What To Do When There's Too Much To Do by Laura Stack Read Free Book Online

time? When key players are overbooked, it can take hours just to schedule a single meeting. Here are three questions you should ask yourself before calling a meeting and inviting a bunch of people:
    1.
Do we really need all these people?
Make sure you aren’t inviting anyone who doesn’t need to have a seat at the table. Not only does it make scheduling more difficult, but you’ll either (a) waste others’ time or (b) bend over backwards to accommodate someone who isn’t going to show up anyway. Don’t worry about hurting someone’s feelings; they’ll be thrilled to not have to attend.
    2.
Can we keep people in the loop without inviting them to every meeting?
Some meetings are full of wallflowers who need to know what’s going on but don’t necessarily need to contribute. Publishing meeting minutes or distributing essential information electronically can save time and shorten the attendee list. Also, find out if some departments are sending multiple representatives. By choosing a single person from each department, you can make sure everyone is represented without having everyone in the room. Need some more incentive to drop people from the attendee list? Take the approximate hourly salary of each attendee and calculate the cost of the meeting. The meeting may cost thousands of dollars!
    3.
Do we need to meet at all?
This is a question you should ask about every meeting, not just the hard-to-schedule ones. Any meeting that doesn’t have a clear objective—or better yet, a formal agenda—should be on the chopping block.
    Be selective about time-hungry commitments like meetings, so you can free up time for other priorities. Remember, our goal for this workflow process is to achieve more whiledoing less. This requires an active commitment to reducing the amount you do each day. Paring down your time spent in meetings will leave you with more time to tackle your HIT list—what really matters in the long run. The quicker you can attack your HIT list, the quicker you can call it a day and enjoy all the other things life has to offer.
IN THE DECISION COMES THE DILEMMA
    When you’re attempting to gain control of your time usage, it’s often the little moments that count. Specifically, one moment: the second you think to yourself, “Okay … what should I do next?” In that space of time, you choose to be productive … or not.
    We face many such moments in the course of each day. If someone cuts you off in traffic, you choose—in a split second—whether to flip him off or to apply the brake. If your partner is in a foul mood and says something snippy to you, you’ll take a second to inhale and decide in that moment to decide whether to escalate the conversation or say something soothing. It doesn’t matter whether you’re angry or not; in fact, you probably still are. But you’re going to make a purposeful choice about what to do next.
    The same is true in time management. Think about the everyday decisions you make in a split second—decisions that would seem inconsequential if you thought about them at all, but that might lead you toward or away from using your time wisely. For example, do you:
    â€¢ Open a word processor and write an impactful article for a blog, organization newsletter, or client … OR open Outlook and spend time messing around with your e-mail?
    â€¢ Dive into that spreadsheet and do difficult brain work … OR pick up the phone and call a friend?
    â€¢ Rehearse for an important presentation next week … OR research airfare options for your next vacation?
    It’s astonishingly easy to choose the unproductive option, simply because we’re human. It’s tempting to take a mental vacation and do a fun task, instead of the difficult one requiring brainpower and focus. However, the results are vastly different. On the one hand is a day filled with activity; on the other, a day filled