Prep Time
Let’s dive into key tasks to ready your future self!
As we make our way into a new year, taking the time to stop down to assess what makes your day its most productive is a wonderful use of time. While this is a great way to kick off a year, there is no time like the present to help manage your time! Let’s dive into the 6 buckets of focus. Each is intended to take larger concepts that drive your day to day and break them down.
6 Key Buckets
Calendar
Recurring meetings. Every recurring meeting set has the same end date of 12.31 each year. During this time, I am looking to achieve two things: 1.) Assess the real need of the meeting. Can the time be better repurposed into videos or emails? 2.) Ensuring the dreaded disappearing meeting doesn’t happen to you. We have all been there, months go by and you look up to think, what happened to this meeting only to find the end date was months ago. This is where the meetings that make the cut for your assessment are locked in until next year.
Recurring Tasks
Map recurring tasks through a double layer system. Once those key tasks are identified, utilizing your project management system of choice is step 1. Lock in a recurring identifier of the activity. After this is set into your system, setting time blocks to ensure time is available to complete the task is key.
Email
This activity is intended to take a deep dive into the email filing system you use. For example, I organize my completed emails into 3 main groupings, Partner Teams, Partner Leaders, and Markets. This gives me clear places to begin a search when needing to reference previous information. Additionally, taking the time to update and audit rules you have set for your emails is important. Outlook color coding rules are a fantastic way to quickly assess your inbox and prioritize.
Files & Folders
My main storage system is OneDrive. I have collected years of key documents and templates there. And without organization, I would never find what I need. Each year, stopping down to ARCHIVE anything that is needing to be kept, but no longer needed to reference allows you to clear the clutter. Specifically, create an archive subfolder under each main folder and label it with the main folder name + archive. This allows you to quickly see file locations when searching. This is like a bit of spring cleaning. So stop to think, do I use this? would I like to reference it later? where is the best place to organize it? Asking yourself these questions will quickly help you lose a lot of clutter.
Learning & Project Goals
This is a task you can lean into as much or as little as you want. As I continue in my field, I am constantly wanting to continue to learn and become proficient with new information. Keep a running list of things you would like to learn. This could be a self made list or a joint effort with your manager, mentor, or leader you look up to so you can grow specific skill sets. While learning is the star of the show, project goals are similarly long tail projects you need to create a plan for. Once you have identified your goals and set micro-milestones, you need to stop and make it a part of your days. Micro-milestones would get added to your project management system of choice and time blocking to stay on track should be set. Without these, you may look up in a month or quarter or year and realize your goals fell to the wayside.
Time Blocking
This is an under-lying piece to everything above. Without dedicated time, you may find you are allowing precious time to slip by. Below is my list of time blocking I use to keep myself on track.
Weekly Calendar Audit.
Morning Success Sessions as my first activity of the day.
Weekly Learning Block
3x weekly reporting blocks
2x weekly focused project work hours
Quarterly Reset & Organization check ins.
These activities have made a major difference in how my days, weeks, months and years go. This is a brief overview of the power of this prep work, but take the time to dive into The Power of Organization for some detailed breakdowns.