To get into and succeed in senior leadership roles, you can’t just solve the problems in front of you — you have to anticipate and solve problems even before they arise.
But you can’t do that if you are:
1. Perpetually busy replying to emails and messages
2. Spending most of your day attending wasteful meetings
3. Mostly firefighting and responding to urgencies
The above activities constitute what we can call ‘busy work,’ which may feel productive but is not.
While you may not control 100% of your time, if you spend at least 40-50% of your time doing non-busy work, you will be on the road to success.
Next, treat this non-busy work time as a ‘productivity retreat’ by doing the following:
1. Earmark a few focus sprints (a 30-50 minute slot without interruption) for major priorities, every day.
2. Identify the problems that nag you, but you normally don’t find the time to attend to. Pick them up and work on them.
3. Occasionally, work on really long-term goals that have zero short-term impact.
Obviously, these are just illustrative but hopefully, they give you the direction in which to go.
Staying busy can be comforting but the core of effective leadership is doing things that are right, yet uncomfortable.
– Rajan