Prioritising your day

I have written earlier about doing an 80/20 of your activities in your day. While I use the concept along with the Prioritisation Matrix suggested by B.J.Fogg in his book Tiny Habits, I used it primarily to save time so that I don’t end up finishing tasks that don’t have too much return on invested time. A lot of times I used to feel exhausted at the end of the day, but when I would look at the achievement , there was nothing to show for it.

It was like I was always walking on a treadmill, burning calories but getting nowhere. That’s where Richard Koch’s 80/20 rule and in a different way the Prioritisation Matrix have helped me considerably. Now everyday in the morning I look at my To-Do list which I keep updating on my phone. Then I put down on this matrix each of the tasks that need to be done in terms of their scale of impact and my ability to influence the outcome.

The benefit of this is that even if I do only the tasks which have a high impact and my ability to influence is high then at the end of the day I would have still achieved considerably more.

Why am I explaining all this to you. Well today was one such day. It was supposed to have started early and I would have done all my meditation and focused sitting before starting office work. But as I got up my wife complained of fever. So I had t replan my day completely while keeping my customer and internal meetings intact. There was quite a bit of overwhelm through the day. I did not achieve a lot of the items on my To-Do list for today. But I still achieved 90% of my highest priority tasks which ensured that I was considerably effective inspite of the challenges I had all day.

If you also have a lot of tasks on your daily To-Do list and you get overwhelmed, seeing your life pass by while you seem to be not getting anywhere, try the 80/20 rule. Once you focus and take affirmative action with a clear indication on what will have the most impact for you, it will definitely change a lot of things for you. Let me know in the comments below if this practice helps you.ichard

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

80/20 to improve on your weaknesses

Habits, Leverage, prioritizing

Its always better to focus on your strengths rather than wasting time on your weaknesses. If over a period of time you eliminate all the activities except where you are excellent, you can have an amazing life.

Now the above is something which I would work towards as my ultimate objective. However there are times when you need to work with some of the weaknesses also because of business reasons.

I was never knowledgeable about legal terms of a contract. But after I came into my present role, I had to discuss on legal parts of a contract. Before this, legal language was absolutely Greek to me.

While marketing and sales is my forte, I had to build some capabilities on legal language. So I identified some 20% items which were always a bone of contention in any legal contract. So I would just check on those first and the other side was immediately engaged.

The other place where I am not strong is spreadsheets- initially when I was stuck with studying business plans on excel sheets, I was all over the place trying to understand what was going on. Now I have identified a few key things which help me navigate the sheet and ask the right questions to my finance team.

With this I am able to achieve 80% of the tasks in any excel spreadsheet with ease. Its what I call small hinges moving larges doors.

Till next time….don’t waste your time in trying to strengthen your weaknesses. Identify the 20% that can meet 80% of the requirements.

Carpe Diem!!!

The 80/20 of a daily routine

Focus, Leverage, Unique Ability

I have been analyzing my daily routine. On a weekly basis if we were to just take 40 hours of work, then after a month of monitoring my daily activities I have realized that

1. I spend more than 30% of my time in peer to peer meetings and unscheduled internal calls

2. I spend another 30-35% of my time in emails

3. I spend about 15% in reviews / feedback sessions with my team .

4. About 5-7% is spent on meeting customers to understand what is happening at their end or to give presentations or to get feedback ….this is one of my Unique Abilities and I love interacting with customers.

5. I spend less than 10% on actual marketing activities like conceptualizing marketing messages, strategies etc.

The last item I am able to achieve with the focused thinking time that I keep writing about.

The other day I was listening to the Ultimate Entrepreneur podcast by Jay Abraham. He had a guest by the name of Dr. Alan Barnard who is a practitioner of Goldiratt’s Theory of Constraints.

In this podcast towards the end they speak about a new offering they’re bringing to the market which shows entrepreneurs how they can convert their existing top line into the bottom line in less than 4 years.

That’s what got me thinking. I have been talking so much about 80/20, prioritizing, small hinges move big doors etc. in my blogs. To actually be able to convert the top line that I get for the company into the bottom line I will need to focus sharper and sharper on the 80/20 of the 80/20 of the items which actually get me business. Items where I have high impact and where presently I am spending less than 15% of my time.

I am on the experiment to see how I can convert the amount of my present top line to become my bottom line in next few years. Will keep you posted.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Prioritizing the top 2-3 in sales

B2B, ideal customer, Methodologies, prioritizing, Sales

The 80/20 rule works even in sales. As I have said before the best thing about this rule is that its fractal, which means there’s always an 80/20 within the 80/20 also.

So within all your customers 80% of the complaints about you or your product or your service would come from 20% of the customers. However you could go one step further and identify 4% of the customers who are actually responsible for 64% of the problems. If you eliminated these 4% your life would be much more easier.

Similarly there will be few customers who would be responsible for more than 64% of your business. You need to ensure that you are constantly doing everything possible to not only keep these customers happy but to also ensure that you are growing your business with them.

As a sales person you also need to analyze which 20% of the products get you 80% of your incentives or commissions and then analyze which 20% of your customers account for 80% of the sales of those products. That will give you a clear indication of where you have to spend your time and prioritize your day.

While you’re supposed to sell all the products that are assigned to you, by following this mechanism to prioritize your day, you will also hit your financial goals faster. The only constraint for a sales person is time. If you can focus 80%of your time on these 20% customers you would get a massive boost to your achievements.

Its always how you can leverage your time for the most productive use. After all small hinges move big doors.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!