5 Simple but Powerful Ways to Accomplish Far More in 2015

Did you get everything done you wanted to get done this year? Probably not. Who did? Making a bigger list probably isn’t going to help you get more done. Often, putting more on your list just leaves you feeling more frustrated. What most of us need is a new strategy. Here are five things I’ve found have helped me and other leaders get ahead.

1. Eliminate wasted time.

Most people are busy … busy wasting time they’ll never get back. Let’s just be honest. We all waste time. I do. You do. If you want to see what a life without much wasted time looks like, read this profile of 17-year-old budding hockey star Connor McDavid. Since Connor was a kid, he did little else but play hockey and develop his skill set. He skipped prom, doesn’t really play video games and missed a lot of the social life of high school. Except now, at 17, he’s likely to be drafted #1 in the NHL. It might not be your idea of an ideal life to pursue one thing with your time. That’s fine. But does binge watching whatever your favorite series is right now really help you become a better person or better leader? Does scrolling endlessly through Instagram or Facebook half watching lives you’re interested in really make you a better leader? Often people who have ‘no time’ to spend time with God end up with all kinds of time for binge watching. So just stop wasting time. Or at least be intentional with the time you waste. By intentional, I mean saying to yourself: I’m going to waste 30 minutes. Then go waste it. Do that and you’ll be far less wasteful. And as a result, you’ll accomplish far more.

2. Stop letting other people set your priorities.

How many times have you finished a crazy day and realized you didn’t even put a dent in your most important priority? Often that happens when you let other people set your priorities. You do this when you: Constantly check email. Refuse to turn off the notifications on your phone. Allow people to interrupt you when you’re at work (no that’s not their issue … it’s yours). When people text you, email you, call you and interrupt you they are asking for you to ditch your priorities for theirs. Do this 20, 30 or 40 hours a week and you will lead an extremely unproductive, busy and frustrating life. The best way to overcome this is to only check email a few times a day. Ditto with the phone. And close your office door or even put a sign on it that says “I’m happy to see you at 2:00,″ and then budget 2:00-2:30 for interruptions. Guess what? Half the people who were going to interrupt you won’t even remember what they were going to ask you about by the time 2:00 rolls around.

3. Be proactive.

There are two kinds of leadership: proactive leadership and reactive leadership. Proactive leaders make things happen. Reactive leaders react to what’s happening. Which one makes the better leader long-term? Quite obviously, leaders who are proactive. A significant part of leadership is creating something out of nothing … making things happen that are currently not happening. Whether that’s building a team, advancing a cause or even finding a solution no one else seems to be able to find, leaders make things that don’t normally happen, happen. No one will ever ask you to do those things. Consequently, they require proactivity. Check your to-do list. Are the things that require that kind of proactivity on it? Is your to-do list really attempting to advance anything meaningful? Or is your to-do list a reflection of point #2 above—it’s merely a response to everyone else’s priorities? Your to do list should always have some big goals that no one else is going to ask you to work on. For example, if you’re a preacher, prioritize sermon prep. Why? Because nobody’s ever going to call you and ask you to spend time researching your message. They will call you to ask you to meet with them, pulling you away from your message prep. Ditto to the big, audacious goals you want to accomplish. They need to migrate to your daily task list. What’s most important to you? What would significantly advance your ministry? Spend at least 10 hours a week on that, and things will change.

4. Do your best and worst, first.

One of the best ways to keep your day (and your priorities) from being hijacked is to do your most important (not most urgent … most important) task first. I like to get most of my ‘big thinking’ projects done before 9 a.m. I’m at my best then, and most people aren’t at work. So I can be incredibly productive and get my big stuff done before anything else happens. I leave my routine things until the afternoon when I’m not as sharp, but when sharpness doesn’t really matter as much as it does when I’m writing a message, writing a series or tackling a high level problem. You’ve probably also got other things on your to-do list that you resent, things you hate doing (maybe like returning a phone call, answering a tough email or doing something administrative, like an expense report). Get some of those done early in the day too, right after you’ve expended your best energy on your biggest priority. Doing something you don’t want to to do early gets a win under your belt and you’ll feel much better about the day. It’s like having a weight lifted off your shoulder. You’ll feel like you can tackle more. And as a result, you will.

5. Get some sleep and some solitude.

The problem is that when most of us are off, we’re not off. We just run 100 miles an hour at something else; family, hobbies, friends, social engagements, gaming, social media, movies … whatever. That’s one of the worst things a leader can do. Refusing to rest is like trying to run your phone for a full day on 15 percent power. I’m a bit of evangelist on sleep because I really think a lack of sleep cuts into every leader’s potential. I wrote about why sleep is a leader’s secret weapon here. Once you slow down enough to sleep adequately, you might also become more comfortable with another best friend of many top performing leaders: solitude. So many high performing leaders I know begin every morning in silence. Christian leaders do this in their quiet time. But even non-Christian leaders I know will take time to meditate, or simply sit in silence. Making time for retreats or for regular silent space to work on it, not in it, are practices of almost all top performing leaders. This isn’t just a leadership trick. It’s a spiritual discipline. Solitude has long been a Christian discipline that’s been all but lost. Regain it. In this post, I share eight reasons why leaders need solitude and ways to find it. Ironically, you would think that to accomplish more you would need to spend less time sleeping and less time in solitude. Just the opposite. Getting a full night’s sleep every night and finding regular, disciplined solitude will make you far more effective. Now it’s your turn. What helps you accomplish far more?