Do you feel you spend most of your time on things that aren’t really important to you? Many things that are vital to your place within an organisation don't present themselves as the most urgent ones to do, so they often get left behind in the scramble to meet deadlines and deal with crises.

But these important but not urgent things can actually make a huge difference to your daily life, and make those crises easier to deal with, or even prevent them from happening. I’m talking about activities such as preparing for meetings, coaching staff, building relationships with key people and moving forward on your team’s longer-term goals.

I call the time spent doing these things “gold time” because it pays off tenfold over the time you invest in other types of activities.

The more responsibility you have in your job, the more essential it is to invest in gold time. People who don’t do this at all spend most of their time in crisis mode and are never capable of making lasting positive change in the culture or the performance of their association. Life can easily get eaten up by the empty promise of “as soon as ...”, unless you start to pay attention to how you’re really spending your time.

The solution is surprisingly simple – prioritise these activities instead. Take charge of your time. Yes, you do have to sort out that pile of paperwork or tenant problem now, but make sure you leave yourself half an hour at the end of the day to plan for your next meeting, consider opportunities for making your team’s work run more smoothly or devise new projects for improving your service.

Gradually, you’ll find that as a result of your efforts, underlying problems will be resolved before they turn into crises. You won’t leave fire-fighting behind completely, but you’ll spend much less of your day panicking and much more doing the things that you really enjoy.

Source

Housing Today

Postscript

Michael Black is chief executive of Best Year Yet! Email: michael.black@bestyearyet.com