-by Dr. Tim Grivois
Productive teams always track their tasks during meetings. You’ll see the best teams review tasks at the start of the meeting, add tasks to their lists as they come up during meetings, and confirm that everyone knows which tasks are theirs at the end of meetings.
While I definitely prefer to work with team members who hold themselves accountable to get tasks done, I’m also in the business (literally) of making work easier for schools and nonprofits. One powerful way to prevent “list explosion” is to ensure that tasks never end up on the list in the first place. “Let’s do it now” is your power phrase for productivity.
Consider the following: “I’ll email Antonio later today and ask when he’s free for the speech consult.” Let’s do it now. “We still need to tell the district office which grade is going first for benchmark assessments.” Let’s do it now. “I still haven’t called back the family who wanted to know about our dual language program. I’m seated by my phone and I have the message in front of me.” Let’s do it now. Whether I’m leading a meeting or working in my office alone, anytime my team or I might be tempted to put a small, pressing, and required task off until later, I say, “Let’s do it now.” Taking a few seconds or even a few minutes to complete the job will prevent to-do lists from exploding and accelerate progress toward goals by ensuring that no one is waiting for a tiny task to get done.
If you or your team has a to-do list full of tiny tasks, try “Let’s do it now”! Especially for those (including me) who are prone to procrastination, just getting the thing done can be a tremendous relief! If this is already part of your practice, or if you’re going to give this a try, drop a comment and let us know how this might work for you!