​Do you find each week you intend to get a lot done, but mournfully realize that when Friday hits you’ve barely touched your own to do list? Instead, you accomplished a lot of things that other people added to your to-do list. In the process of reacting to everyone else’s demands you didn’t get the assignments done, you wanted to. Miserably, you note that some of the unfinished items on your list were crucial tasks to move important projects forward that were truly important to you and your team. 

Trust me, you are not the only one who feels like this at the end of your week. 

Too much reacting rather than responding
​Leaders spend more time acting on requests from others than completing their own priority tasks. The sense of urgency to solve everyone else's problems leaves a manager feeling as though they spend their days chasing fires and never getting anywhere. If you want to get off that hamster wheel and do more of your essential work, then you will need to be more intentional about what you are doing with your time rather than reactionary.

Critical to begin with planning
It is critical that you start each week by planning your week. Before you get caught up in chasing everybody else’s plans and agenda for you, you must reorient yourself to what are priorities for you. By setting aside time each week to lay out what you want your week to look like, you will have better control of what actually happens.  

​Get your head out of the sand
Weekly planning sessions allow you to pull your head out of the sand. While it is important to put your head down and get work done at times, a leader's critical function is to lift their head (and their organization’s head) up and get a bigger picture view repeatedly. Weekly planning time is this head up, expansive view of the bigger picture. This time allows the leader to put things into perspective for them and their organization. 

​Refocus
Weekly planning allows you to get projects, plans, and tasks into focus again. From this outlook, you can choose how to respond to your week rather than frantically reacting to whatever shows up in your inbox, at your door or on your desk. Creating a habit of weekly planning puts you back in control and moving forward, rather than running around and around.

​3 Steps to creating a weekly planning habit  

1) Schedule a weekly time slot into your agenda
First set aside time each week to do your planning. Schedule it into your agenda and stick to it. Depending on your level of responsibilities and your style, you will need 20 minutes to an hour. 

• ​Find a time that works best for you. 
  • Some people prefer Sunday evenings others Monday mornings. Others will end their week setting up the upcoming week doing it last thing on Friday.
• Set clear boundaries
  • Be fairly rigid with those around you that that is your time to plan. Even more importanly, gets strict with yourself. This is planning time and planning time only!
    • DO NOT let anyone or anything interrupt this time
    • Do NOT book anything else in that slot. 

2) ​Develop a list of action items for the week

Dealing with the big list of items
You should now have a list of things you want to tackle in the upcoming week. For some of you, this might feel a bit overwhelming. For others, it might be refreshing. One way to look at it is that you now have everything out of your brain and in one place. There will be less of a chance of forgetting things or having things lost in the shuffle. 

Dumping everything onto this list, from this big picture perspective is in itself, helpful. It creates a roadmap for your week. This plan also you to set boundaries with others when they are trying to take your time. You can align their request up, with what remains on your to-do list for the week. From there that you can make an informed choice rather of what to do than react to what’s thrown at you.

3) Creating your plan
From this list of action items, create your plan for the week.

• Prioritize which things need to be completed first. I will provide more details on how to do this step in next week's blog.
• Delegate certain items.
• Group tasks together that you can get done in one sitting.
• Notice which items you aren’t as important in the bigger scheme of things. They may get moved down to the bottom of the list only completing them if you have time.   

Make weekly planning your priority
Setting aside time to plan your week puts you on track to having a more productive week. Choose when you want to do this, then schedule planning time weekly into your agenda. During the identified time review your annual goals, quarterly projects, the previous week appointments and upcoming week’s schedule. From this analysis create a list of tasks you want to accomplish. Stay tuned next week, for how to then,  prioritize that list. 

QUESTION: While this all sounds great, I'd love to hear your objections to doing this each week. What might get in the way? How would you work around that? Make a comment below.

Leaders are taking their people someplace. Do you know where you are going? Are you clear on the direction you are taking your team? Now might be a good time to figure that out.

Lessons from Steven Covey
Years ago, I listened to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People on tape. Back then Steven Covey was the go-to person for leadership development. His work on creating your personal vision has stuck with me. What he said was this:

Get clear on your vision
I strongly suggest that you spend time figuring out your vision before you get into strategic planning with your larger organization. You as an individual leader need to know that your vision is about.

• Perhaps you want to excel in creating a stronger team.
• Maybe you want to get more effective at managing conflicts.

This vision of yours may be a part of the bigger company vision, for example, increased employee retention. 

​However, it is when you get clear on your individual vision that you start to really take ownership of your work and create more enjoyment in your work.

6 steps to complete your personal vision
 
Starting point

• Set aside a 2-hour block of time.
• Find someplace that you can be alone and uninterrupted to focus on this.
• Preferably you should be off site.

 
Step # 1 – Identify the company’s goals
Jot down a few rough notes about the direction the company is going.

This doesn’t have to be completely accurate and detailed. It’s not what is typed in the tombs of the management documents. It’s kind of a summary of what you know officially combined with what your gut tells you.

• What is the company focused on?
• What are their top three priorities or strategic areas of focus?
• What goal are they working toward?

For example, your company may be looking at:

• Increasing revenue
• Moving into a new funding area
• Reducing short-term disability claims

 
Set this summary of the company’s vision aside.
Let it go out of your mind for a bit. You will come back to it, but for now, ignore it.
 
Step # 2 – Identify your long term vision
Take a few minutes to close your eyes and reflect.

• What kind of work do you want to be doing five years from now?
• What is the impact you want to make?
• What’s the lasting legacy you want to leave in your work?

 
Imagine the perfect scenario for a few minutes and notice what is happening, what’s working well and how you are doing your job.
 
Write down your own vision. This is your own mission critical. This can be in paragraph form or point form.

• In 5 years where do I want to be?
• What is the impact I want to be making?
• What kind of work do I want to be doing?
• What kind of relationships do I want to have with people?

 
Step # 3 - Find alignment
How is your vision aligned with the company’s vision?

Now it’s time to pull back in the vision of the organization. How does it align with yours?

• Do they match?
• Which parts are similar?

 
If there is no alignment, that certainly tells you something, like perhaps it’s time to find a new job. If so, read more here.
 
If you can find points of alignment, it’s time to spend some time there.
 
Step # 4 - Create your 1-year vision
Look at your one-year vision.

Start to bring your vision in closer. In the next year, if you stay with this organization and continue to do the work you are doing, what is it that you see you being able to do in a year?
 
Again, close your eyes and visualize it.
See it visually.

• Imagine in your mind's eye the types of meetings, conversations, and engagement with employees, stakeholders, and clients you have.

Feel it emotionally.

• Connect to the excitement of goals achieved. Feel a sense of purpose when something significant happens as a result of your work with clients. Notice the sense of teamwork, comradery and caring on your team.

 
Record some of the specifics of that vision.
 
Step # 5 – Develop the plan
Get specific.

What takes you closer to that vision and what takes you away from it? What do you need to do to more closely align with that vision? Start to develop specific tasks and strategies you need to do to move towards that vision.
 
Write down your vision and your plan.

• What are you doing?
• What are you creating?
• What are you building?
• How will you do that?

 
Consider this for

• Yourself
• Your organization
• The members involved in your organization
• The people you serve

​Are you a manager or a leader? Here is the simple question to help you see: Are you trying to move things forward or are you trying to stabilize them?

We need to both manage and lead
Likely you do both, but at different times. The challenge is that we get caught in managing. We spend most of our time, heads down just trying to survive. More often and we need to manage less and lead more. Here are the differences and 3 strategies to help you lean to leading your team more often. 

​Manage try to steady things
If, at that moment, you are trying to stabilize things, keep them in line, and follow procedures, then you are managing.  

Here is what managing looks like:
When you wear the manager’s hat, you are;

• Managing budgets
• Setting up work schedules
• Ensuring people are following their job descriptions
• Reviewing procedures at a staff meeting
• Solving the problem of the day
• Returning emails
• Attending many of the meetings we are required to attend

Managers get stuff done
Managers are maintaining order and consistency.  They are keeping things status quo. In essence, they are getting the work done.

Leaders are moving things forward
Shifting into leadership mode means that instead maintaining status quo, you’re now looking to challenge the status quo. You are looking to get out of the steady, sure place and find more movement forward.  Leaders focus on change, movement, and growth.

This is what leadership looks like
Putting on your leadership hat has you do these activities:

• Stepping back and looking at the bigger picture
• Thinking strategically
• Creating a vision

Leaders develop others and the company
Leaders motivate, inspire, and energized team members to grow, develop to be all they can be. In doing so, this also creates the space for the company to be all it can be. Leaders help individuals and team to reach their full potential.

We are better at one or the other role usually
Most of us find it easier to do one or the other of these roles.  We need to both manage and to lead so that we can effectively run an organization. Is important to get clear on the distinction of the difference between a leader and manager and know when we need to shift between the two.

Only leading or managing gets you into trouble
When we sit on one side of the other too long, it creates a void.  Yes, we need to stabilize for a moment, but we also need to keep moving.  Staying still too long makes us stagnant. On the other hand always racing forward can lead to no foundation with which build on. Only focusing on the future can create chaos and essentially you spin out of control.

Leaders need to know how to shift back-and-forth
Leaders need to switch back and forth from their manager hat to their leadership hat. Your strength may be in seeing the future potential of an employee, and so you focus on that during their performance review. You talk to them about their goals and help them decide what training they need to take over the next year. To shift, you may also need to have a conversation with them about them being late with paperwork. That conversation manages the day-to-day challenges and serves to stabilize their work and how that affects the rest of the team.

Don’t gets stuck in managing
I have noticed that many of us, regardless of whether it is our strength or not, tend to focus on getting stuff done in the here and now. That work is what is in front of us. It is the squeaky wheel demanding our attention. On the surface level, it appears to be what we are supposed to be doing. But if we stay only here, we are missing a much bigger picture that also needs to attention.

Add more leading time
I challenge you to incorporate more leading if your day-to-day work.  When you can set your sights farther down the road, you can look up and gain perspective. 

• That big picture view helps you to realize that the urgent email isn’t as urgent as it appears. 
• It allows you to see where completing this task of the day fits into the overall growth of the program over the next six months. 
• Focusing on leading more gives you a different outlook on what appears to be the biggest challenge you face. It often doesn’t look so imperative when you see it lined up with everything over the next year.

Stop striving for work-life balance. It doesn’t exist. Nor should it. Balance is nothing more than societies way of laying guilt on working women

Cindy was seeing her kids for less than an hour a day
She arrived home and had only a brief time with them before she apologetically tucked them into to bed. Each night, she vowed silently to change things. It was the same promise she’d whispered to herself for months. But work needed her.

Cindy tried to make up for it on weekends
She found herself, however, exhausted and with little patience left. The majority of what she had for energy, focus and compassion were used up in the day-to-day grind at the office. Cindy craved balance. She wanted to divide her time between work and home and not have them interfere with each other. Yet she could never find a way to do that.

Work-Life Balance doesn't work
That is because there isn’t a way. If you, like Cindy, have wondered how to better juggle everything to find more harmony in your days, you are not alone. 

Women are tugged at constantly
Working women, especially leaders, feel pulled in all directions. It’s not just work and kids. You also know you need to put some attention to your health and well-being. Likely you have some community groups that you feel a responsibility to. Your marriage, parents, and the renovation projects all scream for their share of your priceless time.

Dividing things equally is impossible
The point is that it is impossible to equally divide your calendar and your energy to each task or area in your life. You can’t spend 1.75 hours with your kids, 8 hours at work and…you get the point. There are weeks that you must work more than 40 hours, in fact, a lot more. Just the same, there are times when your family requires more attention. 

The solution
The answer has been presented in The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. They call it counter balancing. There are a couple of key things to know about this strategy.

Identify priorities
Priories are the things we need to focus on. Everything else needs to be put on the back burner when we are focusing on that priority. This recognizes that we can’t answer the phone, when we are working on a report has been ranked at the top of your list. It also means we shouldn’t be reading emails at the supper table. 

Prioritizing goes deeper than that
In our work days, we chase everyone else’s priorities. Often our own meaningful work never gets done. For example, many indicate relationships are key. Yet, we may plan to talk to an employee for days but never get to that conversation. 

Prioritizing isn’t about ordering the tasks on our to-do list
It is about looking within and determining why we do our work. It is about looking at the bigger picture and having a vision for how to get there. Another great resource on how to do this is the book Essentialism by Greg McKowen.

Lean way out
Counterbalancing recognizes we can’t always walk along a path that is straight. There is no state of being completely balanced. We are constantly in motion. The approach is to sway back and forth. We will need to lean heavily into work some days. Other times life will draw us strongly into it. 

Let yourself lean
When you allow yourself to lean in or out fully you will find more enjoyment and meaning in what you are doing. Imagine being on a beautiful Caribbean holiday, and checking email. That sucks, right? Now image being on that same beach completely shut off from work and simply soaking up the sun. You would find a more gratifying experience. 

Stop feeling guilty
The same is true in projects at work. If you are feeling guilty about missing supper, you aren’t completely focused on the task at hand. Therefore you won’t be doing your best work and it’s going to take longer. 

It takes a bit of getting used to
Keller and Papasan acknowledge it can be bumpy. When we put our focused attention on a priority, it means we are going to lean away from other things.

Engage in Counterbalancing
The key is for the right amount of time. Leaning way out isn’t bad. In addition to a particular work project, perhaps your health and your family are also priorities. If you stay at the office until 6 pm, it’s not the end of the world. Counterbalancing the long day is when you head to the gym after. You further counterbalance when you immerse yourself in reading to your child at bedtime, fully present to him and the story…cell phone in a totally different room. 

Think of counterbalancing as your umbrella
Tightrope walkers carry something the to counterbalance them. They have a weight that pulls them back the other way. Your weight is your other priorities. It might be your health or family. By identifying it as a priority and then giving fully there too, you will find more of the sway back and forth, just as anyone who appears truly balanced is doing. 

When you are out of balance, ask yourself two questions:
1)  Am I currently focusing on my priorities or someone else’s?
If you are focusing on someone else’s, can you stop? Yes, you have a job to do. But are you doing someone else’s work because they didn’t do it? Are you chasing stats that you have sent already? Are you solving a problem that staff can solve themselves? Are you having a conversation that, if left alone for a couple of hours might become a non-issue? If so, step back, pivot and move towards your priorities.

2) What can I do that will counterbalance the effort, time and energy put in here, to pull me back towards my other key priorities in life?
We each have an internal bucket that only has so much within it. Everything continually dips out of that bucket. Conversations drain us. Work exhausted us. Chasing appointments, kids activities and a mile long to-do list depletes our reserves.  What puts back into your bucket? It might be a massage, reading a book, having coffee with a friend or quality time with your family. Do something to put back into your bucket. 

Counterbalancing can save your life
Getting really good as swaying back and forth will be the trick to being able to "do it all". But you must not get stuck on one side for too long. Know all of your priorities. Ensure that you acknowledge your umbrella there to support you.

Rather than the freaking out...I'm gonna lose it soon awkward dance you do, you will find the more controlled and comfortable sway back and forth. And while it may look to the naked eye that you are in balance, you will know you just got really good at counterbalancing. 

Life-changing homework:
Take a moment to write down your top 3 priorities in life and your top 3 priorities at work. Put the list of priorities somewhere that you can see them often. When you are out of balance, look to them to get back on track. 

If you have been at your job for a while, let’s say about 10 years, you should be an expert. The question is, what have you become an expert at?

• Putting out fires
• Looking for problems to solve
• Dealing with drama and office politics
• Defending yourself
• Surviving

Hmm…maybe not what you had in mind when you took out a student loan.

Choices you make every day, choices that turn into words and behaviours, profoundly impact your team at work, but maybe more importantly, your kids at home. Have you given much thought lately to the subconscious messages you are giving your kids about work and life? Might I suggest, that it’s time you did.

 Try this exercise to get clear

Take a moment to sit down and consider the legacy that you want to leave behind.

Imagine it's 10 or 20 years from now and your children are leaders in an organization. Imagine they are great leaders and awesome parents. See what kind of a leader they will be.  Visualize the impact they have on the people around them. Notice in your mind their relationship with their own family. 

• How balanced is their life?
  
• What time do they go to work and get home? 
  
• What's the relationship like with their Family? 
  

Then come back to now. If you want to leave that legacy with your children, what do you need to do now to create that impact? Remember legacy is the way people approach work and life as a result of having come into contact with you. Your kids are in contact with you or have the potential to be each and every day. How will your contact today influence their approach to life when they are grown?

Question: Where do you need to course correct to get your desired impact on your children?

I used to put work first
Looking back over my years as a leader in an organization, I spent many late nights and weekends at the office. Additionally, you would have usually found me at my kitchen table on alternating Sunday afternoons working on payroll. The truth was, if I weren’t at work physically, my mind would be there. I wasn't always the best role model for wellness in the work place.

I still struggle to balance my time and energy
Although family has always been my #1 value, I haven’t always demonstrated that it was. I won’t lie to you; even today I have to work hard at not letting work slip into the #1 time and energy space of my life.
When a deadline is looming or someone pushes me to do something, it's easy to find myself putting my best self into work, leaving very little left for the rest of my life.

I am not alone
Among desires such as freedom, honesty, health and success, family is cited as one of the top 5 most important things on many people’s lists of what are key priorities in their lives. Like me, you probably very much want to spend time with your family. You want them to be a higher priority than work. You want to be able to focus on quality time with your family.  Yet strangely, my actions, and perhaps yours, often show otherwise.

Many of us struggle to find the time and energy to put family first
The problem is, by the time you get home most days you have very little energy left for your family. You often say, “as soon as I get through this busy time…” or “I’m putting the time in now so that we will have time later”. The problem is, later never comes.

When you are with your family, it's not quality time
You run the kids to their extracurricular activities while you finish phone calls. You quickly check emails while you try to get supper on the table. You glance up from the computer as you talk to your kids about their schoolwork. As you wind down your night, you check your emails, in bed, beside your spouse, who incidentally may be doing the same thing. Is this the quality family time that you envisioned? My guess is not so much!

Take an honest look back, is it quality time?
Look back. Can you honestly say over the last 6 months that you feel you met your vision of how much quality time you would like to focus on with your family? If you can answer yes to that, congratulations! My assumption is that you are the minority. Most of us look back over the last 6 months, me included, and say, ummm…not quite.

It's time for a change
My goal moving forward is to have more quality time with my family. If you are in that boat too, here are some ways to increase your quality time with your family. 

The list to soooo long!
I get it. I feel that way too. I have training I want to develop for my audience. I have books I need to read to learn about certain concepts. I have clients to coach. I have training to prepare for. I also need to be doing the accounting, working on my social media marketing, blogging, etc. etc. etc.
There aren't enough hours in a day!

The problem is deciding what to drop. 
We believe they are all important!

But you must narrow it down. Here's how...
That's right, there aren't enough hours to do it all! So how do you decide what to do? 
You must mindfully decide. 

1) Do if first thing
If you wait until other people start to impact your day, your hooped! It is so hard to come back, after you've stepped in. You know the feeling, I'll just take a bite of the chocolate bar. But before you know it there are only crumbs and you don't remember taking the second or third bite. The same is true in our days. My client said to me yesterday "I looked at the clock and it was already 2:00! Where did the day go?".

Decide 1st thing in the morning what your 3 key priorities are for that day.
You may do this while you are still at home. I suggest perhaps before you get out of your vehicle when you get to the office. Although, I had staff ready to talk some days before my door even opened. Standing in the parking lot having their morning smoke, they'd hove waiting for me to arrive. If that is true for you, you might find a time before that. Pull into an empty parking lot a few blocks away to gather your thoughts and your priorities. 

3) Use your sixth sense
Simply write down the first 3 things that come up. Don't judge, evaluate or gage if that is really the right answer. Use your intuition. If you've done the mindful tip of taking two deep breaths first, your intuition will guide you with excellent accuracy. 

3) Keep it simple
Don't go through your whole list and start to re-organize and re-evaluate every thing on it. 

Stop, take a deep breath or two and let go of everything that happened before you got to this moment and everything that is going to happen after this moment. 
Just be here. 

Then ask yourself one question:
What are the top three things I must get done today?

Go, go, go
I am preparing for training. I am volunteering in my community. I am working with clients. I am going to dance class. I am cleaning the floor. I am ...doing, doing doing ... but at some point, I have no idea what I am doing, because I am just going too fast.

I found myself there this week and realized something was amiss. Yup, I was in Survival Mode once again!

Survival Mode
Do you find yourself in that mode? You are just simply doing what needs to be done without much thought. You are doing, that is, what ever shows up in font of you. Yet you really don't know if you should be doing it or not, because you don't have time to think about it. 

If you are like me at this point, you just trying to get the piles off of your desk, get your inbox cleared to a manageable level and make sure no one says you forgot about them.

It reminds me of this video from I Love Lucy!

We become exhausted on this race to do it all. 
I sure know that I was. In this way, we tend to believe that everything is important. I wasn't sure what I could drop. At some point I realized I had too much going on, but didn't know what to let go of. 

Greg McKoewn suggests another way. 
In his bookEssentialism; The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, McKowen suggests that rather than trying to do it all, we discern what is really important. It's been a good book for me to be reading this past few weeks.

Not everything is important despite what others would have you believe.

You might be doing it good, but are you doing it great?
When we do too much, we water everything down. Nothing is being done well. Everything is simply being done, and some of it not very good. As such, we are overwhelmed by the pressures around us. We feel out of control. 

Are these things all really important?
Instead, if we pause to discern what it truly important. We can discipline ourselves to focus on what truly is vital. 

• Do our children need to be in 4 activities or only one?
  
• Do we need to attend every meeting or only certain ones?
  
• Do we need to sit on every committee or the ones that we are passionate about?
  
• Do we need to control every decision or can we delegate certain responsibilities?
  
• Do we need to have our finger in everything or can we pull back and allow others to do some stuff?

The key is discipline
You need to become disciplined at slowing things down. It is vital that you take time to consider, ponder and discern was is really vital. In order to be doing a few things really well, rather than a bunch of things just ok, you need to take time.

Schedule time to look through your activities
Look back over your day timer for the last week. What could you have cut out?

Review your To Do List
Does everything really need to be done here? Could you delegate some? Eliminate others?

More importantly, take time to decide what is vital.

• If you were going on vacation, what would you finish up before you left?
  
• If you were passing the job over to someone else, what would you tell them is most important.
  
• If you were to die...what is the work that is inside you that you would want finished?

Be disciplined in your pursuit of your best work. Keep at it. Come back to it again and again.

What is really important?
The key to managing everything and enjoying life is figuring out what truly is important and working on that. We need to get disciplined


 about figuring out was is the vital pieces we need to hang on to,

Greg suggests that we move from the undisciplined pursuit of more to 
the disciplined pursuit of less.

Ask yourself this often
I am really doing the important work I should be doing - right now?