Prioritization is a master skill of the most successful leaders. The idea is they work on the most valuable things, and let the less valuable go undone or be delegated to others.
How can you make $300 an hour, by doing work you could get someone else to do for $20 an hour? Simply refuse to do any work that doesn’t pay at least as much as your annual income goal.
“But no work pays that much in my company” you say…that’s right, not yet. There is one job IF DONE CORRECTLY, that would. It’s called Leader. A leader leverages his time and focus. He builds the team that gets the results with customers. He recruits, trains and motivates these team members and gives them the key processes, systems and tools to get their jobs done well.
For your employees, it’s about doing things right. For the leader, it’s less about doing things right, and all about doing the right things. Prioritize what you do with your time, and only do the highest value tasks.
Location is to real estate as productivity is to time.
It took me a long time to realize this but you are spot on. It is essential to get get clarity about what needs to be done, focus on those things and then expect the desired results to follow.
This is what I’m told all the time. But what tends to happen is I have too many pressing things that are all important and when I put something aside to work on something else, I get criticized for not getting the other thing done – like I’m expected to be a robot.