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Your #Career : How To Get Ahead Instead Of Just Getting By…Sometimes Small, Mundane “Check-the-Box” Tasks Have to Get Done. However If you Spend All your Time on the Small Stuff, You’ll get By, but Not get Ahead.

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Here are 6 Reasons you’re Not Getting Anything Important Done at Work — Even When you Have the Time — and What to Do About Them:

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Sometimes small, mundane “check-the-box” tasks have to get done. For most people, it’s a problem if they never respond to email or fill out administrative reports (unsubmitted expenses, anyone?). However if you spend all your time on the small stuff, you’ll get by, but not get ahead.

I believe that there’s more for you in your life and career, so I wanted to share some insights gleaned from my own experience as the founder of Real Life E Time Coaching & Training as well as an interview I did with Alexander Schultz, CEO of Complete Labs on what keeps us addicted to small tasks and how to get the big stuff done.

Here are 6 reasons you’re not getting anything important done at work — even when you have the time — and what to do about them:

1- “Cotton Candy” Wins

“We want a sense of achievement and accomplishment,” says Schultz. “When we get a lot of things done, it feels good. But just knocking to-do items off my checklist is not the progress I want to have.” Only doing small tasks is the equivalent of only eating cotton candy. You may end up with a quick sugar high but will soon crash and need more sugar to get you back up again. Your larger projects are like meat and vegetables: they take longer to chew and digest but leave you with a lasting sense of satisfaction.

To make it easier to make progress on these items, cut them up into as small of tasks as possible. That could mean listing out activities like sending an email to someone or editing the document after writing it. By dividing a big win into small celebrations, you’re still getting something of substance completed and making it easier to make progress.

 

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2- Mistrust of Your Memory

Another reason that you jump on little items immediately is because you fear you’ll forget to do them if they aren’t done now. Most likely you blame this on having a bad memory, but in reality it doesn’t matter how good or bad your memory is if you have the right systems in place. When you have a powerful to-do list, calendar system and email processing system, you know that you’ll get the right prompts at the right times to move items forward. By developing the right structure, even if it’s as simple as a notepad where you write down and review all your current to-do items, you can relax and focus on the bigger items at hand.

3- No Idea Where to Start

If you arrive at work, take a glance at your calendar, open your email and then just start bouncing through the day like a ping-pong ball hoping that you’ll land in the right place at the right time, you’re not alone. Many people take this sort of reactive approach to their work. When you aren’t aware of your priorities nor are you clear on when they need to get done, it’s incredibly hard to justify not taking care of the small stuff all the time.

To overcome this reactive tendency, I recommend that you review your projects and tasks lists on at least a weekly basis so that you can know what’s most important now. Then, if possible, slot in time to get the key items done on your calendar. Schultz also recommends writing your goals at the top of your to-do list and asking yourself, “Is this task aligned with what I want to accomplish and who I want to be?”

4- False Guilt

Yes, there’s a time and place to help your colleagues. But in almost every position, there’s also a time and place to focus on getting the work done that you need to do for yourself. Problems arise when external requests come at a faster rate or quantity than you can handle and you start to squeeze out the other work that you need to complete. This can lead to some people — especially people pleasers — feeling guilty for taking time to do their own work before everyone else is taken care of. But the truth is that if you don’t wrap up the projects only you can do, you’re not providing the most value for your company.

The key to overcoming this challenge is to pace the workflow. This means setting aside some time each week to drive your key projects forward, which then allows for work for others to fit into the remaining time slots available. This may mean that you don’t move ahead as quickly on other people’s projects, but in the larger picture that’s typically OK if you’re moving ahead on the most important goals.

5- Shame at Missed Deadlines

When you haven’t done something for a long time that you know you should do, even thinking about the task can trigger shame. So instead of making a dent in that big project, you answer another email.

To overcome this cycle, it’s important to recognize that everyone makes mistakes and has items they struggle to complete. It’s also helpful to talk about what’s going on with someone you trust since shame thrives in isolation. When you notice yourself avoiding a project and going into numbing behaviors, such as randomly checking social media, try to stop and recognize the root cause of these behaviors. This could mean sitting quietly and taking some deep breaths, journaling, or going on a walk and talking with a friend. The counterintuitive truth is that when you focus on your emotions and process them, you have the opportunity to release them and they’ll in turn have less impact on your behavior than if you just try to avoid them.

6- High Fives Required

Getting affirmation for your work feels good for most people. Depending on your personality type, it can be almost essential for getting things done. If you’re one of those people, don’t fight that tendency — work with it. You can do so by using online tools where you can post your activities and have others comment on them, work with a coach, or set up a buddy system with a friend to make progress on your bigger goals. That way you can get “Yahoo YHOO +1.28%!”s for each step along the way, even when the bigger project is far from complete.

If you are ready to really move forward in your career, stop letting the small stuff squelch your success.

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is a time coach, the founder of Real Life E Time Coaching & Training , and the author of How to Invest Your Time Like Money and The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success With Less Stress.

Forbes.com | August 11, 2015 | YEC Women

#Strategy : 7 Creative Strategies for Waking u Earlier Every Day…There are Plenty of Reasons to Get up Early. You can Work with Fewer Distractions from Family & CoWorkers.

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You have Time to Exercise, Meditate, or Simple Downtime Before Appointments Get in the Way. And successful people, from Xerox CEO Ursula Burns to Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, wake up with (or before) the sun.

watching the sunrise

Make time for yourself by waking up earlier.

Unfortunately, it’s not always so easy, especially if you’ve spent a lifetime hitting snooze and racing out the door while still putting your pants on.

We checked out the Quora thread, “How can I make a habit of waking up early in the morning?” and highlighted the simplest and most innovative responses.

Try them all and see which one works for you.

1. Have something to look forward to.

If the only thing you have planned for the early morning is showering and trekking to the office, it’s no wonder you can’t find the motivation to get out of bed.

That’s why Quora user Paul DeJoe says, “You have to be excited about something to do in the morning. If you’re not, then sleeping in as an option is always gonna’ feel better.”

DeJoe breaks it down further, telling readers to take some time at night to write down five things they’d like to get done the next day.

Whether those goals include reading a chapter of a new novel, going for a run, or simply eating a nutritious breakfast, knowing that you have a bunch of pleasurable activities lined up may make it easier to greet the day.

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2. Set a bedtime alarm.

Most of us know that a solid night’s rest is one of the keys to waking up easily the next morning. But few of us have the willpower to enforce a bedtime that’s exactly eight or nine hours ahead of the time we want to get up.

To solve that problem, Ben Mordecai says, “you just need to set an alarm both for when you want to wake up and when you will need to start going to bed.”

The bedtime alarm won’t necessarily force you to start putting on pajamas, but it will jolt you out of whatever non-sleeping activity you’re currently doing, like browsing your Facebook news feed.

3. Chug a glass of water before bed.

An anonymous Quora user recommends drinking a full glass of water before going to sleep so that you have to relieve yourself in the wee hours of the morning.

“After some trial and error, I realized that drinking 300 mL of water before going to bed would wake me up exactly at 7 a.m,” the user writes.

You can do your own experimentation to figure out how much water you need to drink to wake up at the desired time.

4. Start an enjoyable nighttime routine.

Researchers recently identified a behavior called “bedtime procrastination.” Basically, people put off hitting the hay even though there’s nothing explicitly keeping them from going to sleep.

One potential way to conquer that habit is to create a nighttime ritual you enjoy and that lets you ease into bedtime more than, say, closing your computer, brushing your teeth, and shutting the lights.

Simon Haestoe shares his experience with this strategy: “My sleep was stably horrible for 15 or so years. I stayed up late, because I always managed to find fun things to do, and going to bed felt so, so boring.”

Eventually, he realized he could start a nighttime ritual hours before he planned to go to sleep: “I didn’t have to do things that bored me. Instead, I could watch non-intense movies, listen to relaxing music and I could turn the whole thing to an experience I enjoyed and that I looked forward to having, all day long.”

yoga class

Sign up for an early-morning class, like yoga.

5. Don’t sleep more than you need to.

It’s pretty obvious that you have a harder time waking up when you’ve only gotten a fewer hours of sleep.

But research suggests that sleeping too much can also leave you feeling lethargic. That’s because any change in your normal sleep patterns can throw off your internal clock and increase daytime fatigue.

That was Jeff Smith’s experience: “For months I repeatedly had trouble getting out of bed. I would keep snoozing or turn [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][the alarm] off and think just 15 minutes more would help. Nope.”

Finally he realized: “The reason I had such trouble was because the longer I over-slept, the worse I felt. I needed to recognize how long I needed.”

Figure out exactly how much sleep your body requires and make sure not to get more than that on any given night (even weekends).

6. Register for an early-morning activity.

“Sign up for an early class, something that requires attendance and you are really, really, really interested in,” writes Anita Singh, who recently started hitting up a 6 a.m. yoga class. “Once you have a stake in the cause you will be more likely to follow through.”

Preferably, the class should be something you pay for, since research suggests that the prospect of losing money is motivating for most people.

7. Take on the responsibility of waking up someone else.

This is a suggestion from Shikhar Gupta.

Tell your best friend or your brother that you’ll be their human alarm clock by calling them when they’re supposed to get up. That way, you won’t just be sabotaging your own success when you oversleep — you’ll be hurting someone else as well, giving you an additional reason to get out of bed.

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