Record how you spend your time. Cut the things that steal it. Then consolidate your time into chunks big enough to accomplish good work.
Via The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done:
Effective executives, in my observation, do not start with their tasks. They start with their time.
And they do not start out with planning. They start by finding out
where their time actually goes. Then they attempt to manage their time
and to cut back unproductive demands on their time. Finally they
consolidate their “discretionary” time into the largest possible
continuing units. This three-step process: recording time, managing
time, and consolidating time…
2. “Effective executives focus on
outward contribution. They gear their efforts to results rather than to
work. They start out with the question, “What results are expected of
me?” rather than with the work to be done, let alone with its techniques
and tools.”
Don’t focus on the work in front of you, focus on results. If you’re
just doing what comes in, you’re on the treadmill, not making a
difference.Via The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done:
If the executive lets the flow of events
determine what he does, what he works on, and what he takes seriously,
he will fritter himself away “operating.” He may be an excellent man.
But he is certain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away
what little effectiveness he might have achieved. What the
executive needs are criteria which enable him to work on the truly
important, that is, on contributions and results, even though the
criteria are not found in the flow of events.
3. “Effective executives build on
strengths—their own strengths, the strengths of their superiors,
colleagues, and subordinates; and on the strengths in the situation,
that is, on what they can do. They do not build on weakness. They do not
start out with the things they cannot do.”
Judge people by what they’re good at. If you want people who are
competent at everything you’ll end up with a team of mediocrities.Via The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done:
The task is not to breed generalists. It is to enable the specialist to make himself and his specialty effective.
This means that he must think through who is to use his output and what
the user needs to know and to understand to be able to make productive
the fragment the specialist produces… We can so structure as to make the strength relevant.
A good tax accountant in private practice might be greatly hampered by
his inability to get along with people. But in an organization such a
man can be set up in an office of his own and shielded from direct
contact with other people. In an organization one can make his strength effective and his weakness irrelevant.
Want to get ahead? You must do this for your boss as well. Stop
bitching about what they’re bad at and do the work necessary to allow
them to focus on what they are good at.Via The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done:
Conversely, there is nothing
quite as conducive to success, as a successful and rapidly promoted
superior… The effective executive, therefore, asks: “What can my boss do
really well?” “What has he done really well?” “What does he need to
know to use his strength?” “What does he need to get from me to
perform?” He does not worry too much over what the boss cannot do…
Subordinates typically want to “reform” the boss. The able senior civil
servant is inclined to see himself as the tutor to the newly appointed
political head of his agency. He tries to get his boss to overcome his
limitations. The effective ones ask instead: “What can the new
boss do?” And if the answer is: “He is good at relationships with
Congress, the White House, and the public,” then the civil servant works
at making it possible for his minister to use these abilities.
Same goes for yourself. Do not turn yourself into a mediocre
generalist. Delegate what you’re not good at and spend your time on what
you are.
4. “Effective executives
concentrate on the few major areas where superior performance will
produce outstanding results. They force themselves to set priorities and
stay with their priority decisions. They know that they have no choice
but to do first things first—and second things not at all. The
alternative is to get nothing done.”
Getting things done is not enough. You must get the right things done. What is most important? Focus on that.Via The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done:
To be effective is the job of the
executive. “To effect” and “to execute” are, after all, near-synonyms.
Whether he works in a business or in a hospital, in a government agency
or in a labor union, in a university or in the army, the executive is, first of all, expected to get the right things done. And this is simply that he is expected to be effective… All
in all, the effective executive tries to be himself; he does not
pretend to be someone else. He looks at his own performance and at his
own results and tries to discern a pattern. “What are the things,” he asks, “that I seem to be able to do with relative ease, while they come rather hard to other people?”
5. “Effective executives, finally,
make effective decisions. They know that this is, above all, a matter of
system—of the right steps in the right sequence. They know that an
effective decision is always a judgment based on “dissenting opinions”
rather than on “consensus on the facts.” And they know that to make many
decisions fast means to make the wrong decisions. What is needed are
few, but fundamental, decisions. What is needed is the right strategy
rather than razzle-dazzle tactics.”
The best decision makers don’t make many decisions. They focus on the
ones that are important and the ones only they can solve. How can they
do this?Most situations are generic and have a standard solution. Once you understand this and know the standard solutions you can cut through the easy problems and focus on the few unique problems that really require effort.
Via The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done:
The effective executive does not
need to make many decisions. Because he solves generic situations
through a rule and policy, he can handle most events as cases under the
rule; that is, by adaptation. “A country with many laws is a
country of incompetent lawyers,” says an old legal proverb. It is a
country which attempts to solve every problem as a unique phenomenon,
rather than as a special case under general rules of law. Similarly, an
executive who makes many decisions is both lazy and ineffectual. The
decision-maker also always tests for signs that something atypical,
something unusual, is happening; he always asks: “Does the explanation
explain the observed events and does it explain all of them?; he always
writes out what the solution is expected to make happen—make automobile
accidents disappear, for instance—and then tests regularly to see if
this really happens; and finally, he goes back and thinks the
problem through again when he sees something atypical, when he finds
phenomena his explanation does not really explain, or when the course of
events deviates, even in details, from his expectations.
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