Later on, I really learned that I should focus and get one thing done successfully. It is always tempting to try to get my idea heard in many different projects, but I have learned how to manage that.
The tool I suggest is a simple Importance -- Time Spent matrix, as below
Every week (on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning), I review the time I spent this week on each major task category and their priorities, and then put them in above matrix. Ideally, the matrix should look like the green dots -- most time spent on high priority items, and no time spent on low priority items.
When I first started this, it is an eye openning for me that how much time I spent on things with low priority. For example, I sat into too much meetings that are not related to my project nor account I'm managing. Thought it is fun to give my oppnions (and maybe benefitial to those accounts in some way), it has absolutely no contribution in my performance. On the other hand, it eats away valuable time that I can spend to think in depth about my accounts and my clients.
Over the duration of my career, I learned that, when people reaches certain level of success, it is more comfortable to define its own success and hence more focused. To make sure you can truly focus, you have to get rid of the following bad habits :
- winning too much : the need to win at all costs and in all situations. Those are the people who have opnions for every case.
- adding too much value : the overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion
- telling the world how smart we are : the need to show people we are smarter than they think we are
- starting with "no", "but", or "however" : the overuse of those qualifiers which secretly say to everybody that "I'm right. You are wrong."
The key is manage yourself is to make yourself to use those two tools on weekly and monthly basis. If you can keep doing that, you will be doing great in managing yourself.
