How to spend your day, today
Katya's Non-Profit Marketing Blog | How to spend your day, today
I believe there is time for every one of your dreams. That big project, that bold test, that long-tabled idea—there is time for each if you consciously pick them over the endless office filler of email, politics and drama....
Katya is chief operating officer and chief strategy officer of Network for Good, author of Robin Hood Marketing, a blogger, a public speaker, an adjunct professor of communications at American University, a board member of NTEN and mom to three.
Check out this pie from Scott Belsky and Behance - it reinforces to me a very important concept. We have far more control over how we spend our time than we actually exercise. Do your pie wedges look like this? Knowing life is short, how should they look instead?
I know my life is better when I slash the insecurity and pare back the reactionary work. On the days I fail to do that, I’m grouchy and unfulfilled. But if I’m honest, I have to say it’s my own fault. I choose how to spend my day. I could choose better.
Here are the definitions of the pie wedges from Scott Belsky.
1. Reactionary Work - responding to messages and requests - emails, text messages, Facebook messages, tweets, voicemails, and the list goes on. You are constantly reacting to what comes into you rather than being proactive in what matters most to you. Reactionary Work is necessary, but you can’t let it consume you.
2. Planning Work - the time spent, scheduling and prioritizing your time, developing your systems for running meetings, and refining your systems for working. By planning, you are deciding how your energy should be allocated, and you are designing your method for getting stuff done. It allows you to meet your goals.
3. Procedural Work - the administrative/maintenance stuff that we do just to keep afloat: making sure that the bills are paid or preparing tax returns, updating a deck for a business presentation, or tracking old outbound emails to confirm that they were addressed/solved. Procedural Work is important, but we must remember to remain flexible in our approach to it. Procedures backfire when they become antiquated and remain only out of habit, not necessity.
4. Insecurity Work - obsessively looking at certain statistics related to your company, or repeatedly checking what people are saying about you or your product online, etc. Insecurity Work doesn’t move the ball forward in any way - aside from briefly reassuring us that everything is OK - and we’re often unconscious that we’re even doing it.
5. Problem-Solving Work - This is the work that requires our full brainpower and focus, whether it be designing a new interface, developing a new business plan, writing a thoughtful blog post, or brainstorming the features of a new product. Whether you’re working solo or as a team, you’re leveraging raw creativity to find answers.
Thanks Scott for the great thinking.
So what’s your plan for today? How much will go to #5?
I’m going to try to make it more.
Great Post by Katya!
I believe there is time for every one of your dreams. That big project, that bold test, that long-tabled idea—there is time for each if you consciously pick them over the endless office filler of email, politics and drama....
Katya is chief operating officer and chief strategy officer of Network for Good, author of Robin Hood Marketing, a blogger, a public speaker, an adjunct professor of communications at American University, a board member of NTEN and mom to three.
Check out this pie from Scott Belsky and Behance - it reinforces to me a very important concept. We have far more control over how we spend our time than we actually exercise. Do your pie wedges look like this? Knowing life is short, how should they look instead?
I know my life is better when I slash the insecurity and pare back the reactionary work. On the days I fail to do that, I’m grouchy and unfulfilled. But if I’m honest, I have to say it’s my own fault. I choose how to spend my day. I could choose better.
Here are the definitions of the pie wedges from Scott Belsky.
1. Reactionary Work - responding to messages and requests - emails, text messages, Facebook messages, tweets, voicemails, and the list goes on. You are constantly reacting to what comes into you rather than being proactive in what matters most to you. Reactionary Work is necessary, but you can’t let it consume you.
2. Planning Work - the time spent, scheduling and prioritizing your time, developing your systems for running meetings, and refining your systems for working. By planning, you are deciding how your energy should be allocated, and you are designing your method for getting stuff done. It allows you to meet your goals.
3. Procedural Work - the administrative/maintenance stuff that we do just to keep afloat: making sure that the bills are paid or preparing tax returns, updating a deck for a business presentation, or tracking old outbound emails to confirm that they were addressed/solved. Procedural Work is important, but we must remember to remain flexible in our approach to it. Procedures backfire when they become antiquated and remain only out of habit, not necessity.
4. Insecurity Work - obsessively looking at certain statistics related to your company, or repeatedly checking what people are saying about you or your product online, etc. Insecurity Work doesn’t move the ball forward in any way - aside from briefly reassuring us that everything is OK - and we’re often unconscious that we’re even doing it.
5. Problem-Solving Work - This is the work that requires our full brainpower and focus, whether it be designing a new interface, developing a new business plan, writing a thoughtful blog post, or brainstorming the features of a new product. Whether you’re working solo or as a team, you’re leveraging raw creativity to find answers.
Thanks Scott for the great thinking.
So what’s your plan for today? How much will go to #5?
I’m going to try to make it more.
Great Post by Katya!
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