In last week’s blog I committed to 30 days of consciously thinking once a day about what could I do to be more effective.
As my buddy Mike pointed out, I'm dreamin’ if I think I'm going to be doing that every day once our daughter arrives. She’s due this Saturday! But we’re hoping she’s going to take after her Nan (who will probably be late for her own funeral) and come after that to give me time to finish the book I’m writing and our house building project finished. The book and the house are both on track to be done and dusted this week, and she hasn’t arrived yet, so we’re looking good.
Anyway, given I’ll probably abandon the 30-day project the moment she arrives and everything changes, here’s what I’ve come up with over the last week. With apologies to Stephen Covey, here are “the seven habits of a highly effective Pete” (well, the seven I’ve implemented since last week anyway).
- Blocked The Age website from my laptop. My computer seems to jump to the online newspaper with absolutely no prompting from me. But I’ve out smarted it – I’ve got an add-on in my Firefox browser which blocks the website. Genius.
- Made my iPad my consumption tool, and my laptop my production tool. If I want to read a newspaper, check Twitter, watch a Ted Talk, that’ll be on my iPad from now on so I have to make the conscious decision to stop producing and start consuming.
- Spent time on my projects mindmap. It’s very easy for me to get lost in the detail of all my projects, and I have a mindmap that set out my projects at a high level. The more time I spend at that level, the better.
- Connected to some more podcasts (thanks Lynne and Gihan for the suggestions) – I’ve got enough quality content to keep my going for the rest of the year.
- Cleared my desk at the end of every day. I think we underestimate the impact our environment has on our work.
- Booked in a mentoring session with my Mac Guru. Time spent getting better at using my primary work tool is gold.
- Asked for help. Again I have a habit to push through on my own, so I looked at who else I get on the team for a couple of major projects.
Love to hear your thoughts and experiences – what do you do to be more effective? You can leave your comments below.
