If you run a business, have a job or call yourself an entrepreneur, you’d most of the time find yourself with a long to-do list that you have to crumb through the day and has to be done yesterday. As a leader or decision maker, you’re expected to multitask and take care of EVERYTHING in order for your project to run smoothly.
Well that is not true. Or at least that’s what we think.
We usually tend to get ourselves involved in lot of things at the same time in order to resolve the problems in our current project that we’re executing, solving them one after the other because that is what going to make sure the moving of the project. Let it finalizing the new website design, choosing new graphics designers, setting up a POS system, managing support and the list goes on.
This is partly, as I’ve observed myself, is because we don’t trust other people with the things they do. For example, I don’t want Paul to choose my website colors because I’m not sure if he’ll choose the right one and if I don’t like it, I’d have to redo it again. Sounds relatable?
If you haven’t heard about it yet, let me introduce you to the 80-20 rule. It basically says 20% of your efforts drive 80% of the results and its true for many instances. 20% of your customers drive 80% of your revenue. 20% of your problems drive 80% of your depression. 20% of your thoughts drive 80% of your actions. Same goes with your work, 20% of your actions drive 80% of the productivity.
Now if you split it even further, the 20% of the 20% which is about 4%, are the things that moves the needle in your business. The things that really moves your business or project north. You have to figure out what these 4% of things are. Put it this way, everything that impacts your sales strategy or executional path is a needle moving task, and it has to be prioritized.
So step 1: Start with listing out all of your tasks, then check if the specific tasks is a needle moving task. Website design (NO), Ad copy revision (YES), Selecting new colors for the office (NO), Creating an AB test landing page (YES), so on and so forth.
Step 2: Start to trust other people with your tasks. Even if you don’t in the beginning, you’d have to eventually. For all the tasks that are not prioritized, use your team or hire people to execute those tasks. You’d have to trust these people with projects you assign and expect they turn these assigned projects into the 4% priority. Because that’s what moves the needle for them.
Its one of the ways I found myself to be more organized and hopefully you do to.
Artwork: https://dribbble.com/shots/3252385-Job-opening
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