How to improve efficiency

Think of attention as your main resource. Too often, leaders underestimate the importance of their attention. Therefore, they sometimes create unfinished cycles for themselves and allow their attention to “hang” on them.

But the moment you postponed the reply to the letter, you created an unfinished cycle, which now holds a certain amount of your attention. And this already to some extent reduces your work efficiency.

What should you do to free your attention

At a minimum, to answer all letters that were postponed “for later”. But is that enough? After all, you will agree, often, after writing and sending a response, you continue to think about whether the person received your letter, whether he read it.

Whether he understood what you wanted to say. Your attention will be held on this issue until you receive confirmation that the person to whom you wrote received the letter and read it.

The same goes for written assignments that you give to employees. Without receiving confirmation from them that your letter has been received and understood, you are not completely sure that the employee will fulfill the order and will do it on time.

Therefore, it is very useful to introduce a rule into the corporate culture of the company that all letters must be answered immediately after reading them, that the letter has been received, understood, and accepted into work.

Even if the person who received the letter understands everything and does not have additional questions. A simple phrase “Ok, everything is clear” in response to a letter can free both your attention and the attention of your employees. Which, in turn, will help you manage your staff more efficiently.

Hire a personal assistant

Each leader usually has many cycles and problems that only they can solve. Therefore, leaving for important meetings, they cannot afford to turn off the phone and be left without communication.

But if you analyze the manager’s incoming calls, it may turn out that out of 70 calls received in 2 hours of the meeting, only 3 turned out to be urgently important. Therefore, for more effective work, the leader needs a personal assistant or assistant who will filter his communication and prevent the manager’s attention from “hanging” on insignificant issues.

The product of the work of a personal assistant is the freed up time and attention of the leader. He will need to solve many issues himself, so as not to occupy the attention of the leader.

Therefore, it is necessary to hire only a performer for this position, that is, a person who sees the result of his activity and can independently find and implement solutions that allow achieving it as quickly as possible.

Many executives initially disagree with the need to hire an assistant, because we have a common belief that a good leader is someone who can do everything himself. However, we recommend looking at this issue from the other side.

Strategic tasks

It is you who determines the course of the company’s development and solve the main strategic tasks. The future of your entire business depends on how effectively you do it. And, as we found out earlier, to do something effectively, you need to have enough free attention. It is this that hiring a good assistant will provide you.

Thus, having your assistant can be called the key to the further successful development of the company. Write out all uncompleted cycles We want to make it clear right away that an unfinished cycle is any cycle you started (even in thoughts) that you have not completed. 

Even when you just thought that you should call relatives with whom you have not communicated for a long time, or that it would be nice to read some book about the nuances of work in your field of activity, you have already started a cycle. And if it was not completed, then it keeps your attention on itself, reducing your efficiency and causing you to be irritable and agitated.

Free your attention

To free your attention, we recommend at least once a week to write down all the moments and actions on which you have attended, that is, which you remember. Analyze this list. Surely there is something there that is no longer relevant or important.

Cross it out immediately. If you see something important in the list that you can do right now, do it. For example, answer a letter to a friend who invited you to a birthday party, or call your relatives, or find the book you wanted to read and read it.

Start completing the simplest cycles you have written, the ones that you can do right now with minimal effort. With each closed cycle, you will have more and more free attention, and you will be able to effectively solve larger-scale problems.

solve large-scale problems

If you tackle the most important things right away, then you simply may not have enough attention to solve them. A person can effectively direct his attention to solving large-scale problems only if he has completed the rest of the cycles, and his attention is not hanging anywhere.