Monthly Archives: June 2018

The “Eisenhower” or Urgent vs. Important Things To Be Done Matrix

25 Monday Jun 2018

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Stop spending most of your productive time attending to other people’s priorities.

Not planning your week is bad. Planning your week without taking your personal priorities in consideration is even worse. It means you will be able to handle everything “on your plate” but you won’t actually make any progress towards your own goals. Stop spending most of your productive time attending to other people’s priorities.

Your main priorities shall be everything about YOU and YOUR goals. Unless you proactively block time for them and consistently choose to prioritize them, you are in a reactive state where you are only following everyone else’s priorities.

Have you heard of the Eisenhower or Urgent vs. Important Matrix?

It is a really powerful tool that can multiply your effectiveness tenfold. It consists of 4 quadrants that classify your daily activities according to two parameters: level of urgency and level of importance.

For most people it looks like this:

You want to be productive! Spend 80% of your time in quadrant II of the Matrix.

This will allow you to pro-actively work on new opportunities and high-leverage projects instead of spending all your time reacting to pressing issues and other people’s needs. As a result, you will be able to make significant progress towards your goals, actively prevent crisis from happening and lead a more balanced, calm and focused life.

Prioritize all your actions according to YOUR GOALS.

Which actions and projects to prioritize should be based on what is working and beneficial towards achieving your goals and not what you feel like doing.

JMD

Michael Dennis is a former Corporate and Business Law Attorney, a Crisis & Reputation Management Expert, a Public Affairs & Corporate Communications Specialist, a Warrior for Common Sense & Free Speech helping you achieve greatness.

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Too Many Emails

20 Wednesday Jun 2018

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Too many emails

The #1 enemy

I do not have a minute to waste; life is too short.

I am up at 5:00 every morning and kicks things off with a fairly regimented routine.

Most of my morning are focused on planning my day. By 8:00, I am ready to tackle every issue that is to be resolved.

With a jam-packed day, there is one major nuisance that I just can’t be bothered with.

Other than Skype interview request from my beloved clients, I hate email.

With email, the whole world comes across at you; it is your agenda number one enemy and it is terrible, not to say a total waste of time.

Let it be also known that I took my work email out of my phone. All those emails would be going unread, waiting in my inbox, magically multiplying the way unread emails seem to do.

You want to retain my services!  

Other than wanting to retain my services, don’t bother me.

You have an urgent issue to resolve and need my services!

It’s all in my auto-reply, which goes to every single recipient who sends me an email:

“Thank you for reaching out. Being overwhelmed with unsolicited requests, I will not be answering your email. This does not mean that I am not available for business! If you need immediate attention or have to urgently deal with a commanding issue, it will be my pleasure to help and assist you. Do not hesitate to call me at the following number: 1-613-449-3278”

Every email does not demand an instant reply or a reply at all. Even if I do eventually get back, there’s no need to apologize if it takes a few hours or even a few days. I slashed the “Sorry for the delayed reply …” from my email vocabulary. I refuse to set the expectation that it’s abnormal to take a little time to reply.

I have opted out of one of the most important communication channels in today’s working world. It is not because everyone else emails that I should. Why should I?

I hate leaving people hanging as much as I hate being left hanging.

We live in a high-volume 24/7 email world. People are glued to their screens. Don’t expect me to act the same way.

Communicating to people that I am not going to play that game is important. This way, they don’t think that I might have fall off a cliff or just feel extremely slighted annoyed or pissed off.

Yes indeed, I am going off the grid for a bit and I will be checking email less frequently.

This doesn’t mean that I will not be immediately taking care of urgent matters or business issues; it just means that if you have some urgent issues to resolve you have to call me. You have my personal phone number.

Just don’t abuse it!

JMD

Michael Dennis is a former Corporate and Business Law Attorney, a Crisis & Reputation Management Expert, a Public Affairs & Corporate Communications Specialist, a Warrior for Common Sense & Free Speech helping you achieve greatness.

Follow JMDlive on:

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Get your priorities Straight

11 Monday Jun 2018

Posted by in Systemic Strategic Planning

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EMPOWERING YOURSELF Has Nothing To Do With HAVING time. It Is Everything About MAKING Time.

Get your priorities straight!

How are you supposed to know the right path when you have no idea where you want to go or what you want to do?

Setting goals that are important to you is the first step to getting your priorities straight. Once you know what you really want to achieve, it is really easy to prioritize everything in your life and the only thing you ever need to ask yourself before considering doing anything is: “How is this helping me achieve my goals?”

Starting your day checking your emails or chatting at the coffee machine will make it hard for you to gather the focus and motivation you need to tackle your most important tasks and projects at hand later in the day.

It does not matter WHEN you wake up. What matters is what you do when you wake up, what you do with the first two to three hours of your day. Putting in the work towards your goals will help you win the day early.

Postponing your most important tasks until later in the day will dramatically increase the likelihood of not getting them done at all.

JMD

Michael Dennis is a former Corporate and Business Law Attorney, a Crisis & Reputation Management Expert, a Public Affairs & Corporate Communications Specialist, a Warrior for Common Sense & Free Speech helping you achieve greatness.

Follow JMDlive on:

Twitter, Facebook, JMDlive.com, The Futurist Daily News, JMDsystemics.com, Bunkumless.com, Pinterest and Tumblr.

Book a FREE 15 minutes Skype Consultation with JMDlive