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(Written by Allie Vecchiet*) Do you ever come home at the end of the day and think to yourself, “I was so busy today; what did I actually accomplish?” There are so many distractions in our daily lives that it makes it difficult to think clearly, make good decisions, and accomplish the tasks that matter most. Franklin Covey, in his new book, “The 5 Choices: The Path to Extraordinary Productivity,” offers 5 time management techniques to help us make concious decisions about how we spend our time, pay attention, and maintain our energy throughout the day.

1. Act on the Important, Don’t React to the Urgent
   • Practice being concious and intentional about everything you do.
   • Use the Time Matrix – “Pause, Clarify, Decide” (PCD) – to ask and answer the question in a brief instant, “is it important?”
   • There are many things that come up during the day that are urgent, but not important. They feel like they need to be done now, but really, there are no serious consequences if you don’t do them. These are the needless interruptions, unnecessary reports, irrelevant meetings, unimportant emails, etc.
2. Go for the Extraordinary, Don’t Settle for Ordinary
   • Extraordinary means going to bed at the end of each day and feeling satisfied and accomplished.
   • Our brains naturally organize information in categories like roles. When asked about ourselves, we say things like, “I am a pharmacist” or, “I am Jon’s spouse.” The trick is to keep them all in balance.
   • Take the time to identify the few most important roles in your life and evaluate how well you think you are doing in each of them.
3. Schedule the Big Rocks, Don’t Sort Gravel
   • There is a big difference between thinking about what is important and actually accomplishing it.
   • Gravel represents all the little things that fill up our lives - email, phone calls, laundry, less important priorities, and so on. These take time and attention away from the Big Rocks.
   • Decide what are the “Big Rocks” and what is the “Gravel” in the beginning of the week.
   • Keep a Master Task List to keep things in a single, trustworthy tracking system so that you can get them out of your brain and stop worrying about them.
   • When something comes up that you might need to do, it goes either on the floor or on the list, do not keep it in your head!
4. Rule Your Technology, Don’t Let It Rule You
   • Our technologies – like sticky notes, personal computers, email, video conferencing, eBooks, etc. – can provide such immediate responsiveness to our actions that we can be caught up in responding to texts and emails, thinking we are being productive, but in fact, we are only being distracted.
   • Filter your email so your brain is not using up energy on mundane tasks.
   • Follow the basic rule of email: “touch it once.”
   • Having an uncluttered inbox gives you an uncluttered mind.
5. Fuel Your Fire, Don’t Burn Out
   • The brain is the #1 asset and tool that needs to be optimized.
   • To maintain your energy, pay attention to the 5 key energy drivers:
     1. Move: Get up from your chair at least every 90 minutes to walk around.
     2. Eat: Fuel your brain with the rigth amount of whole, natural foods in regular intervals throughout the day.
     3. Sleep: One study indicated that individuals who had gone 17-19 hours without sleep performed like someone with a 0.05% blood-alcohol level.
     4. Relax: Learning to turn off the stress responses in our brain can have a tremendous impact on performance.
     5. Connect: Spend time building and maintaining meaningful relationships.

More than anything, extraorindary productivity is a question of being concious in the moment. It’s about taking small, deliberate steps to cultivate this habit in our lives. As leaders, it is important to get these things right ourselves so that we can help build and develop our teams as we are the role models.

Questions/Thoughts to consider:

1. How much of your day is spent dealing with gravel instead of the big rocks? As leaders,  how can we help and reward our staff for focusing on big rocks?
2. Are you deliberate with how you spend your work day?
3. Have you invested time in organizing your email and developing a system for keeping important emails, documents, etc.? Has it paid off?
4. Which of these areas do you struggle the most with?
5. Does the culture within your organization encourage “fueling your fire” and not burning out? What are the email policies or common practices for responding after work hours? How can we as leaders help proactively address some of these things?

Comments?

*Allison Vecchiet, PharmDPGY1/PGY2

Health-System Pharmacy Administration Resident
Nationwide Children's Hospital
M.S. Health-System Pharmacy Administration Candidate 2016
The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy

Email: Sturm.42@osu.edu