Love or Hate Him, Forrest Gump Knows Why He’s on the Payroll
The Time Management experts, such as Brian Tracy and Dave Allen, tell us to understand why we are on the payroll if we want to improve our time management. Forrest Gump knew why he was on the payroll…
Forrest Gump was called a genius by his drill sergeant because he knew exactly why he was there. Yet so many people at work do not know why they are on the payroll. Why is it important to know why you are on the payroll? It is important because once you have identified why you are on the payroll you will focus on delivering more of those things and stop doing, or do less, of the things that you are not paid to do.
The Benefits are:
- You’ll have ‘laser-like’ focus because you are more easily able to understand which tasks are important and which ones are not.
- You will have increased job satisfaction because you will get more done of what is important.
- You are more valuable to the company because you have delivered what they want and therefore you can ask for more in return!
If you don’t know why you are on the payroll, ask your manager. The answers you are looking for are most likely to be a measure and a target. Make sure that it is a SMART target.
Watch this 38-second video:
For Example:
- Sales target – the measure is sales in value and the target is £1.6m to be delivered by <date>.
- People target – the measure of happiness using the workplace survey and the target is to achieve <number> by <date>.
- Administration target – the measure is the number of invoice errors and the target is less than <number> by <date>.
Can you write down clearly on a piece of paper why you are on the payroll? If you can, pin it up in front of you at work to remind you every day.
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Action: For even more useful content on time management, check out our ultimate guide on Time Management skills.
