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October 21, 2014 by Brett 4 Comments

Most Important Practices Trump Most Important Tasks

Everyday – Three Choices

Every morning when I get into my office, I have a choice between three options:

  1. I can dive directly into my email inbox and get lost in others’ priorities.
  2. I can work on what I traditionally call my 3 ‘M.I.T.s’ – my ‘most important tasks’.
  3. I can carve out the initial time for my ‘M.I.P.s’ – my ‘most important practices’.

The easiest but least productive option is option 1. It’s so easy to pop open email and start firing off responses and answering questions and barking orders.

I’ve been training myself to select option 2: M.I.T.s – Most Important Tasks. I forget where I first heard this little acronym, but it’s a powerful habit. When you have a thousand different items on your to-do list, take out a blank sheet of paper and write down three items that are the most important items on that to-do list.

In truth, it hardly matters if these three tasks are the most important. Having three clear items on a big white piece of paper will help you get traction.

That’s a great practice, but I’ve had an epiphany.

Most Important Practices

While email urgency falls firmly into the ‘urgent, not important’ category (check out Stephen Covey’s time management quadrant), Most Important Tasks also smack of urgency.

Of course, as the name implies, they aren’t just urgent, but also important.

The problem is that they put you in the ‘urgent’ mode, and those vitally important yet not urgent practices get squeezed out.

Most sales, marketing, or leadership roles require some kind of thought work. Writing, planning, developing key relationships, and establishing goals and direction are all necessary for long term growth.

Those activities can only be supported by having a set of practices that keep them in the forefront.

When those practices are relegated to the end of the work day when all the urgencies are done, those practices never actually happen.

But when those practices are tackled with discipline during the first part of the day, the urgencies all seem to get taken care of as they would any other day.  We lose nothing by prioritizing the ‘important, not urgent’ practices first.

M.I.P.s vs. M.I.T.s

I believe we owe it to ourselves and our overall work to spend time on the Most Important Practices first. Writing, making sales calls, and developing thought leadership projects have to happen when our brains are best equipped for them and before our days get obliterated by urgencies.

We  can then move on to the Most Important Tasks with some email tossed in.

What Do You Do First?

What works for you?

How do you start your day so that you are your most productive?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments…

 

 

 

Filed Under: Mindset Experiments, Productivity Experiments Tagged With: most important practices, most important tasks, priorities, stephen covey, time management

October 2, 2014 by Brett Leave a Comment

Water Damage, Dying Dryer, and Having a Plan: Trying to Repeal Murphy’s Law

In the last couple days, the poop has hit the fan in my house. Water damage issues in bathrooms and a dryer crapping out on us.

It has been a mental distraction. Tiling and small appliance repair research. Consulting with my wife while trying to get some work done.

Distractions are excuses. Excuses shouldn’t be allowed. I’m fully aware of this. Life does happen, but that makes it even more important to have an easily executable plan at the ready.

To leave work at the end of the day with a simple plan, waiting on the desk, ready to go for the next day. That’s how to distraction-proof your work day. Even if life happens, there will be some hope to be effective despite the distraction that comes when Murphy’s Law hits.

Have the three most important tasks sitting front and center at the end of the day. That’ll give most of us a fighting chance.

Today’s action: I’m going to keep this one to myself. I picked one. And I did it.

Today’s Reading and Listening

Book: Duct Tape Selling: Think Like a Marketer-Sell Like a Superstar – John Jantsch

Podcast: Ep. 47 Scott Adams: The Secret to Dilbert’s Success – The James Altucher Show: James’s blog is one of my all-time favorite. The guy’s pen/keyboard has balls. It’s pretty amazing his willingness to be vulnerable.  I especially like his book:How To Be The Luckiest Person Alive! His newer Choose Yourself has been super popular, but I’d start with How to Be the Luckiest Person Alive.

Podcast: SPI 117 : Broke on a Friend’s Couch to Successful Entrepreneur with Dwight Peters of BackersHub – Pat Flynn, Smart Passive Income Podcast: A great conversation about uncovering problems and translating them into business ideas. Check out Peters’ site – BackersHub.com

Podcast: SPI 118 : How to Raise Capital for Your Startup with Bill Glaser – Pat Flynn, Smart Passive Income Podcast

——————————–

This blog is a response to Dan Miller’s unintentional challenge from his podcast on August 15, 2014: If you read or listen to 30 minutes of quality content a day, you’ll double your income. 

From September 1, 2014 through March 1, 2015, I will be doing the following:

  1. Listening or reading to 30 minutes of success, growth, business, spiritual, or other mindset-shifting, skill-sharpening content.
  2. Selecting one action item from that content (with some leeway to select an action from a previous day’s content).
  3. Doing that one action.
  4. Writing about the action or some other idea from the reading and listening of the day. 

Filed Under: Mindset Experiments, Productivity Experiments Tagged With: backershub, bill glaser, Dan Miller Challenge, dilbert, dwight peters, james altucher, most important tasks, murphy's law, pat flynn, scott adams, spart passive income

Hello!

Brett the sales experimenter and the challenge accepter Brett - Sales and Marketing Experimenter. I'm a reluctant sales professional. I didn't start out my career in sales and marketing, but I've grown to enjoy it. Here I discuss marketing, sales, productivity, and mindset experiments that will hopefully yield greater results and a more deeply satisfying sales career.

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