Get're Done - Start with a master task list.

Lets talk about your task list.

• Is it helping you get the most important things done?
• Is it allowing you to work with integrity by helping your deliver on your promises?
• Are all your tasks available for you to review in one spot?
• When was the last time your wrote an item on your task list that you had already completed, just so that you could put a check mark next to the item.

Task lists play an important role in helping us remember the items that we need to complete at work, at home and for the family. I believe in maintaining a master task list for all my tasks and ideas. The master task list is a depository of the items that I want to do for all aspects of my life. Maintaining a master task list has many benefits:

Remember what you promised:
How many times have you been in a meeting and made a comment about something that your would do for someone. This casual statement is now an expectation for the person that you were with. They are counting on you to get that items done. Capturing these items on your list when you promise them to others helps you remember what you said you would do.

Sleep Easier:
Do you know someone who has a hard time going to sleep, because as they lay there in bed trying to relax, there brain is working overtime on what they need to get done. I know someone like this. Capturing a list of these items on a sleepless night onto a master task list is even better than counting sheep. Writing them down tells your mind that it is alright for it to relax about that task, you have it written down in a foul proof system that will remind you about the task tomorrow.

Capture Ideas:
A master task list is a great place to capture ideas that you have. Because you are not going to assign due dates to your master task list items, you can write down that ideas that your would like to figure out and try. I wonder how many good ideas have been lost because they were never recorded and went by the wayside.

Maintain Lists:
Within my master task list I often maintain other list of things that I want to record. For example you will always find a list of books that I want to read in my master task list. Maybe it is a list of items that you want to order from a vendor, but you want to make sure that you meet their minimum order. Keep your list handy so that you can refer to it the next time you want to place an order and make sure you do not miss anything.

Your master task list does not have to be perfectly organized, you will do that when you move the items to your daily task list. Remember that you can delete these items later if you feel that they are irrelevant or no longer apply. Just get all your ideas down onto your list.

Making Your Weekly/Daily Plan

The next step is probably to most important step you can take in reducing stress in your life. What we want to do next is to move those items that we have identified for each of our roles, as the most important items in our lives, to our daily task lists. How does this reduce your stress? Our minds are very powerful and if we have a single list of things that we have to get done or accomplish, our minds are going to try and work on all the items on that list all at once. We might not be thinking about all of them conciously, but in our subconcious, are minds are wearing themselves out trying to deal with all these items once.

Take the list of items that you identified, and assign them to a particular day. Make your self say "I am going to take care of this item on Tuesday.", or "This item can wait until Thursday, but I need it for the meeting on Friday," By placing the items into a daily plan you are allowing your subcouncious to say, "Alright, I do not have to worry about this item until Wednesday. " You are now able to focus on today's tasks more effectively and allow your full power to be focused on what is important today. You can relax because you know that on Wednesday, your planning tool will remind you that you need to take care of this other important item.

You can even go a step further. You can assign a particular task to an exact time in your calendar. For example let's say that you have an important proposal due later this week and you want to get the draft completed a few days early so you have plenty of time to review it. Make an appointment with your self to work on that task. Thats right, actually put it on your calendar as an appointment. If someone tries to schedule something at that time, you have the ability to say "I sorry that time will not work for me, I have an appointment. Can we find a time that will work for both of us." You have now protected the time that you are going to dedicate to that project.

There is an old saying that I say all the time, "How do you eat and elephant? One bite at a time." By breaking down your roles into tasks and planning those tasks into your day you are breaking the larger project into achievable action items and planning your time to get the most important items done first so that you will have Peak Achievement Today.

Using Roles to Make a Plan

Once you have established the roles that you have in your life you can use them to establish a monthly and weekly plan that will guide you to achieve the items that you put the most value on. At the beginning of each month, and on Monday mornings is sit down with my list of roles and walk through this process:

1. I review the list of ROLES and make sure that they are all still current and viable. I add or subtract roles based on the month or week.
2. I then go through each role and determine the key items that need to be done for each of these roles. As I do this I write down the key tasks that need to be done for each of these roles.
3. Not all roles are equal - achieving balance does not mean that each role has the same number of tasks that need to be completed. Some roles my have 7 key things that need to be done, and roles may even have only 2 or 3. (I sometimes maintain a role with 0 tasks for a particular week)
4. Make sure that you do not ignore roles that are important in your life, but do not "seem" urgent. One of the roles that I have on my planning list is "husband". I always try to think of one or two things that I could do for my bride that will let her know that she is important to me.
5. Place your list somewhere where you will look at it daily.

This does not need to take a lot of time. When you are first starting a process like this it may take you 30 -40 minutes. As you practice over time the time will decrease. I challenge you that if you take this time here, you will save hours throughout the week by eliminating distractions that come in day to day life.

I have been taking these steps every month and most weeks for the last 19 years. I can complete this process in about 15 minutes a week. I will be amazed at the volume of work I get done by Tuesday night, just because I sit down on Monday morning and identify the key priorities of the week.

On the next posting we will look at moving these items from your weekly plan, and getting them into your daily schedule.

The Gas Pump of Life

We have a choice between positive energy and negative energy. Positive energy is high octane fuel for the ride of your life while negative energy causes sludge to accumulate in your energy pipeline.

With high gas prices, I know that we are all used to going to the pump with the cheapest gas. Yes we could splurge and buy a tank of high octane gas for our car, but we pull up and fill up with good old regular gasoline. Our car survives on regular gas, it gets us from point a to point b, right.

This may work well for my car, but when it comes to my attitude I have to believe that I am worth the very best octane I can buy. (With a diesel car I understand high fuel cost :) ) My attitude is like that Lexus my friend owns, it requires high octane fuel or you void the warranty. If we can fill our life with positive energy, we will achieve more. We will find the extra spark to tackle a tough problem or to push that last bit to achieve the goal we set.

Sometimes we may need to add a fuel additive to our tank to clean out old deposits, but from now on, I AM BUYING THE HIGH OCTANE FUEL FOR LIFE.

Quote - Taking Action

" There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction."

John F Kennedy
35th President of the United States

Book Review - Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

OK this book review is going to be a little bit out of place on our current topic, but I just finished this book this weekend. I have been working on it for a while and it is very thought provoking. For those that are following this blog, that also work for the Boy Scouts, I would not be surprised to find out that Bob M. is basing some of his current changes off this book. Bob's Blog sounds like it could have been a direct result of reading this book. Additionally the setup of the "Department of Innovation" and the new Innovation engine could have been direct results of reading this book. The key is that we need to take advantage of these new tools and do our part to make them a vibrant place for the development of new ideas. We need to seize this opportunity that is being presented to us by our top leadership and contribute our thoughts and ideas to help us all achieve Peak Achievement.

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott

rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a very thought provoking book, and has many great observations and predictions of where we will be going in the future. My biggest challenge with this book is that I was hoping for a little bit more of a road map of how to implement the theory into the work place.

After listening to the book for a while, I started to get some ideas of ways to build collaboration within my own work space, but now I need to search out and learn how to use some of these technologies. The part near the end of the book about older people just needing to get out and experiment with social networks, blogs, you tube, wikis and other collaborative spots on the web is where I am going to get started.

View all my reviews.

Identify Your Roles and Achieve Greater Ballance

One of the fundamental parts of my planning is the identification of the roles that I choose to serve and participate in. Life is not simple, we have many priorities that we have to juggle. Even at work, most of us have multiple projects or goals that we are having to work on at any one time. Throw on top of that all the things that you have to do at home, for family and your community involvement and you have a very complex life to plan.

In selecting your roles, you are identifying those areas of your life that you are going to make a priority now. Think about the key areas or goals you have in your life that are important to you and right them down.

For example I have a variety of different goals at roles at work. I am responsible for the team achievement of our sales goal, I am responsible for helping develop staff and I have a primary role in developing and implementing our communication plan to clients. Each and everyone of the work roles has something that I need to do each week to achieve the year end goal that I wish to achieve.

In addition to my roles at work, I am also a father, husband, soccer coach (for part of the year), a homeowner and I am involved in the community. Each of these are as important to me as my work and I have to make sure that I plan the needs of these roles into my week. If you only set up the roles that you have at work, and ignore the personal roles that are important to you, you are creating stress in your life. I believe that this is what "workaholics" do, they are only able to focus on work items and never learn the skill of life planning.

Take some time and think about the roles you want to have in your life. What things are important to you, and require your attention to maintain in a positive way. What goals are you wanting to achieve. Write down a list of roles, then we will look at the use of roles in planning your life for Peak Achievement!