You’re a business owner and your day is full, so you need to make sure that you’re prepared from the get go. With coffee in hand, you sit at your desk and think to yourself “wait, what am supposed to be doing today again?”
There are so many meetings, deadlines, and other important dates in your life. Staying organized and on top of it all is a real chore. If you get distracted by all the “shiny” things like emails or “fun” jobs you can forget the bigger things you can miss out on opportunities to keep your business growing.
To help keep you focused on your priorities, Daylite gives you the Home Screen, a dashboard that works to keep you organized by giving you a top-down look at your week to help you stay on top of everything happening around you.
Learn how you can use the Daylite Home Screen every day and start your day strong.
Today’s Appointments
When you launch Daylite the Today’s Appointment section Home Screen is the first thing you should head to. This will show you all the appointments you have for today as well as other important dates like the birthdays and anniversaries that you add to your Daylite Contacts.
Starting your day by looking at the what appointments you have today will give you a sense of all the commitments you’ve made, tell you all the places you need to be and topics of discussions priming your brain for success. If you need to remember something or want to do some more prep work and since you can link everything in Daylite all you need to do is pull up people, emails, tasks etc. linked to the appointment and everything you need is at your fingertips.
Today’s Appointments can also help you go the extra mile by as a reminder to send your clients a message or call of congratulations on their dates, or even keep you out of the doghouse to send that special someone flowers.
Today and Over Due Tasks
After you’ve reviewed the appointments for today the next thing you need to check is what tasks, projects and opportunities are overdue as well as due today. This will help you see which fires you need to put out now, and what things you can punt for another day.
If you don’t have a system to help you prioritize which tasks to attack, and which ones you should leave alone, choosing can be hard. You want to make sure that you complete these but not at the expense something more important. We’ve written in the past that on exactly this in – How to Accomplish More by Doing Less – which discusses the different ways you can use the Time Management Matrix with Daylite.
Pro Tip: Not seeing any tasks here? Make sure to add due dates for all tasks you create. Same goes for Projects and Opportunities!
The Worklist
Your to-do list is a mile long which has important tasks due months from now and the only thing harder than deciding on what you finish today is sticking to those commitments. The Worklist in Daylite is a task management tool and reviewing it on the Home Screen is the third step in starting your Day with Daylite
The Worklist helps you filter out what is less important and focus on the essentials. As you’ve gone over the overdue and due today tasks, you’ve set your top priorities. These are the tasks that should be added to the WorkList. You don’t want to burn yourself out so try to keep only 3-6 things on this list.
If you have more than 3-6 tasks, reconsider how you’ve prioritized your day because you may not be able to complete that list. If you don’t have 3-6 due tasks, go over your task list again and choose some other tasks that are and more strategic or long-term goals so you can get ahead of the curve.
Next 7 Days
You want to be prepared for meetings, meet your deadlines and be ready for any last minute changes. The only way we know how to do all these things is to plan ahead, and this is where the final part of starting your Day with Daylite comes in.
The Next 7 Days section of Daylite gives you an overview of tasks, projects, opportunities and appointments that are happening in the next 7 days and so you can plan your week. You see a major task that will take a few days to complete, add it to your Worklist so you can start working on it now. There is a big meeting coming up so create a new task to review your proposal or even schedule a meeting to make sure everyone on your team is ready.
These are just a few ways that the Daylite Home Screen can help you set the right priorities. As you start to use it you will develop workflows that fit you and your business best. You will also find that as you see further into your week as well as the day-to-day all on one screen, you can focus on the big stuff and filter out the noise. When you make the Home Screen the first thing you see in the morning, you can start your day on the right foot and get more done every day.
