You probably feel like you don’t have enough resources to do your work.
And you are most likely correct. None of us really have enough time, money, staff, etc.
Yet we are required to do more and more, every day, it seems.
That’s why it makes sense to get good at two things: obtaining resources and using them wisely.
You need to be able to ask for what you need. To negotiate for more. Which is all based on having a sense of what is required.
So you have to have experience. And you need to pay attention while you are working on things now, so that you can understand what the resource requirements might be the next time you need to ask or negotiate.
Experience will help you to become a better negotiator.
But even more important is your ability to use whatever resources you have wisely.
After all, in many cases, no matter how well-informed or good we are at negotiating, obtaining more resources is difficult to impossible.
It’s good to become better at resource management. That opportunity is before us each and every day.
The more efficiently you can use the resources available to you, the better. Always.
Figuring out what’s really important, where the resources are best applied, and how to maximize their impact is crucial.
On a personal level this may amount to managing your time. That’s a limited resource and also one of your most important resources.
To manage it wisely, you can become really good at productivity. You can learn to use your time extremely efficiently. You can get more tasks done in the same amount of time.
But good resource management is more than efficiency.
Because it’s not very helpful to get a lot of tasks done if they are not the right tasks. Becoming better at the selection, prioritization, and sequencing of tasks is the way to take your abilities to the next level.
You can go even further by managing your energy as well as your time. Working on high priority or complex tasks when you have the most energy, when you are at your best, will have a bigger impact than if you simply allowed any old time to work on those tasks.
Even better, you can manage your attention too. High energy time can easily be squandered if you are checking email, answering calls, or otherwise multitasking rather than giving your important work your full attention.
There is always a way to find more to do with less. That’s a challenge worth exploring, and worth getting better at, every day.
