How to Use The List to Keep Things On Track
avoid the distractions and respond to the right things
Distractions can derail your whole day.
They enter small. They seem important. So important you respond to them right away.
Before you know it, half the day has disappeared and what you actually needed to do has not gotten done.
And now your brain feels like a ping-pong ball bouncing around on the inside of your skull.
Focus denied.
Distractions can easily enter your business too if you don’t have a process to deal with them.
Keep The List.
Not a list. The List. Capital T, capital L.
The List provides a way for your team to surface things they need from you and the rest of your C-suite so you see them clearly above the other activities that require your time and attention.
Specifically, The List includes the following items:
decisions you need to make
problems you need to solve
ideas you need to consider
information you need to provide
Review The List weekly. You can do it in a meeting, but you can also do it asynchronously.
You won’t address everything on The List each time — you’ll need to constantly prioritize and defer. That’s what keeps you from diving into things reactively.
Each item should be submitted with the information you need to respond. If it wasn’t, send it back to the person who submitted the item and ask them to update it.
Once you have the truly urgent items identified, you can:
Make decisions at your next decision meeting
Work through a problem or discuss an idea in a working session. When it moves to a place where you can make a decision, add the item to your next decision meeting plan
Send the information out to whoever needs it. While timeliness matters for all of these items, this one should be executed as expeditiously as possible.
The rest of the items can wait until the following week — or whenever makes sense.
Consider assessing your ideas each quarter rather than each week. They’re particularly shiny and most likely to take you off course.
As a purpose-driven organization, you’re striving to give as much autonomy to your team as possible, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need things from you.
The List can help you prioritize and respond consistently so you keep everything moving in the right direction.
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