What can you do with a Post-it®️ Note?
A simple ritual to be intentional with your time.
I recently had the opportunity to participate in a series of micro conferences on the topics of people-oriented business and leadership. My role on a few days was to lead a “wrap up” exercise at the end of the 3-5 hour session.
Participants spent half a day exploring the value of WHY and in service of WHO, building pages of notes and ideas of WHAT they might do next. There is real excitement and motivation to bring ideas into reality.
So, the question I got to ask is WHEN?
I have a theory that all work is lists and time. Lists can be hard, but time is harder. To elevate above the chaos and confidently march forward requires one to embrace the reality of change and continually realign to what matters most. There are many ways to be intentional with your time, and here’s one of them:
The Weekly Ritual
List 1: What are 5 things that you want to do?
(Each person used a BLUE sticky note for this list in the workshop.)
Boil it down to the five things on your mind right now. What are a few meaningful things that would move you forward? In service of your mission, your goals, your customers.
What would you do, if you had the time?
List 2: What are 5 things that took your time this week?
(Everyone used a RED sticky note for this.)
What was the unplanned work? Without judgement, “unplanned” is not automatically unnecessary or even unwelcome. Often, unplanned work is the work. There is opportunity in crisis and our schedule bends in service of the customer.
But, as it relates to our ability to manage our time and move forward confidently, unplanned is unpredictable. If we are overtaken by the unplanned, then the net result is our planned work will never get done. The result is stagnation and frustration.
How well does that serve the customer?
Schedule: Choose a focus for this week.
(Break out the YELLOW sticky note.)
On this note, we’ll three things, specific to this week:
Reflect — Review your RED list.
First, what’s one thing that was the most painful or disruptive? (Circle it)
Second, what’s one thing you can do this week to better anticipate and respond to similar events?
Realign — Review your BLUE list.
First, choose one thing you definitely Won’t Do … yet. You can’t do it all, so relax any anxiety about that getting that thing done this week and refocus on the others. (Cross it out)
Second, choose one and only one thing that you can commit to doing.
Third, schedule it. Give it one hour and decide WHEN that hour will be.
Repeat — When will you do this exercise again? (Schedule it)
Done once, this exercise doesn’t feel like much. Done every week, and the momentum builds. Every time you do this, you create the opportunity to remember what is important to you and to choose how will you spend your time to realize it.
What changes when you reflect and learn from interruptions as a habit? You will weaken their power to derail you.
What changes when you can consistently rely on accomplishing at least one meaningful thing each and every week? Your list may always grow, but it won’t stagnate. You’ll be solving new problems and moving forward.
As outlined here, this is a personal ritual intended for you to lead yourself. It can scale! Partnerships, Teams, Organizations — any collection of people who are trying to move forward can benefit from an alignment ritual together: Reflect, Realign, Repeat.