Do one thing at a time!

Finish one important task completely. Many people find excuses not to complete something important.

I recently had an important memorandum of understanding (MOU) to complete. We had worked very hard to go through all the points, but when it came down to the wire, the lawyer was not available to read through and make his suggestions and changes. One of the parties was going on a holiday for two weeks. To leave things for two weeks would mean losing the momentum.

We decided to sign the MOU, calling it a draft that was “subject to legal review.” Once the signatures were done, there was a sense of completion. It would have been easy to put it off until after the one party returned two weeks later. But to that, my late partner Harold Karro would have said, “A half-done job is worth nothing!”

Most people have difficulty doing one thing at a time. They prefer to have a hand in many things at the same time in the name of multi-tasking and efficiency. The danger with this approach is that you will finish many things at about 80 percent instead of doing the most important thing at 100 percent. Sometimes the problem is that you do not know what the most important thing is; at other times the problem is that you are not able to focus.

My suggestion is to decide what is most important and invest 100 percent of your effort on that task. After you finish the most important task, take another 15 minutes to make sure you are leveraging what you have just finished.

Once you have done that, you will have created a surge of energy that you can apply to the other tasks. I recommend that before you bulldoze through the other tasks, regroup and prioritize again, and begin round two with the most important task remaining. Go back to focusing 100 percent on the most important item on this new list unless there is something so pressing and important that it cannot wait. Contrary to common belief, there are very few things that cannot wait.

Multi-tasking can also mean that you are running away from the one most important thing that you “must do.” One very important task totally completed is worth more than a few tasks nearly complete.

Try the above approach and you will see how you are able to cross the important things off your list. You will also notice the impact this is having on all your other tasks.

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