3 Major Time Wasters for Leaders — and How to Overcome Them

You’ve got made it to the top of one more 12-hour day, and as you concentrate on all of the scrambling, hustling and fire-fighting you probably did, you marvel — what precisely did I accomplish?

You are not alone, many people hustle all day, each day. We run from assembly to assembly, hearth to fireside, solely to get to the top of the day feeling like a hamster on a wheel, exhausted and questioning the place the time went.

There’s a higher means, and it begins by understanding how you are spending your time and why you are spending it that means. Listed below are the three biggest time killers for leaders and learn how to overcome them.

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How are you including worth?

Chris is the CEO of a profitable firm. Chris’s imaginative and prescient, ingenuity and tireless work are the guts of the corporate’s success.

As the corporate celebrates 10 years in enterprise, there’s only one downside. Someplace within the combine, Chris has moved away from specializing in the imaginative and prescient and has been swept up within the day-to-day, task-level minutia. As an alternative of specializing in technique, planning or constructing the correct relationships, he is wrapped up in hiring the receptionist, weighing in on trivial choices and attending each. single. assembly.

This isn’t the best and greatest use of Chris’s time. In specializing in task-level work as a substitute of imaginative and prescient, Chris is not maximizing his worth to the corporate. Actually, his want to be actively concerned in the whole lot has change into a detriment within the type of bottlenecks and dropped balls.

Letting go of task-level work is not simple. It feels good as a result of it is acquainted and since it is easy to see progress. While you busy your self with simply achieved duties, you get that dopamine hit.

However being busy is not the identical as including worth.

If you’re the visionary for the corporate, your worth is in technique, planning and relationship constructing, in order that’s the place you have to be spending your time.

So the query is, how are you including worth? Listed below are some issues to think about:

• Does the best way you spend your time align together with your function? Are you spending your time doing $17/hour work or $200/hour work?

• Does the best way you spend your time play to your strengths and permit your staff to play to theirs?

• Are you doing the work that’s anticipated of you (out of your staff, your organization, your board, traders, and so forth.) in your place?

• How are you transferring the needle?

When you acknowledge the place you are spending your time and the worth you are including (or not), you may make the mandatory changes.

Chances are high, your staff is comprised of good, succesful individuals. Trust in them to get the work performed. Consider any task-level issues in your plate. Is there a chance to delegate or reduce in your involvement? This lets you offload conferences and tasks wherein your worth is not maximized.

Revisit how your day is structured so that you just’re engaged on the issues that transfer the needle first and doing the issues that suck the life out of your day later.

Associated: 4 Time Wasters That Kill Your Productivity

Delayed gratification and the to-do checklist

I like to-do lists. Extra importantly, I like crossing issues off my to-do checklist. Earlier than beginning my consultancy firm, I lived and breathed that checklist, and I craved that feeling of accomplishment and delight after I might cross one thing off.

As a frontrunner, crossing 100 issues off your checklist each day does not matter if they’re not the right things. And I’ve discovered the onerous means that the issues I am liable for merely can’t be efficiently achieved in a single day, every week, a month or longer.

Most of a frontrunner’s work isn’t task-level. Initiatives, planning and managing persons are nuanced, steady actions — not duties to be crossed off a listing.

Nonetheless, many leaders, as a way of displaying their worth and chasing the satisfaction of speedy accomplishment, maintain on to task-level issues means longer than they need to. And people task-level issues clog up the calendar and draw consideration away out of your most vital work.

It is time to rethink the to-do checklist. This requires a shift in mindset, from chasing the dopamine hit of crossing menial duties off a listing to embracing delayed gratification.

Revisit the way you make your to-do checklist. Be sure to’re capturing the duties or milestones that transfer tasks ahead. Break your tasks down into weekly bites — that means you may see the incremental progress you make and also you get the dopamine hit of crossing issues off. Play with the time-frame of your job checklist. As an alternative of a every day to-do checklist, make a weekly, month-to-month and quarterly checklist.

Cease together with unending, time-sucking duties like “compensate for electronic mail” in your to-do checklist. You’ll by no means get caught up on electronic mail, Slack or staff messages. As an alternative, be intentional about how and if you examine messages. Designate specific times throughout the day when you’ll evaluation emails, and set a timer for 30-45 minutes so you do not by accident fall down the rabbit gap.

Embrace the delayed gratification of finishing greater, extra strategic tasks. Be sure to rejoice these wins!

Associated: Need More Hours Every Day to Grow Your Business? Then Quit These 7 Time Wasters

Downside solver to the rescue

Leaders are usually nice downside solvers. We like to swoop in with our creativity and imaginative and prescient to make things better or add perspective. Sounds nice on paper, however in doing the swoop, leaders can miss particulars or context, delay decision-making, tackle greater than they will handle or make an even bigger mess of issues — all of which wastes valuable time for you and your staff.

Keep away from leaping in to repair issues, particularly these belongings you simply do not have the bandwidth or experience to see by means of. Bear in mind these good, succesful individuals in your staff? They’re most likely good downside solvers, too. Support and coach them when wanted, and empower them to make choices of their areas of experience.

Leaders who’re clear on their worth and perceive the significance of maximizing their time and effectiveness in addition to the effectiveness of their groups, drive effectivity and staff engagement. Simply as importantly, leaders with a watch on leveraging their worth are in a position to get off the 12-hour-a-day hamster wheel and do the strategic, needle-moving work that issues.