The Productivity Pro® Blog by Laura Stack - Time Management, Getting Things Done, How to Be More Productive

What do you do when there’s TOO MUCH TO DO?

You mark your calendar and come to THE PRODUCTIVITY ACADEMY with Laura Stack!

Due to popular demand, we are once again presenting The Productivity Academy on March 15 at the Marriott Denver South at Park Meadows in the Denver area. 

Past participants have said:

You just have NO idea. Really.
New planner. New plan. New tools. New knowledge. New mindset. New energy. New enthusiasm. New HOPE!!

and

I have benefited hugely from the tasking tools in Microsoft Outlook, particularly saving emails to tasks – as well as your 3-minute rule. My inbox is emptied every time I check my email! I am also using standing tickler files at work and home, which has helped me corral all that incoming paperwork! Finally, I am aware of what times of the day I should be working on more difficult tasks, but I have not gotten to where I’ve committed to doing it yet – work in progress!

You’ll learn Laura’s innovative PRODUCTIVITY WORKFLOW FORMULA (PWF). Are you tired of hearing “do more with less”? Many people are already working as long and as hard as they can, and “productivity improvement” classes can be hard to swallow. Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro, turns time management on its head and shows overwhelmed professionals how to actually DO LESS and ACHIEVE MORE. They’ll produce greater results and create significant impact on organizational goals. Laura teaches her latest thinking using this innovative workflow formula to reduce to-do lists, reduce commitments, reduce distractions, reduce the glut of information, reduce inefficiencies, and reduce energy expenditure. Past clients using these systems and methods report savings of 90 minutes a day and higher productivity than ever before!

Visit The Productivity Academy to find out more and register. We’ve got a special for early registrations! Individual registrants can save $100 by using coupon code EARLY by February 6, and if you bring 3 or more people from the same company, you save $100 per person! 3 or more people ordering with the EARLY coupon code can save an additional $100 off their order.

There’s a Lot to Learn About Personal Goal Setting From Football

It’s that time of year again! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – The Superbowl offers a great acrostic game opportunity for learning productivity techniques.

What does time management have to do with Super Bowl football?

Everything!

Football pros competing in the Super Bowl use great goal-setting techniques. By studying the game, you too can learn a lot about how to set objectives. Successful football teams devote a great deal of thought and time to planning how to move the ball down the field.

And successful people devote time to planning what they’ll accomplish in business and in life. Ask the coaches who’ve led teams to the Super Bowl. They know you can’t win without a good game plan.

The term “SUPER BOWL” describes nine components for making touchdowns in your life:

S = Specific. Progress in football is measured a yard at a time. Similarly, you’re wise to measure your progress toward a goal in numbers, percentages, milestones, or dates. “Learn software program” isn’t specific, but “Spend five hours a week learning software program” is. “Lose weight” isn’t specific, but “Lose thirty pounds at one pound a week” can be measured by simply stepping on the scale. “Make more calls” isn’t specific, but “Make five new outbound prospecting calls a day” is.

U = Us. The quarterback doesn’t attempt to score by himself; he hands off the ball to other players. Individual players can’t win without help from their teammates. Reaching a goal requires an entire team of people to be accomplished. You’ll experience limited success if your department or family doesn’t buy into your goal, so understand your strengths and know when to delegate pieces of the task to others. Where can you save time by passing the ball to others qualified to do the task?

P = Plan to succeed. Top teams don’t go out and just start playing. They prepare, plan, and study the playbook. They determine in advance what will be effective and how to spend their time. Similarly, don’t tackle a job without drawing up a plan of attack. List all the steps it will take to execute your plan in a logical sequence. Each night, draw up your plans for the next day so you are focused and
purposeful.

E = Effort. Teams get to the Super Bowl through effort, not luck. Yes, you might reach your goals through sheer luck, but the odds are much better if you work hard. Injuries can put the very best team out of the playoffs, so players put effort into staying healthy. Scoring a touchdown isn’t easy, but it’s attainable with effort. Similarly, your goals should challenge you without being unrealistic. Don’t set yourself up to fail, but do force yourself to stretch. When you experience success at reaching “stretch” objectives, you
gain confidence. Also know when to take a time out and rest, so you don’t burn out or get fatigued.

R = Reward. Players have unique ways of celebrating a touchdown—through a gesture, a dance, even a back flip. Have a plan to celebrate your accomplishments, too. You’ll stay motivated to work toward your objective when you know the rewards. The vision of earning a Super Bowl ring keeps players pushing toward that end.  What will be your reward once you’ve accomplished your goal? What is exciting enough to make you want to shoot for it? A vacation? A massage? A round of golf? Rewards can also be intrinsic, such as increased self-esteem, more confidence, or the pleasure of a job well done.

B = Belief. Football players have a burning desire to win, and so should you. Have confidence in yourself! Picture yourself in the moment you achieve your goal. Determine how you will feel. Use positive self-talk and hear what others say when your goal is achieved. Enlist your friends and create your own personal cheering section. Your fans help you maintain your enthusiasm, and you’ll rise to the level of your own self-esteem. When you’re having a slow day, call your fans and ask for encouragement.

O = Obstacles. Teams spend a lot of time studying the competition and determining how to beat it. What obstacles do you face when working on your goal? What might prevent you from obtaining it? Consider early in the process what could go wrong, then put contingency plans in place and anticipate problems before they occur.

W = Written. Many people dream about what goals they want to accomplish, but few actually write them down. Coaches don’t have all the plays memorized; they refer to their playbooks. Written objectives are tangible and concrete. Make them uplifting and phrase them in a positive way. Review your progress at regular intervals and track it as you go. For example, measure your weight each week, summarize your sales calls every day, or determine how many pages you wrote each day.

L = Limits. Football games have four 15-minute quarters, a framework in which players have to succeed. Break your goal down into manageable pieces with well-defined start and stop dates. Many goals will have multiple action steps, each with a target date. Don’t think of a project as a 10-hour task; think of it as 10 one-hour tasks. A goal is a series of first downs—mini-goals that help you see your progress and keep you motivated.

Remember, you don’t have to move 100 yards all at once. Take small steps toward your goals every day or every week. Get moving, and you’ll soon feel the positive effects of the change. And every little bit of change can lead to long-term healthy habits, which last far beyond the Super Bowl party!

Make it a productive day!

“My first reading of an e-mail is actually a screening process to determine what needs attention…I’ll decide on the spot what to delete and what needs that second reading prior to taking action.” — Junior Morales, poll respondent, Puerto Rico

“Depends on the message. If it’s spam or FYI, then once is enough. If it’s asking specific questions that need thought and/or research to answer, then as often as needed until it’s clear how to proceed. ” — Davyd Breeskin, poll respondent, Washington, D.C.

Several months ago, I posted a poll on LinkedIn asking how many times a day my followers checked their email. The results were rather eye-opening, and as you may recall, I blogged about them in early October 2011. Because I found those answers so intriguing, I posted a follow-up poll in December, asking, “On average, how many times do you read an email before doing anything with it?”

Once again, the troops came through with some very interesting responses. This time I got a total of 46 votes and six thoughtful comments—a somewhat lighter response than normal, but then again, it was the holiday season.

As you may recall, those who answered the earlier poll tend to check their email more often than I recommend—in fact, 63% admitted to checking it throughout the day, never turning their email off, while another 13.6% said they check email hourly. But happily, it appears (based on the current poll results) that while my respondents may check their email a bit too often, they usually don’t damage their personal productivity by obsessing over the individual messages. A total of 17 voters (37%) read each email only once before doing something with it, as most productivity training schemas teach (including mine). Twenty-six voters (57%) review each email twice, while just three (7%) check each email three times. No one voted for the other categories, “Four times” and “Five times”—thank goodness!

The voters didn’t deliver any real surprises this time on the demographics front. Generally, I get a more-or-less even split between management (including C-Suite and business owners) and everyone else; this time, the votes skewed just a bit toward the rank and file. As usual, among those who identified their gender, men voted slightly more often than women did: 18 vs. 13 (58% vs. 42%). It still surprises me how often LinkedIn members fail to include gender on their poll profiles; this time, 15 voters (almost a third of the total) preferred to remain gender-anonymous. The age breakdown was roughly equal across the categories, at least for the 21 voters—fewer than half— who provided their ages (an omission I can more easily understand!). The number of voters varied from 4-6 per age category; the differences are too small, really, to consider them significant, given the limited statistical sample.

The same proved mostly true for the vote breakdowns within the answer categories as well; though I will say that three-quarters of the voters for “Only once” were men, and voters in upper management proved significantly less likely than their subordinates to look at their email more than once. At the risk of extrapolating from insufficient data, the latter seems reasonable, since upper-level employees are usually better at time management.

And make no mistake: as a general rule, the better your time management skills, the less time you waste handling the information that crosses your desk. This assumes, of course, that you give each piece of information your full attention while deciding its fate—and then dismiss it from your mind, so you can move on to the next without bias or distraction. This rule holds true not just for email, but for all forms of information: voicemail, paperwork, verbal orders…and just about anything else you can imagine.

So: how would you vote? If you didn’t participate in this poll, I’d still like to hear what you have to say. Just leave a comment and let me know!

Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R), shares her thoughts on managing your time, the value of time and why you should protect it. (C) 2011 Laura Stack. All Rights Reserved. http://www.TheProductivityPro.com

Time management training tends to focus on individual workplace productivity; and while that’s all well and good, most of us actually work within team environments. It’s not a good idea, therefore, to just ignore the productivity issues affecting your coworkers. Your team workflow process can’t function smoothly if the individual parts are broken.

Raising awareness of group productivity issues requires little more than circulating an informal survey among your teammates, and then distributing the results. Simply ask something like, “What are your X biggest time management challenges?” You can make “X” any number you like, depending on how much time and resources you have to dedicate to the issue.

Needless to say, your team’s manager bears the ultimate responsibility for maintaining an awareness of overall productivity issues; and if you manage the team, then you can implement the survey yourself easily enough. If you don’t, consider approaching your manager and offering to take on the responsibility. They’ll probably appreciate your initiative.

Admittedly, this means a little more work for you. However, it takes very little time to initiate the process, and if handled properly, it will increase your team’s overall productivity—which should shave some time and costs off your organization’s bottom line.

I recommend you circulate the survey quarterly, and then make an effort to help your colleagues address their biggest problems. Again, this needn’t take forever, especially if you leverage the copious resources available online; and in a time = money sense, it certainly justifies any effort you put into it.

Even better, you can invest a few bucks in a copy of my new book, What To Do When There’s Too Much To Do, scheduled to hit the bookstores in mid-2012. This slim volume includes simple, direct ways to cut back on your task list and face down the workplace productivity monster. Watch for it!

Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R), talks about getting out of a rut. You don’t always have to do things they way they have always been done. (C) 2011 Laura Stack. All Rights Reserved. http://www.TheProductivityPro.com

“Reflective thinking requires the continual evaluation of beliefs, assumptions, and hypotheses against existing data and against other plausible interpretations of the data.” — John Dewey, American educator.

“Reflective thinking turns experience into insight.” — John C. Maxwell, American author and leadership guru.

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the most bitter.” — Confucius, ancient Chinese philosopher.

As a savvy SuperCompetent, I suspect you take a few moments occasionally to examine your workflow process, carefully considering what works and what doesn’t so you can maximize your productivity going forward. Psychologists call this process “reflective thinking.” Whether you call it that or not, you almost certainly practice it on some level, because reflective thinking underlies and informs any effective workplace productivity schema. It also acts as a touchstone for how you react to new situations, especially emergencies and other crises.

Put simply, reflective thinking represents a process of learning from experience. You spend time in thoughtful reflection, integrating new knowledge, deciding how to handle specific situations in the future, and identifying what you want to improve. It may also include decisions about which practices to abandon, and which new ones to adopt. Ultimately, every change you make to your personal productivity efforts—every time you tweak a system, implement something new, or trim away something that no longer works—is rooted in this process.

In many ways, reflective thinking resembles metacognition, because it involves thinking about how you think and coming to terms with how you learn. Some researchers consider the terms synonymous, and at the very least, they do overlap somewhat. Certainly, both allow you to take positive advantage of your self-knowledge, whether in terms of your general education or, more specifically, in how you hone your productivity at work.

You can do your reflection and the resulting winnowing on the fly if you have to, and many of us do. However, I consider that akin to fixing a car as and when it breaks down. It keeps the motor running for a while, but eventually, things will grind to a halt as failures cascade through the system—failures that could have been avoided if you’d spend some time reflecting on the system overall, so you could find and correct the problems point by point.

Long-term success at any business venture requires you to occasionally step away and look at the big picture, so you can then home in on the “problem children” in your workflow. If you don’t already regularly set aside some time for reflective thinking, do so. Put it on your task list as a Priority 2 item—important, but not urgent—and keep those appointments with yourself so you can locate and fix the bugs in your workflow machine.

Reflective thinking has a second component that relates to but diverges from the metacognitive one, in that it bears directly on one’s ability to adapt to the changing work environment without either freezing up or going off half-cocked. This form of reflective thinking is the opposite of multi-tasking—which doesn’t give you enough time to really think about your situation—and the antithesis of the “fools rush in” attitude of doing something just to do something.

Admittedly, when events come to a head, you can’t just stand there doing nothing; you have to make a decision, probably quite quickly. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, action beats meditation any day. That said, you need to contemplate the situation long enough to decide the best course of action. If you react too quickly, the results can be disastrous. So study the context and gather as much information as you can before you respond.

Effective communication requires the consistent use of this form of reflective thinking. If you say or write the first thing that comes to mind, especially in response to a tense situation, you may make things worse; whereas if you let things cool a bit and offer a measured reply, you have a better chance of remedying the situation.

As long as you don’t over-think things, both forms of reflective thinking positively impact your workplace productivity by smoothing out and tightening up your workflow. On the one hand, reflective thinking about your systems, processes, habits, and tasks can help you cut wastage and improve your personal efficiency. On the other, the “look before you leap” form of reflection helps you avoid unproductive situations and mistakes that might, ultimately, crash your personal productivity, at least temporarily.

So implement reflective thinking and its sibling, metacognition, in your personal action plan. Step off the merry-go-round now and again, so you can stop and think—and focus on what really matters. If it helps you get things done more efficiently and keeps you from making as many mistakes, then it’s well worth the effort.

Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R), gives pointers on keeping your schedule under control. (C) 2011 Laura Stack. All Rights Reserved. http://www.TheProductivityPro.com

” Remember self-help tapes? You used to throw them into your car [stereo] or Walkman when you were going on a lengthy trip so you could ‘grow on the go’ and hope to return home all the better for it… Well, podcasts that discuss various aspects of productivity very well could be the evolution of those self-help tapes.” — Mike Vardy, Stepcase Lifehack.

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” — Paul J. Meyer, American motivational speaker.

“None of the world’s problems will have a solution until the world’s individuals become thoroughly self-educated.” — R. Buckminster Fuller, American author, designer, and inventor.

From a productivity standpoint, the relentless march of technology allows for all sorts of new opportunities for self-education. And make no mistake: you have an obligation to constantly hone your personal productivity skills, lest you find yourself suddenly overwhelmed by your workload as it evolves to meet ever-changing workplace conditions.

Fortunately, productivity training can be as simple as sitting around and listening to other people talk—which brings us to the topic of productivity podcasts. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, you can acquire a whole host of these simple audio presentations for free, and with very little effort. Some focus on specific professions, from the creative arts to software development; but many handle general productivity topics, often in gratifying detail. A good podcast can last anywhere from a few minutes to over an hour, making them perfect for filling up your downtime gaps or drive time that you might otherwise waste. Just download them to your MP3 player, and off you go!

A quick Google search will net dozens of these little productivity programs, whereupon the problem becomes which of the many to spend your limited time listening to. Luckily, you’ve got me to round ‘em up for you. In this exciting entry, I’ll give you the scoop on five productivity podcasts I believe you’ll find both enlightening and educational.

43Folders Podcast
Although the entries appear very irregularly and it hasn’t updated in a while, Merlin Mann’s 43Folders podcast is both helpful and fun. But this podcast goes beyond mere infotainment, because while he’s a pleasure to listen to, Mann’s recommendations have a lot of merit—and he uses them personally in his self-described quest to help you “[find] the time and attention to do your best creative work.” If nothing else, Mann’s exuberance can be infectious, stirring you on to greater workplace productivity.

Accidental Creative Podcast
Todd Henry, the author of The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant on a Moment’s Notice, helms this info-packed podcast. Henry posts new episodes about twice a month, and while he doesn’t joke around as much as Merlin Mann, he’s a vibrant speaker, interesting to listen to, and manages to snag some pretty good productivity experts as guest stars. In recent months, Noah Scalin, Michael Bungay Stanier, and Mark McGuinness have made guest appearances.

The Productivity Show
This Australian-based podcast starts from a Getting Things Done perspective, but ranges widely over the entire productivity field. It draws its guests from a variety of endeavors, including popular music, and often focuses on specialty software products designed to boost productivity. There’s a two-year gap between the last two podcasts in the series, but as of August 2011 the host, Tony Goodman, appears to be back in the saddle; and in any case, the archives make for fascinating listening.

Back to Work Podcast
For those who’d like more Merlin Mann (and prefer to get your fixes more regularly), I recommend Back to Work, which Mann hosts with a fellow named Dan Benjamin. These two enjoy great chemistry, and spend their podcasts exploring topics like personal limits, communication, and solving workplace problems in a chatty conversational style. But beware: these ‘casts often last an hour or more, so they don’t lend themselves to filling small pieces of downtime; they require a bit more investment.

Get-It-Done Guy’s Quick and Dirty Tips
Stever Robbin’s brief productivity tidbits offer a sharp contrast to the Back To Work crew’s lengthier discussions. They rarely clock more than five minutes, making them just right for listening to while standing in line at the pharmacy or waiting for the traffic light to change. Robbins comes across as witty and interesting, and his to-the-point, time-saving tips make a lot of sense.

Bottom Line
Aside from staving off boredom, these and other podcasts will keep you thinking and questioning what you already know and do, making them valuable tools for refining your workplace productivity schema. It takes just a minute or two to download the individual ‘casts, and if you’ve got an iPod, you can subscribe to many of them via iTunes. So why not embrace this opportunity to better yourself?

How often do you read an email before handling it? In other words, how many times do you click on an email before it before it’s gone from your inbox? Please vote in my poll. Thanks!