Batch It

Hey, everybody Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute, this week coming to you from home in Denver, Colorado. You know I, like you, have a lot of days that are very scattered, lots of meetings lots of phone calls, and it seems like I can never get to my complete to-do list. But today, I had a great day and the reason I had a great day was because I literally blocked off five hours, uninterrupted hours, no meetings, no phone calls, and all I was going to do was answer email and clear out my inbox. Over the last couple weeks, we had the summit, we had all kinds of big things happening, and so my email box, my inbox was getting really unruly and I would try and chip away at it but I couldn't make a dent. And I find that's true for actually most tasks that, for me anyway, if I can block off an hour to two hours to really tackle a big task, or like today, five or six hours, where I was really uninterrupted and all I did was just crush through a task which had really been weighing on me, in this case, cleaning out my inbox. I find that's a time management tool that as a business owner and as a leader and as a boss, that is a very powerful tool that I do not leverage as often as I should. And every time I block off the time and I actually respect and protect the time, because that's critical, you can put it on your calendar all you want, But if I respect and protect it, then what happens is I actually get a ton done. When I'm in a zone and nothing breaks that sort of pattern and I can just stay focused, I can get a two or three days worth of work done in a handful of hours. So, if you're struggling to get everything done on your to-do list, maybe think about batching them up and creating these sort of big blocks of time that allow you to really tackle those tasks uninterrupted in a very focused way. I know it sounds super simple but honestly, I don't do as often as I should. I know better, but I don't do it as often as I should. And every time I do, I think I got to do more of that. So, I'm guessing you may be in the same situation. Big blocks of time to tackle onerous tasks and just get them off your list. All right, hopefully that's helpful. I'll see you next week.