Deal with one thing at a time

Editor's note: Faced with the recent work efficiency problems of the company, Chairman Yuan Weijin held a management meeting on May 19, 2012. At the meeting, Chairman Yuan Weijin pointed out: Some of our management cadres are confused in their usual work and cannot distinguish and handle some important tasks at hand. Here, I hope that the company's management cadres can distinguish the priority of the work at hand, so as to handle the management work in a timely and orderly manner.

When managers are always faced with such and other problems, do you have to deal with all these problems? If so, which problem should you solve first? Here is a principle-only deal with one thing at a time! Why?

Urgent problems are not equal to important problems. We should deal with them so that they will not happen again in the future.

Many people have this experience: we are absorbed in doing one thing, suddenly the phone rings, someone asks for help, subordinates need our help to solve the problem, the company suddenly has a new arrangement ...... So, we have to be forced to interrupt the work in progress. After a few rounds of tossing like this, it is very likely that you can't even finish one thing, and you will even forget what you are doing just now because you are constantly being disturbed, or the thinking that you have just sorted out will be disturbed, so you can't continue to think deeply.

The biggest enemy of thinking is chaos. Therefore, we can't spread our energy over too many things, which will only reduce the efficiency of our work and increase our troubles. Because too much information in the head can cause thinking to be blocked, just as a computer full of processing commands can cause it to run slowly or even crash. Therefore, in order to get rid of all the trivial things, you need to eliminate all distracting and stressful thoughts, focus your attention on your main focus, and let your mind fully enter the current working state. Below is a story that will inspire us.

Bethlehem Steel's chief executive, Charles Schwap, once turned to efficiency expert Avery to improve the company's performance, and Avery said he could help Schwap manage the steel company better. Shuvap said that he knows how to manage himself, but in fact the company's performance is not satisfactory. What he needs is not more knowledge, but more action. He told Avili, "I know very well what should be done. If you can tell us how to better implement these plans, I can listen to you, and it is up to you to decide the price within a reasonable range."

Avery said he could give Schwap something in 10 minutes that would improve his company's performance by at least 50%. Then he handed Shuvap a blank piece of paper and said, "Write down the six most important things you will do tomorrow on this piece of paper." Then he added, "Now use numbers to indicate the order in which everything is important to you and the company." This took about 5 minutes. Avery continued, "Now put this paper in your pocket. The first thing tomorrow morning is to take out this note and deal with the first item. Don't look at the others, just look at the first item. Start with the first thing until it's done. Then treat the second and third items in the same way... until you get off work. If you only do five things, it doesn't matter. Because you're always doing the most important thing."

Therefore, in real work, we really need to learn to focus on only one job at a time and only deal with one thing at a time. This will help us to spend our time first on the most important and productive work.