Recently I was completely fed up with some of the things I was doing. Or better yet, I had to do because others were expecting them from me, or even asking me to do them. They asked because I was the person who did these things well, so why go to anyone else?
I had to change this, but I had no clue as to how. So I did a very simple exercise with my personal coach, which helped me understand exactly what I had to do in order to only be busy with the things that I liked. I have to warn you, the exercise is easy but the following up is hard. If you do however, the rewards are well worth the effort.
Task axis diagram
First off we will use the diagram below. If you can, use a big sheet of paper, draw this diagram on it and order a ton of post-its. Make sure you put the sheet up somewhere you’ll see it while working or at least won’t hesitate to walk over to it if you need to.
![Task axis diagram]( "Task axis diagram")
You use the diagram to place the tasks you do into it. That is what the post-its are for, you write the task on it and place it on the diagram. The vertical axis represents the scale on which tasks you do are good for you. The higher you place the task, the better it is for you. The lower you place it, the worse it is for you. The horizontal axis represents the scale in which others think you are good at the task. More to the right means others think you are good at the task, more to the left means they think you blow at the task.
The simple first step
This is the easy part of the entire operation… you just do what you do every day for two weeks. But every task you notice yourself doing, you place on the system. You can go as fine-grained as you want, but for it worked best when I placed tasks on it that would take at least an hour to do. For most people the first days involve a lot of sticking post-its on the board, while this degrades fast as you do recurring tasks (which are already on the board).
After two weeks you should end up with a board which shows you the tasks you have done, how good they are for you and how well others think you did them. Most people will have many post-its in the right half of the diagram, some post-its in the upper left quadrant and hardly any in the lower left quadrant. But don’t despair if it looks different for you, we’ll get to taking control soon!
Taking control
The big trick now is to use your new found knowledge to make sure you spend more time on tasks that are good for you. The way to do this is to get rid of tasks that are not good for you, but others think you’re good at; while improving on those tasks that are good for you but others think you don’t do so well. The diagram below shows the shift you want to accomplish in the tasks.
Screw up!
The first step is to shift tasks from the lower right to the lower left quadrant. This means making sure people don’t think you’re good at tasks that are not good for you. There is a very easy way to achieve this: just fail. Make the task go wrong. Screw up. Seriously, this is not as bad as it sounds. Screw-ups can be fixed 99% of the time. Your goal is to make sure you don’t get to do the task again, and if you continue to feed other people the idea you are good at it, you won’t succeed. So as scary as it is, screw things up (just don’t overdo it). Doing this step first will free up valuable time to perform the other task transition.
Improve your performance
The next step is to improve on those tasks that others don’t think you’re good at (yet!). The best way to do this is to make a list of these tasks and devise a strategy to improve your performance in them. Sometimes this means making more time, for other tasks it might be best to read a book or consult an expert. Do whatever it takes to get better and make damn sure that others see your improvement. If there is anything that impresses even more than skill, it is attaining skill!
