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

When you promise someone you will complete a task by a certain timeframe, do you do it?  Or does the deadline slip past once again, with you muttering to yourself, “Stupid! What is wrong with you?”  Now you aren’t able to focus on anything, always aware of this dark cloud hanging over your head.  Guilt sucks the energy right out of you!  Instead, decide today that you are going 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?  Seek to control yourself.  If you say to yourself, "I probably shouldn’t be doing this right now," you’re probably right.  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?  If tomorrow, you arrived at work and didn’t get a cup of coffee…didn’t get on the Internet…didn’t talk to your friend…didn’t get your new blog postings…didn’t get sucked into email for 90 minutes…what could you use that energy on instead that will made you proud and give you a boost of satisfaction for the entire day?  When you finally complete the task you’ve been putting off, the freedom from the stress it was causing you is its own reward.  Good things begin to flow into the space the negative guilt used to occupy.  You’re no longer paralyzed, and you get your energy back.

Not only can Western society’s work ethic be rigid, but so can our clothing.  There’s a reason that casual Friday was invented—it’s because we finally followed our intuition that uncomfortable clothing restricts our energy flow!  In the 70’s movie Tootsie, Dustin Hoffman dresses up as a woman to get a job.  While he’s donning women’s apparel he says something akin to, “Who’s the misogynist bastard who invented high heels?!”  In my opinion, high heels and bras are tangible proof of evil.  Wearing high heels on a regular basis can cause serious foot problems such as hammertoes, bunions, corns, calluses, Achilles problems, growth of nerve tissue called neuromas, and even stress fractures.[i]  And that’s just your feet!  High heels also cause knee osteoarthritis; they place abnormal stress on the front and back of the knee, increasing pressure by 22 to 26 percent.  Although wide heels are slightly better for your feet, they’re just as bad for your knees.[ii]  And that’s not to mention that high heels also cause lower back problems, poor posture and spinal misalignment.  Save high heels for special occasions—such as attending the Oscars. 

As for bras, if you work in a home office and put on a bra every morning, you need to have your head checked! As a matter of fact, the more hours a woman wears a bra, the higher her chances are of developing breast cancer; that’s because bras restrict circulation throughout the lymph system.[iii]  Men have it rough, too.  Ties can choke.  My husband will attest that wearing a suit jacket when it is 90 degrees outside is nothing short of torture.   

Being comfortable doesn’t mean you have to look like a slob.  Try going without a tie; just wear an oxford with a suit jacket if you need to be more presentable for a meeting.    Wear comfortable dress shoes.  Make sure your pants aren’t too tight, especially around the waist.  This can constrict blood flow and cause headaches.  The decreasing levels of estrogen during menopause shifts women’s weight from the thighs and hips to the waist.  Likewise, the decline in testosterone caused by andropause concentrates men’s weight in the abdomen.[iv]  Although these natural mid-life processes can be overcome with diet and exercise, be realistic.  Your body changes as you get older; dress accordingly.

When I first started my professional speaking business in 1992, I did everything myself.  I hired my first employee in 1998, and after six years of flying solo, it was admittedly hard to let go.  But I knew if the business was to grow, I was going to have to stop going to the post office, making copies, and getting the copy machine repaired.  As you change positions in your company, your level of delegation must shift if you are to have any time to yourself.  You must become a leader instead of a doer and get work accomplished through other people.  If you try to do too many jobs at once, it’s like spinning china plates on sticks: the longer you keep it up, the greater the odds of a crash.  The great philosopher Virgil said long ago, “We are all not capable of everything.”  Never do anything that can be done just as well by someone who is paid less.  If there is another person who can handle something you’re doing, stop doing it.  If someone can do the job 80% as well as you can, let that person do it!  We mistakenly believe only we can do it correctly.  Be open to new, innovative ways of tackling projects, and you will be pleased with the results.  And you can focus your time on higher-value activities. 

You should consider delegating the following types of work:

·        Decisions you make most frequently and repetitively

·        Assignments that will add variety to routine work

·        Functions you dislike

·        Work that will provide experience for employees

·        Tasks that someone else is capable of doing

·        Activities that will make a person more well-rounded

·        Tasks that will increase the number of people who can perform critical assignments

·        Opportunities to use and reinforce creative talents

·        Recurring matters

·        Minor decisions

·        Time-consuming details

You should always retain broader management duties such as overall planning, policy making, goal setting, and budget supervision, as well as work that involve confidential information or supervisor-subordinate relations. Make sure to monitor work, so you don’t expend a lot of energy re-doing things.  I had an employee who was supposedly working a 40-hour week, when I checked the phone company logs, it turned out he was working for another company on the side and only working 20 hours a week. Don’t be blind and assume even your "star" employee is giving you his/her best. I had another employee who was saying negative things about our company on myspace.com. Be tech savvy and learn how to monitor what sites are visited.

I’m quoted in the Alabama Press-Register in an article by Kaija Wilkinson called "Express Yourself," discussing productivity in office cublicles or "workstations" as they are called today.  She discusses how neat they should be, configuration, use of personal items, and design.  Pretty good article.  I come across as a bit of a neat freak, so I wanted to provide some additional commentary on why I think it’s a good idea to maintain a neat workstation.

Order is your ability to sort, filter, and process information effectively. It’s also your ability to FIND what you want, when you want it. It’s how tidy your work areas look, inside and out.

I believe a messy office is a career detriment. I can’t tell you how many negative comments I hear, such as, “Joan’s office and her work are so sloppy.” People equate messy desks with messy work. Not fair, I know, but perception is reality. My HR clients have flat-out told me: “I’d promote someone with a tidy office over someone with a messy office any day.”

A seminar participant wrote, “My time management abilities are fair but could certainly be better. I interface with several agencies and outside individuals on a daily basis, which tends to keep me moving from issue-to-issue. With a little more organization, I could be more productive.”

Some people try to justify their disorganization by appearing as if they are disorganized on purpose. They say things like, “I have a great system. I just let things go and if it’s really important, someone will call about it.” Others tell me they have no choice but to be disorganized. One woman told me in defense, “But I’m CREATIVE, you see. Creative people are naturally disorganized.” I wouldn’t necessarily agree. I’ve known many creative, right-brained people who were highly organized; they simply had to learn different systems. You don’t have to be creative and disorganized, if you are willing to learn and the pain is bad enough.

Let’s make another important distinction: “Neat” does not necessarily equal “organized.” Let’s say, for example, that someone you care about is coming to your home or office, and your desk or dining room table is so full (and has been for so long) that you don’t even remember what the surface looks like. You sweep your arm across the surface, dumping all the contents into a container, throwing it under the bed or in the closet. You have “neat,” yes, but do you have “organized”? Of course not. You could be a neat, disorganized person. Or you can be organized and not neat, but you will experience several problems.

An organized office:

·        Saves time. In my experience, the average professional spends at least 30 minutes a day just looking for things. Many people work longer hours to compensate for this wasted time.

·        Allows you to focus. When you are surrounded by clutter, it’s difficult to concentrate on the task before you. Most people have 1-2 weeks of work on their desks right now, assuming they didn’t get anything else to do today.

Allows others to find things in your office. It’s frustrating for coworkers to locate items in your office when you go on vacation or stay home sick.

·        Lowers your stress levels. People with a cluttered office report having anxiety, and being overwhelmed and frustrated. Your environment directly affects your moods, attitudes, and emotions. Stress-related illnesses cost the U.S. $300 billion per year.

·        Distills the important from the unimportant. Without a system, you will deal with large amounts of extraneous material. Just as we only wear a small percentage of our clothes, we only use a small percentage of information that crosses our desks.

·        Could possibly help in career progression. I hear many negative comments about messy desks.  People tend to equate sloppy desks with sloppy work. Not entirely fair, I know, but that’s the reality. My HR clients have flat-out told me: “I’d promote someone with a tidy office over someone with a messy office any day.”

An organized desk sends this important message to other people: I’ve got it together. Visualize your desk in your mind. What does it “say” to others? That you are overwhelmed by work? That you are disorganized and therefore not too competent? That you obviously have trouble making decisions, since you can’t decide what to do with anything? The next time someone walks over to your cluttered desk and makes a “joke” about the mess, you might want to listen. Regardless of what excuses you offer, your desk says a great deal. Your newly organized desk will now say that you are professional, competent, decisive, efficient, productive, and in control. No matter what you’ve seen on coffee cups, a clean desk is NOT the sign of an empty mind.

I love sitting in first class on an airplane.  By policy, I travel coach to my speaking engagements.  Occasionally, I will earn enough upgrade certificates in my mileage program to upgrade myself to first class, even though I’m only paying for a coach ticket.  I feel blessed each time I get to sit there and would expect others feel the same way. But today I had a seatmate who complained about everything—the seats, the food, and the lack of choices on the menu.  Excuse me?  A lack of choices?  The people in coach are jealous that you even have food!  And this guy’s complaining about sitting in first class.  Are you that way?  Are you complaining in first class?  I give training seminars at an accounting firm in Denver that has received the Best Place to Work in Denver award—for three years in a row.  After the busy tax season has ended, the partners of the firm regularly hand out goodies: extra days of vacation, a $100 gift card, a video iPod, etc., but unbelievably, one woman in my seminar was complaining.  I couldn’t believe my ears!  I told her she had absolutely no idea how spoiled she was to work there and she should count her blessings.  Every time I’m there to teach, the firm orders food for the class participants, and there are free sodas, coffee, and tea every day.  A classic example of complaining in first class. What would happen if you stopped complaining about what you don’t have and start counting up all the things you do have?  At the University of California at Riverside, psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky used grant money from the National Institutes of Health to study different kinds of happiness boosters. One tool was the gratitude journal, a diary in which subjects write down things for which they are thankful. Lyubomirsky found that conscientiously counting your blessings once a week will significantly increase your overall satisfaction with life over a period of six weeks, whereas a control group that did not keep journals had no such gain.  At the University of California at David, psychologist Robert Emmons found that people who keep gratitude journals improve physical health, raise energy levels and report fewer physical symptoms. "The ones who benefited most tended to elaborate more and have a wider span of things they’re grateful for," he notes. So get out a piece of paper and write down all the wonderful things in your life.  Stop complaining in first class!  And maybe, just maybe, you’ll have more energy to devote to productive pursuits rather than negativity.

Can you maintain your productivity all day?  Even if you do start out the day with plenty of zest, you may eventually feel that energy slipping away. You can be zipping along just fine, then—Boom!—you hit what sports enthusiasts call "The Wall." How well you handle your energy budget will determine whether you break through the Wall and move on to the rest of your day—or just bounce off and slog through the mental mud.

There’s no magic pill to help you increase your endurance or skyrocket your stamina. If you Google “increase your stamina” and “increase your endurance,” you’ll keep coming upon exercise tips (at least you will once you get past all the ads for vitamins and, yes, magic pills). There’s a good reason for that. Much of your ability to make it through the entire day is based on your physical well being. Simply put, you can’t keep going for long if you don’t feel good, so it’s vital that you use maintain good health—which means exercising regularly, eating right, staying hydrated, and getting sufficient sleep. Supplements like vitamins and minerals may also help increase your energy endurance.  However, avoid ingesting too much coffee and other stimulants, since they’ll only pick you up for a little while before slamming you back down.

If you want to increase your endurance and stamina, and stay alert longer, practice these tips on a daily basis:

·        Exercise vigorously, to increase cardiovascular activity. This will help you burn fat and build energy-producing lean muscle mass. You should perform at least two cardio workouts per week.

·        Eat a healthy mix of high-energy proteins and carbohydrates, but not so much that it turns to fat and drags you down.

·        Don’t skip meals, especially breakfast.

·        Eat five or six small meals a day.

·        Drink your minimum daily requirement of water. Remember, there’s a calculator available at http://www.bottledwater.org/public/hydcal/input1.html to help you estimate how much you need.

·        Cut back on all stimulants and caffeinated drinks, including coffee, sodas, and tea. Decaffeinated herbal tea is still good, especially green tea, which can help speed up your metabolism a tad.

Following these tips won’t necessarily result in an immediate increase in your energy endurance, but after a few days, you will start to notice a difference. As with everything else you do, you’ll need to work on increasing your endurance a bit at a time.

I enjoyed this post about how to be more productive with your Crackberry, I mean Blackberry.

Especially true is Nakagawa’s comment, "…the people who are the most productive don’t seem to have them." 

I’m sure you have your beefs about Blackberry usage in your organization (or by your spouse, for that matter).  If you were king or queen of the world, what "rules" would you create about Blackberry usage?  In addition to the 10 the author lists, I’ll add the following from personal experience:

1.  Do not pretend you are listening to someone by brainlessly mumbling "uh-huh" while you are answering an email on your Crackberry.

2.  Pay attention to the presenter during training sessions rather than using the time as your personal Crackberry play time.

3.  Use codes in the subject line when emailing, so Crackberry recipients can get your message without having to open it: "Do you know what the June budget figure is for professional services? END"  (AR = Action Required, END = End of message, LONG = read later etc.)

4.  Set your Crackberry to delete your email off the server when you delete it from your handheld (so you don’t have to do it twice).

5.  Turn your Crackberry off when you are standing in line for the Matterhorn at Disney World with your poor children tugging at your arm.

What are your rules?