It’s the second week of the stockist chat, and for this session, SollyJo and Linda Carter were discussing a question posed in the previous week.

Asked by Denmark Distributor Sabin Schulz:

“How do you set up your priorities for the best implementation of your business in order to do justice to everyone? The day is just 24 hours and I need more as a wholesaler.”

Find your priorities

The first thing to consider is ‘high pay-off activities’ these are tasks that give you the biggest return for the investment of your time.

Plan, plan, plan

At the beginning of every month, make a ‘to do’ list and break it down by weeks, or even days. From this you can set your own deadlines on when certain tasks need to be completed.

Pick the top items of your list, around 6. These are the task that you should be dedicating 80% of your time to.

At the end of every day you need to plan tomorrow.

“Plan tomorrow, today” – Linda Carter

When planning your tasks, make sure to outline the importants and the imperatives.

Think to yourself ‘When do these things need to be done?’ anything that needs to be done TODAY, that’s an imperative.

Anything that does not need doing that day, but is still pressing, that’s important.

Time Delegation

Once you have established your imperatives, you need to give a guestimate on how long you think this job will take. For example, if you have 3 imperatives that only take 5 minutes each and 1 imperative that will take an hour, do the smaller ones together, get the all done in those 15 minutes.

Also, when organising your imperatives, make sure to do the tasks you least like first. Get them out of the way, and have fun for the rest of the day, treat the less tedious tasks as your reward.

But your goal is to get to the point where you are working with no imperatives on your list.

When delegating your tasks, you need to make sure that you aren’t doing someone else’s work. If you have an assistant or work with a partner, don’t end up doing their job. Keep to your task list.

Write it down

You are 50-70% more likely to remember something if you physically write it down. Digital planners may be handy and less bulky than a planner, but you are more likely to forget what you have put in there.

If you prefer not to use a planner you can use a 3 x 5” card with the imperatives on one side and importants on the other, you will find that this will also fit neatly into your pocket.

A final word of advice:

“A short pencil is better than a long memory.” Writing tasks down daily makes your goals tangible and increases your commitment to completing because now you have evidence of your intention.