January 18, 2011
Courses | Books | Software | Franklin Covey | Tools
Hi, Kell here!
Welcome to the Work Smarter Not Harder Newsletter #35.
In your lifetime, chances are that you've used a hammer's claw, an everyday pair of scissors, a pair of pliers, a nut cracker, wheelbarrow, bottle opener or even tweezers or a fishing rod. If you have, then you've used an item as leverage to accomplish some task. Leverage can be a powerful force, especially if used in the right way.
Hammer claws, scissors, pliers and wheelbarrows all refer to using leverage to accomplish ordinary tasks, however. What about the leverage you use to accomplish what you need to get done in your personal and/or professional life?
In Work Smarter, Not Harder newsletter #35 we look some of the major levers of life. Some of these include:
The levers of life
Just as you have concrete items to use as leverage to take care of simple tasks, you also have levers in your life that can help you succeed at work and in your career. While you may not think of them as giving you leverage, the opportunity exists to use them in ways such that you can accomplish much more than if you didn't use them. The same concept applies to the examples of the hammer or wheelbarrow above.
A few of the major levers we have in life are time, including yours and that of other people, resources, knowledge and education as well as technology. It may be easy to see how some of these fit in as leverage more than others, but here are some concrete ways you can use them to advance your career and/or bring you success in whatever it is you need to accomplish:
How to Leverage Time
While we all have 24 hours in a day, 7 days per week and 52 weeks per year, it may seem that we are all time-limited. One way you can effectively use time is through the practicing of time management and goal setting.
You must set goals, both long-term and short-term goals, to keep a visual bar of where you need to be at the moment. These goal setting forms yearly, monthly and weekly goals can help you stay on track.
When you're starting to work towards the goals you have, you need to employ time management. Franklin Covey Planenrs help you to prioritize short-term tasks and activities to make certain you're focusing on the right things.
You can also leverage other people's time.
This comes into play if you keep assistants, partners, consultants or contractors on hand to help you out. Through delegation and team-building, you can make sure that both your time and that of others is spent wisely.
Here are some tips on how to delegate. I also find it very useful to use:
- project planning software
- Franklin Covey software to track tasks and assigned projects
- employee time management software useful for tracking employees use of time and task completion.
How to Leverage Resources
One principle of personal leverage involves the leveraging of your own resources.
Resources include your skills, talents, personal and professional connections, as well as financial resources.
To begin leveraging your own resources, you must take stock of what you have and what you need.
When you acknowledge and know your weaknesses, you can bring in other people to help. If you have certain strengths, you can expand on them and use them as personal leverage to get things accomplished.
Leveraging Technology
Technology is often one of the easiest concepts of leverage to grasp. To leverage technology, all you basically need to do is analyze the tasks you're already getting done on your own and figure out ways to make life "easier" with the technology you have. I find free time tracking software is useful to analyze how to better use my time.
For example, you may have both a home and work computer to help you stay connected, but a BlackBerry, Smartphone or other PDA can work as leverage by giving you access to information on-demand.
Another example is voice dictation software, which can help you automate typing if you need help in this area.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are certainly many ways you can use your personal time, resources and technology as leverage to make things happen.
As you start to think about all the reasons for which you need this kind of leverage, your thought processes change dynamically to focus on how you can change what you're doing to always incorporate at least some type of leverage to essentially automate your success.
To all of our subscribers, please let us know your comments, views or feedback so that we can improve our site for our most valuable resource
- YOU
All the best,
Dr Kell and the team at Effective Time Management Strategies wish you all the best.