of action without needing to rely on others to tell you what to do. In a great leader it also means you are able to think through the results of your actions.

Leadership requires that an individual take initiative and is considered a quality of great leaders. In most settings, however, one must also be aware of boundaries and ramifications. You cannot, for example, ignore company policy, exceed guidelines of authority or make decisions that are far out of the scope of your job description or you may be seen as a loose cannon, out-of-control and in violation of rules or even laws. You must be able to see the end result before you take the initiative or at least have a rationale goal or objective. So, how do you take initiative without getting into trouble?

Ask yourself these questions first.

1. Is there anything about what I am doing that does not feel like it will be okay with my supervisor or other company leaders? If yes, then think through your actions carefully, what are you doing, why you are doing it and what specific reservations do you think others would have of your actions.

For example, giving a refund to an unhappy customer for a mistake or error made previously might be satisfying to the unhappy customer but does it set a precedent for giving refunds to all unhappy customers, or present a danger to the cash flow of the organization? Where is the money coming from? How is it documented and what are the guidelines for giving refunds? Too often, companies cut prices in an attempt to keep customers but what they are doing is reducing the ceiling price for their products over time until the discounted prices become the norm rather than the exception.

2. Is what I am doing a new or innovative solution, or am I taking shortcuts that could come back to create more problems in the future or set precedents that would be disadvantageous to the organization?

For example, eliminating much of the “boilerplate” in contract language might make your agreements easier to understand and more acceptable to customers but could also eliminate protections and stipulations that also avoided future problems arising from a variety of situations, weakening your position in the agreement and decreasing their value. Boilerplate, like rules and regulations were created for a reason and you should understand their value before dispatching with them.

3. Have I thought through the ramifications of what I am doing? Who would have an issue with this? Is this ethical and fair? Does this put my organization in a stronger position or a weaker one? What would my supervisor or co-workers say about this?

For example, putting heavy emphasis on a sales force to get more business by concentrating on selling lower cost products might get more initial sales, but result in a higher volume of cancelled orders, or secondary negotiations to keep customers and unhappy customers because they were not sold the appropriate value equal product to match their needs in the first place. It is an example of not doing it right the first time resulting in higher quality costs in the long run.

Asking yourself “What Would Jesus Do?” might be good for addressing moral issues and asking “What Would My Boss Do?” might be better applied to workplace decisions since it is the Boss who will be evaluating your actions.

Listen to this Audio Blog Just Got Fired MIX_SmallFile

Being let go at work can be a frightening, nearly traumatic experience depending upon how it is handled by the Company and the person fired. Here are some suggestions for the “Firee” to make it as painless as possible and avoid burning some bridges along the way or taking some action you might later regret.

For the Firee’s, your first reaction is a tendency to become anxious and defensive, and maybe angry. This is normal but check those emotions because if the decision to fire has already been made, then this is usually not a good opportunity to renegotiate or launch a defensive maneuver. If you feel the decision was grossly unfair to you then you might make a statement to that effect and why and then stop. Give them time to review the facts and if they change their mind later they’ll call you, but don’t hold your breath.

Above all be professional.  Avoid emotional outburst or lashing out.  Pack up your stuff with as much dignity as possible.  Remember it was your performance or your behavior that led to this result.  You are still mostly the same individual as you were on the day when you first walked in the door.  So, walk out the same or as a better one for the experience.

 1. You have a right to be anxious because your income is being removed from your life equation. No one has fired your Cell Phone Bills, Gas, Mortgage or Rent Bills, Insurance, Food, Auto, etc. You will need to get another job and adjust your bills during this interim period. Begin adjusting your budget immediately. It might feel good to go on a shopping spree as I did once at Barnes & Noble immediately after being fired, but it just might add to your anxiety. Adjusting your budget and rethinking your expenses allows you to take positive action which helps reduce some of the anxiety. Be sure to begin looking for the next job immediately.

 2. Begin thinking about what can you salvage from this situation. Are there people at the old company that would give you a positive recommendation perhaps because of some results you did achieve? What skills, knowledge or abilities did you learn while at this company that you can apply to your next job? What did you learn about yourself?

 3. Before listing references from this past company, think about whom you wish to list and what they will say about you. Ask them if you need to. Amazingly, some people will shoot themselves in the foot on job applications by lying about why they were let go which is easily verified, or make up bizarre excuses which scare away your next employer. Be honest, simple and to the point. Focus on what you learned and how you have been changed positively by this experience so you talk about it with your next employer in a positive way. Turn it into an opportunity to demonstrate your resilience, fortitude and adaptability.

Learn to be these words.

 resilience – Marked by the ability to recover readily, as from misfortune.

fortitude – Strength of mind that allows one to endure pain or adversity with courage.

adaptability – Ability of an entity or organism to alter itself or its responses to the changed circumstances or environment.

 Without lying or covering up anything, do what you can to avoid sending your next employer to people who will go at length to tell them about all of your failings and problems.

 4. Be honest about why you failed or were fired in each instance. It does not mean you did not do your best. Perhaps, there were things about the job, the work, or the product/service that you struggled with and failed to achieve the desired results.  Many employees are inadequately trained in advance and ineffectively trained while on the job. The important thing is what did you learn from the experience that can help you in the future.   Try to put a realistic, positive spin on the experience instead of turning it into a huge black spot on your resume.

I was once fired from a job selling extended auto insurance (break-down) policies. The vast majority of their policies were for expensive “enhanced power train coverage” for high mileage vehicles often near or over 100,000 miles . I tried to make the firing process as uneventful and as positive as possible. As I reflected back on the experience the next day I recognized the reasons I failed to produce the desired results in the “one phone call closed sales” and why I was probably not a good fit for that job. In other words, I was probably incapable of ever producing at the level they were expecting for a variety of reasons, but more importantly, because they knew I had done my best and was good on the phone with customers, the next day I was called back by a higher level Manager in the company and offered a new position in their Customer Service Center, which I accepted.

 A good reason not to burn bridges on your way out the door.

The most obvious meaning is learning to work with the resources you already have, which can be applied to an individual as well as a business or other organization. Some individuals think they need to change or get to some future point before they begin to work or “plow”. Successful people know they already have the most important resources available: determination, objectives, their own intelligence and perseverance. They start working immediately even if that work at the moment means going to school to learn to be even more successful in the future.

Now is never late.

Some executives and managers fall into the trap of thinking they need to replace or reorganize components of their organizations in order to make them more effective. More often than not this is an expensive, wasteful effort which while creating change, does not result in the changes intended or desired. After all, new people or people in new jobs must be trained, adapt to their new responsibilities or roles, coworkers, circumstances, etc., which adds time to the improvement process and unknown variables. People already in those jobs are in the best position to tell management what they need or changes that might be helpful in improving processes and success, but you need to earn their trust to get them to tell you. If you improve the process then turn around and let 10% of your workforce go, the other 90% will often become clueless as to what you need to do differently.

“Learning to plow” means that one must first “learn” what the best ways are to accomplish a particular task or goal. In the ideal world of quality improvement this is an ongoing process that does not rest on a single stagnant process, and any process that is not constantly changing to meet changes in the competitive environment, customers and circumstances, is a stagnant process. So, learning to plow is learning to consistently adapt your process to changing circumstances, not the trend of the moment, but fact-based, data-driven changes that can measure improvements and successes in the change process itself as well as in results, in meeting marketplace demands and business objectives.

“With the Oxen You Have” means learning to use your current resources more effectively, organize or structure your “oxen” or rather your resources, into ways that can continually capture data, and use this data to drive and implement successful ongoing changes. Besides, oxen are a difficult bunch with unique personalities and it is far easier to work with those you know, rather than trying to get to know a new one and keeping all of the other oxen on edge at the same time.

Listen to this Blog:  Take Risks Get Rewards

When we are children we take risks all the time, often because at this age we do not know that there is a risk.  When taking a risk backfires, and we get punished or otherwise suffer from a bad decision this makes a deep and lasting impression on our personalities.   Other times as children we perceive threats or have fears that prevent us from taking risks at all.  We learn to believe that avoiding those things we fear will keep us safe.  Some kids become very shy, avoiding any risk of meeting new people.  Others learn to avoid new activities which might expose them to ridicule, failure, pain or frustration.

When a world is full of dangers like Tigers, Wolves, Bears, Rattlesnakes, Poisonous Spiders, Warring People, Gangsters, Bullies and thousands of other threats to our survival learning to avoid risks becomes a major part of our behavior patterns.  By staying inside the cave, keeping the fire burning and making lots of noise we keep the wild animals at bay and stay safe.   Unfortunately, this same behavior that teaches us to avoid the risks may also limit our ability to succeed.

I am currently in a training class that started with 14 people.  It is now down to 11 or 12.  One person dropped out the first day, afraid that success in a new job would limit his opportunities for greater success in an imaginary job elsewhere.  This individual I’ll call “Jim” was by majority opinion of the remaining trainees a “Wacko” who was disruptive, argumentative, domineering and did much more to suck the energy out of the room than to add to it.  Although we are glad he left, it struck me
that he was avoiding risk of succeeding at something he thought was beneath him as well as avoiding the risk of failure at a job he saw as lower than his own
worth.  A pride and risk issue I think.

Yesterday, after a week of training, another gentleman quit the class and I believe it was also about avoiding risk.  He was afraid of failure at a job that required a variety of skills as well as afraid that if he succeeded he might be mortgaging his values or some perceived level of worth in order to accomplish this business goal.  What is amazing to me is that both people, apparently jobless, avoided a new opportunity because of a fear of what might happen long before they even tried the activity.  They chose to remain in the cave rather than even stick their head out to see if there were in fact any wild animals in the neighborhood.

To move forward with your lives, an adult learns to properly assess risks versus rewards.  “Nothing ventured is nothing gained” means nothing is learned, no new skills are added, no accomplishments are recorded, nothing is mastered and no growth happens.  You don’t even learn from your mistakes.  You must take risks to move forward.  Doing this successfully simply means we learn from every opportunity, our successes, our mistakes, our errors and our brilliant breakthroughs.

Taking risks is like taking your first steps.  You will fall, you will trip and you may scrape your knees, but eventually you will be running, jumping, biking, dancing and a whole new world opens up for you.

TAKE RISKS = GET REWARDS

Okay, so I’ve been stealth coaching a friend of mine for several months now in her efforts to find a better job.  To put yourself in her place, imagine you have a PhD in a field where you are recognized as highly knowledgeable and skilled.  However, you have been holding teaching jobs since you obtained your degree because you struggled with finding entry-level jobs for someone of your caliber in the area where you live and have been reluctant to relocate since you also already have an established family.  Your husband is employed, your children are in school or employed and you are now middle-aged.  You want to go out and work, do research in a growing field but you seem stuck in just how to get that position.  In fact, you are now not even sending out your resumes or trying to contact people in those fields that might be able to refer an opportunity to you because you are afraid the jobs they offer will be too confining, like 40 hours a week, 8-5 in a laboratory somewhere and you will lose some of your freedom.

I call this “Fear-Based Inertia Stagnation”.  Remember the laws of inertia, a body at rest tends to stay at rest and a body in motion tends to stay in motion.  My friend wants desperately to find the perfect job in her chosen field but tolerates teaching until she finds it, and now is creating perceived barriers to getting one of these other jobs before she has even applied, let alone been offered a position.  It is a fear-based behavior; fear of change, fear of being unhappy in the future based on a decision today, fear of being too busy and losing something in the process like the enjoyment of her family or free time pursuits.   Instead of moving forward, she is creating barriers to change and so she continues to “stagnate” meeting her minimum life requirements, somewhat unhappy with her situation but afraid to change it out of a fear it might become worse.

Here’s the problem.  Today’s reluctance to follow your dreams will become your future regrets that tug and tug at your psyche like fishhooks stuck in your heart.  Now is all you have.  You don’t have tomorrow for another 24 hours and then today will be tomorrows yesterday.   Rather than fabricating barriers to your future and sacrificing your dreams for the status quo, get up and move now.  Wait for the barriers to appear or anticipate barriers and go around them.  If you let them stop you before you get started I guarantee you will be the unhappiest later wondering why you didn’t do more with your life, why you let all those great ideas and dreams slip away.   If my friend was worried about a 40 hour workweek or having to work 8-5 then she should tell prospective employers she is looking for a four-day workweek, or a part-time job, or flex-time, or how much more money she expects to be paid if she has to work the 40-hour 8-5 job.  If you know what will make you happy or not on a job, there is no reason you should not approach the job with these criteria in mind or seek jobs that meet your criteria instead of hoping you match theirs.  Will it take longer to get a job this way.  Certainly!  But when you have a PhD in a field that is in demand, plus a variety of skills, abilities and attitudes that make you someone who can make things happen, and other people enjoy working with,  than by all means hold out for a great job.  You deserve it.  Keep in mind, my friend also has a good teaching job which she enjoys and so is not running out of funds or so desperate for any job as many people are today.   Still, knowing what kind of job you want, what will work best for you and then aggressively seeking exactly those jobs  gives you a leg up on people who are desperate for any job no matter their own criteria.  They are the ones who are more likely to find themselves in a job they hate later because they didn’t identify their own “work success criteria” before they looked for a job.

My last bit of advice is “ALWAYS HAVE A BUCKET LIST”.   We need things to look forward to doing, accomplishing and experiencing.

Lack of Goals and Action Plans May Lead to Depression

My own YMI Down Research organization has recently come to a conclusion regarding the origin of a fairly common cause of depression.  This depression called the AWTR Syndrome for “Aimless, Worthless, Trapped in a Rut” Syndrome originates from a lack of goals, action plans and inertia.  Simply put, people who have no goals or plans to get somewhere or lack the inertia to go there become depressed.  People whose goals and plans do not align with what they truly value also become depressed but at a slower rate.  Fortunately, there is a simply solution that is effective in almost all cases if the depressed would follow these steps.

First, talk to a professional, preferably a life coach who can help you establish life goals and realistic action plans to achieve them.  This step allows the depressed to focus on what “can be” instead of what “is” at the current moment.  Focusing on where you are at the present moment is a useful starting point only when one recognizes where one wants to go or where one has been.  Although the present moment is all we really ever have, knowing where one is going helps in generating enthusiasm for the next moment and so on.

Second, carry out the action plan and begin pursuing your goals.  See yourself as having achieved them (in your mind, don’t delude yourself or pretend you are done already).  The purpose of imagining the future is to keep you on track to achieve the goals you have set for yourself.   A plan of action not implemented is merely a story of what might have been.  Refusing to move forward with your life is a prescription for remaining in a depressed state.  You were created to keep moving forward.  It is in your genes so move it!  Know that God created you to keep moving forward which is why he put no eyes in the back of your head.

Third, don’t stop to evaluate where you are at right now except to see how well you are moving on the continuum to the place you wish to go.  Since you are not there yet, taking a deep look at where you are is a waste of time unless it is used for course correction or to reward yourself for the milestones you have passed and progress made.  Never stop to contemplate yourself as if standing at the bottom of a mountain you must climb.  All mountains in the world have been climbed and every single one of them was climbed one step at a time.  Always know where you are going, but look only at the next step and adjust your  overall plan as appropriate.  Once you start moving you may find shortcuts or a quicker way up the mountain (like on the Tram).  But if you dont’ keep moving you’ll only end up sitting in your own pile of poop.

God created your legs but you created your lap.  So get up and get moving.

Mission Statements Can Focus the Team

What is Your Mission Statement “What Is Your Mission Statement”

Businesses have Mission Statements and so can Individuals.  When you have a mission statement it ties together your goals, values and standards in a concise, easy-to-remember format and will usually help you become more successful by condensing your goals and values and how you will achieve them to a concise summary.

BUSINESS MISSION STATEMENTS:

Here is a simple Mission Statement from Bristol-Myers Squibb Company a researcher and developer of pharmaceuticals and healthcare products.  It is a company dominated by scientific research, product development and marketing so their mission statement says:  “To discover, develop and deliver innovative medicines that help patients prevail over serious diseases.”  Simple and succinct,  it says they focus on “innovative medicines that help patients.”  Their mission statement might be considered more of  a concise statement of purpose for their business and seems to fall short on detailing goals, values and how it will be accomplished.

Compare the two mission statements below for FedEx and UPS.  I have highlighted certain portions to show the goal and values, which together often describe “how” they will achieve their goals.

FedEx Corporation (goal) will produce (value) superior financial returns for its shareowners by (goal/how) providing high value-added logistics, transportation and related business services  (how) through focused operating companies. (goal) Customer requirements will be met in the (value) highest quality manner appropriate to each market segment served. FedEx will strive (goal) to develop mutually rewarding relationships with its employees, partners and suppliers. (value/how) Safety will be the first consideration in all operations. (goal/how) Corporate activities will be conducted to the (value) highest ethical and professional standards.

UPS Mission Statement:  (goal) To guide the company’s efforts to provide (value) responsible, (value) ethical business behavior and (goal) manage business conduct to achieve and maintain (value) compliance with all applicable regulations and policies for all aspects of UPS business worldwide, including all wholly owned subsidiaries.  If you had only the UPS Mission Statement you would probably be unimpressed and their “vision” statement doesn’t add much more.

UPS Vision Statement:  “As the world’s largest package delivery company and a leading global provider of specialized transportation and logistics services, UPS continues to develop the frontiers of logistics, supply chain management, and e-Commerce … combining the flows of goods, information, and funds.”

It would be naive to say that FedEx Mission Statement has helped the company excel to a greater degree than UPS, but you have to wonder.  FedEx mission statement is quite clear and informative about what they will be doing and what they value.   UPS Mission Statement sounds like very much like a “traditional” company and both the mission and vision statement seem to be looking backward at history rather than forward at the future and is more focused on “compliance.”   While they do indicate they will be developing “frontiers” of new logistics services there is little in the way of values other than compliance and ethical behavior.

The fact that Federal Express started in 1973 while United Parcel Service started in 1907 might help explain why UPS seems to be looking backward, it is over 100 years old and is the larger of the two companies.  But the revenue differences are startling; $35 Billion for FedEx in 2009 versus $45 Billion for UPS in 2009 and even more startling when you consider that FedEx handles less than half the number of daily shipments that UPS does but makes over 3/4 as much revenue.

The point here is that a good mission statement not only identifies where you want the company to go, but how you are going to get there and what you value in the process of going there.  A good statement can provide an easy way to unite all employees in achieving goals and promote the teamwork necessary to make it happen as well as reassure stockholders, employees and customers that their interests are included as the FedEx Mission Statement does.

PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENT:

No matter who you are you can have a personal mission statement that helps define you and your goals and values in the same way.  Look at these examples:

Mission Statement for a College Student:  I will be the best student I can be by completing all homework assignments on time and to a high degree of excellence.  My time will be well allocated between class time and study time with additional time allocated to wellness and play activities, social relationships and duty to God and Country.  (Okay, it’s a little corny maybe, but nobody ever suffered from being corny).

Mission Statement for a Father:  My life will be managed to provide time for my children, for healthy interactions, activities and support of their growth, balanced with my time to foster a loving relationship with my wife, while work will become a means to an end for me and my family and not an end in itself, although I will practice high standards, grow professionally and adapt to changing work requirements in order to meet my obligations to my family.

Mission Statement for a Stay At Home Mom:  I will dedicate a portion of each day to caring for all my family members, helping to maintain a healthy living environment and including time to develop myself, enjoy my hobbies and pursuits, maintain a healthy lifestyle and continue to grow in body, mind and spirit.

The point is not to create the best statement, but the best statement for yourself, one you can believe in and accurately describes your goals and aligns with your values and  how you will accomplish them.

When you do this you will have a simple definition of who you are and what you are about.  Review your mission statement often, print it and tape it to your mirror or someplace where you will often see it and think about how well you are living up to your mission statement.  It should represent your aspirations and something you want to do and need to do in order to achieve those things upon which you have set your sights.

Identifying Your Priorities

Compare your priorities to your Boss, Peers and Subordinates on the most important things you are working to achieve.  If you are in Sales and Marketing you better add Customers to that list. If you are in a matrix-type organization you might want to add team members or team leaders on cross-functional or project teams in which you also operate. “Whoa, hold up I’m on overload and what do you mean by priorities anyway?” Okay, let’s back up.

Focus is what is really important to you, your priorities, and they should be based on input from your internal customers, their expectations. These are the things you see as the most important things you should be doing with your time.  To test your priorities make a list of the 10-12 things you feel are the most important things you should be doing. Now, go share this list with your Boss and ask if you have missed anything and what he or she may see as the top three things on your list from their perspective. This could be an interesting meeting where you build a better one-on-one relationship with your Boss and get specific feedback about what is important to them. Now, take your list to your peers and ask them about it. What do they see as the top priorities from your list. Then, do the same with your subordinates. Be sure you are open to allowing any of these groups to add items to your list and probe them about why these items are important to them.   If you’re in Marketing and Sales, then this is also a good discussion to have with your best customers although sharing your list is probably not a very good idea. Simply ask them what are the most important things you should be doing for them.  Once you have this data also compare it to your job description and performance measurements. It should be in sync, if not then something is wrong with the job description/performance process.  In most companies, what is measured can be managed and what is measured is what people usually consider to be their priorities, if these do not reflect the reality of the job then there is a performance process problem that needs fixing.

What you will have after all of this,  assuming you didn’t lose half your papers along the way or spill coffee all over them, is a list of the most important priorities or tasks you should be accomplishing.   Now, here’s a secret.  Important people only work on important things, that’s how they get to be seen as important people. If you are working on things that others see as unimportant then they will see you as wasting time, that your work is not important and your priorities wrong and they will discard you. Those people who want your job may use sightings of you working on the wrong priorities as evidence against you in the court of water cooler gossip. Supervisors may see you as confused about priorities and rate you lower on evaluations. Peers may see you as struggling and not carrying your fair share of the weight. Subordinates will be frustrated that they are working for a bad supervisor. In short, you might accomplish a thousand things you thought were important but if no one else thinks they are important, then you may as well have accomplished nothing.

Always establish your priorities based on the most important things as viewed from your internal and external customers, or develop some very good persuasive skills and collect sufficient data to demonstrate to them how and why what you are working on really is more important.  [Keep in mind this could be a very steep hill to climb and first ask yourself if it is worth the effort, and what will be the impact of failing to convince them.  Will you look like an idiot or a determined executive. ]  If they still see it as unimportant after your best effort, then you will be better off adopting their point of view.

There are exceptions, of course, let’s say you have your thumb in a dyke to keep it from leaking but no one else sees a hole in the dyke (and how could they while your thumb is in it), so it may be necessary to remove your thumb from the dyke to enable them to see the hole and imagine the coming flood,  so you can go back to plugging it and saving the town from certain death. In other words, you still need to make your case and help them see what you think is important and why or you will still be seen as working on unimportant stuff.   Unimportant workers do not become important people, except in fairy tales.  Important people are those who are seen as working on important things.

Misplaced Priorities & How to Fix Them

•  Doing something else that seems important may actually be easier and more familiar than working on unfamiliar, new or challenging tasks.  Once you identify the most important tasks, seek the advice of others how best to organize it and attack it.  Learn more about the task, read a case study, look for others who have conquered the same  or a similar task and learn from their efforts.  Ask a specialist.
•  Someone else told you it was important, maybe someone in the same job from another company, or a training guru or consultant, maybe you read it in a blog.  What might be important somewhere else does not mean it is recognized as important where you are.  If it isn’t important to anyone else then it should not be important to you.    Keep in mind your internal customers and focus on what is important to them.   Turn important tasks into a well-defined process and describe exactly what happens and in what order, dependencies and integration with other departments or staff.  In order to eat an elephant you have to take one bite at a time so break the elephant down into bite-size chunks.
•  You may have a need to have things organized or established in a certain way to make you comfortable.  Okay, we all have our quirks but sometimes we have to survive in a different situation. Learn to adapt and work on the most important things even if you are working in the middle of chaos.  Or, as you have some extra time expand your zone of comfort and move the chaos a little farther away from you, but keep working on the most important things first.  If you need a PDA, certification or new software or something else to help you work more effectively ask for it and relate it to the important job or one of the priority tasks you are accomplishing and how it helps the organization.  If it is truly a priority then it should be easier to show that the benefits outweigh the costs.
•  Are you putting out fires all the time?  Unless you are a fire fighter,  you might be focusing on doing the “urgent” tasks because urgent tasks seem important. This is a falsity.  Some urgent tasks are important and its okay to work on those but many urgent tasks are simply urgent and not important.  Delegate these or learn to say no to accepting responsibility for urgent tasks that are not important.  Do not imply to others that you have lots of time on your hands or they will be delegating all of their urgent tasks to you.   You want to be able to say, “I’m working on something that is very important now.  Is there someone else that can do this for you?  If you are always available to help someone else you might feel good about yourself but you are also conveying the impression that you do not have anything important to do.  This is not a good idea.
•  Put all of your important tasks into a plan.  Prioritize them.   Think about how much time each week each of these tasks will require and organize your day to allow you to work your plan in order to stay on top of and to excel at accomplishing your most important tasks.  You will be seen as a very important person in your work environment, someone who survives down-sizing and gets considered for bonuses and promotions.

With over 30 years of leadership and management experience, Gregg Sterett provides executive and life coaching services to clients in the anywhere in the world where English is spoken.  We use an online course for our Life Coaching which is a rich content, multimedia training program supported by personal coaching sessions that can help anyone achieve their dreams and goals.

A – Most important towards accomplishing my goals.

B – Important towards goals and Urgent with a deadline.

C – Important to goals  but not urgent.

D – Not important to goals but urgent.

E – Not important to goals and not urgent.

Now that you understand your list you can decide how you want to work on things.  Working on A things first would be the most helpful in moving me towards accomplishing my goals, but the B items are also important and Urgent with a deadline, so you might first want to work on both the A and B items, knocking out the hardest to accomplish items first because it will get easier as the day goes on.  Then work on C and D items and lastly the E items.

Some people try to do all the easy tasks first putting off the hardest tasks until later.  I prefer to complete the harder tasks first that are the most important in moving me towards my goals because I will have more energy earlier in the day and by accomplishing an A task first I am ensuring a constant movement towards achieving my goals.  Instead of wearing me down, it actually energizes me and helps me build momentum.   Likewise, the B tasks are important and I am able to meet the deadlines by addressing them with some of my A list items.

How many times do you find yourself doing some task that captures your attention at the moment only to realize later that you just spent a lot of time doing something that does not move you towards your goals and was not urgent.  This is called a negative work habit.  Possibly, your goals do not reflect what you really would like to achieve or you have not organized your workday in a way that you have prioritized what is truly important to you.  If you have no specific goals then it is even more difficult to organize a TASK TO DO list because you would have no way of evaluating what is important to you versus simply urgent or what is important might change from day-to-day with your moods.

Creating a TASK TO DO list can usually be done in just a few minutes and doing so gives your whole day direction, plus by having a list handy you can mark items off as you accomplish them, add more as needed and track how many things you are accomplishing.  Saving your lists also provides you a short journal list of what you accomplished on a particular day  in case you need to go back and find some piece of information about the task that was accomplished or to confirm it was actually accomplished.  Likewise, your list can be used to carry over and plan the next day’s TO DO list so perhaps those Items listed under E – not important to goals and not urgent might be able to move up the list if you “want” to do that activity and it becomes more important for your goals such as enjoying life.