When people asked you about your day, you tell them the story. Usually it’s the story of how you felt in the traffic, the nasty emails that you received, the interruptions, the challenges and deadlines, the conversation over coffee.
But if you frankly check your daily routines, you may find that you react to the things around you. Even the things that you have planned.
The wisest way to effectively navigate the ebb and flow of your activity is to anticipate the directional changes and plan for them before they actually happened. It is called writing your own story.
When you write your story you don’t have to become a victim of circumstances or situations you find yourself in.
So how would you respond to what surprised you, your priorities, and your task list?
How would you write your story?
Would you allow other people or circumstances’ write it for you?
The solution is to live with intentionality, but not simply intentionality but ‘Proactive Intentionality’. It is thinking ahead and anticipating what the plan actually needs to have in place in order for it to work.
It is a vital part of a leader’s toolbox that will make him or her stand out among all of the other everyday leadership tasks.
Here are three areas you can be proactively intentional about thus enabling you to be the author of your script.
- Plan your day ahead – Have a clearly communicated system of working practices agreed and understood by all. See my post on 6 smartest things you can do everyday.
- Adopt best practice email management – You’ll love my post on email etiquette.
- Manage your meetings more effectively.
The question surrounding proactive intentionality is of who wrote your story today. Were you the author of what happened? While many things happened to you throughout the day, did you determine the pathway through it all or were you floated along on every one’s agenda or script?
This is my story, what’s yours… I’ll love to hear from you.
Photo via Flickr
