December 22, 2009

No doubt, a glance at your calendar reveals your priorities. Time, as your most precious commodity, is doled out in small increments depending on your goals and values. As such, you should be able to look back on previous days and feel proud of how you allocated your energy. You should feel like your time was well spent.

However, many of us feel otherwise. Oftentimes, long meetings prove fruitless. Strategy sessions and brainstorms that consume hours of your day may, ultimately, lead to nothing actionable. Frustration swells. But alas, this is unavoidable. You schedule meetings and spend time on long-term projects because you believe that, ultimately, these activities will make an impact.

Accept the fact that much of the energy you invest in long-term initiatives may lead to nothing. This is simply a cost of doing business. Rather than giving yourself a hard time about it, consider making up for it with a “power hour” devoted to the small things that make a big difference.

The guidelines for a “power hour” are quite simple. Stop thinking big picture and zoom in on the particular factors that impact outcome on a daily basis. For example, if you are a web company that generates leads online, you might consider the analytics for your sign-up/registration page. Is there one button, link, or piece of copy that could be quickly improved to make a material difference?

Another example is taking a few minutes to review common complaints in customer service logs. Is there one easy change or clarification you could make that would please your customers? Or maybe you want to spend your hour calling up a vendor to inquire about price breaks? One last example: Why not spend an hour following up on “dead leads” from six months ago – customers you never heard back from?

Try placing such an hour on your calendar every day. Especially for visionary leaders that are always thinking forward, the “power hour” can serve as a grounding effort with a measurable outcome.

***This article is based on research by Behance CEO Scott Belsky, whose book, Making Ideas Happen, will be published by Penguin in April 2010. Behance runs the Behance Creative Network, the 99% productivity think thank, the Action Method project management application, and the Creative Jobs List.

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Join the conversation ( 2 )

• DAVID CHASSE 1 year 1 months and 30 days ago

  

  This really opened my eyes to how we manage time in our office. Thank you!

• Sam Spurlin 2 years 4 months and 11 days ago

  

  This is very timely for me. I've been doing a lot of thinking about what it is I need to do to expand the audience of my blog. I'm very uncomfortable with self-promotion (in fact, this feels too much like it for my taste). However, I have realized that I need to spend more time networking (usually by commenting) on other blogs in my genre. I need to make connections with other writers. However, when I read blogs I very seldom think to actually respond via comments. I like to consume their good ideas without actually putting forth what I think. I'm slowly trying to break myself out of that lazy habit and put forth my own thoughts on articles that make me think.Thank you!