Yesterday, I read an interesting excerpt from an article in The Globe And Mail, a Canadian newspaper. It was authored by a guy named Wally Bock. His blog is called the Three Star Leadership. The subject was “First on to do list, unpleasant tasks”.
This is a concept I often address in First Approach sessions, and it directly relates to a primary reason most of us fall off the prospecting wagon, reverting to our old habits of putting it off to another day.
If you think about it, most people tend to be on auto pilot in many areas of their lives. This includes how we typically address tasks and responsibilities throughout our work day.
Me, my mornings almost always start the same way if it’s an “in office” day. I stop on my way in, get my coffee, arrive at the office and turn on the computer. Then, while I wait for it to boot up, I check for voicemail. Before I return any calls, I go back to the computer and check to see what the traffic was on my website the day before. I check LinkedIn, and then I look at emails.
This sequence rarely varies for me, and if you look carefully, you’ll see a denominator that will no doubt be in common with how many people start their day. What I gravitate to are the tasks that offer high reward. Emails from a client, or perhaps an interesting invitation to join someone on LinkedIn. Maybe there was a voicemail from a client I was waiting for a decision from.
The irony of course, is that most of us recurrently avoid the low reward tasks, the ones we don’t enjoy or just plain don’t like. These are the tasks that get put off for “when I have time”. They are also the things that we find a burden or a thorn in our sides.
Doubtlessly, prospecting ends up being the job we’ll “do when we have the time”.
What if we changed up our game? What if we identified the stuff we typically avoid – for me, invoicing or organizing my calendar – and made sure we tackled and completed these tasks before anything else? There are significant arguments to be made for instituting this strategy.
- First, unpleasant tasks are addressed at the beginning of the day, while we’re fresh and yet to be worn out or behind schedule.
- Putting the unpleasant “behind you” allows for less reticence or dread towards the rest of the day.
- With the unpleasant behind you, your energy and motivation throughout the rest of the day is more easily sustained.
It is generally accepted that those who exercise or go to the gym in the mornings skip fewer work-outs than those who go at lunch or the evenings. Why, because fewer things become excuses or get in the way. As the day wears on, we become more likely to procrastinate around getting the difficult or low reward stuff done. It’s just human nature.
Do yourself a favor. Make a list of all the things you don’t like, perhaps hate having to do each day, and then get them done before anything else where possible. You’ll be amazed how much your productivity will improve.