Dateline: January 6, 2017
Welcome to our Friday WRAP – one thought-provoking idea to think about over the weekend.
To start out the new year, we’ve taken our one thought for this week from a recent Fast Company post about being more efficient and effective in 2017. The article, This 100-Year-Old To-Do List Hack Still Works Like a Charm, describes a simple process for getting the right work done each day. Behavior psychologist and author James Clear writes about efficiency expert Ivy Lee’s method for efficiency. Hired by the President of Bethlehem Steel to help him get more things done, Ivy met with each of the company executives and taught them this process:
- At the end of each workday, write down the six most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow. Do not write down more than six tasks.
- Prioritize those six items in order of their true importance.
- When you arrive tomorrow, concentrate only on the first task. Work until the first task is finished before moving on to the second task.
- Approach the rest of your list in the same fashion. At the end of the day, move any unfinished items to a new list of six tasks for the following day.
- Repeat this process every working day.
As the story goes, at the end of 3 months, the President was so thrilled with the results, that he paid Mr. Ivy handsomely for the consultation.
What is your plan for organizing your day? Do you have an efficiency process to help insure you get the right things done?
That’s a WRAP! Have a great weekend!
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