Elaine Lindsay’s tip to Find Your Top Activities

Laura: Elaine, we’re all familiar with the Pareto Principle or some people call it the 80-20 Rule where 20 percent of our efforts generate 80 percent of our results, but sometimes, identifying what those 20 percent activities are, that could be a real challenge for some.

So what’s a tip that you would share to help someone be able to identify those 20 percent activities?

Elaine: Well, I think this is so important that I’m going to suggest you dedicate an entire month to what I’m going to tell you. You need to figure out the three highest leverage activities or tasks in your work.

Now, what you want to do is look at an entire average month. You’re going to make a list of every task that you do on a daily basis, and then you’re going to look at that list and ask yourself if you can only do one thing on this list for an entire day, what would it be?

And it sounds really like a huge thing to do, but you’ll be surprised just how quickly you can actually hone in on those tasks that sort of, you know, get your passion going, make the most sense to you they’re actually your money makers.

When you pick that first one, you’re going to ask yourself the same question, OK, what’s the next highest leverage activity or task from this list that I could do all day long. And finally, you do it a third time, and that gives you those three top most highly-leveraged activities that are important for you to do because that’s your 80 percent.

Now for me… I’m not just going to tell you how to do it. For me, it would be the writing I do for my speaking gigs, the prepping for the training modules that I do because I do a lot of training.

And the third thing is actually staying current in my field. I do a lot of reading and research to be sure that I know what’s going on in my niche.

Laura: Yeah, it’s so, so important, and if… You know, as I’m listening to the three things that you do, I hope people kind of heard what was underneath that. Those are not three things that you can outsource. If you outsource those three things, those are your intellectual property. Those are the things that are your money makers, your revenue drivers.

Now, the only exception to that, I do outsource the process of my VA, taking top news and putting it into one succinct spot for me to read through everything quickly. You can do the same thing with Google Alerts. I just do it with a person.

Elaine: Absolutely, and Laura, that is something I always do, but that to me is separate and apart from… By staying current in my field, I mean staying up-to-date on the most important. For me, it would be platforms that are out there. It would be the new dashboards, technologies, whatever is going to help me with what I do and make sure that I’m always on the cutting edge of my niche.

Laura: Exactly. That is what generates revenue, being able to be the expert, being able to be the go-to person that has the knowledge, creates the material, and trains and teaches others on it. Such a great three-prong answer, and I’m so glad you shared it in that way.

The post Episode 105: Elaine Lindsay’s tip to Find Your Top Activities appeared first on Online MasterPlan Series | Delegation and Social Media Training.