How to focus your time and energy
When you have lots of important things on the go, it's easy to get overwhelmed.
Learn a handy 7-step system to beat overwhelm every time - and grab a free workbook to support your process!
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What this guide is for
When you have a lot of important things to do, it's easy to get trapped in the details and become overwhelmed.
You get to the end of each day exhausted, after doing countless small tasks - but you've got an overall sense that you should be doing something else, or you didn't do enough.
This is a fast track to burnout and unhappiness.
In this guide, learn the 7 steps you can take to find focus when you're spinning your wheels.
7 steps to focus
Finding focus is easier than you think - if you take a second to pause and work through the chaos.
In this guide, learn the seven steps you need to take:
1. Write a list of all of the things you've currently got in train or are thinking about doing.
2. Reiterate your vision and focus for the quarter or year.
3. Weight those focus areas by importance.
4. Assess all of the potential initiatives against these areas as criteria.
5. Select your top priority initiatives.
6. Create a short-term implementation plan for each of those initiatives, including the steps involved, the time it will take, the help you will need, and the key milestones you need to reach.
7. Incorporate your priorities into your calendar to guide how you spend your time.
Step 1: Write your list
Chances are, you have a long and invisible list running in your mind. This is extremely unhelpful - because you can’t work with what you can’t see.
Start a to-do list where you write down everything you can think of – big, small, obvious, invisible, the lot.
Consider keeping a running list somewhere accessible over a day or two so that you can add to it as you remember.
Step 3: Prioritise your goals
Your big-picture goals and focus areas are not created equally.
Consider the relative importance of your objectives by assigning a weighting to them out of a potential 100.
Once you've weighetd them, you can use your goals as evaluation criteria for your tasks and projects!
Step 4: Score your list
Now, you can use the criteria you developed in steps 1-3 to ‘score’ your to-do list.
List each task and project from Step 1 in the left column of the matrix.
List each of your focus areas, and the weighting you assigned them, in the top row of the matrix.
Score each of your tasks for alignment with/ contribution to your key focus area.
Here’s a handy scoring system:
Low alignment/ contribution: 1
Moderate alignment/ contribution: 2
High alignment/ contribution: 3
Then, apply the weighting to tally the total score and pick the winners!
(Look hard? Download your free guide to get a prioritisation matrix you can work with!)
Step 5: List your top priorities
Your matrix will have identified your top priorities, based on the highest weighted scores.
List these now, and consider:
- Grouping related items
- Readjusting as required
- Timing, dependencies and deadlines.
Then, identify your top 2 or 3 priorities to work with in more detail.
Step 6: Detail your priorities
It’s time to turn your top priorities into tangible entities you can work with. Spend some time considering:
- The steps and milestones involved.
- How long each step or milestone will take.
- What help or support will you need?
- Who else needs to be involved?
- Dependencies, deadlines and connections to other tasks.
- Risks and things that might go wrong.
Try it out yourself
Grab this free workbook to work through each of the 7 steps to get clear on your top priorities, and plan for success.
1. Write your to-do list
2. Reiterate your goals
3. Prioritise your goals
4. Score your to-do list
5. List your priorities
6. Detail your priorities
7. Make a plan
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