It’s Sunday.
On Friday you said to yourself: “I’ll have to work Sunday.”
You said: “I had so many meetings I didn’t get much done.”
Q: How can you make the best impact if you don’t prioritize your time?
A: You can’t.
Get disciplined about Your time
One unstated part of the PMM job is to spend your time on the highest impact stuff.
While people ask you to all sorts of meetings, most of those are not the best use of your time.
One simple tool to take back control is the Sunday Meeting Cleanse.*
The Sunday Meeting Cleanse™
Every Sunday, look at your calendar for the upcoming week.
Find the 5 hours of meetings that are the least impactful use of your time.
Decline those meetings. If they are your meetings, cancel or reschedule them.
If you’re vital to a meeting, fear not! The host will squawk and let you know.
Almost always, the meeting will still work – often better because you’re not there.
If you’re a manager, ask someone from your team to go for you.
If someone from your team is already in the meeting, great. Stop being a helicopter.
Things will go better without you there.
Putting your freed-up time to work
Look at your list of priorities for the next 3 months.
(if you don’t have this list written down, write it down – in priority order)
Make a plan for how you will use the time on your #1 or #2 priorities.
Now schedule the planned work as actual meetings on your calendar.
(This will help you stick to your plan)
As you practice this discipline, you’ll find you get more important work done.
You’ll thank yourself for it, and your boss and colleagues will like the change.
You’ll seem more senior, and be trusted with bigger stuff.
Happy Sunday cleansing!
Todd
* all credit for the name to the fabulous Alan McAlpine, a star PMM in London
**Illustration by Victoria Morse – a great illustrator. Check her out!
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