Work smart, not harder

One of the most common mistakes made by managers and leaders is to keep working more intensely and for longer hours as the stress increases. This is fatal, for many obvious reasons, such as the danger of burnout, but most importantly because it causes the manager to lose sight of what is going on in the company. Ways of working smarter, not harder have to be found, for example:

• take a radical look at your working day and jettison everything that is not important
• re-visit your company vision and check that you are not spending time doing things that do not, or no longer, line up with your vision
• audit your tasks into the four categories of urgent and important, urgent and not important, important and not urgent and not important and not urgent and plan your diary well in advance with this audit in mind
• look to delegate as much as you can to members of your team

One of the best and most well-known books on self-management is “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey.