I’m a big fan of various systems for setting priorities, then creating processes to import those priorities into daily activities. I’m also a believer in to-do lists, scheduling those things that are most important. Are you scheduling the time, setting the priorities, focusing on those things most important? Or, do you spend your days, weeks, months and years doing seemingly urgent, relatively unimportant tasks?
As I write this, I’m 55 years of age… it all came at me in a hurry… childhood, school, marriage, children, soccer, football, concerts and counselors, Dad’s death, graduations, college for the children, the empty nest, Cindy’s cancer, her remission, the passing of the relatives (there goes the emotional buffer!), not quite as fit/nimble/flexible as I used to be… so what’s important? Just what everyone tells me, time and time again: family, spirituality and health.
Now, having said all that, this book is about increasing the performance and productivity of your organization. It is about a system that will allow you to spend more time on your priorities. Most of us still have to work to keep food on the table.
Jim Trounson, a friend of mine, works in medical management. He has an impressive model which has led to real success, success being defined as being highly productive, contributing to the greater good, keeping priorities of family, spirituality and physical health in the mix. Jim talks about:
- The value of a blended lifestyle, one where work is integrated with life’s other priorities. The work gets done, the mind is clear, the body remains fit and there’s time allocated to family.
- More of us now are becoming knowledge workers than widget crankers. Therefore we thinkers don’t enjoy the harder edges to work that makers of things have. Work time versus non-work time is difficult to distinguish because we can’t and shouldn’t compartmentalize our consciousness.
- Consider a “to-don’t” list, or at least giving yourself permission to get to a task at a specified time later, is needed for focus on the work or play task in front of you.
