The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [12]
This can’t be overstated: email can be the death of good time management. Companies that have new-email alerts constantly sounding keep every person in a reactive mode all day long. If your computer signals when you have an email, DO NOT go directly to read it and answer it at the moment it comes in. Email is there for your convenience. If it’s not convenient, don’t answer it.
Concentration is like a muscle and it strengthens as you concentrate more. If you stop concentrating every time an email comes in or the phone rings, you actually lessen your ability to concentrate and you become less effective in any situation that requires concentration.
Note: As you go through these six things, don’t think about whether you’ve heard them before. Think about whether you’re applying the discipline to implement them.
Step 2: Make Lists
Many people make lists as a way to keep organized. If you don’t keep a list, you are most likely a very reactive person. Lists help you stay focused on high priorities and highly productive matters. Keeping a list will double your productivity right away.
When I conduct a seminar on the topic, I go around the room and ask how many people keep lists. Then I ask, “How many items do you usually keep on your list?” There are always a few people in the room who have to-do lists of 25 items or more.
The key to being productive is to stick to the six most important things you need to get done that day. You’ll find that when you have a long list, it becomes the management tool for your time. When you want to feel productive, you go to your list and just pick something and do it. It feels good. When you have a long list, you generally do the easier, less productive tasks just to trim down the list. At the end of the day, you find that the most important things on the list didn’t get completed because they are either the hardest, the most time-consuming, or both.
Long lists also mean that you will never finish your list. There is a negative psychological impact to not finishing your list. But there is an enormous psychological boost to crossing off that sixth item on your list, especially when all six of them were the most important things you needed to do that day.
So here’s the rule: list the six most important things you need to do and, by hook or by crook, get those six things completed each day. That doesn’t mean you don’t keep a side list of running items that need to be done. When you plan each day (coming up in a moment), you can go to your long list and use that as a menu of items from which to build your list of the six most important things for that day.
Exercise
Do this exercise now and we’ll build on it as you read the rest of this chapter. Take a clean sheet of paper and write down the six most important things you need to get done tomorrow. Your list might look something like mine:
Work on client proposal.
Fax contract.
Schedule meetings.
Conference call with Heidi.
Review this month’s marketing plan.
Work on direct mail letter.
Step 3: Plan How Much Time You Will Allocate to Each Task
Do not think about when you will do each task yet. Just determine the amount of time you will realistically dedicate to each task. This is an important step to make sure that the six items on your list can actually be accomplished in a day. If one or more of the items on your list is too big to accomplish in one day, then write down how much time during that day you will dedicate to it. You will take care of bigger projects in manageable chunks of time. This