Your Development Is One of Your Top Priorities

Domain: Development - Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Lack of development and/or growth is stagnation. Because the world is constantly evolving, to remain stagnant is to fall behind. By doing nothing, you are regressing, not idling.

Most of us understand this intuitively; however, when it comes to our own development, we deem ourselves too busy to work on it.

The fact is, that your own development is one of your top priorities and you should be treating it as such. Hopefully, your top priorities get your attention on a weekly basis (if not daily). Well, your development is one of your top priorities.

What I've found is that simply telling professionals to do this weekly is not enough. Below are just a few tactics to ensure that you are prioritizing this activity consistently and effectively as possible.

Tune in

Before you even determine what your development goals and subsequent actions will be, you need a dedicate time each week to focus on them. After all, if you don't have goals in place, you will likely be spending your first couple sessions figuring that out.

The first question you should ask yourself is, when are you most focused and engaged at work? If this is not immediately obvious to you, consider asking yourself the following…

• What time of day am I most productive?

• When do I find myself "lost" in my work?

• What time of day to I typically focus on my (other) top priorities?

For me, it's mid-late mornings. It doesn’t matter the day of week, I'm usually most turned-in from 9:30-ll(ish).

Tune out

The other half of the equation is about minimizing distractions and interruptions. It's easy enough to identify your own busy times, but what about other people's busy times?

You have your agenda, but everyone else also has theirs. It stands to reason that if you are searching for time to focus solely on you, that you find a time and space where you are less likely to be interrupted.

Back to my example, I have fewer meetings and fewer asks of me on Fridays. Combining the first two points, Friday mornings are my sweet spot for my own development. It's also a fun way to head into the weekend.

That's just me though. Identify your peak times of focus and find a timeslot that also carries a low-risk of interruption. That's your sweet spot.

Now put a standing meeting block on your calendar to protect this time.

Stick to it

So you have the time scheduled. Now comes the tricky part, sticking to the time and task. If you're new to the idea of scheduling non-meeting tasks on your calendar, you are going to be extremely tempted ignore the task at hand and either "catch-up" on emails or address another task.

The poor advice here is "use will-power" or "just do it". That advice means well, but it's not helpful whatsoever. To be fair, it's also a really hard problem to solve.

The key here is to treat this time as you would any other meeting with your colleagues. That means declining competing meeting invites you receive for the same time. We've previously covered tips for protecting your time in our Calendar Defense and Meeting Assessments posts if you are uncomfortable with how to approach this.

You might also consider putting your phone away and going on do-not-disturb during this time if you struggle with distractions.

Track it

Once you have made the time and space to work on your development, make sure that you are also tracking your progress during this designated time. Doing so will allow you to assess whether you are truly using this time as intended. Assuming that you are, you're likely to see progress which should also help with motivation in the long-term.

Thank you for reading. My hope is always that you've found something helpful and easy to implement.

This week’s action items:

1. Identify the time of day you are most productive and/or engage

2. Identify one day of the week in which you will use this productive time to work on your development goals.

3. Schedule a reoccurring weekly meeting for this date/time.

4. Distance yourself from distractions during this time.

5. Track your progress against your development goals to keep you on-track.