Leaders are always seeking to find ways to save time. As we develop new habits in the new year, I have a trio that will go a long way to helping you manage your time more effectively in 2017: Eliminate, Automate, Delegate. Stated simply, eliminate means create a “not to do” list and stop doing things you ought not to be doing in the first place. After all, it doesn’t matter how effectively or efficiently we complete tasks we ought not be doing at all.
On my list of items to eliminate in 2017 are: checking e-mail multiple times each day. Instead, I’m checking them before my work day begins and as it ends. Shut off automatic notifications so the familiar ding doesn’t have you have you pulling yourself away from an important task for the urgent, but usually not important, task of checking the latest e-mail. Another item I’m eliminating is automatically turning on the television after dinner in the evening. We moved our television to the basement, so it takes an intentional effort to watch it. It’s a blessing because now television can’t be a brainless activity, nor an automatic time waster. The list is long, but let me mention one more: I am eliminating long to do lists. After all, how many items can I actually complete in a day. As Michael Hyatt reminds us making a list with three important tasks to complete each day and then completing them is much more time effective than listing fifteen or twenty items of various importance and accomplishing half of them. As he points out even completing ten such items leaves us feeling defeated, because we didn’t finish ten.
For the past couple of years, we’ve been saying, “Automate the important,” at New Life. We’ve been helping folks see that automating their giving means they won’t forget to do it. We can automate so many things in our day, from paying repeating bills, to setting the thermostats in our homes, to sending standard e-mail replies to repetitive e-mail inquiries–the list literally goes on and on. With a little creativity and time invested up front automating the important and the mundane can save a great deal of time in this new year.
Finally, I’m learning to delegate work that is not in my wheel house. After all, while I can master many different tasks, why would I want to master ones that are not in my are of giftedness and skill, and which I will never have passion to accomplish. As John Maxwell reminded us decades ago, all that happens when we work at our weaknesses is we end up with strong weaknesses. Better to find someone who has strengths in the areas we are weak, because they will have passion to do the tasks, they’ll do it better and our organizations will be better off for it.
Here’s to leading better by eliminating, automating and delegating tasks from our to do lists–today! (and throughout 2017!)