18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done (12 page)

In other words, the problem with typical to-do lists is that we use them as our primary tool to guide our daily accomplishments. But it’s the wrong tool. A to-do list is useful as a
collection
tool. It’s there to help us make sure we know the pool of things that need to get done. It’s why categorizing the list into our areas of focus for the year is so important. Categorizing forces us to pay attention to what’s in the pool. It ensures that we’re focused on the right things—the ones that will move us forward in what we intend to accomplish for the year.

Our calendars, on the other hand, make the perfect tool to guide our daily accomplishments. Because our calendars are finite; there are only a certain number of hours in a day. As will become instantly clear the moment we try to cram an unrealistic number of things into limited spaces.

So, once you’ve got your categorized list of things to
do, take your calendar and schedule those things into time slots, placing the hardest and most important items at the beginning of the day. And by “the beginning of the day,” I mean, if possible, before even checking your email. That will make it most likely that you’ll accomplish what you need to and feel good at the end of the day.

Since your entire list will not fit on your calendar—and I can assure you that it won’t—you need to prioritize your list for that day. What is it that really needs to get done today? Which items have you been neglecting? Which categories have you been neglecting? Where can you slot those things into your schedule?

One more thing. As you schedule your priorities on your calendar for the day, make sure to leave some time, preferably in the afternoon, to respond to other people’s needs and the items in your
Other 5%
category. If you schedule it, you’ll be comfortable
not
doing it until the scheduled time. That leaves you free to focus on your priorities without worrying that you’re neglecting anything.

Following this process will invariably leave you with things still on your to-do list that you will not be able to accomplish during the day.

That’s a fantastic thing to know ahead of time. Because it would have happened anyway, but you would have ended up surprised, disappointed, and, most important, helpless. Because you were not exerting any real control over what got done and what got left behind.

Now, on the other hand, you can be strategic about
what gets left behind. You can decide, in the morning or the night before, what’s really important to get done.

And, like Eleanor and her shoe-shopping trip, you can be relatively certain that if you decide
when and where
you’re going to do those things, you’ll actually, reliably and predictably, get them done.

S
o you’ve categorized your to-do list. Avoided things that don’t fit in with your plan for the year. And made sure that everything on the list reflects where you’ve strategically chosen to spend your time. Excellent.

Then you’ve taken your calendar for the day and made hard choices about what you can fit in your limited time. You’ve decided to do the more challenging things in the morning, when your thinking and patience are at their strongest; and the requests, interruptions, and needs of others can most likely be postponed for later in the day. Perfect.

But that still leaves you with the possibility—or rather probability—of a long list of items that didn’t fit into your calendar for the day. And that list will simply grow longer and more stressful—a continued reminder of what you
aren’t
accomplishing—day by day. What do you do with those things?

That’s where the three-day rule comes in. This rule ensures that no item on your list ever stays on it, haunting you, for more than three days.

Here’s what I do: After I’ve filled my calendar for the day, I review what’s left on the list. If there are new items I added that day or the previous two days, I leave them on to see if they make it onto my calendar tomorrow.

But for everything else—anything that’s been on my calendar for three days—I do one of four things:

There’s one other list I keep: my waiting list. If I’ve sent someone an email, left them a voice mail, or expect to hear back from someone about something, I put that item on my waiting list. This way I don’t lose track of things I expect from others—and I’m able to follow up if I don’t receive them—but I also don’t have to look at those items every day or confuse them with things I have to actually
do.
This list is on my computer, and I assign a date and reminder to each item. That way I don’t have to think about what I’m waiting for or when I should review the list—I simply wait for the reminder, and if I haven’t received the thing I’m waiting for, I’ll know to follow up or, as I discuss in a future chapter, let go of the expectation of hearing back from the person.

That’s my process. It ensures that nothing stays on my to-do list for more than three days. And once I’ve scheduled everything I plan to do for the day, I use my to-do list only for details related to things on my calendar (who was that person I was going to call and what’s her phone number?) and to add new to-do items that come up throughout the day.

It takes the guilt out of the list.

D
ov is a great guy. The CEO of a professional services firm, he’s been successful by any measure. He’s financially secure. He’s happily married with several children. He’s active in his religious community. He’s smart, well read, reasonable, and likable. He’s the kind of guy you’d enjoy talking with at a dinner party.

Then again, the other day, in anger, he threw a telephone across the room, nearly hitting someone.

“That’s not who I am,” Dov told me. And it’s true. I know him. And I’ve never remotely experienced him that way.

Now, throwing a telephone is pretty extreme. But if you take it down a notch, Dov is not alone. Lisanne is another incredibly successful leader in a different company—someone whom I personally like and respect tremendously. She’s been receiving feedback that she’s rude, abrupt, uncommunicative, and harsh. When I discussed the feedback with her, she said the same thing: “That’s not who I am.”

Dov and Lisanne are, mostly, right. It’s not who they are. Usually, anyway. And it’s certainly not who they want to be.

But, under the wrong conditions, it
is
who they are. Sometimes.

And it’s not just Dov and Lisanne. While most of us would resist the temptation to throw a phone, many of us still manage to lose our tempers more easily than we’d like. The other day, I yelled at my kids—
yelled at them—
for fighting with each other at the breakfast table. I immediately regretted it.

And then, a little later, I was on the line with an AT&T representative, and, after forty-five minutes of getting nowhere, I lost it again.

It’s not just anger. We blow people off. Don’t return phone calls. Don’t pay attention when they’re telling us something important. Many of us, at times, act in ways we don’t like and don’t recognize as ourselves.

I think I’ve figured out what’s causing it: overwhelm.

We have too much to do and not enough time to do it. Which results in two problems:

In both cases, our tempers get short. Because there’s nothing more frustrating than having good intentions and not living up to them. It feels unjust. Like a child who spills something and then cries, “But I didn’t
mean
to do it.” We don’t mean to be mean. But we lose all tolerance for anything that slows us down or that makes demands on us that we can’t fulfill. And we get angry at others for our own feelings of inadequacy.

I wasn’t angry at the AT&T representative for wasting my forty-five minutes. I was angry at myself for having stayed on the call that long. And I wasn’t angry at my kids for fighting as much as I was overwhelmed with cooking waffles and pancakes and oatmeal and setting the table and getting the syrup and the orange juice and making a nice breakfast. But I was so intent on making a nice breakfast that I ruined it.

Planning ahead, knowing what to do and what to ignore, using our calendars strategically: All those are good—and important—daily strategies for managing our day. But we need something more. We need a discipline—a ritual—that can help us stay centered and grounded throughout the day. We need something to remind us who we really are. Who we want to be.

For me, that something is a beep.

Each morning, I set my watch—you can also use a phone, computer, or timer—to beep every hour. At the sound of the chime, I take one minute to ask myself if the last hour has been productive. Then, during that pause, I
deliberately commit to how I’m going to use the next hour. It’s a way to keep myself focused on doing what I committed to doing.

But, for me, the chime rings deeper than that. When it goes off, I take that deep breath and ask myself if, in the last hour, I’ve been the person I want to be. In other words, during that pause, I deliberately recommit to not just
what
I’m going to
do
, but also
who
I’m going to
be
over the next hour. It’s a way of staying recognizable to myself and to others.

Because if we’re going to reverse the momentum, we need an interruption. As soon as I yelled at my kids, I regretted it. Which interrupted my self-defeating behavior.

That interruption was all I needed to remind myself that I was not
that kind
of father. I stopped everything I was doing and sat with them, held them, and apologized for raising my voice.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the interruption were a chime rather than a yell? And if it came
before
I lost my temper?

But most likely, your chime won’t come at exactly the right time. How many of us lose it exactly on the hour?

It doesn’t matter. Because losing control, becoming someone you’re not, happens over time. It builds throughout several hours. And that once-an-hour reminder, that one deep breath, that question about who you want to be, keeps you stable. It keeps you
you
.

Maybe your issue isn’t losing your temper. Maybe it’s multitasking. Maybe it’s being so overwhelmed you don’t
know where to start, so you don’t start anything—you just surf the Internet. Maybe it’s letting your mind wander while someone is talking to you.

Whatever your issue, when the beep sounds, take a breath and use that one-minute pause to ask yourself whether you’re being the person you want to be.

Ask yourself if you’re trying to accomplish too much. Or if you’re focusing on the wrong things. In other words, disrupt the source that destabilizes you. Reduce the overwhelm. Reconnect with the outcome you’re trying to achieve, not just the things you’re doing. Then you’ll react less and achieve more.

When Dov threw the phone, he immediately regretted it. And he’s still working to make up for it. Because, unfortunately, one dramatic disruptive act outside the norm quickly becomes a story that defines the norm.

There is a way to change that story, though. To create a new story. But it’s not dramatic. It’s deliberate and steady. It’s consistent action over time.