Getting More for Less

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I was asked to moderate the edu-tourism sessions at the Economic Restoration Summit last week and there were about 20 people who worked together to come up with a lot of great ideas to build this aspect of tourism. We eventually divided into smaller groups to focus on the top four areas that could really make a positive difference in the CNMI. The big question that most of the participants asked during my session was: Who will be accountable to follow-up and ensure that these ideas are implemented?

It was a good question, but I couldn’t answer it because once the Summit was over, it was out of our control. We did our part well, and handed it off with the hope that someone will carry the ball across the goal line.

You may find it difficult to concentrate on activities in your personal life because you’re constantly bombarded with numerous requests and tasks to do every day, and you may not feel like you’re getting much done. There are things in life, though, that you do have control over to ensure that things get done. If you find yourself spinning your wheels a lot, here is an idea to take back control and help you get more done with less time and resources.

Categorize your days into three time frames that allow you to get more done because you’ll be able to concentrate and build momentum during each of these days. The three days all start with the letter “f” and they’re called your focus day, follow-through day, and free day.

Focus day. On this day your objective is to get results. Think of the most important things you can do to get the most results for the time spent on each activity. In a business, these activities will help you make more money, get more customers, or help your business take a giant leap forward. These are the things that need to get done, but you don’t seem to have the time to do them. Don’t be tempted to spend time on anything else. On this day, every action you take is focused to move you closer to the completion of your most important activities. Our Summit session was a focus day to come up with innovative ideas to move the CNMI closer to the goal of improving educational tourism.

On this day, you solve problems before they become worse, and you get commitments from others that will move you to the next step. If done properly, you will find yourself getting two to three times more done because you can develop momentum to keep a project moving forward. Start off with at least two focus days each week, and then add more as you become more accomplished so that you’re spending more of your time on focus activities.

Follow-through day. The major objective on this day is to reach conclusion with the various tasks started during your focus days. This includes administrative work, committee work, paperwork, and any meetings to help you follow-though on your important activities. For a businessperson, this day should be spent handling customer service issues, putting together proposals, writing emails, meeting with vendors, or getting quotes.

As you get better, you will learn to delegate most of these tasks to someone else or outsource them so that you can spend more time doing focus activities. As you learn to better delegate, you should strive to eventually spend less than 25 percent of your time on follow-through activities.

If you have activities that don’t fit into your focus or follow-through days, you may consider eliminating or minimizing them. After all, if they don’t add value to you in some ways, why should you keep doing them?

Free day. This is the time you need to recuperate and build relationships with important people in your life. On this day you don’t think about work or do anything related to work. This is your play day to have fun, spend time on a hobby, play sports, go shopping, or do anything you enjoy. This is a vital day because as the saying goes: “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.”

Sunday is my personal free day and I know that on this day I won’t do anything related to work. I will work hard to get things done beforehand so it doesn’t spill over into Sunday. It’s a great time to spend with family or to do things to serve others.

Plan each week to determine which days will be your focus days to get more results, your follow-through days to reach closure on your important activities, and your free days to rest and build relationships. Eventually you’ll find that you’ll get much more done in less time, and have more fun in the process.