7.
Set your priorities
What are your priorities? You have
been told what you are supposed to do, you know how far you are supposed to go,
you know what scope you are supposed to cover, and you know what will be used
to assess your performance. Armed with the knowledge above, you also need to
know which one to do first of all the things you are supposed to do; which one
should come second, which one should come third, which one should be last. You
have to set priorities; you have to know the order you are supposed to do
things. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 8:5-6 (NIV) ‘there is a time and
procedure for every matter but a man’s misery weigh heavily on him.’ There is
always a procedure for everything we do, even such mundane things as sitting or
walking have a procedure. There is a procedure for working, writing, listening,
speaking, parenting, husbanding, wife-ing; everything has a procedure.
However, the Bible says only the wise
in heart will know the proper time and procedure. There is a proper time and
procedure for everything you have to do and that is why you have to set
priorities; what do you do at point A, what do you do at B, what do you do at
point C, until you get to point Z? You have to set priorities every day to know
what you do first.
Life is a school; it teaches us a lot
of things, only if we pay careful attention to the lessons. How many of us just
put on our dress and head to work when we wake up in the morning? No, we
probably have to first take care of ourselves: brush our teeth, shower, apply
cosmetics, etc. The first thing is not to don the clothes and hit the road;
there are certain preliminary things to be done before you get to the stage of
wearing clothes. That is a lesson in procedure. Life teaches us a lot of
lessons on a daily basis; we only need to be attentive to them.
There are things you have to do first
so you can perform and be productive. If you put the least important thing
first, you won’t get the most important things done. So you have to set
priorities, you have to know the order of what you are meant to do. Now you
know yourself, the metrics, the coverage, you also need to know how do to do
them: which one is first, which is second, the third etc. Star performers set
priorities.
8.
Manage your time
There is time and season for everything.
But you have to ascertain the time and then manage yourself within it. Time
management is one of the things God will not do for anyone. That is why the
Bible urges us to redeem the time because the days are evil.
Time management is the chief of all
skills, because if you can manage time, then you can manage money. If you can’t
manage time, you can’t manage money, because time is money. If you can manage
money, you can manage people. That is the way I see it, because people
naturally flock after money and they would do whatever anyone who helps them to
increase or make more money tells them to do.
If you manage time well, you can
manage money effectively. A reason why people have poor financial situation is
because they do not manage their time well. Time is intangible, we don’t see
it; we only see what the hands of the clock are saying. But we can see money,
smell and touch it. However, if you can manage the intangible time, then you
can manage the tangibles effectively. You were given many assignments to carry
out, but you can idle within time and not achieve all you were asked to do by
just loafing; that is a horrible thing to do because time is meant to be turned
over into results on a daily basis.
I used to have a Nokia phone that I
set to beep every hour so I could reflect on what I had achieved within the
hour that just passed. If I had used the hour well, I would smile. I was in
paid employment then, and I was not even reporting to my principal about most
of what I had done. But If I had not done something worthwhile within the hour,
I would feel bad and tell myself, ‘You’ve got to make the next hour count.’
Time management is very important and star performers are strict time managers.
9.
Focus
After you set your priorities and you
are able to manage time, you have to be able to focus on what you are doing.
You have to learn the art of focusing. As simple as it sounds, it is one of the
most difficult things to do. It is not easy maintaining a laser focus on what
you are doing and not be distracted.
There are psychological noises
everywhere, even in your own thoughts there will be stuff demanding your
attention. But you must have the ability to sieve through the myriad of things
and focus on what needs to be done at any point in time. That is a major habit
of star performers, they know how to focus; they know how to sieve through the
muddled thoughts, they know what they want and they go after it, not minding
what is going on within, around, below or above them. They just focus on what they
have to do; they are not easily distracted or carried away.
You have to maintain focus, it is key
to star performance. People usually get swept away by emotions and situations
and then leave what they are doing or supposed to do to mind whatnot. Star performers
do not fall prey to such trifles.
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