Four Ds to Help You Get Things Done

Commitments, appointments, errands, tasks, projects — call them what you will — the busyness of our lives is comprised of a wide variety of activities that quickly expand to fill up every available minute on our calendar. Activities are the things that we DO with our lives. They may be related to work or leisure; they may be pleasant and relaxing, or stressful and taxing; but — one way or another — our lives are defined and consumed by our activities. The important question is this: are your activities helping you to achieve those goals you believe are important to you? Put another way, are you wasting valuable time on activities that aren’t tied to your most important goals?

If goals define our destination, activities become the road map that points the way to our destination. Activities are the tasks you must pursue and complete every day if you want to achieve your goals. So, one of the best ways to achieve your most important goals is to begin to analyze and sort your activities and align them so that they get you where you want to go.

Start by identifying and tracking all the activities that could have an impact on achieving your goals. Once all relevant activities have been identified, you must sort them according to complexity and priority.

First of all, eliminate any activities on your list that are not actionable. Activities may be considered not actionable if they not cannot be acted upon in the near future, or are not considered vital to helping you attain one of your current goals.

For example, assume one of your goals is to develop a retirement plan by January 1st. Perhaps your list of activities includes: investigating IRA’s online, reading two books on retirement planning, re-examining your budget, setting up a 401(k) through work, and attending a class on retirement planning. Upon examination of these activities, you conclude that taking the class is not an actionable goal because it is outside the scope of your budget, and you can’t fit it into your schedule before the end of the year. Scratch that activity off your list right away, because even though it sounds nice, there is no way to actually do it.

The remaining ACTIONABLE items can be further sorted using the following sub-categories, known as the 4 Ds:

• Do It – Activities you can begin to work on now; possibly activities that require immediate attention or must be done as a prerequisite for doing other tasks.

• Delegate It – Activities that may be handled by someone else. Delegation is one of the most powerful and effective time leveraging tools you have at your disposal. It is also one of the most underutilized. Usually, the failure to delegate often enough is related to the fear that a) nobody else can do the task as well as we can, or the fear that b) by the time we have trained someone else to do it, we could have done it ourselves anyhow. Please remember: You are not a superhero. You can’t do everything. Once you learn to trust others to do the things that don’t absolutely require your personal touch, you will have fewer projects on your plate and get twice as much done.
  
  • Note: a decision to delegate also becomes a Do It. If you decide to delegate an activity:
    • Make a note in your planner regarding who you will give the job to,
    • when and how you will discuss it with them,
    • and what will be the deadline you give them for getting it done.
• Defer It – Activities that are important, but either can’t or don’t need to be done immediately. NOTE: If you are going to defer an activity, always make a note in your planner of the date and time when you will come back to it.

• Dump It – Activities that might seem appealing but which don’t add real value to helping you efficiently and effectively accomplish your goals. It might be nice to do these at some point, but if you never got around to it, there would be no negative consequences for reaching your goals. Probably, you should just scratch these off the list.

Time Management Quick Tip of the Month – One Life = One Planner

In the lore of the Texas Rangers, there is the story of a riot in a small town that became so severe that a call went out to the Texas Rangers for help. A couple of days later, a solitary Ranger rode into town. The flabbergasted local constable couldn’t believe it. “Why did they only send one Ranger?” he demanded to know. The Ranger’s reply: “One riot – one Ranger.” The goal of time management is to help people make sense of the ongoing riot that is their life. Some people assume that it helps to keep a separate planner for business activities and another planner for personal/family activities. Wrong. You only have one life; you only need one planner. The idea of time management is to balance ALL the activities of your life into one harmonious symphony, and quell the riot of competing priorities for good. If you can’t make it all fit into one planner, you are too busy. It is time to make some serious changes.
 

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