Changing Priorities

It’s always hard trying to find the best way to plan your time. Do you list tasks as A,B,C priority? Maybe you do ‘Immediate’ and then 1st Pri, 2nd Pri, 3rd Pri, 4th Pri & ‘Quick’ to create a unified order to tackle.

Inevitably you end up tagging lots of things immediate and anything that drops to 2nd priority or lower, never quite gets done. Sometimes you’ve tackle lots of quick things, but then you’re not focusing on the deep work.

You have to fill the rocks first and then put the sand around it.

The proverb goes that you have a glass jar with some rocks and sand and you need to fit everything into the jar.

If you fill the jar with the quick tasks (sand) first, the rocks won’t fit in. But if you only do the rocks without leaving time for the sand there’ll be no foundation.

The answer for scheduling my day came from an unlikely source – ‘Sell it like Serhant’ – a book about selling real-estate.

It’s a great book for entertainment purposes but it also has some great business advice.

The formula is FKD. An anacronym being ‘Get FKDd’.

F is for Finder
This is your deep work in the morning. Find new business, podcast guests, new design work, whatever your area, find more.

K is for Keeper
Focus on what you’re already running, does your team need support on anything? Do you need to build a new studio pipeline? Galvanise your work in this period.

D is for Doer
In this period, just do the work It doesn’t require as much brain power, but you do just need to do your work. You need to put your headphones on and just get the work done.

It’s been a really useful system to follow and helped me launch a creative side project that I can do on evenings and weekends.

If you’re having trouble with focus and an unending list of tasks, try this approach for 7 weeks, it might help with plan your day.