The secret to faster career progress
People often ask me how to get more done, in less time. And how to progress their career more quickly.
So this weeks blog is my simple answer to this question.
Do less.
Each day, pick the 3 things that will create the most impact and get them done.
Try 2 work related and 1 personal related idea.
This is over and above you BAU day to day role. I'm assuming you already have lots of relevant activities planned relating to that. But there's probably some important, not urgent points that you often don't get around to. These are often the ideas and projects that will have the most impact.
It's a comfortable behaviour to keep ourselves 'busy'. It can be satisfying to jump into our inbox and delete a few messages, hit back some easy replies.
It's much harder to not look at your inbox and instead pick up something more brain hurty that isn't particularly urgent, but would make a big difference to your performance.
For example from a business perspective, it could be something like planning a strategy session to generate ideas for a new service, reading the full board pack that you normally skim read, having a difficult conversationto improve delivery from stakeholders and reviewing your performance against longer term deliverables.
From a personal career perspective it could be booking in to attend a local networking event (you know, those e-mails you keep deleting to make your inbox look less scary, read one and go!), or booking in a coffee with apotential mentor, or reading a chapter of a book to learn about something relevant to future roles.
If you took 2 important business actions and 1 personal action every day, you'd be unstoppable.
Think about the momentum that builds over time. This is why it is called a high performance habit. And you'll find it discussed by entrepreneurs and successful CEOs - the critical few are the ones that move the dial.
I'm not a morning person so I prefer to do this at the end of each day - ready for the next. It means I can quickly shrug off my dazed start to the day and efficiently get down to work. If I have no critical few planned when I walk into the office, work takes over. I do the things in my diary and miss the over & above elements that would make the difference.
You know you best, whether it's first thing in the morning or last thing as you leave work, think about the 3 critical actions you want to take...and then do them.
No long to-do lists. Just 3 simple actions, consistently created and completed, will get you results faster.
I'd love to hear what you're working on this week and how you implement this idea.
Wishing you all the best
Kat
Kat Hutchings
Career Coach, Kat the Coach Ltd
kat@katthecoach.co.uk
P.S. Stop trying to do more by doing more! Reassess. What are the critical few actions you can take today to hit your performance objectives?
