Last week I had lunch with a friend who was visiting from North Carolina.  Over lunch I was asked, "Do you write your own newsletters?"  I replied, "Yes."  During our lunch meeting my friend raised a couple of issues that she was being faced with to which I commented, "Oh, those issues were addressed in a couple of articles which I wrote and posted on my web-site."   I also went on to inform her of the titles of the articles.  My friend said, "I didn't read those two," to which I replied, "Have you read any of them?"  The response that I received was negative but she went on to say, "I created a folder and I place all of the articles in the folder with every intention of reading them." 

My friend went on to say that she has so much to do, time just flies by and she is unable to get everything done that she needs to do.  She said that she procrastinates and important tasks fall through the cracks creating stress and exhaustion.

The thing that I find very interesting is that my friend had some issues that needed to be addressed in her business.  Had she read the articles she would have found the solutions she was looking for and would have increased her performance and results.  One of the great enemies of being a top performer is procrastination.  How many times do we flit from event to event only to find ourselves at the end of the day not having accomplished what we wanted to accomplish? 

If you have found yourself in a similar situation you may want to go back and read the article entitled Take on the Challenge, Make Better Use of Your Time & Achieve Higher Levels of Performance which was posted on November 10, 2009 in addition to the article entitled UPDATE:  Take on the Challenge, Make Better Use of Your Time & Achieve Higher Levels of Performance which was posted on November 12, 2009.

I received a call from a client who had read the article identified in the email sent out on Tuesday of this week.  He told me he put the practice into effect on Tuesday night and had an outrageously productive day on Wednesday as a result.  He also informed me that today he had accomplished more than he would normally.  If the truth be told, he focused on the top three items he needed to complete.  He became so empowered with his ability to produce a result it had a domino effect on the following day.  If you have not read the article from Tuesday you may want to do so and put the practice into place tonight. 

Please scroll down to read the previous article.

I want to share a technique that will help you stay more focused, have a more masterful approach to getting things done each day, become more result oriented, and decrease the potential of incompletions.

I believe time is the great equalizer.  Every one of us has the same amount of time.  Some make better use of it than others.

There is a strong argument for using planners and having to do lists that have been prioritized and labeled A, B or C.

I knew a person that color coded her to do list and phone calls, put it in an Excel spreadsheet and was happy to show it to all comers.  The sheet was quite attractive.

On a given day fires and distractions would occur that needed to be addressed and the to do list got postponed by a day.  The next day the to do list got longer and again the fires and distractions came about and maybe part of the to do list has been addressed.

By the end of the week the list had grown to a monumental size and almost seemed daunting.  We have all been there or are there right now.  Not necessarily with the color coding but certainly more to do items than time will allow.

The time management gurus will tell us we need to manage our time better.  I disagree. We need to manage the events we choose to participate in better.

For tomorrow to be a success a result has to be produced. In order to be more masterful and produce results and achieve higher levels of success there is a very important question I ask myself each evening. Here is the question, "What are the three most important things I need to do tomorrow that will impact my life tomorrow and in ten years?"

Give it a try this evening.  Take on the challenge. Write down the three most important things you will do tomorrow that will impact your life tomorrow and ten years from now.