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

With a finite amount of time available, the temptation is to go faster and work more hours if you want to get more done. But productivity isn’t just about squeezing more into your day: it’s also about reducing the "speed bumps" — things like poor administration, red tape, bureaucracy, and unclear priorities — that waste your time. Here are a few ways you can streamline that reduction process.

1. Eliminate the causes of most problems, and avoid crises. There’s a difference between an emergency and a "crisis" that occurs because something wasn’t done. If you delay something long enough, you’re contributing to a future crisis.

2. Control and prevent interruptions. To avoid getting bogged down by interruptions while still managing to stay informed, establish conditional interruption criteria, set aside check-in times, or create signals to show when deadlines are imminent and you can only be interrupted for emergencies.

3. Handle drop-in visitors and co-workers effectively. Controlling time taken up by visitors requires both courtesy and good judgment. Be honest and assertive about how much time, if any, you have for a particular interruption.

4. Refuse requests you don’t have time for. Just say no if something doesn’t fit into your schedule. Set boundaries, so you don’t have to feel guilty about being the bad guy — and stick to your guns.

5. Recognize and eliminate personal shortcomings, especially if they lead to decreased departmental and organizational productivity. Your company’s in business to help customers and make money, not to tolerate your idiosyncrasies.

6. Avoid spending time in irrelevant, unnecessary meetings. If you’re calling a meeting, carefully choose the best time to hold it. In any meeting, help the group stay on track. Find ways to avoid some meetings altogether: e.g., by sending an alternate, by having someone tape it, or by leaving early. 

7. Eliminate unnecessary responsibilities or tasks that belong to someone else. Keep a time log so you can see whether you need to bring in extra help, or where you’re wasting time so you can plug productivity leaks.

8. Get rid of everything you don’t need or use and live simply. Simplify your life so you’ll have more energy to spend at the office. Among other things, get rid of unnecessary junk, learn to live within your means, and reduce your debt.

9. Delegate properly. Don’t do tasks that others are capable of doing. Improper delegation is one of the primary symptoms of overwork. Productive people know how to get help and use it effectively.

10. Keep socializing during work hours to an appropriate level. While some socializing at work is productive, it can quickly lose its value, especially when you enter the realm of gossip or negativism. Putting limits around socializing is an important way to recover time for more significant things.

Speed bumps are inevitable in most work environments, but you don’t need to let them slow you down and siphon off all your time and energy. In fact, it’s wise to invest a little effort here and there in order to get rid of them. By eliminating speed bumps, you create the space to accomplish the important.

© 2007 Laura Stack.  Laura Stack is a personal productivity expert, professional speaker, and author who helps busy workers Leave the Office Earlier® with Maximum Results in Minimum Time™. She is the president of The Productivity Pro®, Inc., a time management training company in Denver, Colorado, that caters to high-stress industries. Laura’s newest productivity book, The Exhaustion Cure (Broadway Books), hits bookstores in May 2008.  Laura is a spokesperson for Microsoft, 3M, and Day-Timers®, Inc and has been featured on the CBS Early Show, CNN, and the New York Times. Her clients include Cisco, Sunoco, KPMG, Nationwide, and MolsonCoors.  Contact her at www.TheProductivityPro.com. 

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Its About Time

Pareto is very busy in the sales world.  You know the 80-20 rule.  In this case, it means that only 20% of salespeople spend 80% of their time on selling activities.  Are you in this group?  See if you recognize yourself.  If not, here’s how you can join the group.      

Put your fingers on it fast.  Laura Stack is a professional speaker and author of Leave the Office Earlier® and Find More Time.  She sees several time wasters that cost salespeople valuable selling time.  One of the biggest time wasters is lacking a system to track client history.  The system should include notes on conversations that took place, with whom, and when they took place.  Stack says, “To be truly organized you should be able to have a prospect call you out of the blue and you should be able to immediately refer back to a conversation that took place years ago.”  Without the system, you can’t be effective. You may even frustrate clients who have to repeat themselves and might have to rely on facts that aren’t correct.   Stack uses ACT! to take notes while talking with clients on the phone.  Many salespeople are unaware that Outlook can be used to track history.  The journal feature allows you to take notes and attach those notes to the contact.  Stack adds that you can use a manual folder system if you prefer. What is essential is to have a system to aggregate and retrieve client history. 

There’s an unexpected time waster—the BlackBerry.  It’s hard to use one for taking notes because you can’t type that fast.  Stack sees salespeople taking notes on scraps of paper, place mats and even their hands. That haphazard system makes them more disorganized.  She suggests, “Understand the features and benefits and decide if it’s for you.”  It’s important once you do take notes to enter them into your system as soon as possible so they don’t pile up.

Get to work fast.  Another time waster is when salespeople lack a plan or poorly plan their daily activities.  It starts by having a system to schedule follow up tasks like telephone calls.  If you tell a customer you will call in two weeks, you must follow through.  Some salespeople think they can remember everything they promise. That’s far too taxing. Instead, a technology supplied or manual system works well to keep your promises.  She says, “People will work with someone who is reliable more than someone they like.”  Some inefficient salespeople begin each day thinking, “Who am I supposed to call today?”  Stack says that when you come to work each day you should already know whom you’re supposed to call and what you’re supposed to do.  If you work in inside sales, your planning can be the last task of the previous day.  If you do a lot of driving, a week out is sufficient and more time is required for air travelers.  In addition, at the beginning of each month Stack recommends reviewing activities for the coming month.

Work on selling.  Stack sees many salespeople wasting time on activities that take them away from selling. One activity is constant email checking which she suggests reducing to once per day. She sees salespeople who take notes on spiral notebooks only to waste time flipping back through the notebooks to locate a particular piece of customer information.  She often hears complaints about completing reports that are time wasters. Yet when she asks, “What have you done about it?” she often gets the response, “Nothing.”  Stack reports, “If leadership knew, they would care as it’s directly impacting the profitability of the sales force.” 

You may think you don’t have time to plan your selling.  You really do.  Stack says, “Organization is an enabler. Once it’s in place, it allows you to make more sales. It’s a launching pad to reach more sales revenue.”  Sounds like it’s time to take the leap and join the 20% that are selling more effectively. 

Maura Schreier-Fleming works with business and sales professionals on skills and strategies so they can sell more and be more productive at work.  She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results which is available at www.BestatSelling.com.  She founded her company Best@Selling in 1997.  You can reach her at 972.380.0200 or info@Bestatsellling.com. 

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Pretty much anybody you ask will tell you they’re pressed for time. There just aren’t enough hours to get it all done, yadda yadda yadda.  So we prioritize, streamline, and simplify.  You can improve your efficiency until you’re blue in the face, not to mention very tightly wound, but you still aren’t addressing one of the biggest time and energy wasters in your day: incoming information.  As my 12-year-old daughter, Meagan, would text on her phone: “TMI” (translation: Too Much Information).

If the 21st century has brought us anything, it is WAY too much information. You can watch several channels full of cable news 24 hours a day. You can surf the internet on any topic until you can’t see straight. Most people could heat their home with the amount of junk mail they receive on a continuous basis.  Imagine the time and productivity lost just sorting though it all!

So why not join me in 2008 and put yourself on a low-information diet? Make this the year that you say “NO MORE!” to the endless onslaught of time-wasting, productivity-eating, stress-inducing STUFF coming at you.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Skip the news. I haven’t regularly watched the news or read a newspaper in fifteen years. Some people are shocked when they hear me say that.  But I’m shocked when people confess how much time they waste each day reading their latest blog postings.  Think about what you really gain by being a news junkie.  To be honest, most of the news out there just isn’t the kind of thing that really impacts my family, my business, or me. And quite frankly, a big chunk of what gets reported will do little more than make me feel angry or even depressed.  So if your job or your natural sense of curiosity don’t prohibit it, consider a very low-news diet. Believe me: my selective ignorance has never caused me a single problem and allows me to focus my energy and attention.

Never meet in person to give information. What’s the number one complaint most people have when it comes to office productivity? Meetings!  Why do we do it to ourselves?  Do we really leave with the decisions that made spending the time worthwhile?  Or are we just regurgitating information that’s already been provided elsewhere?  Does the speaker stand there and read the PowerPoint slides he just emailed to you?  Hello?  If you already have the slides—you could have just read them yourself.  Phone conferences are even worse: they take much longer than an in-person meeting, because participants are checking email and fiddling with their computers.  Create a pact with your team members or department mates to never again have an in-person meeting or phone conference where you are simply conveying information.  Put it on the intranet or compile it into a single email that goes out once a week.  Keep the high cost of the in-person meeting at ebay when the purpose is a simple transfer of low-value information.

Use the phone strategically.  What about meetings with people outside of your office—vendors and clients, for example?  How many times have you spent weeks trying to set up an appointment, only to have it rescheduled at the last minute? Once the meeting actually happens, it costs you a huge piece of your day. If you have a thirty minute meeting that requires an hour’s worth of driving, decide if the time would be better spent with a phone call. Are you really getting better information in person?  Nine times out of ten these meetings could be handled in a tiny fraction of the time, if only they were replaced with a quick phone call. Skip the commute, keep the gas money, and save yourself a ton of time. You may even find that your clients view your respect for THEIR time as refreshing and will appreciate it to no end.

The Mailman Knocks One Hundred Times. The U.S Postal Service does not come running to your home, ring your bell, and hand you one piece of mail at a time, multiple times a day.  It’s batched and delivered once.  If only we could follow the same principle with electronic mail.  I’m not recommending you only check your in-box once a day—I believe that’s unrealistic—but you should still try to cut down.  You can’t focus on a task requiring concentration with your in-box open.  I process my e-mail just a handful of times each day. It’s easy to be in the habit of checking the instant you hear that little ding, but think about what you’re doing to yourself.  What percentage of incoming email is important?  10 percent?  25 percent?  Two percent?  If the majority of incoming email is unimportant and represents information you don’t need (there are donuts in the cafeteria), why would you stop working on the most important task of the day to see if one makes the cut?  You’re letting everyone else dictate your day to you by immediately stopping your productive work and redirecting your attention to an e-mail that is probably not that important anyway.  Then you need to refocus your attention and try to get back on track with whatever you were doing.  After the 50-200 emails you receive each day, just think how many times per hour your productive activities must come to a grinding halt.  Maybe—just maybe—you’re doing it, on purpose, as an excuse to NOT to have to do the hard work you should be doing.

Make the decision NOW.  Many decisions are put off because people are waiting for more information.  How much do you need?  Sometimes enough is good enough.  You will never be able to analyze all the in’s and out’s of every decision, and there will always be more information out there you didn’t consider.  Gather enough information and make the best decision you can with the information you have.  Things can always change.  My father always told me to take initiative and ask forgiveness, not permission.  In the early days of my career, I just handled things for my managers without asking.  If they were gone, I answered for them.  Sometimes it was the wrong answer to be sure, but I’ve always been praised for trying to save my boss some time and force some movement, rather than being berated for the wrong action.  I wish more people would just get some brass and DECIDE.  Stop getting approvals from a million people to cover your backside.  You’re making everyone around you crazy.  Sometimes it is much more efficient to go with the information you have, make the WRONG decision, and make adjustments if necessary, than to waste time being indecisive.

Empower your people. Eric Hoffer, the late American social philosopher, once said, “Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.” My husband and COO, John, has asked me several times if I’d like to learn to use the postage machine in our office.  I’ve always staunchly declined.  I have absolutely no desire to learn how to use it.  I enjoy being purposefully ignorant about that machine, since I have no business running it.  When my assistant, Lisa (who sits near me by design), casually asks me a question on the postal machine, I can honestly say, “I have no idea.  You’ll have to get with someone else.”  My staff needs to learn to be problem solving people and handle challenges they experience in the areas they’ve been charged to run, just as I do.  They can’t handle my areas of responsibility, and I refuse to handle theirs—and I unabashedly hold them accountable for their own results.  I’m happy to get them training or pay for assistance, but you should never do those things personally that can be done by someone else at a lower pay level.  You’ll kill yourself.  Give your people the authority they need to make decisions and get things done. If you don’t, you’ll find they consistently create more work for you, not less.

Cut, cut, cut.  Don’t lose your focus as the year goes on.  Cut, streamline, and reduce.  Cancel magazine subscriptions.  Get rid of the junk you haven’t used in a year.  Let all calls you don’t recognize go to voicemail.  Unsubscribe from all newsletters you haven’t specifically requested.  Go out and find things you determine you need to buy, rather than having salespeople feed you information about more things you’ll buy but won’t use.  If your clients keep asking you for the same information over and over again, put it on your website and let new clients know in advance where to find it.  These are just a few examples about how you can deal with less information.  Hope you lose lots of weight on your low-information diet and make 2008…GREAT!

Make it a productive day! ™

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By studying the game of football, you can learn a lot about how to set and achieve goals and spend your time more productively.  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!

© 2007 Laura Stack.  Laura Stack is a personal productivity expert, professional speaker, and author who helps busy workers Leave the Office Earlier® with Maximum Results in Minimum Time™. She is the president of The Productivity Pro®, Inc., a time management training company that caters to high-stress industries. Laura is the bestselling author of the books Find More Time (2006) and Leave the Office Earlier (2004).  Her newest productivity book, The Exhaustion Cure (Broadway Books), hits bookstores in May 2008.  Laura is a spokesperson for Microsoft, 3M, and Day-Timers®, Inc and has been featured on the CBS Early Show, CNN, and the New York Times. Her clients include Cisco Systems, Sunoco, KPMG, Nationwide, and 3M.  Contact her at www.TheProductivityPro.com. 

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It always amuses me how many people get inspired to get organized come the New Year.  It’s as if 1/1 somehow had a magical connotation.  What was wrong with 4/16 or 11/8?  For whatever reason—POOF all of a sudden you’re ready.  But, hey, at least it’s getting done, so bring it on.

What you don’t want to happen, however, is a massive shopping trip to buy bins, baskets, gadgets, etc., if you have no plan on how to use them and implement your system.  Your new organizational tools can now create more piles and even more clutter.  Clutter is not always a problem that can be solved by bins.  That can make it even worse.

Here’s how I would systematically declutter an area.  Get five sturdy boxes.  Label them:

1.     Put Away—items that are out of place and should be put away

2.     Give Away—items that are in good repair that you no longer want, need, or use.  Give to charity, sell, or swap items

3.     Store—items that are going to be used again in a reasonable amount of time, but you don’t use on a regular basis

4.     Toss—items that are broken, old, worn, or in bad repair

5.     Belongs here—will go back into the room, drawer, closet, or cabinet you’re organizing

THEN (and only then) determine your storage solutions for item 3.

See my website for hundreds of articles on improving your personal productivity.  Better yet, subscribe to my free monthly newsletter.

Then take one item out at a time and put it into the appropriate box.  If you’re going to organize for 1 hour, set an egg timer for 50 minutes.  When it buzzes, use the last few minutes of your organizing session to put items away, put the charity items in the car, throw out the trash, or put boxes into storage.  The time investment made in getting organized will repay you over and over in reduced stress, decreased frustration, and more time to spend with friends and family.

The New York Times has a great article on this called A Clutter Too Deep for Mere Bins and Shelves, which reports on the health effects of disorganization.

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I’m not a big believer in New Year’s resolutions.  Frustrated by bad habits like smoking, overeating, being disorganized, or not exercising, many of us vow to change and make a New Year’s resolution.  "This year, I’ll walk on my treadmill three times a week," we pledge, and by May, it’s gathering dust down in the basement.  Defeated, many people give up further attempts to change. 

Most of us don’t have a clue how to make a reasonable resolution, which is why most of us fail to keep the ones we make. We set high goals for ourselves, and then wonder why we never attain them. So we either stop setting goals (never a good choice), or make resolutions that are ridiculously easy to keep.

Making a decision to change just because it’s New Year’s Day isn’t enough to keep you motivated for * long. *  Lasting change means being prepared to make sacrifices.  Are you truly willing to make the effort to kick a bad habit and start a healthy one?  If so, you’ll need to develop a plan of action and make that plan a priority.

Here are a few tips to get you started:

1.     Conduct an "annual review" before the end of this month to determine the things that you meant to do, change, or accomplish by the end of 2007 that didn’t get done.  After you’ve completed the review, take a moment to pause, step back, and appreciate all the things you *have* accomplished in 2007, and my hope is that this will motivate you to aspire higher in 2008.

2.     Select a *few* (two or three) things that you’d like to change or accomplish in 2008. 

3.     Word your goals carefully.  Let’s say your resolution is to relax more in the coming year. Try not to think of it as "This year I am going to relax." That’s a stress-inducer waiting to happen! It forces you into thinking of the resolution as something you must do, not something you want to do. Try to make it sound a little gentler: "This year I’m going to explore different ways of relaxing." It also suggests more of a plan—you’ll fulfill the resolution by experimenting with relaxation techniques. The first resolution sounds as if you’re going to force yourself to relax by sheer willpower.

4.     Write your list and put "due dates" next to each.  Then break them down by the month that you will begin working on them.  If you wish to start an exercise program, plan what kind of exercise you will do, when, and how often.   

5.     Transfer your due dates to your daily plan or calendar, making that "appointment" with yourself just as important as one with another person.  Aren’t your needs just as, if not more, important than others?

6.     Create reminder cards you can post around the house, on your bathroom mirror, on your dashboard in your car, etc., to continually remind yourself about your goals.

Take small steps toward your goals, every day or week.  If you can do just a little bit to get going, soon you’ll feel the positive effects of the change.  And that little bit of change can lead to long-term healthy habits that last far beyond New Year’s Day.

Make it a productive day! ™

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