Alpeon Magazine Alpeon | Page 58

56 || personal development | PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS by Marc Richter A MARATHON: THINK, ACT, SHARE ACHIEVEMENTS THE TAMING OF THE SHREW What is our life? “Routine, a gray, bedraggled reality,” as one denizen of the World Wide Web has expressed it. But if we dig a little deeper, it will emerge that everything is subject to routine, even the everyday life of cre- ative people. It’s time we realized that routine is life as we have created it for ourselves. And it’s sufficient to begin doing what we like to do for life to get interesting, and instead of being a boring slog, the everyday routine will become an instrument for achieving your goals. I f you’re engaged in business, then time is a very valuable resource for you. And a poorly organized life is a series of missed opportunities. The less you attend to regimen in your life, the more of your en- ergy is stolen. The people and kinds of activity that are important to you suffer from a shortage of attention. Of course you want to master your time, to tame that shrew; the trick is to find concrete ways to reach that goal. АLPEON proposes several toeholds on the climb to success. Set up a system of priorities and stick to it. Good organization is the ability to distinguish be- tween what you need to do from what you’d like to do if you had unlimited time. Unfortunately, none of us have that. So write down on paper your main goals and tasks as they come to mind. Then compare their value to you and, depending on degree of importance, assign them numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Discard everything else. Com- pare how you’ve spent your time with how you should have spent it, gearing yourself to the tasks that have ALPEON.COM been set. Discard any activity that doesn’t lead to your goal. Use three columns so you can keep track of all your obligations. The first column is for goals and high- priority activities. There you can mark positions: “A” is for “urgent,” for matters that cannot be put off and that only you can deal with; “B” is for “important,” for urgent matters that you can delegate to someone; and “C” is for “can wait awhile,” for matters, the necessity of which is questionable for the time being. The second column contains a list of the phone calls you’ve penciled in to make over the course of the work day. And the third col- umn lists various points you plan to discuss with col- leagues, partners, or personnel. As you finish up the day, devote fifteen minutes to an “evening sort-out” and put together a plan for the next day. Your analysis of the day just past is in the answers to these five questions: — What have I managed to do, and what haven’t I? — What interfered with my achieving more?