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Use Business Savvy to Declutter Your To-Do List

Season #1

Use Business Savvy to De-Clutter Your To-Do List

Hi, this is Susan Colantuono coming to you from beautiful South County, Rhode Island. Today I'm musing on the importance of de-cluttering your to do list for your mental sanity and well being.

Have you ever had the experience where something comes into your inbox or across your desk or into your DMs and you have thought, "I'm going to tackle that later?" Later comes and all of a sudden it's not even important.

I have had that happen so many times and the lesson it taught me is that focusing on what's crucial matters and it can simplify my life a lot.

If I felt like I had to respond to every DM, every email, the moment they come in, I would be a basket case and feel pretty overwhelmed and I think you could probably relate to that.

An executive that I met years ago from Verizon said that one way to demonstrate business acumen was focusing on the right stack of work. I would say that this is also true: only with business acumen can you identify the right stack of work.

Start Each Day with This Question

I offer a really different perspective than all the normal advice about prioritizing. Mine is this:

Once you're clear on your positional purpose and the key financial and other metrics that you are being paid to move forward, then the question to ask at the start of every day is, "What are the most important outcomes that I am being paid to move forward today?

Of course, then if you're working on your leadership, you can ask, "Who do I have to engage in order to move them forward? And what personal greatness will I rest on to do that?"

But I, I would say to start simply by asking, "What are the most important outcomes that I am being paid to move forward today? And then what activities are associated with those? So, as demands come in, as they always will, that pull you away from your early morning bright, sharp focus you can filter them through this question: "Are these going to help me move forward the outcomes that I'm being paid to move forward today?"

If so, then respond or make a plan to respond.

If not, let them wait.

What's a Woman to Do?

To summarize, let's go over the main points.

  1. The first is to know your positional purpose.
  2. The second is every morning use your understanding of your positional purpose to identify the outcomes that you need to advance.
  3. The third is to use that understanding as a filter to judge whether the demands and pulls and tugs and interruptions that are coming at you really do need to be responded to in the moment or whether they don't need to be responded to at all or responded to later.

Now, if You are new to the podcast and you don't understand what I'm talking about when I talk about positional, when I talk about positional purpose or the outcomes that you need to move forward.

You can use hashtags and search in the blog or in the podcast for positional purpose or for outcomes.

Catch you next time. 

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Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com
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