What Have You Done This Week?

A lot of people go to work, but a smaller number go to work to work, the first being a place, the second being work that generates outcomes.

Take a look at what you have accomplished this week. What did you actually do and what did you accomplish?

It’s easy to show up to work, open your email, open the browser, and find yourself carried away by the now countless distractions available to you. There are always little tasks available inside your inbox, all of which are related to the work you do without actually being necessary to produce the results you are there to generate. And then there is the internet and social media.

So, what work did you do this week? What outcomes did you actually produce?

You go to work (even if this means your home office) to accomplish something. Your role, whatever that is, is to produce some result, something measurable, something that makes a difference and moves things forward. In times past, the work you did would have been visible, tangible, something you could see and feel. Now a lot of outcomes are intangible, making it more difficult to measure them, and easier to procrastinate and fill your time with the trivial instead of the critical.

Each of us has exactly the same amount of time in a day, making it the great leveler when it comes to results. You and I both have 24 hours. If one of us has priorities and does the work to produce the results they’re after, while the other spends time with distractions, the one who works on their priorities will invariably outproduce the one who allows themselves to drift (and the one who drifts often finds themselves far from where they need to be and without the time or energy to cover the ground they lost).

What is the one outcome you absolutely must generate today to produce the results you need? Do this first.

No doubt you have a lot of priorities, but your priority right now must be to get your full focus and attention, lest you lose the day, lose the week, lose the month, and eventually, lose something more important.