The Hamster Wheel of Misfortune

Dear Jayme:
I start each day with a plan, but when I get to the office or jobsite, I get bombarded by problems and questions that demand my immediate attention, and my plan goes out the window. I end up feeling like I’ve been through the wringer, but I’ve usually accomplished nothing. How do I get my life to match my priorities?
Erik

Dear Erik:
Life on the hamster wheel equals lots of effort and activity but no progress. It’s hard to keep on track when somebody’s in your face with what seems to be a burning issue. It’s human nature to deal with immediate situations because they appear more urgent and you can have an immediate impact (which makes you feel good).  Unfortunately, firefighting may make you feel busy and powerful in the moment, but it’s like a sugar buzz—no real long-term value and a headache later. So what can you do to counteract the tendency to be distracted by short-term matters and stay on track?

Have a plan: A long-term vision for where you’re business is going and shorter term (quarterly, monthly) benchmarks that move you down the road. These should be the guiding force for all your activities. (You may groan at this, but successful businesses have detailed long-term plans and unsuccessful ones don’t. Period. There’s tons of data to support this).

Tie your schedules in accordance to your plans: Most of your energy should be spent furthering your long-term goals, so tie your daily activities to them. A true manager spends no less than 80 percent of his time on strategic matters.

Analyze your time: Keep a written time log for a week, and see where your time is going. Rank-order the biggest time-consumers. The 80/20 rule is probably in play.

Delegate: Most owners waste time doing tasks or making decisions that could be performed by employees. Review the time log, and determine who else could (and should) be handling the stuff you currently do (Note: Delegation is a topic of its own that we’ll discuss in detail next month).

Let’s say you’ve off-loaded 80 percent of the time-consumers to your employees (and yes, this is completely doable). What about the rest of the stuff that comes at you every day?

Don’t jump in: Ask yourself if a day-to-day issue is in line with your long-term goals and benchmarks. If not, be polite, but say no. I know it’s hard not to be agreeable, but if five people a day eat up ten minutes of your time, that’s 10 percent of your day gone. You wouldn’t let an employee get off-task for an hour a day, so don’t you do it either.

Delay: Although people want immediate answers, you usually don’t need to provide them. Make a note of the issue, promise a future reply and deal with it when it’s convenient for you, not them.

Don’t be a slave to your phone: Screen calls (or have them screened for you), have calls roll to a service, whatever, but answering phones is incredibly distracting and isn’t something an owner should do except in rare cases. If you need to answer lots of calls to make your business operate, something’s wrong.

Now, if the building is really on fire or a backhoe struck oil, you’ll obviously switch gears and deal with those things as soon as possible, but for 80% of your time, you should be able to enforce this structure to maintain your focus on what’s really important.

Balancing priorities isn’t rocket science. You just need to have a realistic long-term plan, insure your activities tie to that plan, delegate whenever possible, and don’t be all things to all people. Some of this may be outside of your comfort zone, and that’s okay.  You don’t get stronger by lifting the same weight every day and neither does the hamster.

Cheers!
Jayme

Construction Business Owner, August 2007