Video: How to Manage Time With 10 Tips That Work

Entrepreneur Magazine frequently offers useful time management tips. Here are 10 that are helpful. Don't worry too much about the revolutionary declaration that most time management advice is useless -- that would make THIS advice useless, too. It's not. It all depends on how you apply it, particularly with the discipline that you apply it.

All time management tips depend on people DOING them with the discipline to say NO to distractions and low-payoff items. Focus first (and most) on the HIGH PAYOFF items and you are likely to be happy with the results.

Here are the tips for additional review and application:

Carry a schedule and track all of your activities, conversations, actions, and even thoughts - for a week. Identify your productive vs. non-productive times.
Assign time for your important activities. Put it in your schedule!
Plan to spend at least 50% of your time in the activities and actions that produce most of your results.
Schedule time for interruptions. You know they are going to happen - plan on that consumption of your time.
Take the first 30 minutes of your day to PLAN your day. "The best use of your time is planning the use of your time" might seem weird but give it a try. It is critically important.
Take 5 minutes before any call or task to determine what result you want to obtain. Set a goal.
Put up a "do not disturb" sign when you absolutely must get something important done.
Practice not answering the phone. Just because it is ringing doesn't mean you must answer it. When you are working on something more important (or interacting with someone in person!) let the call go to messaging.
Block out other distractions like social media (unless that is part of your job or promoting your business.) If it's just fun, do it during designated fun times.
Remember that it's impossible to get everything done. No one can do everything. Odds are that 20% of your time will produce 80% percent of your results. Make that time the best you can.

Video Source: https://youtu.be/go5XyuI7DkA

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Your Team Needs a Strong Leader

You're not just part of the team, are you?

You are, as the team leader, at the center. You set the tone. You set the speed. You set the mood.

Those are powerful abilities, if you use them in high performance ways. You'll need power, and you'll need strength, and you can't grab that from anyplace else other than yourself. Your team is counting on you. Whether or not they tell you, they depend on you to be their strong leader. The strength of patience. The strength of persistence. The strength of high expectations.

Pull your team together. Talk with them individually AND as part of the whole team. Let them know how to succeed and they'll do their best to do so.

As much as you might want it to, your team will not build itself. It needs a strong leader.

That's you.

You can do it. You're the boss.

-- doug smith

Video: Marshall Goldsmith and Feed Forward

From Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, Executive Coach, comes this is a great way to share fast, low risk coaching with a number of people. The three steps are simple and easy:

Write down an area you'd like to improve that would have a big impact for youAsk for 2 positive suggestions for the future that would help with that areaRepeat getting positive suggestions from others in the group There are two simple roles for the process:

No talking about the pastNo judging or critiquing ideas
Here's Dr. Goldsmith describing the process in one of his highly useful videos:

I found this article and video from one of my favorite sources of leadership advice, GetLighthouse.com, here.

Stay Creative

Don't let anyone or anything stop you from being creative. It's power you have to use to make things better and achieve your goals. Sure, it sometimes might aggravate people. It might cause some people to bristle at having to look at things a new way. It's important. Stay with it.

Creativity will get you out of more trouble than it ever gets you into.

-- doug smith

Provoke Something Positive

Leaders do not settle. Good enough is not enough. Almost will never do. As my dad used to say, "Anything worth doing is worth doing right," and leadership must be done in a fully attentive, fully focused, high performance way. High performance leaders insist on ever increasing performance. To get there, they encourage positive action after positive action. Step by ever reaching step to a higher level, to a better degree, to a higher quality.

It's what high performance leaders do.

High performance leaders provoke positive actions.

What positive action will you provoke today?

-- doug smith

Leadership Call to Action The next conversation you have with anyone on your team today, take a moment to provoke a positive action. Encourage your team member to do more, to add quality, to add value to something otherwise routine. Keep provoking until that positive action is a reality -- and then keep provoking until that positive reality is a habit.

You can do it. You're the boss…

What's Your Superpower?

Would you like another super power?

There's a skill that, once you start using effectively, begins to feel like a superpower. You never have to settle for a poor answer again. I learned this from my mentor Andrew Oxley, who taught me "if you don't like the answer to a question, ask a better question."

Try it.

It takes practice. At first you might run out of questions. But, if you stick with it and work at it you can always, always, always come up with better questions. And if you get stuck, silence can even be your better question. Just don't give in. Just don't give up. Ask better questions.

Remember what Andrew Oxley said:
If you don't like the answer to a question, ask a better question.
-- doug smith

Building Your Team: Recruit Constantly

Team building. It's a never ending process. It starts with recruiting. Who you bring into your team makes the chemistry of your team. Who you bring into your team sets the players in place to do the work that needs to be done.

Take your time with recruiting. Start by getting to know the best talent you can. You never know who might be interested in joining your team, but first get to know them. Learn from talent everywhere. Explore places you might not usually explore to find the talent that can take your team to the next level.

They might not join your team now. They might not even be interested. But, someday they might. The only way that someday arrives is if you start the dialogue today.

Who do you know who you wish was on your team right now? What if you gave them a call?

-- doug smith

It's You

Have you ever worked for a perfect leader? Me, either. And neither am I a perfect leader. We can't be perfect, yet we can work to be on the work toward perfection. It's a road we'll never finish.

I've been blessed to work with many great leaders, none of them perfect. But, some people have not been so lucky. Some people seem to have worked for a long streak of frustrating leaders or bullies. Maybe some of those people are headed for (or already on) your team. The news is good, though. You can greatly influence their future experience, even if you were previously less than what they needed in a boss.

It's a new day. It's a new time. You can be a new, improved, effective, attentive, high performance leader.

Start today.

Be the leader you always wished you had.
Someone else is wishing for that, too.

-- doug smith

The Road Is Distorted

Have you ever been on your way somewhere and suddenly realized that you were on the wrong road? Before GPS, that would happen to me frequently. I'd get lost. Things looked different than I expected.

On our road to our goals, things can get distorted. Our expectations, formed with optimism and trust, can get twisted or tumble over a cliff. The road to any goal requires a toll. Are you prepared to pay that toll.

One early toll is seeing thru the distortions. To achieve our goal we need to see clearly. That could mean seeing things thru someone else's viewpoint. Find out the facts, sort out the feelings, and focus on as much objective truth that is available.

The road ahead is distorted. It's up to us to stay centered, focused, and on the right route to our goal.

Keep you map handy.

-- doug smith

Video: How to Get Your Boss to Like You

I gain much from watching these brief videos from Business Made Simple featuring Don Miller. If you enjoy them to you can subscribe. This one features some quick advice on how to get your boss to like you.

Set Five Top Goals

How many top priorities do you have?

The trouble with too many top priorities is getting them done. Too many top priorities means you don't really have priorities -- just a really long list of goals.

Have all the goals you want. Goals are great. I've know people who carry a list of 100 goals. They check them off one by one, and some have truly accomplished nearly half. That takes time, and feels more like a bucket list than a goals list.

Top goals are what you work on first. Top goals are what you prioritize above all else. Top goals are where your results make a meaningful distance.

High performance leaders show the courage to focus on five top goals.

How many do you focus on?

-- doug smith

doug smith training

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