50/40/10... it's not the combination to your high school locker!
Are you struggling with a zillion people a day interrupting you and keeping you from getting the key project done?
Trying to find the one productive strategy that will help you get more done than the guy down the hall or five cubicles to the left from you?
How often this week did you ask yourself, "Where the heck did the day go?"
If any of these sound familiar to you, then I urge you to spend five minutes and forty-three seconds with us in this Episode of Focus Friday and steal our 50/40/10 productive strategy to help you out.
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NEW: Our Dojo Members have asked us for transcripts so that they can follow along. If you like this, please give a social share using the buttons on the page or leave us a comment below. The episode five transcript is found below the video.
Press play now to watch Episode 5 of Focus Friday.
Episode 5 Transcript
Hi and welcome to episode five of Focus Friday, the 50/40/10 productive strategy. This one strategy can help you get more things done that means the most to you. Your goals, your objectives and your things while in the process of helping other people get their stuff done. And get it all done and keep it all together at the same time. Sound intriguing?
So, what is 50/40/10 and what's it mean?
"Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it." - James A. Baldwin
"No matter how busy you are, you must take time to make the other person feel important." - Mary Kay Ash
"Meticulous planning will enable everything a man does to appear spontaneous." - Mark Caine
Here's the 50/40/10 strategy: you going to spend 50% of your day on you. 50% of the day focused on your objectives doing your work. You may say, "Shane hi, I work in an environment where I work in customer service and I'm on wicket or a teller at a bank". While this may not apply to you because you may be in a job that is very reactionary to providing service or answering a telephone, that's okay.
Even your in your personal life you can spend the first half of your day with the first couple hours in the morning so you can focus on your personal objectives. You're spending the first, best half of your day focusing on your objectives. Putting your time and energy into doing your most creative work and doing the things that only you and you alone can do.
The next 40% is that the second part of the day when you're focusing on serving other people because we all live in a connected, interdependent world. Depending on what you're doing or you're trying to achieve, this is the time that you can check email. You can check social media. This is the time you might make phone calls to people to set up meetings.
I'll tell you what happens to a lot of people. They start the day by looking at the blackberry or the iPhone and they let that be the course of the day. Well, that is terrible. That's like jumping in a sailboat, setting the sail and sitting back and not really caring where you go. When you hit that the coral reef and your boat breaks in half, you're going to be sunk.
That's really metaphorically what happens to a lot of people everyday. They just jump into reactionary mode. "Oh man, I have 25 emails". They respond those emails and then at the end of the week, they say, "where did the week go?". "I can't get that project done and my boss is on me".
That's why it's designed to structure the first half your day for you and you alone. Get your objectives done. Fight the power. There's days where I will break form and I will set up a conference call or I'll meet a client. Or get some consulting work to do with a client group and they need me in there at nine o'clock on Thursday morning. I will get in there and do it. The same thing can hold true for you, but make those the rare exception and not the norm.
Then the last 10% of the day. If you're working eight hour day or ten-hour day, you spend maybe an hour of that or three quarters just planning. In this planning session what I encourage you to do is sit back and review the day and look at your calendar. I've had days were you're running from meeting to meeting and you're just going crazy. This is the time you collect your thoughts and look through each meeting.
What were the action items?
What were the follow-up points you need to be cognizant of?
You also want to celebrate today as well.
What did you do really great?
What surprised you?
What were some of the cool things?
Where was the moments of the day were you laughed and you enjoyed the day or you had some time to spend with somebody?
That's all important. Then you go into the preview of tomorrow. Is what's in the calendar the right thing for me to do, knowing what happened today?
You're always one phone call away from a massive opportunity realizing that the prospect that you been hunting down for a long time calls you and says yes. Yes I want to hire you. Now that's just changed the whole thing, the whole game and the whole week for you.
You could be one phone call away from your knees were you get that phone call. I have to drop everything to jump on a plane and go see a family member who's ill or had a catastrophe and now it's changed the whole way the other way. You get a chance to review the day and look at tomorrow, look at the rest of the week. Keep it in view and then you can shift things and prioritize. But then you leave work with that day locked and loaded for tomorrow.
If you have any time left over, you can check email, sort email, do all that kind of stuff. This one productive strategy it's going to be tough for you. It's going to be tough for you to work it and put into place, but maybe it's not 50/40/10. Maybe it's 20/20/60? Who knows whatever the numbers are to be for you. Focus on trying this strategy out. It will pay dividends.
Again, if you have any questions, send me an email and I would be happy to talk about it with you.
Please make sure to drop us a line in the comments below.
Domo Arigato.
