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Opportunity

by | Oct 24, 2015 | Personal Development, Productivity

Opportunities are everywhere. So frequent in fact, that we often miss out on taking full advantage of them. Usually simply because we lack structure to support ourselves in this area. As one of my favorite programs, Trello absolutely has a solution for this.

Start by:

  1. Creating a new Trello Board called “Opportunities” (you can name it whatever you please though)
  2. Add these four lists:
    1. Past
    2. Present
    3. Due Diligence
    4. Future
  3. Add all the opportunities you’ve had in the Past list
  4. Add all the opportunities you’re working on in the Present list
  5. Add all the opportunities you’re considering in Due Diligence list
  6. Add all the opportunities as cards that are just ideas or a long ways off in the Future list

That’s just the beginning though. In the card description add both a CBA and the ROI. Essentially what costs does it have and what benefits does it have, and then what Return On Investment does it have (and you can add 3 different levels; worse case, average, and best case). You can also add a SWOT analysis to each opportunity if you’re looking for more detail on what you should work on. This system provides tremendous power over your opportunities and how well you can delineate what’s important and what’s not, and even how to best approach them to take full advantage of them.

You can view a sample of this Trello board here.

Tips:

  1. Add opportunities you may not consider very large. How you do anything is how you do everything. Be faithful with little.
  2. Add the labels “Volunteer” and “Business” etc and label your opportunities by type
  3. Arrange cards vertically in lists based on their importance and how closely they align with your goals and One Thing
  4. Integrate Peter Drucker’s idea of Feedback Analysis in his excellent book Managing Oneself by writing down what you expect to happen if you work on a specific idea, and then set a due date on the card a long way out and measure what actually happened comparatively.

Now when deciding what to work on and how to manage your time, you’ll clearly know what’s important and what’s not.