I just read this quote by Lewis Eigen, uttered in 1961, which is even more profound today than it was then: "The workers and professionals of the world will soon be divided into two distinct groups. Those who will control computers and those who will be controlled by computers. It would be best for you to be in the former group."
A 2001 survey sponsored by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and conducted by Harris Interactive shows that the increased use of technology such as cell phones, beepers, email, and computers has had a tremendous impact on the feelings of overwork in
America
. The four out of ten employees who use technology often or very often for their jobs during typical non-work hours more frequently feel overworked. About one-fifth of employees in the study said they often or very often have to be accessible to their employers during typical non-work hours and non-work days, while 30 percent said they never have to be accessible. Which are more stressed? Employees who are more accessible to their employers during non-work hours feel more overworked.
Consequences of being available 24/7:
·Loss of time for loved ones, reflection, relaxation, and spiritual growth
·No “unavailable” time: intrusive
·Can violate desire for privacy
·Pleasurable activities (lunch with friends, a walk) quickly lose their pleasure when you’re “on call.”
·Feel like you have no control over your time.
Keep your cell number private. Only five people have my cell phone number: my husband, mother, day care, best friend, and assistant. If you give it to everyone, you will never have private time. Unless your job requires it, give the number to as few people as possible, so you can turn it off and protect your privacy when you choose.
Turn off the computer and television. How much time do you spend surfing the Web each day? Playing video games? Watching television? The Bureau of Labor Statistics “Time-Use Survey” from September 14, 2004, states that on an average day in 2003, men spent about 2.7 hours watching television each day and women watched 2.4 hours each day. Holy cow! If you’re among that group and reduced your television time by only five hours a week, you’d gain almost 11 days a year. What could you do with 11 days a year? Spend more time with someone you love? Think carefully the next time you reach for the remote.
Be fully present. Some people don’t feel productive when they’re not doing four things at once (such as driving, talking on the phone, drinking coffee, and putting on makeup). If this describes you, shift your focus. Avoid the tendency to multi-task at home. Be especially attentive with children for their safety. On weekends, turn off the technology completely. Resist the urge to sneak back into your office to check email “just one more time” while your family hangs out elsewhere in the house.
Draw the line somewhere. If you stayed connected to your email and cell phone all weekend, you will go to bed physically and mentally exhausted on Sunday night. Instead of starting the week recharged, alert, and efficient, you will be sluggish on Monday morning. Slow down and rest. Reinvest in yourself.
What are other ways you use to control your technology, rather than allowing it to control you?
I’m on a three-day writing retreat, composing my newest manuscript Up Your Energy! The only thing I dislike about writing is creating the citations for my endnotes—making sure they are in exactly the right format consumes a great deal of time and energy. Well. Enter the "Son of Citation Machine," a web-based tool that automatically creates the citations for you in the correct format. You choose the writing style (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.) and the format (book, website, magazine, etc.), fill in the appropriate fields presented to you, hit submit, and VIOLA! I perfectly-formatted citation you can copy and paste into your endnote description. This has saved me precious hours of time already, and I highly recommend it.
I’ve been away from the blog for 10 days now…not that you’re counting…completing my 2007 preparations. Corporate America is back to work, so my training business is back into the swing of things. And so is my diet. Not a diet as in "lose weight," but a diet as in a meal plan. After weeks of eating improperly, I’m back at it. Having a balanced diet will help you be more productive; poor eating habits can make you fuzzyheaded. The American Dietetic Association in Chicago says that people perform less efficiently on an empty stomach. Fatigue from low blood sugar levels leads to poor concentration. So your brain needs to get away from work to function optimally. You can’t expect your car to start if you don’t put gasoline in it, and your body is the same way. It’s also easier to catch colds and other viruses when your body is weak from a lack of nutrients.
If I’m the morning speaker at a conference, I always ask my client if breakfast will be served prior to my presentation. If the reply is, “Yes, we’ll have a continental breakfast,” it means sugary pastries and muffins: no eggs, fruit, yogurt, or granola. So I make my own breakfast arrangements before arriving because the last thing the client wants is a sleepy speaker.
Similarly, when I conduct on-site training in a large organization, I’m always amazed at the array of available food. Someone made cookies and someone is having a birthday. There are leftover donuts from the board meeting, vending machines full of fat and sugar products, and the bottomless pot of coffee…. No wonder it’s so hard to eat right with all these food temptations and few healthy alternatives in your workplace. It all begins with you making changes to your eating habits. Here are some tips to get started:
Have healthy alternatives on hand. One of my clients in Denver , VISA DPS, offers one of the best little employee perks I’ve seen: fresh fruit in every break room. Oranges , apples, and bananas are available for the taking. Steer clear of “sleepy foods” that have refined flour and sugar like bagels, muffins, cookies, pasta, donuts and bread items, which are common items on the catered breakfast meeting menu. Sleepy foods will “drop” you an hour later. Keep food on hand that contains healthy ingredients. Purchase the following items to keep in your desk drawer: snack boxes of raisins, dried fruit, low-fat granola bars, power bars, cans of juice, snack cans of fruit, nuts, and whole wheat bite-sized cereal pieces.
Don’t go more than six hours without eating. Personally, I never have to worry about this one. How can you forget to eat? Go longer than six hours and your blood sugar level will drop, leading to headache and fatigue.
Drop the guilt. Many people wear the “I never have time to take lunch” like a badge of honor. If you’re so pressured that you can’t break for lunch, get some perspective. Are those deadlines really life-or-death issues? If they are, so be it. Most aren’t, and if you’re panicking about some future event, ask yourself if you can’t focus on one half-hour at a time. Taking time out to feed your body is not an indulgence you can’t afford—it’s a necessity you can’t afford not to take.
Be consistent. When I’m traveling out of state for a speaking engagement, it’s tempting to order a big, fattening dessert from room service. “After all, I am working hard, I deserve it,” I might justify to myself. But when I feel sluggish and bloated the next day, it’s never worth it. Paying attention to the foods you eat will help you today…and tomorrow.
Keep track. I have a hard time remembering how much of what food group, how many calories in a serving, how much of what food is a serving, blah blah blah. So I made a chart for myself to follow that I hang on my refrigerator and check off as I go, making sure I’ve had the right amounts of the right foods to maintain a nutritious balance and weight control. You can use mine as a guideline and create your own based upon gender, calorie requirements, and weight goals:
I know many of you want to set some New Years Resolutions, but you’re resisting, because you don’t have the space of time or mind to add things to your to-do list. So let me propose some things you might consider to resolve in 2007 that aren’t tasks but MINDSETS and BEHAVIORS of personal productivity.
1. Seek to be a person of your word. Are you reliable? Can people count on you to do what you say you’re going to do? Do you have integrity and keep the deadlines you promise? What’s others’ perception of you? Do you live out what you affirm? Do you do what you complain about in others? What things do people "jokingly" say about you and your behavior?
2. Seek to model productivity. Do you have a reputation of exceptional organization, follow-up, and time management? Are people afraid to send you email, because you never respond to them? Is your desk a virtual black hole, where something coming in never goes out? Does it take you thirty minutes to find something, and do you complain when someone else can’t find it in thirty seconds?
3. Seek to control your technology. Don’t be a slave to the Send/Receive button. Discipline yourself to get work done, rather than allowing yourself to be sucked into the email vortex for four hours. Be willing to turn off your Blackberry (gasp!) for two hours to focus on a project. Forward your voice mail when you need some time to concentrate. Set your IM on "do not disturb" while you finish up an article. People are not going to die if they can’t reach you for an hour. Those are expectations you are placing on yourself, rather than others placing them on you.
4. Seek to be proactive. Wrap the present days before the birthday party (not in th car on the way). Refill your prescription several days before you take the last pill (not when you’re out of medication, forcing you to wait at the pharmacy 30 minutes before work). Find your tax receipts a month before taxes are due (not when you’re forced to file an extension). Buy greeting cards before your card box is empty (not when you have to make a special trip to the store to purchase a single card). You get the picture.
5. Seek to live in the moment. You’ve passed that magazine twenty times—you know, the one that has a great article for your dad—and keep telling yourself, “I need to send that article.” Do it now. Decide that, whenever possible, you will dispatch routine tasks immediately. If it takes less than three minutes, do it right then. Avoid saying “I’ll do that later,” as in I’ll take that off the wall later.Just walk down, get a screwdriver, and do it.Strive for NOW.
6. Seek to control yourself. If you say to yourself, "I probably shouldn’t be doing this right now," you’re probably right. Are you checking your ebay listings incessantly? Are you surfing the Internet, shopping for personal affects, when you should be posting to your blog? Are you watching several hours of television a day? Do you stare out the window and space out when you’re disinterested in a task? Do you spend too much time gossiping when grabbing a "quick" cup of coffee in the break room? If you’re honest with yourself, how many hours could you save every day by being more disciplined? And could you leave the office earlier with that saved time?
7. Seek to plug time leaks. Where do you experience frustration throughout the day? Are your staff meetings a waste of time? Does a certain co-worker pop in and bother you several times a day about nothing in particular? Have you stopped delegating a task to an assistant because it hasn’t been done correctly in the past? Have you provided the appropriate training? Do you say anything about things that waste your time? Many people seethe in silence about the things that are bothering them the most. Decide this year you are going to be proactive and try to influence changes in others or processes.
8. Seek to value yourself. Your body is the most prized possession you own. Are you taking care of it with proper exercise? Do you get enough sleep? What kind of food are you putting into this priceless treasure? Do you hold rigidly to every appointment with others but cancel your own doctor, dentist, and eye appointments when someone wants that slot? Have you had an annual physical and received the proper tests and checkups? Are you a physically active role model for your children? Drink water. Stop smoking. You know exactly what you’re doing to yourself that is lowering your personal productivity.
9. Seek to walk your talk. You say your family is important to you. Can people tell you value them by the way you spend your time? You say your significant other is the most important thing in the world. How much time have you spent spending time with them versus spending time working? Yousay your spirituality is important, but how much time do you spend praying, reading, meditating, attending services, volunteering, or whatever reflects your beliefs? Is it merely an outside facade? If you say your health is important, how do you feel when you eat an entire pizza by yourself and watch five straight hours of television—consistently? Say and do the same thing. Be congruent. Or just stop saying it and be yourself.
10. Seek a positive attitude. If your life is filled with turbulence, challenge yourself to change your perception.Are you playing to a self-induced drama?Life isn’t as crazy as some people make it out to be.What might happen if you refocus your attention to positive, proactive experiences and open your thoughts to opportunities instead of problems? You are where your attention is. If working late is a habit, you might tend to slack off your pace. You know there’s no rush, you’re not as focused, and you don’t push yourself or prioritize your work as well.You waste time on things that don’t need to be done and convince yourself that you need to work all those hours, and then complain about it to others.We can create our own self-fulfilling prophecies, so watch the stinking thinking.
Wishing you a happy, healthy, and productive 2007!
Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.
I believe this is, indeed, a truth. Take vacation planning, for example. Countless business people in my seminars have told me their schedules are so hectic, they can never fit in a vacation. That’s the wrong approach. You should first schedule the vacation, then work around it. You will NEVER miraculously find a block of time on your calendar in which to rest and spend time with your family. You have to make it happen. Once it’s on your calendar and PAID FOR (book the cruise, put the deposit on the Club Med vacation, etc.) it’s amazing how you can move heaven and earth to make that a reality.
So in the the New Year, decide what you are going to commit to and START. It doesn’t even have to be big. You don’t have to have all these grand project plans broken down by the day, and objectives set so high you’ll give up in two weeks. Take tiny steps toward your bold goals.
For example, I’ve committed to participating in the Danskin Triathlon in Denver on July 14-15, 2007. Nope, I’ve never been in a Triathlon. But Santa brought me a new XBox 360 program called Yourself! Fitness, and I’m just going to take it one step at a time, without locking myself into a set of unrealistic exercise expectations. Now that this is on my calendar, I’ve commited to it, and I’m taking steps toward it, I know that it will happen. That’s the power of starting.
Now that I’ve put it out there, I’m waiting for Providence to find a workout partner in Highlands Ranch who’s interested in training with me or anyone in Denver willing to meet me at the Triathlon. Know anyone?
