Have you ever had a great idea pop into your head while cycling, driving or in the shower and don’t remember it later?
Or perhaps you’ve read or heard something that resonated but haven’t acted on it because you don’t know how to organize the information or feel overwhelmed.
As business owners, we often juggle competing priorities, e.g. trying to create a new business or grow the business while working, studying, raising children or managing other responsibilities.
With constant demands for our attention our mind becomes overloaded and things slip through the cracks.
A consistent challenge I’ve noticed with many Business Owners is they are not taught how to manage and organize information. Most only manage a handful of things and often it’s the easiest thing in front of them. This limits what they achieve in business and life.
So how do we effectively manage information?
David Allen created a framework in his book “Getting things done” designed to help us keep track of tasks, ideas and different projects.
The overarching principle is that our brain is for generating ideas and not for holding them. Our head is not a to-do list.
Rather, its only when our mind is clear and our thoughts organized that we achieve effective results.
Therefore the first priority is to capture all ideas, tasks, projects, to-do items and any relevant information and prioritize them, and then ask: “is this something I can action within two minutes or schedule for later? Dealing with emails should follow the same approach.
If scheduled for later, group the information into appropriate categories, e.g. “Sales & Marketing”, “Leadership”, “Finance”, “Health & Fitness” etc.
Then ask: “what is the next action?” and schedule so you take purposeful action.
Most importantly, review your schedule weekly and make appropriate adjustments to keep your system operating smoothly and action any outstanding deliverables.
It astonishes me how so many successful business owners achieve so much from proceeding as set out above.
