Designing Your Success – Part 3

The antidote to drifting into failure lies in doing three things consistently, namely to be deliberate, to be thorough and to be efficient. I am going to address each of these three in turn. Part three is about efficiency. Please keep your eyes peeled for the other installments.

Deliberate can be summarized by the one line: “if it is to be it is up to me”. Thoroughness is doing the job the way it is to be done to make success inevitable. Now, being consistently efficient is about managing time, saving time and working smart.

You might have been given this one liner many times: why don’t you do it right the first time?” Or, “you must have lots of time if you have the time to do the work over, or make corrections the second or third time around?”

I suggest that managing time is not a technique or a philosophy, but an attitude. Peak performers, I have found, have to consistently balance their priorities and therefore time is precious to them. I hear more times from peak performers (67% more) than from the average performer this question: is this the best use of my time? I don’t know of many peak performers in business that has the luxury to do only one thing. They do peak performing things as well as a range of other maybe more mundane jobs that are part of the package. So, it boils down to: how do you manage your time? This question comes with a twist though. The real question is: how efficient are you using the time that you have available? If you use it best by controlling your priorities, then you are managing your time.

How do you answer the question: “should I be doing this?” In an organization where activities and busy-ness is important it is easy to fall into an activity trap where the activities are the goals in themselves. As long as you are busy, you are doing well. But, the activity trap does not answer the question “should I be doing this?” The test is: how does this activity allow me to be efficient and actively contribute to my deliverables? If it was possible to give this activity a rating out of 100%, what percentage does this activity carry to take me nearer to my outcome? If I rate my day by adding all the percentages of the activities for the day, what is the average percentage I am achieving towards my real outcomes? This could be one way of measuring your personal efficiency.

One misunderstanding here is the following: very few people have one thing to do. Being a peak performer is a balancing act between things to do and the important priorities leading to this precious experience called “peak performance.” You might find that if your personal efficiency rating over a week (or whatever is a realistic time slot for you given the deadline in your SMART-goal) is a truer indication of progress rather than a minute by minute evaluation.

I wish you success in designing your own success.