If you’re having the kind of day where you effortlessly fill the hours, but don’t get any sense of achievement, I may have the answer, and it involves prioritising tasks.
After a spate of days like this, I was well and truly over it. A change was in order.
No matter how much we delegate, proceduralise, simplify or ignore, there will be times when we have stints of being buried in the minutiae of business life.
But it’s one thing to know that days will be dull for a while, it’s another to do something about it.
How do you change the one thing you really can influence – the way you choose to feel?
The answer, I discovered, was to take a close look at my weekly action list and pick out those items that, once complete, would definitely make me feel good.
Next up, I’d give some thought to how long it would take to accomplish each of these items and schedule one for the end of each day. If there were a few I might book one in just before a lunch break as well.
I literally flag it with a little A+ in the margin and book it in as the last job before I shut down for the night.
A+ translating to ‘achievement and positivity’ by the way. Sad I know.
This past week, once such A+ task was bundling up my end of month receipts and mailing them off to my trusty virtual assistant. She then performs her magic generating my month-end reports.
I don’t enjoy this task, finding it laborious and unexciting. Mind you once it’s completed I feel relieved and fulfilled.
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In reality it took me no more than 20 minutes and once done I strode out of my office heavily dowsed in the sweet fragrance of accomplishment.
Other examples over the past couple of days have been:
– making follow up calls I should have made weeks ago
– filing or recycling the past week’s notes and mail
– paying all outstanding bills
– comprehending my overly complex phone and internet plans
All tedious, yet once upgraded to the status of A+ and wiped out at the close of business, the cause of much good feeling.
Give it a go and experience leaving on a high. Let me know how it goes.
