As we sit here at the beginning of 2016, I’m mindful of the fact that last year I spent too much time down in the dirt, and not enough time up in the clouds. To be sure, every executive needs to remain firmly grounded, and have a good understanding of what the business is doing, but you also need to spend enough time up in the clouds to move the business forward in larger leaps and bounds; to decide what risks you’re going to take, what experiments you’re going to run, what strategies you’re going to pursue; to look at your competitors and evaluate exactly how much trouble you’re in (how close on your heels are they?).
We did do a few big things at The Ibis Network in 2016. We expanded the markets we support to include all small businesses, and we introduced a commission sales program for college students. We also did some less strategic, but nevertheless important, big projects — we redesigned our web site, and we migrated our entire infrastructure to AWS. But really, as I look back, that doesn’t feel like nearly enough to me.
If you’re in the same boat — if your business has had some success and done some things in 2015, but you’re sitting there with the nagging feeling that you really should have done much more — then it’s probably time to make some changes.
Get An Assistant
For me personally, I’m doing two things. First, I went most of 2015 without an executive assistant. My previous assistant moved on to a great new opportunity last April, and I didn’t replace him. I just hired a new assistant in December, and she’s already immeasurably improved my life. As important as time-management is, I’m terrible at it and I know it, and an assistant can be key to helping you achieve maximum productivity. If you’ve never worked with an assistant before, you should definitely try it. Granted, not everyone is in the same position; my life is preposterously complicated, with my recent appointment as CEO of Linius putting me in active management of three companies. But even if your life isn’t as complicated as mine, and even if you’re not in the position to hire someone full-time, you should look into virtual assistants. As a first step, read these two articles:
- My Outsourced Life — a true story on AJ Jacobs’ (editor-at-large for Esquire magazine) use of virtual assistants
- Do These 3 Things Before Hiring a Virtual Assistant — advice from Brandon Turner, a real-estate investor who started using a VA
After you’ve read those articles, to help you work through the pre-flight checklist that Brandon put together, go over and read this article by Alina Dizik, 10 Things to Outsource to A Virtual Assistant. It will help you brainstorm the kind of things you can and should be outsourcing, and you can use that list to figure out what systems you need to put in place to make the VA most effective.
If you’ve read through all of those things, you’ve probably come across several recommendations on where to hire your first VA. Unfortunately, a lot of the links out there are to companies that no longer exist, or are clearly not best-in-show anymore. I haven’t used these guys personally, but after a little poking around, I think your best bet for a first VA is Zirtual. Down the road, you may go with cheaper solution, but all signs point to them being a great starting-point for first-time assistees.
Time Management
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Whether or not you’re ready to hire a personal assistant, and regardless of your personal time-management skills, if you’re running a business and haven’t achieved the bulk of what you desired in 2015, then odds are good you need to focus on time management.
There are nigh-on innumerable ways of managing your time. One of my favorite mentors used what I deem to be a crazy system. Every morning, he came into the office, grabbed a yellow legal pad, and divided it into three columns. In one column he wrote down the things he needed to do that day for work, in another he wrote down what he needed to do for his personal life, and in the third he wrote down his scheduled meetings. It worked for him, and ultimately, that’s all that matters. The key is to find a system that works for you.
It’s also important to realize that the system need not only be right for your personality, but also for your role. Maybe you learned a time-management system a decade ago, and maybe it served you well, but maybe your needs are different now than they were then. Here are three major time-management systems that you should consider. There are many, many others, but these are all very popular (for good reason) and cover a lot of ground in terms of both personal temperament and organizational role:
Day-Timer — Day-Timer is the granddaddy of time management. The company began in 1947, and made it until 2012, before it was absorbed into ACCO Brands, which now owns several planning mechanisms. But just because the company isn’t there anymore doesn’t mean that their techniques were no good. This was the first system I learned, early in my management career, and it served me well for years. You can get an introduction to the Daytimer method, PPR, and it is actually probably the best method for most people.
Franklin-Covey — A modified version of this system is what I personally use, today. As my life has become more complicated, and as it’s become more and more about delegation, I’ve found this system most effective. FranklinCovey is the result of the 1997 merger of Franklin Quest and Stephen Covey’s Covey Leadership Center. The system merges some techniques from Benjamin Franklin’s original writings with Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. If you’re a genuine manager, in the sense that most of your tactical efforts are delegated, and you personally engage in more strategic activities, then I strongly encourage you take a look at this system.
GTD — Getting Things Done is the most recent serious contender in the world of time management. I haven’t personally used it, but it’s extraordinarily popular, particularly amongst the tech crowd. As a result, there are lots and lots of applications and open source tools surrounding it. If you lean more towards the computer than the paper, this might just be the system for you.
Whether or not you choose any of these, it’s worth noting that they all have at least two things in common, and there’s a reason for that. So, if you do anything else, even if it’s as simple as lists on sticky notes, you should keep these things in mind:
- Set time aside every day for time-management; for the actual planning. It doesn’t matter if it’s the last thing you do at night, the first thing you do in the morning, or somewhere in between, but it does matter that you make it a habit and do it every day.
- Put everything into your system. And I mean everything. Not just critical things, not just what’s foremost in your mind; neither just personal nor work things. Everything. Really everything. Put time in there for you to sit and reflect on your spirituality. Put time in there to take the trash to the curb. Put Everything into your system.
I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty excited about 2016. And I’m equally excited about putting these practices back in place, and taking The Ibis Network to the next level. Drop a note in the comments below, and let us know what you’re doing to make your 2016 even more successful than your 2015.