Activity Trap

Are you caught in “Activity Trap?”

Activity trap is a management term, wherein the risk of becoming so busy that you tend to neglect or forget the purpose of your activity and why you undertook that activity.

Do you find yourself trapped into too many activities at a time & they are not interesting.

Despite hustling for the entire day you don’t complete all jobs up to satisfaction.

Then you are trapped into an activity trap.

For instance, as a manager/team leader your main job was to see that you lead a group of people/but you end up doing all the petty jobs whereas I reality you were only expected to show the directions and guide wherever required.

Another instance, for students who have to meet all the deadlines for project submission as well as study and participate in extra-curricular activities and attend family functions. No less than a juggling exercise. In such a case the student finds that he is unable to focus on his actual priority, i.e. studies and good score.

If one is expected to do a task, they happen to ignore the reason why it is being performed and just jump into doing it without giving it a thought eventually,losing interest in performing. This is why keeping end results in your mind is vital.

Activity trap is unknowingly faced by people who become complacent over a period of time. When one garners success, they become comfortable and stick to the mundane tasks which they are convinced with as a formula for success. But this does not serve in the long run. Complacency causes to lose the sight of your goalpost.

How to escape from activity trap.

Figure out your priorities. Once you have it figured out, understand other trivial activities that interrupt your main activity a lot. Issues, requests, or any other routine activities.

Main categorization can be done into and urgent and important, and later on you can follow the steps of 4 d accordingly, Do Dump Delegate Defer. We all are aware of these steps, but putting them into practical use for our benefits is a must to be successful.

• The tasks which are urgent and important both, require your attention the most. Do it. Don’t wait.
• Delegate the jobs which can be performed by others. It does not mean delegating irrelevant jobs. Rather delegate jobs which are useful and necessary which in turn provide learning to the doer along with spreading your workload. Be willing to let go of tasks and ensure that you be a guide to the doer of the task.
• Postpone the tasks which do not require your immediate attention. i.e. tasks which are not urgent. Delay/postpone those distractive plans. If anything is not urgent but important, then ensure you break them into timelines fix a plan of completion and stick to it.
• Saying ‘no’ is an art. This art will benefit you to delete or dump lot of unproductive tasks that might come your way. These are mostly distracters or recreational activities. Sometimes the people around you will want to pass on their urgent priority onto you. If this is allowed to happen you end up spending your time and resource into something that does not matter much to your growth.

Alpha Mindz is one of the leading trainers known for time management and negotiation skills coaching. Taking up these sessions will definitely add value to ones professional as well as personal life and make one more efficient.