How to Stay Strategic When You're Short on Time

💡Stay Strategic: Frameworks to Keep You in Control This Year

Reality Check: Are you stuck in reactive mode?

My intro was supposed to be a quick reality check for you. Did you run a quick self-assessment? Or are you seeing signs of losing focus? We all know the common symptoms: constant firefighting, being torn between emails and meetings, and always saying “yes” and “I’ll get to that…”

To prevent it from getting out of hand too quickly, a weekly and sometimes even daily review of the things you plan to focus on can be helpful.

The Eisenhower Matrix is a tool to use when seemingly similar priorities collide. It is a task management tool that prioritizes your tasks by urgency and importance.

Recipe:

• A list with all the tasks for the timeframe

• Add due dates (if any) to your tasks

• A 4×4 matrix with the four quadrants:

  • Urgent & Important

  • Not Urgent & Important

  • Urgent & Not Important

  • Not Urgent & Not Important

• Go through your tasks and assign a level of urgency and importance, aka moving all the tasks to one of the four quadrants.

As a tool, any piece of paper will do, or you can use this free Notion template by Msyo.

Momentum Matters: The power of small wins

The best method for gaining momentum in your personal quest to keep control is the ONE THING Method. This method forces you to review everything you “need” to do and consciously decide what one thing to do today.

Recipe:

• Identify and commit to one strategic action each day that moves the needle forward and helps you on your path to success.

• Tip: Use a sticky note (digital or real) that reminds you throughout the day OR set time to do it first thing in the morning,

It’s that simple—nothing else to say. Despite travel, jetlag, and meetings all day, this method guaranteed that I would get this newsletter done this week.

To keep track of my KAIZEN, I love to use streaks. I aim to hit new high scores. How many days or weeks have I continuously done something for my KAIZEN? A simple spreadsheet or calendar is a great tool. Put a checkmark on each day or week you contribute to your goal and try to reach continuous streaks.

My current weekly newsletter streak is at 41. 💪

Kill your non-essential habits

I highly recommend the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. One of the things that stuck with me was his way of describing non-essential habits. These behaviors do not contribute to our goals and often just waste time and energy.

The most important thing here is that we become aware of the noise. Bad habits stick with us because they are easy and convenient. Be mindful of that and make them less appealing!

Do a personal inventory and find the “Time-Fillers” like excessive email or slack checking, mindless scrolling, and planning to perfection.

A practical way to allocate time to the right things is a 3 Bucket Modell. It helps you identify your strategic tasks and all the non-essential habits.

Recipe:

Split your tasks into 3 categories:

• Strategic: High-impact, long-term planning

• Executional: Important but day-to-day tasks

• Non-essential habits / Noise: Low-value distractions

Trust me when I say you will be surprised how much noise you can filter out. To tackle strategic tasks on an ongoing basis, spend at least 30% of your weekly time on the strategic bucket. The rest might be execution.

If you use THE ONE THING method from above, that is 2.1 days of the week that should focus on a strategic task.

You see, strategy is much more about focus, not perfection. You need to take the time to focus on what matters. If you feel like you could use a little focus, start small and try one of these methods this week and see what sticks. Let me know how it goes.