← Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast
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Brooke Richie Babbage
I have yet to meet a nonprofit leader who doesn't feel like they're juggling way too many important tasks. It's so easy to feel overwhelmed because everything feels essential. Well, in today's episode I'm going to walk through the four step process that I've used for more than a decade and that I teach the leaders that I work with to help them make tough choices, prioritize, and ultimately feel in control of their calendar and their time. Welcome to the Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast. I'm Brooke Richie Babbage. I've been in the social impact game for 25 years as a social justice lawyer turned two time nonprofit founder and leader turned growth strategist and coach for leaders around the country. I grew my nonprofit from me and an intern in a tiny closet to a high impact seven figure organization. And along the way I learned so so much about how to build an organization that has real impact and how to do it without burning out. In this podcast I share the nuts and bolts of all of it so you can do that too. We dive into the mindset, strategies and tactics of how to scale a high impact organization and how to do it in a way that's truly sustainable. So we all know what it feels like to be overwhelmed, to look at a list and sometimes even be paralyzed by the feeling of too much to do and not enough time. When you break it down, this feeling of overwhelm actually comes from one or both of two places. Too many actual tasks on your plate that is not making enough tough choices and prioritizing or filling your calendar with the wrong tasks, that is tasks that lead to incremental progress and allow you to cross things off your list, but not necessarily transformational or high leverage outcomes which can sometimes take longer and don't lead to that sort of dopamine rush of Yep, I accomplished something today. So that's where this process that I'm going to walk through today comes in. I call it the Focus Filter Framework. I've been doing it for well over a decade. It is a simple four step process that you can use to help you gain clarity, get rid of distractions and make sure that you're working on the right things and the right number of things. So I'm going to walk through each of the steps. The first one is start by making a list of the tasks that you regularly do and that you have on your calendar. This is everything from meetings to big picture strategic work, sort of blocks of time to small operational duties. And this is both personal and professional. So the Goal here is to capture everything that will occupy, occupy your time in a week. I sometimes will do this two weeks at a time and I'll talk a little bit more about why in a few minutes. But whether it's a week or two weeks, you want to capture everything. So, dentist appointment, taking the kids to the park, going for a run, meetings with your staff, the time you set aside to call your partner, whatever that is, if it's something that is in your calendar or that will take time. You want to make a list, right? Things that you have to do. Now assume that this starting list will not be your ending list. This is, this whole thing is an ongoing process. To stay intentional and to actually be in control of your time. You have to consistently pause, prune and prioritize your task list every month at the very least. And like I said, I do this every week in sort of two week chunks. If you don't pause and prune and prioritize continuously and you treat your task list as you create it, your starting task list, which is really some combination of brain dumped tasks, rollovers from last week or last month items, sometimes for some of you, added to your calendar into your list by others. If you treat that starting list as your actual list without evaluating and pruning, you're never going to feel like you're keeping up. You will never feel in control of your time. So you have to create this list and understand going into this process that it is just a starting point. So that's step one, make your list. Step two is goal alignment. Ask yourself, are the tasks on this list aligned with my ultimate goals? You always want to have your sights fixed on your end goals. And so the first thing you're going to ask yourself here, the first thing you're going to do with your list, is to filter your tasks through sort of the sieve of your core goals for the month. I find it helpful to name my core goals for each month and write them down. And then anytime I'm looking at my task list, literally one by one, and over time this will come sort of more naturally. But when you first start, it may just be the rote practice of looking at an activity or a task and asking yourself, does this move me in the direction of my core goal? Is it aligned with my core goal? If it is not, when you say no, then you have a decision to make. This is your first decision point. You either delete that task, delegate that task, or you defer that task. That's the ideal here, right? So you come to the first thing that is on your task list that isn't aligned with your goals. And the reason, just as a side point, the reason that I said at the beginning that this is both a list of professional and personal tasks is because we all know that there's no real clear separation between how your brain processes what you have to do for work and how your brain processes what you have to do for non work. It's both taking up brain space, it's both taking up time. So reading a sort of work task list as somehow separate from a personal or home or some people call it other task lists, it just isn't how your brain processes information. So as you're thinking about this second step, this goal alignment, I find it really helpful to name both my work goals, what needs to be accomplished by the end of the month, and any personal goals that I have. Am I going to the gym a certain amount of times? Am I calling my parents a certain amount of times? Am I doing certain things with my kids? Do I have health goals? You are aligning your task list with all of your goals, personal and professional. And when something isn't going to move you in the direction of something that you have already determined you need to accomplish for work or for yourself or for your family or for your home, if it's not aligned with a goal that you've identified, then there is a very good chance it's not actually a task that you need on your list right now. So delete, delegate or defer. Step 3 time reality check so this is how you're going to begin to tackle the problem of too many tasks. You're going to do this by continuing to be honest about what's really on your plate. Each of the steps in this framework, in this Focus Filter framework acts as a filter, right? You're starting with your list, then you're filtering out things that are not or aligned with your goals. And now we're going to take a step to really illuminate what is the cost of what's remaining on this list, right? The time cost, what's really on your plate. So look at your calendar and add up how many non meeting or non busy hours you have within which to get work done. Realistically, you want to back out, time for the gym, your dentist appointment, meetings that you already have scheduled. Often the easiest thing to do is you just pull up your Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, whatever calendar you use. When I first started doing this, I was still using a written planner, which I have sort of integrated into my Google Calendar. But Whatever your sort of planner of choice is, pull it up and literally just look at the white space, right? If you don't put personal things in your calendar, make sure to include those. So if you don't have your dentist appointment or going to the gym, you know, midday meditation, whatever your things are, but you know that these are not actually available hours, make sure that you include these in this sort of audit so you don't actually need to write down what those things are. You just want to add up the number of free hours, right? So the hours that you don't have already allocated to something. I'm so excited to share that I've opened the doors for enrollment into my next level nonprofit Mastermind. It's the way that I provide hands on support to leaders of small nonprofits that want to grow without the constant overwhelm and threat of burnout. The program is really awesome. It combines private coaching, group coaching, professional development for your entire team, live training on core areas of nonprofit growth and sustainability, intimate access to sector leaders, and exclusive access to a carefully curated Rolodex of consultants and short term staff support to make sure that you don't get stuck in the idea phase because you simply can't find people on your team to execute. We've got you covered. And more than the features that I'm obviously really excited about, it's just a wonderful, powerful community of peers. The other coaches and I love working with the leaders inside the program. And if it sounds like support you could use, you can apply at brooke ritchie babbage.com backslash next level nonprofit. This is the number of hours that you actually have within which to get work done. I recommend doing this in two week increments and the reason is because as you'll see, it's going to give you some flexibility to make some adjustments because. Because this is really sort of the meat and potatoes of where you start to regain, if you are willing to make some tough choices, regain some control over your calendar. Some people do this in week long increments that actually also totally works. I wouldn't recommend any longer than two week increments because sometimes you're not. It's not as accurate. Right. Sort of. What is going to be on your calendar? Meetings and things like that. So what you're looking for here is white space, the number of hours that you genuinely have to get work done. Then you go through your task list and I want you to assign time blocks in 30 minute increments to each task based on how much time you think that task will take to accomplish. I usually do it with tiny little dots, very analog on a piece of paper. Each dot represents one 30 minute increment. So writing a first draft of a presentation might take a half an hour, right? So that would be one dot. Or maybe you are someone for whom writing that first draft. Like that's really where you sort of get all of your ideas down and so take an hour and a half. So three time blocks. So you put three little dots. You might look at your task list and see a collection of tiny tasks that have to get done, but can be sort of grouped into one 30 minute time block. So for me, often that is emails that I know I have to respond to and you know, four or five of them I can knock out in 30 minutes. So they'd be sort of grouped with like on the page with one dot next to all of them. Now I suggest 30 minutes. That's actually intentional because it's long enough to settle into focused deep work. Right? So if you set your timer for 30 minutes at any given time, that's actually a great amount of time for your brain to do focused deep work before you ought to take a break and let your brain muscle rest. And you can actually move the needle in 30 minutes. And at the same time, it's short enough to be modular. Meaning you can assign one deep focus time block or add up focus blocks for longer tasks throughout the day. Right. If you were to assign time blocks in hour long increments, there are many things that don't actually require an hour. If they do, you can do 2 minute, 230 minute increments. But you want to be, you want that flexibility to be able to say this is going to take 30 minutes, 90 minutes, 60 minutes, et cetera. So the 30 minute increment is actually intentional. So you're going to go through your task list and assign these time blocks to everything on your task. Now once on your list, now once you've assigned time blocks to each task, add them up. This is often a really big aha moment for the folks that I work with because here's what's always happened in every single incident happens with me. I've literally never seen this not happen. You will find that you have more tasks than time to complete them. Right? That the number of hours in of white space that you have identified, meaning time where you could slide in your tasks is going to be less than the number of time than the amount of time it will take you to complete your tasks. I've never seen it not Work out this way. Right. That's just sort of how our brains work. So don't freak out. That's okay. Because the fourth step in the process is triage is your time block. Triage. And this is where the magic happens. This is where you're going to make your final set of important decisions. Right. It's the. It's the last filter. How will I close the gap between the time I have and the time it takes to get done what I've said I need to get done? How will I. Right size my task list. So you have three options. You can free up more hours, right. Create more white space. You can shrink your task list, or you can do some of both. Usually it's going to be some of both. I recommend some of both. When you see that stark contrast between the time you have and the hours you've put on your list, you're going to see that not getting everything done is often not because you didn't work hard enough. It was never going to be possible. You were mathematically eliminated from the beginning from achieving everything on your list. I personally have found that to be very freeing. And I know that when I do this activity, either with the folks in my accelerator program or I have them do it and sort of come back to me with their right size list, that sense of, oh, it's not actually that I've been doing something Redfone wrong this whole time. I just didn't have the right system set up. Right. I didn't have the right process for creating a realistic, achievable task list with the right tasks. So I hope that you find this freeing as well. Doing this activity taught me that what my mind thinks is possible is just more aspirational than what is actually possible. Right. That my task list, my starting task list, is some combination of things that I really want to be able to get done and things that I have to get done. And so this step by step process really allows me to not feel so overwhelmed all the time because it forces me to focus on and deal with what is actually possible. So how do you do the triage? Right. You have this gap that exists. I always start with freeing up more hours. I think that's where you ought to start. Is there anything in your calendar that you can delete, delegate, or defer? Are all of the meetings on your calendar absolutely critical? Can some of them be moved? Can some of them be handed to somebody else? Or is there a way. And the answer is yes, there is a way to politely email some of the People that we have meetings scheduled with to say, I'd actually love to share information a different way, right? Not in a meeting. Let's come up with some asynchronous way that we can exchange the information we're going to exchange in this meeting. This process has really pushed the folks that I work with to ask those questions and be intentional and strategic about their time. And what they realize just at this first step in the triage is actually not all of these meetings are critical. And here's an even deeper realization. Sometimes a meeting is critical to another person, but that doesn't mean it is critical to me, right? That another person may want to meet with me. That doesn't necessarily mean that the meeting should happen. And that that distinction is a really important one as you start taking control of your calendar and your time. And so asking yourself, wait a minute, I actually have to free up more hours and shrink this list. There has to be a right sizing because I just, I see the numbers, right? There isn't enough time in my calendar. I found that it will often push us to say, even if it is uncomfortable at first, this is not a meeting that I need to happen, that I need to have happen this week or at all. Someone else can do this meeting for me. We can share this information in another way. There may be things like one in one two week period, I realized that I had three doctor's appointments. And when I had scheduled them, I did it because I believed that I would have more spaciousness. It turns out I did not. A few things came up that were actually more urgent than these doctor's appointments. And going back to why I recommend doing this in two week chunks, I was two weeks out. So I could actually message one of the doctor's offices and say, hey, can I shift this a month back? Right. It gave me some flexibility. So that's the first thing is look at your calendar and ask, how can I free up more hours? Get yourself some more white space. Then turn to the work of shrinking your list. Ask yourself, which of the items on my list are urgent? Right. So can't take them off the list. They have to be done this week or the next two weeks and or necessary for either moving work forward or unlocking the next step in some process. Right? So they may not necessarily be urgent, but until this thing gets done, other things can't be done either by me or other people on my team. So things that are urgent and things that are necessary, I'd prioritize those. So again, if you are Doing this analog, as I often do, I have a blue highlighter for things that are urgent and necessary. Right. They have to stay on the list and I'll highlight those and then I can see, oh, okay. So that's actually two thirds of my time. So now I have, you know, or a third of my time. So now this is the number of hours that I have to play with. One thing that I'll say about the urgent and necessary, particularly the things that move work forward or unlock the next step in a process, these are often things that don't lend themselves to a checklist. Right. I often will break them down. I suggest breaking them down into these time blocks. Can you assign two time blocks this week so that you know you're making progress and shift some of the work to a future, more open week? Right. So doing these time blocks also allows you to recognize that tasks can be chunked, tasks themselves can be broken down. And I really encourage you to play with that and use that flexibility to free up time in the short term or in the near term and be more strategic about how you're allocating these time blocks. So after you've identified the urgent and necessary tasks, then ask yourself of the remaining activities, which are high versus low leverage activities. Now, I've done a few episodes about high leverage activities and I'll link them in the show notes. Basically, these are activities that directly drive the revenue or impact of your organization. These are things like relationship building and partnerships, visioning and strategy, thought leadership, certain types of fundraising, your board, your job as the executive director is to focus on these activities. So you look at your tasks and divide them into high and low leverage activities. For the low leverage activities, delegate or defer. You always want to push yourself to delegate or defer as many low leverage activities as you can. For the high leverage activities, my recommendation is to add protected time blocks to your calendar and carve out space for you to focus on these. Say, for example, I am going to dedicate two time blocks a week or a time block every day to move these high leverage activities forward to make sure that I am creating space in my calendar for high leverage activities. And over time, you really want these time blocks to grow. If you have to start small, that's okay. So to recap, there are four steps in this process. You start by making a comprehensive list. Check for goal alignment, assess how much time you have and determine how much time your task list will take and compare what's the gap and then use time blocking triage to add more time. Get rid of tasks or some combination of both, right? To close the gap. This process is not complicated, but I can say from years of experience of working with leaders to do some version of this in their own organizations and with their teams over time it's it can actually feel scary because at the root of it lies some tough decisions and what, at least for me over time, has sometimes been a hard truth. You just can't get everything done that you want to get done. You have to choose, you have to prioritize. So hopefully this four step process can serve as a bit of a roadmap for you for focusing in on the right tasks and illuminating over time where you might need help, right, who you can delegate to and where really you ought to be delegating and you don't have that space, right? This is another benefit of this strategic orientation to your time. This kind of strategic thinking allows you to be in charge of your time and your calendar, which ultimately is the best way to fight any sense of overwhelm. That is all for this week. I will see you back here next week for more Mastermind. Thanks so much for joining me this week. If you enjoy this podcast, I would love for you to leave a rating and a review. I read every single one and they really do matter. I also share extra tidbits and resources building on what we talk about here in my newsletter, Leadership for 321. You can sign up by texting the word impact to 6686 and finally, definitely check out the links and resources that I mentioned in this episode@brookerichybabbage.com podcast. See you next week.