The First Step To Mastering Personal Workflow In Business

One of the reasons that many people struggle so much with getting stuff done in their business and haven't had a lot of success at "getting organised" is that they are trying to do too many things at once.

What happens is that when you write your To-Do list you are most likely writing down what your priorities are and probably trying to put them in some kind of sequence which is all good and well, but the problem often lies in that there are no actions associated with these items.

So what ends up happening is that all those things on your To-Do list are essentially "chunks of stuff" that may require multiple actions to get it done. Some things may be bigger than others, but more than likely each item on your list probably has a number of sub tasks and actions that would be needed to complete it.

So how do you become better at getting stuff done? Well, mastering Personal Workflow is all about being organised and breaking down the chunks.

This is my step one for mastering personal workflow:

Collect all your information and sort it out into buckets. These are the things you need to do, and your priorities. Don't worry too much at this stage about assigning actions to them. You just want to get these items into your Workflow System so they can move along. If you're already making a To-Do list, you have half of this step already done, you just need to categorise the items on your list into groups or "buckets" as I like to call them. So, this means all items that share a common theme or link should be in the same bucket. So your buckets might include:

* Prospective clients * Existing clients * Marketing * Projects * Administration

You also don't want to go overboard with your buckets. Really try and identify the themes between items on your list, rather than creating a bucket for practically everything. Your buckets can either be virtual "folders" or a physical in tray. The combination of your buckets make up your intray or inbox.

The purpose of this step is to get all the "frazzle" going on inside your head, out of your head and down onto paper.

Neglecting to regularly "download" our brain means fitting more stuff in becomes an even bigger challenge and this just leads to more overwhelm.

Now, you don't want your buckets overflowing and becoming just another storage holder. You want them to work for you. This means you need to empty them regularly.

Here is an important tip.

Emptying the bucket doesn't mean you have to finish the action off completely, or even begin it for that matter. Emptying the bucket means you have to decide:

1. What you're going to do with it 2. When you will do it, as in a date you will action it.

After you have decided what to do with it, don't put it back into the bucket that's waiting to be actioned. You need to put it into your "Completed" bucket (virtual or not) and breathe a sigh of relief at getting another thing off your plate!

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