Following a great response to my previous blog post inspired by my Direct Line for Business calendar, I’ve looked to March’s page for inspiration. The suggestion for this month is to have no more than three priorities at any one time, on the grounds that ‘identifying three priorities will enable you to work with focus and pace and, over time, deliver far more than if you tried to do ten things at once’. This sounds like intrinsic common sense and the reason it particularly resonates with me is that it echoes a recent conversation I had with a super-successful businesswoman. Read more
Tag Archive for priorities
Eat that Frog! by Brian Tracy
Eat that Frog! is my favourite book on productivity, and I often find myself rereading it in January, to remind myself of the disciplines and practices I’d like to follow in the coming year. While there are 21 tips in the book, these are really just variations on a few key themes. These themes are all based on one commonsense insight that pulls away the shrouds of illusion from our desire to ‘catch up’: there is never enough time to do everything you have to do. No matter how many personal productivity techniques you master, there will always be more to do than you can accomplish in the time available. Selecting what we actually do amidst the panapoly of things we could do is critical. As Brian Tracy puts it: ‘You can get control of your tasks and activities only to the degree that you stop doing some things and start spending more time on the few activities that can really make a difference.’ Read more
How to get your new year off to a great start
At the Business Startup Show back in November I picked up a Direct Line desk calendar. Turning to the first page this week, I saw that the business advice for January is ‘Have a clear number one goal’. The full tip reads:
Work out your top goal: you will then be able to identify the key actions you need to take to achieve it. What, above all else, is your number 1 goal for this year? Is it a sales goal, a profit goal or the retention or acquisition of certain clients? Read more
Category: business, business coaching |
Tags: achievements, business startup show, celebration, goals, new year, priorities, Stephen Covey
How to use 2011 to kickstart 2012
I hope you’ve enjoyed the festive season and are looking forward to the new year ahead. I’d like to wish you all health, happiness and success for 2012.
Before you forge on into the promise of a brand new year, it is worth taking just 15 minutes to pause for thought and reflect on the year just gone by. Think about what you’ve achieved, what you’ve learned from it, and where you want to go now. This will help you begin 2012 in a more focused way. To help you with this, I’d like to share the following tips from my friend and top coach, Rasheed Ogunlaru. With my publishing hat on, Rasheed is also author of the forthcoming book, Soul Trader, which I’ll be publishing this year at Kogan Page.
Ponder on the following questions posed by Rasheed. I’d suggest identifying 3 answers to each, and making a note of them so you can refer back.
- What have been the highlights of your year?
- What have been the main challenges of your year?
- What have you learned from it all?
- What priorities do you need to focus on for the year ahead?
Good luck in achieving all your goals, whatever they are. And don’t forget to let me know how you get on, I’d love to hear from you!