Things don’t just organise themselves, you will need to drive this. It will take a combination of big move and small adjustments to have things working the way you want them to.
Small adjustments weekly
Big adjustments every 3 months
If something will bring more order to how you work, costs less than $100 and take less than 30 minutes to implement, you should do it. Don’t think about it too much, just do it…
Try this example - buy a decent phone cradle for your phone in your car.
Charge while you drive and get things done. This Cygnett cradle is under $100. Click the image to buy one.
Tony Robbins talks about N.E.T time - get things done whilst you’re doing something else, meaning it’s done with ‘no extra time’ taken.
David Allen, in his book ‘Getting Things Done’, promotes the idea that ‘your brain is a good place for having ideas, not keeping them’.
How many thoughts and ideas do you get whilst driving along? If you’re busy, probably a lot. With a decent handsfree setup for your phone you can;
Text - a person or group to ask or remind them about something
Call - a friend for a chat, a client that called you or ask for a quote of check something with a supplier
List - an action that something needs to be done in ‘Things’ or in a note taking app
Create - a new appointment in your calendar
Listen - to an audio book or music to relax or a podcast to learn something
Bringing ORDER to your business is the third level in the ‘business hierarchy of needs’ explained in detail in the book ‘Fix This Next’.
Learn, listen, list, communicate, enquire or just chat. Relax yourself or get revved up. Once you start the possibilities will grow for you. Just put “Hey Siri!” at the beginning of a task and then say what you want out loud.
Hey Siri, <call, text, create a new…> for Tom Woodbury…
Listening to whatever is fed to you by the radio, that is probably mostly irrelevant information or music you are luke warm about is pretty pointless now that we have these new tools and technologies - Audible, Spotify, podcast apps, Speech to Text, ‘Hey Siri’ and so on.
Make it a habit to adopt new habits and practices regularly. Overtime these small wins add up. Make the first step super small, like just ordering the equipment you need. Just get started.
You need to strive to adopt good practices across you whole business to be able to get anywhere. If you can’t take this attitude for how you manage yourself, then it’s not likely you’ll be able to move on to the rest of your team and business.
