Schedule your time
Have you ever had a problem that you just cannot solve? You attempt to solve the problem by trying different tactics, talk to people around you and still cannot seem to resolve it. Nothing works, after a long fruitless day you leave with the intent of tackling it in the morning. Does this sound like something that has happened to you? In the morning, you wake up with the solution in your mind. It is called sleeping on it. I do not know the validity of it I just know it happens to me often.
I like to capitalize on this idea and every evening before quitting for the day, I update my "action list,” my to-do list. I keep my list on an Excel spreadsheet a running list of the items that I need to accomplish. Every evening before quitting work for the day, I add the lines in the top of my spreadsheet for items that cropped up during the day that will need my attention. Once I have added the items, I will rate every item on my list, old and new, starting with category 1 items, then cat 2 items and finishing up with cat 3 items. I may have ten, fifteen, or even twenty category 1 items. The trick is to start your day with your cat 1A item and continue with it until you are finished or as far as you can go. Then I start my cat 1B item and continue down the list.
Should an emergency pop up (remember this is construction), I stop what I am doing to take care of the emergency until it is solved then return to the item I was working on prior to that emergency. This tends to keep me focused and I wind up getting more items that are high on my priority list complete.
Remember to add your daily items to your list every night before quitting for the day. Also the item that is your priority 1A item today may very well not even be a priority 1 item tomorrow, so rating everything is very important, at least to me.
Scores of great books are available on the topic, many make the idea much simpler to understand for many of us. The book that has helped me is “Eat That Frog” by Brian Tracey. The second edition is out and the book sells for around sixteen dollars. It is an easy book to read, and for me is one of those books that I can open up to any chapter in it to reread that chapter to refresh his concepts in my mind. I understand this is also available as an audio book to listen to in your car, I have not seen this at my local bookstore yet.
