How to get the Important Things done, when there just isn’t enough time?

It’s too easy to be busy doing all those smaller and more urgent tasks and never find time to do the big important things.

Our excuse is that there just isn’t enough time.

“We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

So, when we say “we didn’t have time”, what we mean is: “that thing wasn’t a priority for my time”.

We all have 24 hours in each day, 365 days a year. Everyone has plenty of time. We just choose our priorities differently.

Personally, I never let down a client. If I say I will deliver a workshop, or give an online mentoring meeting, or make a presentation, I always do it. If I promise to write a report by a certain date, I never miss that deadline.

But I let myself down. Often. It’s easy. I make a note that this week I’ll do a task, then at the end of the week I renegotiate the deadline with myself to do it the next week. Then the next. Then the next…

These things that get shifted along from week to week, even month to mongh, are the “important but not urgent’ tasks.

I don’t find time to do them because I’ve been too busy with more urgent stuff. Even unimportant yet somehow ‘urgent’ things.

Those important things might be project such as:
– redesign the website
– write that book
– develop that new product
– find an export partner
– move to better premises
etc, etc

These can be super important for our business, yet busy-ness gets in the way of actually doing them.

The truth is often nearer to the fact that we CHOOSE to do easy stuff.

Ticking off twenty little tasks from a list makes us feel like we are being productive.

But are we just procrastinating?

Are we just finding reasons to put off the big scary stuff?

“Being busy is a form of laziness” – Tim Ferriss.

So what’s the answer?

Two things are essential:

1. Break the big task down into smaller parts; and

2. Set deadlines with an external ‘client’.

For example:

A big task on our to-do list such as “write book” or “develop new products” is far too big to be tackled, so nothing gets done.

So we need to break it down into smaller parts, such as:
– Meet with editor to agree book theme and content
– Sketch out the scope and outline of the book
– Consult with person x about the market for the book
– Present proposal for book with scope, outline and market to publisher
– Agree deadlines with publisher for writing parts of the book, etc

Each of the above is much more do-able than “write a book”.
And each can be given a deadline, in which we are accountable to an external person (“client”)

At the end of one of my business advice sessions, I asked my client: “Could you do me a favour?”
Slightly apprehensively, they responded: “Er, yes,” wondering what I was going to ask.
I explained: “I’ve been meaning to write an article about the business issue we just discussed, but I keep putting it off, from week to week. So please look at my website next Friday afternoon at 5pm and if the article isn’t there, please phone me up and shout at me!”
From that moment on, there was no way I wouldn’t do it. If only to save my client the embarrassment of phoning me up.
Of course I then wrote the article. It was now a priority and I was accountable. I called them before the deadline to confirm it was written and to release them from their awkward obligation.

So the second essential thing is to create some kind of external accountability.
It doesn’t have to be a business client of course. It could be a friend or relative, or the guys down at the pub, or a public declaration.
The essential thing is that it cannot be renegotiated with someone who would let you use the weak excuse: “Sorry, I didn’t have time this week”.

This is how I wrote my second book “Chase One Rabbit: Strategic Marketing for Business Success”.

Several people have told me that they are slowly writing a book but don’t have the self-disciple to knuckle down and get it written.
They have even congratulated me on my self-discipline.
But I don’t have self-discipline!
I’m just as capable of procrastination and the laziness of making myself too busy to do the hard work as anybody else.
What got the book written was a system and structure of external accountability.
My editor, Fiona Shaw, is a brilliant wordsmith, editor and adviser.
But half of her job was simply to be my manager. I agreed to send her sections of the book on agreed deadlines. I was accountable to her. And I always delivered. I never had to find out what it was like to miss one of Fiona’s deadlines!

Writing parts of the book then became another essential task I had to fit into my weekly routine, along with attending meetings, writing reports, doing essential admin, etc.
The job of “writing a book”, which sat outside my weekly to-do list, was broken down into tasks that had to be included in my priorities for each week.

So, in conclusion, the answer to the question of how get the Important Things done is:
1. Break the task down into smaller parts. Bite sized chunks. Do-able tasks.
2. Create external accountability with deadlines that we cannot wriggle out of or renegotiate.

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