This time we’re not referring to your body. Instead, we’re talking about the knee-jerk responses you may have responding to all the “shoulds” or emergencies people tack onto your time. As a chamber pro, you have an agenda, a strategic plan, and goals. You don’t want to treat your workday like a Whack-a-Mole game where you’re banging something down wherever it comes up. Yet, that is what a lot of chamber pros do. They react to wherever someone else is popping up and drop what they’re doing to attend to that “mole.”

Solution: stop letting others set your priorities. You met with your board and created a strategic plan. You know what your goals are. Someone else’s emergency is not your emergency unless it impacts one of your goals. That’s not to say you shouldn’t be helpful but be deliberate with your help and not like someone using a padded hammer in that carnival game. There is nothing productive about that.

Letting others set your agenda can be a real time drain and that often happens when you don’t know what you’re doing. We don’t mean this as a putdown of your skills. Quite the contrary. The more capable you are, the more often people will seek help from you to straighten out their problems. When you go into every day knowing what you’re doing, you will have a clearer vision of what doesn’t fit (aka someone else’s agenda, for instance). On the other hand, if you go in waiting for that phone to ring or the next emergency to fall on your desk, you’re starting in reactive mode. This gives the rest of the world power over your day and places them in charge.

Solution: chart your day, week, and month. Know what must be done immediately and what’s on the horizon. Practice saying “no” and setting expectations. If you have your to-do list prepared, you can easily see if you have additional time to help or if you will need to defer their issue to another day or help them find another solution/delegate it to someone else.

While there isn’t anything you can do about this, if you are female, you can become more aware that people are more likely to ask a female co-worker for a favor than a male. Additionally, women who are inclined to help are viewed less favorably than women who are less agreeable. Something to think about before agreeing to the next work “favor.”

Using Antiquated Methods Around the Office

Tech has changed a lot in the past decade. From its cost to its capabilities, from its integrations to its limitations, if you haven’t investigated new software and what’s available to streamline your processes, you could be wasting a lot of time on things that could be automated. Sometimes it’s not even a matter of adopting a new tool but taking the time to understand how what you currently have works.

Solution: Think about one of your biggest pain points from a productivity perspective and search online for a solution. You might be surprised about the options out there. Sometimes, you already have what you need. You just don’t know it. Remember all those emails you get about software feature updates? Read them on occasion and you might just find you have more capabilities in your hands than you realized.

We only know what we know. If you’re not a lifelong learner, there may be a solution out there that you know nothing about. While other generations look down on the younger ones for “job hopping” there is one benefit to doing so. You see how other companies work. If you’ve been with your chamber for decades or been in the industry since before social media, you may be doing it the way you know best. That is great; until it isn’t.

It’s important to ensure you’re always exploring how others are doing the job. Put yourself in charge of your professional development and education. Don’t expect someone to tell you. Be open to learning new things and experimentation. You may find a more efficient way to do something.