When working with an executive coach, a leadership coach or any success coach, your aim is to set and achieve high-level goals for your job or business. Whether these are marketing goals, sales goals or growth goals of any kind—you and your coach are going to look for noticeable progress every month, and that progress is based on taking the agreed upon steps recommended by your coach.
However, if you struggle to complete those steps, your resulting progress—or lack thereof—will become a topic of future conversations with your coach. Anything that gets in your way of reaching monthly milestones requires close inspection and a discussion of what’s holding you back.
Usually, a lack of time is what slows progress, because time is what is needed the most to do the recommended steps given by a coach. And when there is little time to spend on the “homework,” it’s often due to having reactive, out-of-control workdays that steal time, reduce efficiency, and make you wonder what you accomplished by the end of the day.
If you feel like you’re slogging through molasses and your results are slow to appear—for your own projects as well as for monthly coaching assignments—reflect on HOW you’re working each day.
HOW a professional works in their workday can make or break their efficiency, productivity and progress.
A lot more time and energy are lost in inefficient, ineffective workdays than professionals realize. The more smoothly and more streamlined a workday becomes, the more time, energy and effort are saved.
It all comes down to workload management skills.
HOW you work is just as important as DOING your work.
“Doing” your work means using your expertise. It’s what you do best and it is the very best use of your time.
But the “HOW” is getting in the way of workday efficiency. The “How” is like the workday operating system that should be running quietly and smoothly in the background of your day, but for many professionals, it’s not working that way. They’re struggling with three of the biggest workday questions:
How am I going to handle all of these tasks and shifting priorities?
How am I going to get the time I need to work on my most important projects?
How am I going to get through all of these emails?
Like most professionals, you’re an expert at what you do, but if you feel like you’re spinning your wheels, always looking for more time and wishing you could get out of email jail, the HOW of your workday is getting in the way of your efficiency and productivity.
If you have trouble making steady progress without letting things slips through the cracks, the HOW is also increasing your stress, which means you’re less able to do your best work.
So, if you’re grappling with how to manage your workload and your workday, and you’re also lacking the TIME to make progress and get results from your coaching investment, something has to change.
Three Useful Strategies to Support Achievement and Progress
In order to hit milestones and reach goals, it’s essential to have systems and strategies that support daily progress. You must sustain clarity, keep your focus and stay in control of your workday. The more efficient you become, the more effective and productive you will be, and the time and energy to put towards completing the assignments and steps recommended by your coach.
Here are three strategies to support your success and help you make the most out of your coaching investment.
Strategy #1: Become a Master at Protecting Your Time.
To complete tasks, process email and move projects forward, you need quiet, uninterrupted time. However, it’s nearly impossible to get this kind of time when you have an all-day, open-door policy. It’s also impossible when you have back-to-back meetings or calls every day.
Similarly, it’s difficult to finish what you start when you bounce reactively through your day addressing ringing phones, steady emails, instant messaging, multiple interruptions and ongoing distractions.
There are many strategies for reducing interruptions and distractions to maximize your time when you have it, but getting more and longer stretches of time is the primary goal. To achieve this, the most useful strategy is to proactively PROTECT the time you need on your calendar.
Take control by scheduling 60- to 90-minute blocks twice a day (recurring, but movable, with no end date) for quiet time to work uninterrupted—preferably with your door closed if you have one.
When you work with great focus “in the zone,” you’ll be able to accomplish ONE thing at a time, finish what you start and make the progress you really want to make.
Strategy #2: Use a Total Task Management System, Not a Paper To-Do List.
What do you use to track of things to do? What keeps you on target with achievement? How do you handle shifting priorities?
Without a reliable system for accomplishing tasks every day, you’re sailing without a compass, tackling wave after wave, just trying to stay afloat, but floating aimlessly. The word “adrift” comes to mind, which describes it well. It’s work day “lacking aim, direction or stability.” Yep, that’s the kind of day many professionals have and it is definitely the kind you want to avoid.
What most professionals don’t realize is that tasks and follow-ups come from MORE than 10 different sources in a typical workday. Email, calls, meetings, texts, social media and the papers and files on your desk are just a few, but there are MANY more.
Professionals ALSO don’t realize that it’s actually IMPOSSIBLE to efficiently and effectively plan, prioritize and accomplish tasks when trying to manage them ONLY from their sources without missing, losing or forgetting something—or a LOT of things.
Outside of using NOTHING to keep track of tasks—usingthe archaic, paper to-do list is the most INEFFICIENT and INEFFECTIVE way to plan, prioritize and accomplish tasks—again without missing, losing or forgetting anything.
The ideal solution is to use a Task Management system. But don’t let the word “system” scare you. This approach is simply a centralized, digital and complete Task List that you can build in your own email system. When you add ALL of your tasks and responsibilities—no matter the source or when you’ll take action—you’ll have a comprehensive “system” that’s all-inclusive and reliable.
With 100% awareness of what you’re responsible for, you’ll have the ultimate edge—a level of clarity like none other—which is absolutely necessary for accurate planning and prioritizing. Then you can accomplish tasks faster and easier, and with a LOT less stress—all without missing, losing or forgetting anything.
Strategy #3: Become a Decision-Making Ninja.
Information is flowing into your computer, your office and your workday constantly—from emails and attachments, papers and files, meeting and calls, social media and reading, and more. Whether physical or digital, the information you receive can build up and stall without ONE VERY ESSENTIAL action on your part… and that’s making decisions.
Clutter equals unmade decisions and when it piles up, it becomes a constant reminder that your work is never done, which can be overwhelming and demotivating. Not only this, but when clutter builds up, it will steal time from you and as a result, slow your progress.
To process what you receive and reduce what you keep, you need to INCREASE the NUMBER of decisions you make each day and INCREASE the SPEED at which you make those decisions. This means thinking quickly, identifying the information you DON’T need and dispensing with it, plus identifying the information you DO need and saving it quickly into the right systems right away.
Information like e-documents, papers, files, emails and contact information—just to name a few—can all go into systems you ALREADY have that are meant for managing those specific types of information.
Decisiveness is also beneficial when you can quickly add tasks to a single system for tracking, managing and accomplishing them, as mentioned in Strategy #2 earlier. When you can do this, you won’t waste time worrying about what you might have missed or lose time back-tracking from something you forgot.
When you use the systems you already have for managing tasks and information, you can make decisions much faster and easier, and enjoy less build-up around you on your desk and in your computer.
This results in fewer distractions, less worry and more focus, allowing you to move forward more quickly with accomplishing tasks and making more steady progress on projects. With increased efficiency and productivity, you’ll have additional time for taking the recommended steps given by your coach, which will propel you more quickly to the success you’re reaching for.
