If lack of focus is your challenge...
Distraction is a major problem for many of us. Not because we are not skilled at managing, but we have so many competing priorities and sometimes there are more than one that needs our attention.
I covered delegation as one of the most underutilized concepts in gaining productivity and efficiency earlier.
But what if it is something that you cannot delegate?
I am working on completing my book for #Intrapreneurs and the slow month of December provided me an opportunity to get good traction. However, with the start of the new year, as my other responsibilities started taking over my time, the book writing started to suffer.
So, I turned to my younger son and asked him to be my watcher for my modified Pomodoro process. His job is to ask (remind) me every day if I wrote for 4 25-min blocks and 2 45-min blocks each day till I am done with writing. I will use one of the browser lock apps available to ensure I am not getting distracted by emails,, LinkedIn, or any other meaningless or meaningful browsing or activity during my writing time.
For every missed timeblock (pomodoro) on a daily basis, my kid gets $5 from me. If he helps me finish the book within the set timeline, he gets $1000 (teaching him the higher valued delayed gratification).
During my corporate days, I always empowered one of my PM leads to hold me accountable for things that I cannot delegate. As a leader, we will always have competing priorities and there is never enough time, and we will drop a few things. This is one way to ensure we have access to that extra push to do what is good and important and not let ourselves be the cause of our failure.
I will talk to you on immersion-based process for problem-solving or solution development in another post.