Planning and Multi-Tasking
Two of our 16 female leadership strengths. Does it sound like they may work against each other? Or is one not optimized unless you have the other?
AND HOW! For me, they help create the ideal, which is slowly and painfully disassembled as the day progresses. Walk with me through the before and the after …
The Ideal Day: (a la Katie)
7:30 am Working emails & calendar
(Allow more for some of your situations but look to diminish email time. See managing emails for tips from a corporate client who regularly received over 200 per day.)
8:00 Morning Kickstart: PPT
(Personal Productivity Time – protected and non-interrupted!)
Material development for clients and website
Writing and being creative
Library or bookstore for research
Lots of meaty things accomplished!
9:30 Check in on Email
Phone calls
Set up appointments
Requests answered on email
10:00 Out and about: Face-to-face’s with prospects and present clients
11:30 Lunch & other errands
Start planning dinner
Dry cleaners, bank, post office, etc.
12:00 pm Exercise (pre-empted until later if there is a lunch meeting)
Usually a bike ride where I merrily greet passers-by.
1:00 Coaching Calls with Clients
4:00 Working emails & calendar
4:30 Administrative, billing
4:45 Write plan and actions for next day, must-do’s for tomorrow
5:00 Make dinner
Reality:
7:30 am Working emails & calendar
Location changed for morning meeting, spend time getting directions, another client suddenly needs a proposal by noon, reset SPAM filters which self-righteously rejected everything overnight
8:15 Personal Productivity Time (started 15 minutes late)
Material development for clients, a little slow on creativity, probably because it was a bad-hair day, got distracted and checked into airfares for Thanksgiving trip, got tempted by the new iPhone and researched online blogs for switching from Verizon, wandered for a while into the garden to get back on track. Nevertheless, still made good progress on some new material for next month’s workshop.
9:30 Work Email and marketing
Phone calls, some of them dreaded, wrote a proposal which was a painstaking process
9:50 Answered Phone Calls
Phone calls from clients and ended up leaving late for 10:15 appt across town, return several phone calls en route
10:20 5 minutes late to a project meeting
11:30 Lunch
Quick bite, swing by drug store to get more Advil (stiff neck from holding up bad hair)
12:00 pm Exercise
Took a bike ride, several people did not acknowledge my hospitable greeting, swerved avoiding a lazy lizard and skidded on some gravel, bike fell over (dang toe clips), scraped myself in the exact location where I had already hit myself with the tennis racquet the day before (clearly, my follow-through needs some work)
1:00 Coaching calls start
Ahhh. Nice, quiet concentration
3:00 One coaching call re-scheduled (client has the flu)
Ran over to Kinkos to check a proof for a workbook, spent $47 at Office Depot on ink cartridges, then spent nearly that much on a latte at Starbuck’s
4:00 Project-related work
Tried to organize my notes from the morning meeting & entered the action items on my calendar, build an itinerary for a trip next month
4:25 Work emails
4:45 Admin stuff
pay online bills, client billing, balance checkbook, put in new ink cartridges, took call from Accountant and learned that California wants income tax from me (looking for ways to legally hide from that)
5:15 Declare MYO night for family dinner (Make-Your-Own) and open a bottle of Red
