Do this and Become a more Productive Manager

Look, if you ever want to get to a better place and experience better results, you have to BE better. Not your team, not your situation, not your sales pitch. YOU must improve. And you need to start right now. Remember, regardless how busy your schedule is (like traveling to Israel for a conference) – there is always time to get things done.

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now. You likely do some – maybe even a lot of – things very well. But if you got better, so would your situation. Yes, you could make other changes and see improvement. But to achieve your optimum promise you have to be your absolute best. All right, enough of that obvious soap boxing. You should have known that stuff already. Let’s get to the six changes you need to make right now to become a better manager. Make some changes, and you can be “some” better. That’s a tremendous goal, right? Yeah, didn’t think so.

You want to be much better. And you will. I won’t lie to you and tell you it will be easy, but I can tell you what you are about to read is SIMPLE. So simple most “smart” people skip right over it. Then they watch “dumber” people outperform them at every level. “Dumber” people making more money. “Dumber” people getting more promotions. “Dumber” people achieving their goals. So, are you “dumb” enough to be smart…or are you so smart you won’t change? Don’t tell me. Do this stuff or don’t do it. Your results are up to you.

Do the hard stuff first. Some have called this “speed sequencing.” That means taking the longer, more difficult tasks and getting them done first, when you are freshest and most committed to completing the task. Do the easy stuff first, and you will quit before you are finished.

Get more done before lunch. For the life of me, I can’t understand why so many people schedule all their time-killing meetings first thing in the morning. Stop doing that, people. Get stuff done before lunch. Here’s why. If you can knock out at least three things before lunch, you will go into your afternoon charged up and excited by your success. Plus, if you take your typical morning meetings and hold them AFTER you have achieved some success that day, you will be more confident and feel more accomplished going into those meetings. Doesn’t matter who you are meeting with, they will pick up on that confidence, and you will see better results.

Batch your work. If you know you have several similar projects to work on, do them in sequence. Repetition creates momentum. You will be surprised at just how fast you can blast through similar projects if you work on them one after another rather than splitting them up for “variety.” Forget variety. That doesn’t pay the bills. Completing work pays the bills. Get more done and get it done faster by batching.

Jonah Engler is a New Yorker who works as a financial analyst, investor and stock broker in Manhattan. Engler is a coffee lover and social media expert.