When you’re in a position of leadership at your company, your time is precious. There aren’t enough hours in a day for you to handle everything yourself, and you can’t afford to shorten the day further with poor productivity. Dayshift supervisor, store manager, or business owner—or something in-between—it doesn’t matter. Your mental bandwidth and your time are limited resources.
Writing for The Hartford, Alexander Huis details five tips for avoiding productivity traps so that you can take control of your workday and be the most effective leader possible. Let’s take a look a three of those today:
1. Beware the Internet
There’s an irony in telling you to be cautious about using the Internet too much, as that’s exactly the way in which you are seeing blogpost. As Huis admits, “You can’t run a business without being online,” but reminds us that “the Internet can be distracting.” For as disciplined as we all strive to be, there are a lot of shiny lights and interesting things on the web, and it’s all-too-easy to fall down a rabbit hole on social media. Huis suggests that if you don’t need online access to complete the tasks ahead of you, you should consider disconnecting.
That’s a difficult prospect for those of us who feel obligated to be accessible to our subordinates or our clients, so Huis mentions some applications, like Cold Turkey, that can block on schedule the most tempting time sinks so you can focus when it matters most.
2. Avoid Unrealistic To-Do Lists
Many leaders find it difficult to just let go of certain responsibilities and delegate them to others. This is especially common among those who’ve ascended the ranks within their company, those who have served in the trenches but now command from the towers. Your desire to just do things yourself—perhaps because you secretly believe that’s the only way they’ll get done correctly or in a timely fashion—is completely normal. But understand that doing everything yourself has diminishing returns, and is ultimately as wasteful as wiling away the day on Facebook.
The idea of being a leader within your business is that you’re taking on the responsibilities that others can’t do. You’re shepherding resources, including your employees’ time, to make sure everything in your purview stays together and works at maximum efficiency. If you busy yourself with doing other people’s jobs, you’re depriving your business of its much-needed leadership. So, pare down your list to the tasks that really belong to you. Huis tells us, “Remember: putting less on your list doesn’t make you a slacker. It helps you work more efficiently and more productively.”
3. Take Breaks
In another ironic turn, the idea of taking breaks might seem counterproductive for avoiding time waste. After all, you’re trying to get more done—how can you do that if you’re not even working? But the truth is that intermissions actually make you better at your job. When you shirk taking moments to decompress, you make your workday all the more stressful. People in danger of burning out do not work at optimal efficiency. There’s really no sense running yourself ragged. “If you don’t take breaks you risk getting less done, not more,” Huis says, adding, “there will be times when you’ll feel like you can’t because you’re so busy. You can. Believe me. You—and your brain—will never regret taking a moment way from work to refresh.” Make sure you take that lunch, or that you grab some coffee, go for a walk, or even take a power nap.
You’ll be happier, and so will your team.
How to Share Responsibility
When leaders become ineffective, the business suffers Ineffective leaders waste not only their own time, also the time of their employees—which ultimately trickles down to the customers. Remember that everything, good and bad, rolls downhill. And because inefficiency breeds ineptitude, the customer is the one who will suffer the consequences when you and your team deliver an inferior product or service.
You might not have ever considered that an outside company could help you ease your responsibilities, but that’s exactly what we do at The Brandt Group. In fact, we like to think of ourselves collectively as your employee, taking on some of those tasks that would otherwise distract you from what you do best. One of those is measuring your customer experience, the very thing that is so heavily affected by distracted leadership. Our world-class mystery shopping services will handle all the auditing you need, so you can reap the rewards of honest, actionable feedback. Not only that, we can also help you as an individual through our leadership classes and seminars.
Everything we do is about making you and your company better. It’s what we do best. Stop wasting your time trying to do everything yourself. Contact us and let’s get you concentrating on what you do best!
