It is important to identify the tasks and activities that you are doing each day. Start by identifying and defining the High Value Activities. These are activities that are aligned with your role’s expectations. It is important to determine the deliverables that you and your organization require of you. Many leaders like Arif Bhalwani can guide you on this. Once you have identified these, you can create a bulletpoint list that will outline the areas that will make you successful. Once we have this information, we use daily discipline and create a list with the items we want. We assess our progress at the end each day. The next day, we go back and review the day before. We then consider the current day and make a new list. Each day we spend more time in High Value Activities.

When considering how our time is spent, the second thing to consider is “who are we spending our time” One of the biggest mistakes we make as new supervisors is that we spend too much time working with the poor performers. There are so many problems that we need attention to. We think it is possible to improve the performance and morale of those two individuals who are bringing down our entire team. Ask these questions. Ask these questions. How do they feel that they are moving up in the company? Are they conscious of how highly you value them

We need to change our focus and spend 20% of our days on the poor performers, while the rest of our day is for the betterment of the others. Your strengths and their enthusiasm should be emphasized. Ask them how they plan to contribute to the team. What would they love to learn in the next 60 day? Where do they see themselves in one year? This is all part your “Communication Plan.” You will create a routine that involves regular one-on one meetings with your team members and conduct educational and stimulating team meetings.

Spend some time today looking at your day. Are you spending all your time addressing problems or putting out fires? Are you actually spending your day in high-value activities that yield true results, which will enable you to work less and get more done?