Game-changers in life and in business happen all the time.
Some are good, like having a child and now you’re figuring out how to adapt to being a working parent for the first time. Or you’ve just gotten engaged and now you need to plan a wedding.
Some are not-so-happy occasions, like the passing of a loved one and you are responsible for everything they left behind. Or you need to spend more time each week helping an elderly parent who is declining in health and lives alone or helping a family member who is ill.
Or there’s a pandemic. And it changes everything.
Whether it’s a happy game-changer or not, your workday is going to change as a result, but the goal is to be productive and produce the kind of results and outcomes that are expected, if possible.
The secret to achieving that goal is AGILITY.
Agility has always been an essential skill.
According to a recent Forbes article, agility is the skill to have in 2021. The article focused on agile marketing in particular, yet agility is necessary in ANY workday or career if you want daily progress, steady achievement and meaningful results.
Dictionary.com defines “agility” as the power of moving quickly and easily; nimbleness; the ability to think and draw conclusions quickly.” This also includes intellectual acuity or sharpness.
You may feel you move quickly through your day, but there’s a difference between working reactively and working carefully and with agility. The key is to be agile, but not at the expense of other important things slipping through the cracks—things missed, lost or forgotten.
Agility has been referenced as a key skill to have over the years in many areas such as leadership, marketing, culture, sales, customer service, technology and more.
However, in order to be agile in those areas and in your workday in general—no matter what your area of expertise—you have to be in a solid state of readiness.
You have to be prepared and ready for anything. But that’s impossible to do when you lead a reactive workday when you always feel behind, short on time or out of control.
What does a reactive, chaotic day look like?
In an office it will look like a piled-up desk with an overloaded inbox and to-do lists everywhere. In the computer, there will be e-documents and short-cuts all over the desktop and the email Inbox will be overloaded with hundreds or thousands of emails.
And how well do you operate when your day is reactive or chaotic?
Accurate planning and prioritizing is limited since not all tasks are in your awareness. Information is lost, follow-ups are forgotten and time is short. Emails scroll off the screen containing important tasks, information and attachments within. Deadlines are missed, projects are late and opportunities are lost. And trying to make progress is like walking through glue.
If you are already working efficiently and productively, and getting top results, a game-changer will give you pause, but you can often keep moving forward very quickly without missing a beat.
It’s a LOT easier to pivot with peace of mind, when you already have things under control.
But if you aren’t already working efficiently or productively, you’re on shaky ground and it’s liable to get worse if something big and unexpected happens. Then you’ll fall even farther behind than you are today.
If you’re currently working reactively in an out-of-control day, it’s much harder to not only pivot, but pivot without facing more of a mess later on when you discover that things slipped through the cracks. This will keep you stuck in a “reactive” mode when you’re always trying to catch up, bridge gaps or fill holes when something important was missed, lost or forgotten.
Even without a game-changer, maybe the stress of your workday is wearing you down.
Are you tired of the reactive, continuous daily rush to try to “get it all done” and “keep it all together” so nothing falls apart? Do you feel frazzled, frustrated or overwhelmed?
If so, it’s time to take a look at HOW you’re working to see where improvements can be made that will support you in the future. Your workday can be managed a LOT easier than you think.
HOW you work can make or break your ability to be AGILE.
Take a look at HOW you’re working today and consider these questions.
- Are you operating at peak efficiency?
- Are you making the progress you want to make?
- Are you getting the results you want?
- Are you getting the time you need to work on your tasks and daily priorities?
- Do you finish each workday with a feeling of pride and accomplishment?
High performance and peak productivity are based on having clarity and control of tasks and email, confidence you’re focused on the right responsibilities at the right times, and time to make things happen so you can make meaningful progress.
But you won’t be able to enjoy this kind of workday when you’re not prepared behind the scenes—when you don’t have the systems and processes to support you every day.
How to Take Control of Tasks
To make sure you’re always ready for anything and on top of your work, you must have 100% awareness projects and responsibilities, which you need in order to accurately plan and prioritize tasks quickly and accurately, and determine how to spend your time.
Many professionals don’t realize that tasks come from MORE than ten different sources in a typical workday. They also don’t realize that it’s actually IMPOSSIBLE to efficiently and effectively plan, prioritize and accomplish tasks—while trying to manage them ONLY from their sources—without missing, losing or forgetting something—or a LOT of things. This only leads to trouble, both for today and in the future.
To achieve 100% awareness, a centralized, digital task management approach is required to include ALL tasks, no matter the source of the task or when you plan to take action.
This is something a digital “to-do” app on your phone can’t do. It’s still a stand-alone tool, like writing a to-do list on a legal pad. Neither of these tools, nor many others, will allow you to quickly and easily include ALL tasks from ALL sources so you have full awareness of everything you need to do.
With a centralized, digital task management approach, you can create a plan that’s easy to prioritize and adaptable when priorities shift. As a result, you can turn on a dime when necessary, allowing you to execute proactively and make BIG progress every day.
How to Take Control of Time
You could be incredibly clear about daily tasks and responsibilities, but if you don’t have the time to do what you need to do, your tasks will stall and progress will slow down.
Luckily, having clarity of tasks FIRST is an extremely useful driver in determining HOW you will spend your precious time. This is true because knowing what you need to do and when you need to do it can raise your sense of urgency and make you more proactive.
The most important step you can take is to PROTECT the time you need to not only make progress on tasks, but to be able to continuously process email as well.
Protect time instead of just settling for the scraps of time left on your calendar after everyone else has taken what they need—or you gave it away.
Protect time proactively—an hour or more in the morning and in the afternoon—on a recurring basis with no end date. You can move individual blocks of time around to accommodate the requests of others. Protect this time NOW so you have the time you need to do what you need to do every day.
The more time you can protect, the more time you have to be flexible, responsive and agile.
How to Take Control of Email
Professionals try to manage email in the Inbox, but the Inbox is NOT meant to be the primary system for MANAGING tasks and information after emails arrive. The Inbox is just a tool for bringing email IN. That’s it. And what comes in must go back OUT again to be managed more effectively in other, BETTER systems for reference or action. Otherwise, emails can be archived or deleted.
To stay in control of email, first establish systems and locations as soon as possible to store necessary types of reference information and for managing tasks.
The next step is to actually read the emails and MAKE DECISIONS about two things: what it is—reference or action—and how useful the information is, whether now or in the future.
The third step is to MOVE the information, attachments and/or tasks OUT of the email and into other, BETTER systems that are MEANT for managing the reference information or the action steps. Otherwise, emails can be archived or deleted. The final step is to get the email OUT of the Inbox entirely. Once you’ve moved the information, attachments and tasks within to other places, you don’t need this email in the Inbox anymore.
With an empty Inbox, you’ll have more flexibility to spend time OUTSIDE the Inbox, spending time on tasks and projects, and moving them forward.
You won’t always feel behind or in catch-up mode. You’ll have more clarity, control and peace of mind, which will support you in being agile and productive.
Keep in mind that it’s the behind-the-scenes systems and processes that determine how productive you are, how agile you can be and how much progress you can make. With an empty Inbox, a sturdy task management system and time already protected, you’ll have more control of your day and more clarity about your workload.
Take charge of how you manage tasks, time, information and email. Don’t ignore what backs up, stacks up or scrolls off the email screen. These are the things that will make or break your ability to be agile.
