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Executive Prajna

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Crazy Busy: How to Prioritize the Important Work


When I served as a CEO, I grumbled about the days of back-to-back meetings and working meals, but if I’m being honest, those were the easy days.


I always had something to do to advance my business. It may have been relatively small (talking to a vendor about office cleaning, for example) but it was unquestionably work. Most importantly, when my colleagues and family looked at me, no one would accuse me of slacking. 


But this came at a cost: I rarely asked myself big questions: 


Am I spending too much or not enough to execute my plan? Do I have the right employees on my team? Do I have the right investors? What is the most important thing I should do right now?


Here’s the big bind about running a company: There are always more than enough decisions to make and tasks to do during the day that one can successfully avoid the hardest ones, the ones that will actually determine whether a venture succeeds or fails.


So how do you make sure you don’t avoid the big decisions? The answer may surprise you. And horrify you.


Create space in the day or the week to tackle the larger questions. In order to utilize that space, I have to learn to be okay with not being busy all of the time. I have to build up the muscles that allow me to tolerate the experience of, wait for it, not being busy. 


Five tips to tackle the big challenges.


  1. Create the space in the calendar. Block out between 15 minutes and two hours in the next week for strategic planning. Don’t have any expectations for this first chunk of time. Don’t add any to-do items to it. Don’t invite anyone else to the meeting. Just put it on your calendar and protect it. 


  1. Change Your Context. When your strategic planning time arrives, find a set and setting for the time that is different from all of the rest of your meetings. If you do meetings at your desk, go outside. If you always have your computer open, shut it. If you do all of your important meetings on walks around the neighborhood, sit down under a tree. Let your body know that this is different from normal. 


  1. Change Your Perspective. Once you’ve set yourself up, take a moment to step back in your mind from your current situation. I often ask clients to imagine themselves several years in the future, looking back at this moment in their lives and their business’ history. You could also imagine yourself as a key customer or an investor or maybe the next CEO of the business. 


  1. What Needs to Happen Here? With this new perspective, consider your current business. You can be focused on a particular problem (How do I hire the right CMO?) or it could be more general (How do I make this business a success?) Let yourself consider this question from a distance. Remember, you are in the future now, potentially this isn’t even you considering the question, but a future executive! From that perspective, what is the direction emerging for you on today’s problem?


  1. Write it down. Leave time for you to write down your answers. Don’t spend time questioning the answers or thinking about challenges. Just capture the ideas. 


Return to the paper the next day (or even the next week) and see what you think of the idea.



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