Focus!!!

-- J.D. Meier

Focus is the key to success for many people.  I put together proven practices for how to focus in a comprehensive set of “Focus Guidelines”.

One of my mentors, a seasoned manager, once told me that the difference that makes the difference – why some people succeed and others do not – is focus. Those that lack focus spread themselves too thin, or never finish what they start. They have a lot of dreams, ambition, and ideas but they never spend enough time working on any one thing to make it happen. On the flip side, those with focus, know what they want to accomplish, and they apply concentrated effort, and see it through to completion. They also focus on less, yet achieve more.

I set out to nail a set of proven practices that could help anybody improve their ability to focus.   I gave myself a timebox of four hours to see what I could put together for a v1 release.  I sanity checked the results with a few folks that said it very much echoed what they thought were the keys to improving focus, so now I’m sharing with a broader audience.  (If you’re wondering why I gave myself a timebox of four hours for this it was to help me focus Winking smile   Focus is a complex topic and deserves attention, but I also have other priorities I’m working on.  I was willing to spend 2 hours Saturday and 2 hours Sunday to chip away at this stone, if it could help the greater good to have a robust set of practices that actually work for achieving the highest levels of focus.  I expect my four hour investment to help many others get exponential results and help them take their game to a new level, by expanding their mental toolbox.  Even if that’s not the case, spending four hours to work on such a key cross-cutting skill for life is still a good investment.)

These practices are time-tested and Softie approved.  As you can imagine, with all the bright and shiny objects that go flying around, it takes skill and discipline to stay focused.  The beauty though is that if you know the key strategies and tactics for improving your focus, then it actually gets a lot easier to focus where it counts and enjoy the ride.

What Works Against Focus:

1) Conflict, confusion, and chaos.
2) Internal distractions.
3) External distractions.
4) Mental chatter.
5) Lack of vision or clarity.
6) Lack of discipline.
7) Lack of structure.
8) Lack of progress.

Key Strategies for Focus :

1) Get clear on what you want.
2) Start with your “why.”'
3) Align your focus and your values.'
4) Use time frames to scope your focus.
5) Expand your attention span.
6) Use 20-minute intervals to focus with skill.
7) Reduce distractions.
8) Spend your attention with skill.
9) Structure for success'.
10) Chart your progress.

Guidelines at a Glance for Improving Focus:

 
1) Apply concentrated effort.
2) Ask yourself, “What are you rushing through for?”
3) Clear away external & internal distractions.
4) Create routines to help you focus.
5) Use the Rule of Three. Simply identify three goals for the day, three goals for the week, three goals for the month, and three goals for the year. When you read a book, to stay focused, simply look for three take aways you can turn into action. If you’re in a meeting, look for three take aways.The Rule of Three can help you focus in just about any scenario.

Gain Control of your Future by Creating it

-Jamie Wood

As individuals we have to gain control of our future by creating it, not being pushed around by it. We have to make clear what our organization stands for and maintain accountable for our future. Successful leaders understand that leading change in today’s organizations depends to a large extent on creating resilience and flexibility in dealing with the future. We must not wait for miracles to happen or things to get better; we have to create the future on our own terms.

“My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.” ~ Charles Kettering

The role of leadership is to create a future of possibilities for our organizations through an evolving business model – one distinctly different from the past. We must not be hindered by the inability of letting go of the past and not seeing what is possible and what is in front of us, because we are too busy holding on to what was behind us.

Strong leaders quest endlessly for new opportunities to expand; they do not accept the limits of existing products and existing markets. The spirit of innovation keeps fresh ideas flowing and reinvigorates us. We must move towards the future we want, not just react to a present-day reality we don’t like. We must grab hold of it, bring it into the present, and then go about creating it.

“Seizing the initiative can make all the difference between winning and losing.” ~ Thomas Davis III

Without a future vision, resources are underutilized, our organizational purpose is unfulfilled, and individual energy can be misdirected. A growth attitude is essential in order to overcome the stagnation of operations and the complacency that naturally occurs.

Many business leaders are only focused on survival and management of the day to day, but if we want to lead our businesses into the future, we must have a vision and think strategically about the future. Without knowing where we are, we are unable to deal with the changes that are needed to move to the next level of success. We must focus on improving efficiency and effectiveness of our current activities and reflect on improvements. We should ask ourselves these very basic questions:

    Where are we now?

    Where do we want to go?

    How do we get there?

Until we know the answers to the questions, it will always be an uphill struggle, but when we know the answers, everything else will fall into place.

The road is not as hard or as long when we know where we are going. Remember the old saying – “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there”. We must clearly articulate where we are going and why, to have the best chance for success.

The key is to look inside ourselves and our company. In any business, there are clues, often subtle, both internal and external to help guide future direction and to identify opportunities. Creating business foresight and strategy with a long-term view – will be essential to success. Monitoring future trends and new profit opportunities will come from organizations that see the future first and become ready, while anticipating and evolving before the competition does.

We must create our own roadmap and we have to start with a vision. To be clear, a vision is not a strategic plan. It is quite simply a picture of what success will be at a particular time in the future.  Our vision articulates where we are going; the strategic plan tells us how we’re actually going to get there. We must ask ourselves if we have both a vision and a strategy. We must think about our vision for our future and really know what we want to achieve.

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” ~ Jack Welch

To dramatically change our business:

    We must decide what our company’s ideal future looks like

    Determine what qualities we need to attain it

    Understand the steps that are needed to bring the desired outcome

Without such a plan, we will have nothing concrete to run towards and we would have to be content to stay where we are. We should take our time planning and working on the issues, challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. We must have clearly defined and focused milestones and goals. And these must be subject to frequent review to ensure our thinking is validated.

We must take control of our future and accept responsibility for the choices we need to make. Either we are in this for the long haul or we might as well throw in the towel right now. We can sit back and hope that everything will work out; or we take direct action and do whatever it takes to reach our vision of success.

How To Recover From 10 Types of Demotivation

 by Cath Duncan

Motivation is central to creativity, productivity and happiness. Motivation is what causes us to act, and when we act, we create movement, growth and change, we feel involved, masterful and significant, we feel powerful through experiencing how we can change the world, and we create more of what we love in our lives. And all of this gives our lives purpose and happiness.

De-motivation is like snow
It’s said that Eskimos have multiple words for snow because snow is so familiar to them that they can appreciate the subtle differences between different types of snow. These additional distinctions enable Eskimos to respond differently to different types of snow, depending on the challenges and opportunities each particular type of snow is presenting them with.

Most of us have just one distinction for demotivation, which means that you’re likely to assume that you’re struggling with the same problem whenever you’re demotivated, when in fact demotivation is a category of problems that has many different distinctions within it. When you have just one distinction for demotivation, you’ll apply the same old strategies whenever you feel demotivated, which for many people looks like this: set goals, push harder, create accountability checks that will push you, and run your life using GTD methods and to-do lists. These strategies are ineffective with most types of de-motivation, and in some instances they can even make you more demotivated.

At its essence, demotivation is about you not being fully committed to act, and there are many reasons why you might be in that position. Having more distinctions for your demotivation will help you to identify the real reasons for your unwillingness to commit to action, so that you can pick the right tools and strategies to get motivated again.

Here are 10 different types of demotivation and the strategies that will help you to get motivated again:

1.) You’re demotivated by fear 
When you’re afraid, even if you’re entering territory that you’ve chosen to move into, a part of yourself is determined to avoid going forward. Fear slows you down and makes you hesitant and careful, which can be beneficial to you, but sometimes your fears are based on your imagination rather than an accurate assessment of the risks in your reality. If your fear is big enough, even if you’re also excited to go forward, the part of you that wants to keep you safe can successfully prevent you from going forward into territory that’s both desirable and safe.

How to get motivated again: To get motivated, you need to deal with your fear. Start by naming your fears so that they’re out in the open. Remember to say a gentle thank you to your fears – they’re trying to protect you after all. Then question your fears; “Why am I afraid of that happening?” “What are the chances that would really happen?” Some of your fears will slip away now.

Look at the fears that are left. What are these fears telling you about the research you need to do, the gaps you need to fill and the risk management strategies you need to put in place? Honor that wisdom by building it into your plan. Finally, consider breaking the changes you’re wanting to make down into smaller steps and focus on just the next few small steps – this will calm your fears.

2.) You’re demotivated by setting the wrong goals 
Martha Beck has a great model for understanding motivation. She explains that we have an Essential Self and a Social Self. Your Essential Self is the part of you that’s spontaneous and creative and playful, the part that knows what’s most important to you. Your Social Self is the part of you that developed since the day you were born, learning the rules of the tribe and working hard to make sure that you’re safe by making you follow the rules of the tribe.

We’re all surrounded with so many messages that feed into our Social Selves and we’re keen to impress our tribe. When you feel demotivated, it’s because you’re setting goals based purely on what your Social Self wants and this is pulling you away from the direction your Essential Self is wanting you to take. Your Essential Self uses demotivation to slow you down and try to disinterest you from the toxic goals you’ve set.

How to get motivated again: Take some time to review your goals. Because your Essential Self is non-verbal, you can easily access your Essential Self through your body. Notice how your body responds as you think of each of the goals you’re trying to work on. When your body (and particularly your breathing) show signs of tightness and constriction, that’s a pretty good indication that you’re trying to follow toxic goals. If you get a constricted reaction, scrap your current goals and question all your stories about what you “should” do with your life. Notice what makes you smile spontaneously or lose track of time and set goals around that stuff instead.

3.) You’re demotivated by lack of clarity about what you want 
When you haven’t consciously and clearly articulated what you want, your picture of your future will be vague. We like what’s familiar and so we resist what’s unfamiliar and vague and we stay with and re-create what’s familiar to us instead. If you’re not clear about what you want to create, then it makes sense that you’ll lack motivation to act because you’d rather stay with your current familiar reality.

How to get motivated again: If you want to create something different to what you’ve been experiencing, it’s not enough to just know what you don’t want. You need to know what you want instead, and you need to articulate a clear and specific vision of what you want to create so that you can become familiar with that new outcome and feel comfortable to move towards it. Take some time to articulate what you want and why you want it.

4.) You’re demotivated by a values-conflict
 Your values are what’s important to you in life. If you have a values conflict it means that there are two or more values that are important to you but you feel that you can’t satisfy all of those values in a particular situation. This causes you to feel conflicted and pulled in different directions as you try to find ways to get what’s important to you. You might have brief spurts of motivation to work on something and then lose motivation and start working on something else or your motivation might dry up altogether because the energy of dealing with internal conflict quickly tires you out and saps your motivation.

How to get motivated again: You need to unpack your values-conflict and play mediator to get the parts of you that are advocating for different values to play on the same team again. Start with acknowledging the internal conflict. Grab a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle so that you have two columns. Write about the two different directions you feel pulled in, one in each column and summarize it with a statement of what each part wants. Now pick one column and chunk it up; “Why does this part want that? What does it hope to get as a result of having that?” Keep asking the question and writing your answers until you feel that you’ve hit on the end result that part ultimately wants. Now do the same for the other part and notice when you get to the level where the answers in the two columns are the same.

Ultimately, when you chunk up, all of the parts of yourself always want the same thing, because they’re all you. Now that you know what you really want, you can evaluate the strategies that each part had been advocating for and decide which strategy would work best.

Often once you’re clear on what you really want, you spot new strategies for getting it that you hadn’t noticed before. Sometimes by doing this exercise you’ll find ways to satisfy all of your values, but sometimes that’s not possible. If you’ve taken time to think through your values and you’ve consciously chosen to prioritize a particular value over your other values for a while, this clarity will ease the internal conflict and your motivation will return.

5.) You’re demotivated by lack of autonomy 
We thrive on autonomy. We all have a decision-making center in our brains and this part of us needs to be exercised. Studies have found that this decision-making center in the brain is under-developed in people who have depression and that, by practicing using this part of the brain and making decisions, depression often clears.

In his book, Drive, Daniel Pink writes about the research that shows that when it comes to doing creative work, having some autonomy to decide what we do, when we do it, how we do it and who we do it with is core to igniting and sustaining motivation, creativity and productivity.

How to get motivated again: Consider how much autonomy you have in relation to the goals you’ve been trying to pursue. Are there areas where you feel constricted and controlled? Consider how you could gradually introduce more autonomy in your task, time, technique, location and team, and then if you’re employed, have a discussion with your manager and ask for greater autonomy in a few specific areas of your work.

6.) You’re demotivated by lack of challenge 
Challenge is another crucial ingredient for motivation that authors like Daniel Pink and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,” highlight. When it comes to dealing with challenges, there’s a sweet spot. Too great a challenge and the fear becomes too great and saps our motivation (see point 1), and if the challenge is too small, we quickly get bored and struggle to stay motivated. We’re designed to be living, growing creatures and we need constant challenge and opportunities to master new skills. Without challenge, our Essential Self steps in and demotivates us as a way of telling us that we’ve departed from the path that’s right for us.

How to get motivated again: Review your goals and the projects you’re working on. Are they challenging you? Are they going to require you to grow in order to achieve them or are you treading water in your comfort zone doing only the things you know you can do? Try tweaking your goals to make them a bit more challenging, take on projects that will require you to grow and find a new thing or two to learn to stimulate yourself.

7.) You’re demotivated by grief
 At the beginning of any change, we go through a phase of wondering if we should or could hang onto the way things were and grieving what we’d be losing if we make significant changes. Confusion, self-doubt, mistrust of the world around us and feeling lost are common symptoms and the bigger the change, the more powerful these symptoms. Sometimes we even go through a bit of depression and social withdrawal. Martha Beck calls this the “Death and Rebirth” phase of change in her book, Finding Your Own North Star. With all the grieving and fearing and feeling lost that goes on in this phase, it’s normal for your motivation to dry up.

How to get motivated again: If you’ve just experienced a trauma or loss, or are going through a major change and finding that there are days where you’re hit hard with Death and Rebirth symptoms, don’t try to make make yourself motivated and proactive. You can’t rush grieving and the undoing of your old life and ways of thinking and you can’t skip the Death and Rebirth phase and go straight into Dreaming and Scheming.

You need to give yourself a lot of space for nurturing and reflection. Look after your body with good food, rest and exercise. Express your grief, confusion and fears with people who can listen lovingly. Spend time in nature and with calm, loving people to center yourself. Accept every feeling and thought you have – they’re all normal and safe. Take one day at a time and go easy on yourself. Confusion, forgetfulness and clumsiness are all normal in this stage. The grieving will end when it’s ready and if you relax into it and express your grief, it’ll be sooner rather than later.

8.) You’re demotivated by loneliness 
This is an especially important one for those of us who work alone from home. You know those days when you feel a bit cabin-feverish, you just don’t feel like working and you’d rather be out having a drink with a friend or playing a game of soccer? Well perhaps it’s because we’re designed to be social creatures and sometimes your Essential Self is just longing for some connection with other people and so it steps in and hi-jacks your work motivation so that you’ll take a break from work and go and spend some time with other people and give your Essential Self what it needs.

How to get motivated again: Take a break and go and spend some time with someone you enjoy. You may be surprised at the motivating impact this has and find yourself much more clear and productive when you return to your work. And then look for ways that you can begging to build more networking and joint venturing into your work.

9.) You’re demotivated by burn-out 
Since I attract over-achieving Type A’s, and as a recovering Type A myself, I know that sometimes we’re banging on about wanting to get more done even after we’ve exceeded the limit on what’s sustainable. If you’re feeling tired all the time, have lost your energy for socializing, and the idea of taking a snooze sounds more compelling than the stuff you’re usually interested in, then you’ve probably pushed yourself too long and hard and you may be burned out.

Your Essential Self will always work to motivate you to move towards what you most need and away from goals, projects and ways of working that take you away from what your Essential Self craves. So if you’re burned out and needing sleep, your Essential Self may even sap the motivation from the things that you’re usually really ignited about – just to get you to meet your core needs again.

How to get motivated again: Sleep. And then when you’re done sleeping and the quality of your thinking has been restored, check back in with your Essential Self about what’s most important to you, hang out here on Charlie’s blog, pick up The Dojo, and start to build sustainable ways of doing more of what’s important to you.

10.) You’re demotivated by not knowing what to do next 
Your end-goal might be nice and clear, but if you haven’t taken time to chunk your end-goal down into smaller goals, you’ll get stuck, confused and demotivated when it’s time to take action. Some projects are small and familiar enough that they don’t need a plan, but if you’re often worrying that you don’t know what to do next and you don’t have a clear plan, then this might be the source of your demotivation.

How to get motivated again: If you want to keep your motivation flowing steadily through all stages of your projects, take time to create clear project plans and to schedule your plans into your calendar.

Use your fears to point you to the potential risks you need to manage in your plan. Write down all your, “I-don’t-know-how-to” concerns and turn these into research questions. The first part of any planning stage is research, and you’ll find new research questions along the way, so realize that conducting research should be part of your action plan at every stage of your project. Finally, ask yourself what smaller goals need to be achieved for you to achieve your end-goal and schedule deadlines for yourself.

Goal-setting and pushing is rarely the answer 
Goal-setting, planning, organizing and accountability structures are often touted as the big solution to demotivation and the silver bullet that will get you creative and productive again, but notice that it’s only a useful strategy for dealing with some types of demotivation. With many other types of demotivation, goal-setting, planning, organizing and accountability structures will only make your demotivation problem worse.

Over to you… 
Have you been able to pin-point the type/s of demotivation that you tend to struggle with most? 
Have you been stuck in demotivation right now? 
What do you need and which motivation strategy is going to give you what you need right now?

Commit to Think

In 1849 Walter Hunt wanted to pay a fifteen-dollar debt to a friend. So he decided to invent something new. From a piece of brass wire about eight inches long, coiled at the centre and shielded at one end, he made the first safety pin. He took out a patent on his invention, sold the rights to it for four hundred dollars, paid his friend back and had three hundred eighty-five dollars to spare.

We believe, every human being is capable of becoming a great innovator or inventor. It is really a matter of doing something which you intend to do. Every person is born with this innovative spirit, sure some more than others, I am certain you got some innovator genes along the way. But even if you did not get an extra dose of innovator genes, with a little work you can become a world-class innovator.

Anyone with practice can become a great innovator and become what you think about most. If you wish to become an innovator all you need to do is to commit yourself to think.

What is 'Recession'? [Nice Story]

This story is about a man who once upon a time was selling hotdogs by the roadside.

He was illiterate, so he never read newspapers.

He was hard of hearing, so he never listened to the radio.

His eyes were weak, so he never watched television.

But enthusiastically, he sold lots of hotdogs.

He was smart enough to offer some attractive schemes to increase his sales.

His sales and profit went up.

He ordered more a more raw material and buns and use to sale more.

He recruited few more supporting staff to serve more customers.

He started offering home deliveries. Eventually he got himself a bigger and better stove.

As his business was growing, the son, who had recently graduated from College, joined his father.

Then something strange happened.

The son asked, "Dad, aren't you aware of the great recession that is coming our way?"

The father replied, "No, but tell me about it." The son said, "The international situation is terrible. The domestic situation is even worse. We should be prepared for the coming bad times."

The man thought that since his son had been to college, read the papers, listened to the radio and watched TV. He ought to know and his advice should not be taken lightly.

So the next day onwards, the father cut down the his raw material order and buns, took down the colourful signboard, removed all the special schemes he was offering to the customers and was no longer as enthusiastic.

He reduced his staff strength by giving layoffs. Very soon, fewer and fewer people bothered to stop at his hotdog stand. And his sales started coming down rapidly, same is the profit.

The father said to his son, "Son, you were right".

"We are in the middle of a recession and crisis. I am glad you warned me ahead of time."

MORAL OF THE STORY: It's all in your MIND! And we actually FUEL this recession much more than it is.

Be Enthusiastic

Nothing great is ever achieved without enthusiasm. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Enthusiasm and success go hand in hand, but enthusiasm comes first. Enthusiasm inspires confidence, raises morale, builds loyalty! and is priceless. Enthusiasm is contagious. You can feel enthusiasm by the way a person talks, walks or shakes hands. Enthusiasm is a habit that one can acquire and practice.

Many decades ago, Charles Schwab, who was earning a salary of a million dollars a year, was asked if he was being paid such a high salary because of his exceptional ability to produce steel. Charles Schwab replied, "I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among the men the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement."

Live while you are alive. Don't die before you are dead.

Enthusiasm and desire are what change mediocrity to excellence.

Water turns into steam with a difference of only one degree in temperature and steam can move some of the biggest engines in the world.

That is what enthusiasm helps us to do in our lives.

Why goals???

On the best sunny day, the most powerful magnifying glass will not light paper if you keep moving the glass. But if you focus and hold it, the paper will light up. That is the power of concentration.

A man was traveling and stopped at an intersection. He asked an elderly man, "Where does this road take me?" The elderly person asked, "Where do you want to go?" The man replied, "I don't know." The elderly person said, "Then take any road. What difference does it make?"

How true. When we don't know where we are going, any road will take us there.

Suppose you have all the football eleven players, enthusiastically ready to play the game, all charged up, and then someone took the goal post away. What would happen to the game? There is nothing left. How do you keep score? How do you know you have arrived?

Enthusiasm without direction is like wildfire and leads to frustration. Goals give a sense of direction. Would you sit in a train or a plane without knowing where it was going? The obvious answer is no. Then why do people go through life without having any goals?

How to Prioritize When Everything Is Important

Alan Henry

You know that sinking feeling you have when there's too much on your plate? When you try to tackle your tasks by priority, but it feels like everything's important? Don't get overwhelmed—it's a problem that everyone faces at some point or another, and while it's difficult to skillfully juggle multiple priorities and competing responsibilities, it's not impossible. Here's how.

It just so happens that there's a career that focuses specifically on juggling competing tasks and priorities: These people are called project managers. And as luck would have it, I was a full time PM for many years, PMP-certified and everything. In that time, I learned a number of helpful tricks that can help you manage your workload at the office as well as your ever-growing list of to-dos at home, with your family, or with your friends. Here's how you can apply some of those techniques to your everyday life.

First, Answer the Question: Is Everything Really Important?
Even if everything on your plate is supposed to be equally important, you still need a way to break down which ones you spend your time on, and how you slice up your time. The first question you have to get past is whether or not everything really is of equal importance. Here are a couple of tips to help you cut through the fog and get a feel for how important your responsibilities and projects really are.

Grill the boss. At work, you have a manager. At home, you're your own boss. One of the primary responsibilities of any manager is to help you understand what's important, what's not, and what you should be working on. You may have a manager at the office who does this (or needs your help doing it well), but everywhere else, you're in charge of your own work, and no one's going to tell you that backing up your data is more important right now than painting the house. It's easy to give up and think "it's all important," but at work, you can lean in and tell your boss that you really need their help. At home, sometimes you just have to pick something from your to-do list and get started to build some momentum.

Ask around. If you're prioritizing tasks that involve other people, like your family, friends, and coworkers, talk to them. Find out from them when they need your help, how much work is backed up behind the things you're working with them on, and if they can lend a hand. If they don't need you for another week and someone else needs you tomorrow, or if they aren't as busy as you are, you know what to do.
   
Work backwards. We'll get into this a little more later, but you probably have an idea of when each of your tasks are due—or at least when you'd like them done by—and how much time is required to work on each item. Start with the due dates, take into account how much effort you need to put into each one and how much input you need from others, and work backwards to find out what you should be working on right now (or what you should have already started, in some cases).
   
Cover Your A**. Finally, once you've taken some time to determine what's really important and arranged them based on what you think you should tackle first, it's time to put it in writing and share it with everyone involved. Set expectations with others for when you'll get your work done for them, and set expectations with yourself for when you'll have time to work on your own projects. This is more important in a work setting, but involving others in your non-work to-dos can also keep you—and others—accountable.

Get Organized
In order for your priorities to even matter, you need to have some sort of a personal productivity system in place to which you hold yourself accountable—and in which your priorities will actually matter. If you've got a tried and true system, great. If not, check out our guide to building one that's right for you.

The goal of your system, whichever you select, is to take away the need for you to waste time deciding what to work on next, even when you have a lot on your plate. I've found that David Allen's GTD framework is one of the most effective methods for me, mostly because it focuses on what you should do now and what your next actions should be, and it emphasizes getting your to-dos out of your head and into some system that will help you work. I've mentioned before that I manage my to-dos in ReQall, but there are plenty of other options, like previously mentioned Wunderlist, or if you work on a team, Asana, a collaborative tool we adore.

Whichever tool and productivity method you choose, dump your to-dos and projects into it as quickly as possible. Make sure it's something you'll actually return to and use frequently, and something that's easy to fit into your workflow, and you'll be successful. In the end, you want something easy to refer to, easy to enter tasks into, and that gives you a great view of all of the balls you have in the air at any time.

Behold, The Trinity: Cost, Scope, and Time
When I was a project manager, one of the first things I learned to help me judge which projects were most important or needed the most attention is the "triple constraint," or a triangle with three equilateral sides. Each side represents the cost of the project, the scope of the project, and the time required to complete the project. None of the sides can be adjusted without making changes to the other two sides. The sides you're weakest in help determine the projects that need special attention. This holds true for all things, not just projects and project managers: If someone heaps more work onto you (scope), but insists that you finish in the same amount of time (time), you'll need more resources (cost) to get the job done.

For example, if you want to paint the spare room in time for out-of-town guests to stay over, you can't change the size of the job (scope), but you can control whether you buckle down and do it yourself overnight (time), or get someone else to do it for you while you do something else (cost). Here's how you can use these three principles to organize your everyday to-dos.

Time: Work Backwards From Your Deadlines. Time is usually the one variable most of us can't change. Deadlines are deadlines, and often we're not the ones who set them. This is where working backwards from due dates is crucial. Start a spreadsheet, and mark down when each project or task on your plate needs to be finished. Then work backwards to the present day, taking into account everything each specific to-do that needs to be done to get from here to there, and how long it takes to complete. When you're finished, you'll likely see a bunch of tasks that should have started already and others that hopefully won't start for a while if you're going to make the deadline. That list, by itself, is a good indicator of what your priorities are, what you should be working on right now, what you should work on next, and perhaps most importantly, what you should get help with—especially if they're tasks that should have started a week ago.
   
Cost: Get Help from Family, Friends, and Coworkers. Cost means more than just dollars. It also means people who can help you, or services you can call to give you a hand or take the load off. Could you finish faster if someone else worked on it for you? What if a teammate could take part of the job off your hands and you could pick it up later? Perhaps there's a program or application that can automate the process for you, and it's pretty cheap. It may be worth spending money or dragging in friends to help you finish renovating the kitchen before you run out of vacation days, or calling someone to install your new washing machine so you don't have to take time off to do it.
   
Scope: Don't Be Afraid to Make Compromises. If your to-dos have to be done by a certain time and you can't get help, it's time to sit down with the people waiting on you and start making some deals. Let them know what you can deliver by when, and then go on to explain what you can give them later. This is important, because it sends the message that you're not trying to avoid the work you have to do, but you're trying to give them something now that they can use while you keep working in the background to get them everything else on their wish list. The sooner you stop thinking of your to-dos in terms of all-or-nothing, the sooner you'll have the flexibility to say "I'll give you this tomorrow if you give me a week to give you the rest."

Delegate, Delegate, Delegate
It's easy for us to toil away in obscurity, quietly hating our lives and our jobs and growing more frustrated with every passing minute. All the while, there may be a friend who's willing to help if we had only asked, or a boss who would be willing to help you out if you asked the right questions or gave them the right information.

We've talked about how difficult it can be to delegate, and how to delegate effectively in the past, but however you go about it, it's important to remember that you need to be assertive, not aggressive when asking for help, and you need to make your case with all of the data you have available. By now, you should have your priorities laid out and you have a good idea what you need. Use that information to ask for help and prove you need it, and remember, don't be upset if your friends, boss, or coworkers say no.

Buckle Up, It's Going to be a Bumpy Ride
Using this method to set your own priorities and keep track of your own responsibilities isn't just something you should do when you're starting to feel overwhelmed. If the walls are closing in on you, yes, it's definitely time to take a good, hard look at what's on your plate, what can come off, and what has to give, but waiting until you're already busy and stressed out will make it especially difficult to make the changes you need to get your head above water. Even so, it's essential, and once you do it you'll never look back. Hopefully, you can apply these tricks to your work, at home, and in your day-to-day life. Once you really understand what you have to work on and how long it takes, you'll be able to make smart decisions about whether you can take on that big new project at work, or help your best friend plan their bachelor party.