FranklinCovey > Focus: Achieving Your Highest Priorities
I recently listened to this seminar. It was surprisingly helpful. The topic is basically time management. But the interesting angle of this seminar compared to other time management courses I’ve taken is that they have you understand what is really important to you first and then build out your weekly and daily schedule from there.
Initially you create a basis of your values, then develop your goals. From there you create a weekly list of items to do. Then you create a daily action list. The idea here is to place your most important items on your weekly calendar so you are sure to get them done.
Part of this includes “Sharpening the Saw”. This entails focusing one hour per day on at least one of these four items: Mental, Physical, Spiritual and Social. I think about these items regularly. But I probably don’t focus on them for 1 hour each day.
The idea that really stood out to me was the concept of listing all of the items I want to accomplish in a week in one place. Then place them out on the weekly schedule in order of importance. They should be set up as A,B and C and numbered in each of those letters: A1, A2, A3, B1 etc. This schedule should include work and personal items.
They also spent a lot of time discussing a time management matrix. Quadrant 1 items are urgent and important (what you probably get paid to do at your job). Quadrant 2 is not urgent but important (spending time with your family, Sharpening the Saw, learning, accomplishing long term goals). Quadrant 3 is urgent but not important (interuptions like calls and last minute meetings). Quadrant 4 is not important and not urgent (television, drinking).
Quadrant 2 has the highest value. But often isn’t given much time. The easiest way to get time for Q2 is to steal it from Q4 and Q3.
Quadrant 2 for me is Rocky, Indiana, the SageRock Experience, becoming a better leader, sharpening the saw, and the top 15 people in my life.
I’m excited to try laying out my entire week. We have our weekly meeting tomorrow. I’m going to have Rocky put all of my tasks in on Sunday and then I’m going to put them in a hierarchy and lay them out over the week. They suggested trying to only schedule 65% of your time. I’m excited about that as well. I want to see if I’m really able to schedule my time with 65% capacity. It will be interesting.
Finally, they suggested that if you can’t put your notes all on your computer (if that’s what you use for an organizer), then write your notes in one place so you can easily access them. That sounds like a good idea to me. But I’m not sure totally how to do that. If I write down my notes then no one else will be able to access them. I’m wondering if I could get a keyboard for my Palm and put my notes in there. It might be something to experiment with. I’ll have to give it some more thought.
But if you are looking for a time managment course you might check this one out.