Move Priorities Into Your Busy Schedule In 4 Simple Steps
In a recent coaching session with two very busy co-founders, this important question came up:
"How do we make sure we accomplish our priorities when our calendars are already so full?"
For those who are not familiar, Focus Areas is a simple one-page document we create each quarter inside the Groundwork System to stay in touch with what matters most. It includes four components: vision, mission, priorities, and pathways.
Working with these two brilliant founders, we ensured their priorities were intact inside their busy schedules. Here's how we did it:
- Make measurable, clear, and doable Focus Areas
- Use the System to avoid duplicate thinking
- De-prioritize unrelated ideas
- Tie Focus Areas to their calendars
Step 1: Make measurable, clear, and doable Focus Areas
Establishing measurable and clear Focus Areas that are doable is key.
Since these two founders were already drowning in projects and tasks, this exercise needed to bring relief and clarity. In reviewing everything they needed to get done, we considered what was truly important and how they would win by breaking priorities down into pathways.
As you establish your priorities, ask yourself, "Can I measure them well enough to know that I will have completed what I set out to prioritize?" Ensure they are stated in a measurable way.
Seriously though, ask yourself multiple times, "Can I actually accomplish these priorities?"
Step 2: Use the System to avoid duplicate thinking
When deciding on your priorities for the quarter, take a full inventory of what matters right now.
As I worked with them, we reviewed their calendars and Weekly and Monthly Review lists to ensure they weren't missing any key aspects they wanted to include. This also helps avoid duplicate thinking—you may have all the priorities you need already captured in your system.
Step 3: De-prioritize unrelated ideas
If you haven’t done a thorough Focus Areas review in a while, it's likely that you have been getting lost in reacting to whatever is showing up around you.
You're about to fix that. But remember, you can't do it all!
You will likely need to de-prioritize projects and ideas that are not related to your priorities. Move things to Monthly Review as much as possible.
Prioritizing what is important but not urgent (Quadrant 2, Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) is the point of creating Focus Areas.
Step 4: Tie Focus Areas to your calendar
The last step we tackled was moving priorities from their Focus Areas into their already busy calendars during their Weekly Review.
Here's how you can do it too:
- Do a thorough sweep of the calendar and truly get grounded in reality. What meetings can be shortened and refined with clear agendas? Where are you duplicating work? What can you delegate? What can you park (move to Monthly Review)?
Unblock your time by being ruthless about what you are committing to.
- Schedule or capture the next piece of work you need to do on this priority. Time in the calendar to work on a priority is only complete when, at the end of that block, you've identified what needs to happen next. This creates high accountability to that priority.
The Focus Areas exercise can be found in the digital Groundwork Workbook starting on page 21. Download now.
Like these two entrepreneurs, you should feel relief once you have Focus Areas set. Having a simple structure to bring focus, clarity, and peace to work and life is a game-changer.
Need support to do your Focus Areas? Join a Groundwork Practice Session at the beginning of each quarter for a guided Focus Areas session with me or book a 1-1 session.
The Groundwork System is a simple way to manage your inbox, to-do list, and calendar, and a simple way to understand and manage the triggers and pain that keep you in survival mode.
