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

The results from the Gallup Organization’s annual Work and Education survey show the average American averages 46 minutes commuting to and from work in a typical day.  If you take out those who work at home, the average increases to 48.1 minutes per day.  However, if you have above-average income and work more than 40 hours a week, your commute is greater than the average, and so is your stress level.  Since the advice "move, earn less, and work fewer hours" doesn’t work, let me instead give you some ideas to make your commute more productive, efficient, and stress-free:

Use the phone. Now I’m one of those people who get aggravated while people are chatting away on their cell phones while driving…generally because they’re not, well, driving. Many people have no idea how slowly they’re going while they’re on the phone. Plus talking on the phone has proven to be unsafe, and many states have passed ordinances against it. Often, you’ll see someone pulled over to the side of the road to make a call.

That being said, you can get a hands-free phone installed, which uses a mounted phone and speakers. Many phones, like the Treo 650, use Bluetooth technology, which allows you to wear a wireless earpiece and talk hands-free. By using these safe options, you can still use your phone to call clients or catch up with friends and family while still keeping your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.

Clear your brain. Basically, use your morning commute as a warm up to your day. On the way to work, do whatever helps you focus and arrive at your desk raring to go. For mass transit travelers, that may mean reading the daily paper with a cup of coffee. Drivers may like to listen to news radio for their daily summary.

Bond with your family. While driving together to “away” games or a relative’s house, you can sing songs, quiz your child on his spelling words, play “I spy” or another travel game, or listen to stories. When your eyes are on the road, your child may feel more comfortable than usual bringing up a touchy subject, so be available to just listen as well.

Shift your schedule. If you frequently get stuck in traffic, consider changing your schedule slightly to hit the road slightly before or after the rush, and use the time on either side to organize your day.

Use a voice recorder. I knew a professional speaker who wrote an entire book by talking while driving. She clipped a microphone on to her shirt and talked into a recording device (there are many available). Then she simply had those tapes transcribed, hired an editor to clean it up, and printed it at www.instantpublisher.com. She has published a book at the rate of about one a year using this method. Other people get voice recorders (Radio Shack sells a good one) with several minutes of tape and dictate their letters while on the go. If you’re blessed enough to have an assistant, he or she can type your letters from the recording. Some cell phones also have recorders built into them, so you can make your to-do list or remind yourself of things as you think of them. Do NOT, under any circumstances, attempt to write while driving unless you’re completely stopped.

Listen to books on tape. My favorite place to eat breakfast is a restaurant called Cracker Barrel…hash brown casserole, grits, and honey ham, baked apples…oh, sorry! The closest one to me is an hour’s drive away, so I don’t get to frequent it often enough because of traffic. But if you’re lucky enough to have one in your hometown or pass a sign for one along the road, STOP. You’ll notice that Cracker Barrel restaurants are always built right off an interstate exit. One of the founders’ core strategies was to make them easy on, easy off from the interstate. You could get to the next one on a tank of gas, refuel, grab a bite, buy what you need (and what you don’t need) in their little store, and get back on the road. Cracker Barrel has also came up with a clever book-on-tape program for frequent travelers. The next time you visit this restaurant, look for the spinning rack of tapes. You can purchase one audio book and, for a nominal fee, trade it in for another, anytime, at any other Cracker Barrel. Or you can get tapes and CDs from your local library before you go on a trip. You’ll notice that your perception of drive time is greatly reduced when you’re listening to an audio book. Your brain gets engaged in the story and time flies by. I have a friend who was planning an international trip, so she listened to French language tapes while in the car. Within three months, she learned enough French to get around nicely while there.

Carpool with your spouse. If you work roughly in the same area, hitch a ride with your sweetie! You can use the extra time each day to talk. While one person drives, the other can take care of miscellaneous family business on the phone. By the time you reach your door, the calls will be done and you can enjoy more quality time together at home.

Take the train instead. If you’re lucky enough to have a great public transportation system, use it! Of course, many professionals are forced into taking commuter trains because of traffic or distance or speed. But many people have told me they live for their train time because they can complete light paperwork, catch up on reading, pay bills, or just nap. By the time they arrive home, they feel rested and can settle into the second shift.

What are some other ways you take advantage of your commute time?

A new study of 10,000 workers by Kenexa Corporation found that employees who telework from home at least on occasion were happy than those who had to put in "face time" every day at the office.  I hope managers who still insist on measuring employees by the hours in the office vs. results are reading this.  Just because they are in the office doesn’t mean they are producing anything of value.  You can have one employee work an eight-hour day and another work a twelve-hour day, and the eight-hour worker can be FAR more productive than the twelve-hour worker.  It doesn’t matter how long you’re there; it only matters what value you created in that time.  If one "loyal" worker toiled the office all day for 12 hours but played solitaire, bought plane tickets for a vacation, checked their fantasy football scores, and made personal phone calls all day, who cares that they were in the office!  I’d much rather let someone work from home occasionally and build loyalty and increase retention and measure that person based on what they produced.  Organizations that allow occasional telework allows them to recruit the very best talent.  In turn, employees give their best every day and are less likely to search elsewhere where this oppotunity isn’t provided.  With the tightening labor market, it’s imperative that leaders reassess their positions around working from home if they want to attract and keep the best workers.

As Mark Sanborn, bestselling author of The Fred Factor, wrote in the Foreword of my book Leave the Office Earlier:

“Too often leaders focus on input rather than output. There are times when arriving early and staying late are necessary, but the real test of an employee’s abilities and commitment is accomplishment. The proof is in the results, not the recorded hours.  Today, good employees refuse to sacrifice their family and personal lives on the altar of antiquated employer expectations. If you are a leader, face the facts: you are renting talent, not buying the hearts and souls of workers. You will either focus more on results and contribution and less on desk time or end up with a team of posers. If you are a valued employee, find somewhere to work where your contributions are recognized.”

I have a friend who jokes there are always three people in her bed: herself, her husband, and her Blackberry.  I was in California last week on vacation with my family and witnessed people typing away on their Blackberries while at Disneyland, with their children tugging at their pants legs, asking to go see Cinderella.  I was presenting a seminar yesterday, and one participant kept looking up to say, "Would you repeat that"? not because I wasn’t clear, but because she wasn’t paying attention to me—you got it—checking her email during class.  Examples abound but the bottom line is Americans are addicted to email.  Slaves to the Send/Receive button, countless workers sit at their desks, waiting for the next Desktop Alert, beep, cursor change, envelope in the system tray, whatever trigger prompts their Pavlovian response to interrupt whatever they are doing and check it.  And unopened email!  A present—for me!  Someone loves me.  Many workers allow themselves to get sucked in the email vortex for an entire day and not actually complete any work.  And then we blame the sheer mass for sucking all of our time, rather than acknowledging the reality: you are controlled by your email. 

A new study released July 26 by AOL in partnership with Opinion Research Corporation reveals that more Americans are using portable devices to email around the clock from virtually anywhere—even in the bathroom and at church.  Even more dangerously, 53% of respondents admit to tapping away *while driving.*  Some other interesting statistics:

* 83% of email users are checking while on vacation;

* 59% of those with portable devices are using them to check email every time a new message arrives.

* 43% of users keep the device nearby when they are sleeping to listen for incoming email.

*  15% describe themselves as "addicted to email" (really? only 15%?)

These statistics are just sad.  AOL was extolling this like a virtue, of course, that you can stay connected anywhere, anytime.  I think it’s a dangerous message.  We’re teaching people that in order to be productive and be a valuable worker, you have to be "always on," give up your private time, and check email at all hours of the night.  Portable devices are very convenient when you’re traveling for business, sitting on an airplane, in a taxi, driving as a passenger in a car with nothing better to do, at a business conference to stay in touch with the office, waiting to pick you kid up from soccer, etc.  There are certainly and definitely valuable uses for handhelds and they can be quite handy.  But be very careful about throwing yourself upon the altar of email addiction and sacrificing the quality of your life balance and time with your loved ones. 

The big differentiating factor is control.  If you shut your Outlook down completely for an hour, would you be able to resist checking?  Can you turn off your device for two hours while having a nice dinner with a spouse without thinking about it constantly?  Would you get hives if your Blackberry wasn’t charged?  Do you feel like the world is going to end?  I’m not here to judge you and neither should anyone else—only you know—intuitively—whether you have a problem.  Time to control yourself rather than letting technology control you.  If you think it’s bad now, just wait to see what happens in a couple years.

The 3rd annual Salary.com "Wasting Time Survey" for 2007 reports that the average employee wastes 1.7 hours of a typical 8.5 hour work day.  Salary.com reports that figure is down from the 2.09 hours wasted per day in 2005.  The #1 culprit of wasted time?  Internet use at 34.7%.  Followed by socializing with co-workers (20.3%) and conducting personal business (17.0%).  Over 63 percent of respondents admitted to wasting time at work.  The 20-29 year olds waste almost twice as much time (2.1 hours) compared to 40-49 year olds (1.4 hours).  Keep in mind this does not take into account how much work people are doing at home and on weekends, however.  What, do you think people aren’t conducting business while at home?  Of course they are!  In my opinion, they might be asking the wrong questions.

It’s interesting that wasted time has declined 19 percent since the first survey in 2005.  Yes, you can point to a growing economy and increases in productivity.  But is it possible that people are wasting less time because they want to get things done more quickly and get the heck out of dodge?  Are they deciding they are going to control their technology better, rather than letting it control them?  I believe it’s the beginning of a backlast against the corporation that is happy to work people to death.  Workers have had it with the years of their personal lives suffering, and a rebellion is building.  As I forewarned years ago, the pendulum is swinging the other way.  With a tightening labor market, skilled workers will be at a premium and will start to call the shots on when, where, and how much they will work.  By reducing wasted time at the office, they can get the results they need, do it in less time, and get home to their lives.  A win/win for employer and employee. 

What will the results show in 2008?  How low can we go?  Well, we can’t eliminate all "wasted" time.  People aren’t robots.  All socializing isn’t bad.  Some is necessary for relationship building and stronger teams.  Let them get on the Internet and buy a birthday gift for a spouse.  Who cares.  They go back home and log back in and continue working anyway.  Employers will have to get hip pretty quickly with the way people are working if they want to keep the best and the brightest.  Maybe they are wasting time because they are underpaid or there are system problems or computer issues or politics or horrible meetings or a lack of challenging work.  I wonder what the results would be if we turned the tables and surveyed the management on what they do to slow down their employees and cause them to waste time?  You think?

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released the results of its annual American Time Use Survey for 2006 on June 28, 2007, which is actually conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.  You can sift through all the data files and accompanying documentation, but let me save you some time and summarize some interesting results.

Of full-time workers, men work 8.4 hours a day on average, while women work 7.7.  But 52 percent of women cleaned each day, while only 20 percent of men clean each day.  65 percent of women cook each day and only 37 percent of men.  Men average 5.7 hours of leisure a day, and women average 4.9 hours.  Women spend 1.2 hours a day caring for children, while men spend .4 hours.  Men spent more time watching television and participating in recreation. 

Lastly, women slept slightly more: 8.69 hours a day vs. men at 8.56…not a wonder…they are tired from all the extra work!

Here we go again: another report showing us how much technology is going to save us time and reduce the American workweek.  Didn’t we hear this 20 years ago?  How we would all have so much extra time on our hands due to technological improvements?  That’s just like the "paperless office," which of course is a joke, since we generate much more paper now than before the advent of the computer. 

A Gartner research report released on May 30 says that by 2015, workers will be working 20 hours instead of 40.  It argues that workers are seeking a more fulfilling life balance and employers better catch on if they want to retain good employees.  They sort of forget to consider that many people consider working an ecomomic reality and can’t afford to drop down to a 20-hour week.  The report encourages employers to create job descriptions for 20-hour positions.  Ugh….don’t we just call this part time?

It does cite the need for increased flexibility for workers, which I agree with, but usually that’s the ability to be able to work some hours from home.  It also states that it will be very difficult to draw a distinction between the personal and work computing environment.  Many employers have already figured this out and provide access to the corporate workstation from home.  Others use Blackberries or laptops as a desktop with a docking station, so the work environment is portable.  This is already being done, of course, so I fail to see what is to unique or novel in this report.  Increased flexibility and combined computing does not equate to a 20-hour week.  In my work teaching corporate seminars and speaking at conferences, I’m finding the work week continues to *climb* for the average worker.  As people have more flexibility and can work from home, they tend to just add more to their plates.  They leave work, go home, plug in, and keep working!

What’s your experience?

I’m the proud founder of national Leave the Office Earlier day, named after my book of the same title, and the movement to tighten efficiency in the office in order to work fewer hours and get a life.  This holiday is listed in Chase’s Annual Events,and we are celebrating the 3rd annual event on June 1, 2007 this year.  Normally it’s June 2 (my birthday), but that date fell on a Saturday this year, so it was moved up one day.  It asks participants to only work an 8-hour day and is intended to focus workers on improving their personal productivity.  It’s an opportunity for people to change work patterns, adjust priorities, and to discover how much more productive they can be in an eight-hour workday (sorry, no playing hooky or leaving early than you’re supposed to allowed).  If you’d like to in the event, you can register and receive a free ten-day eCourse on How to Leave the Office Earlier.  Here’s an electronic media kit you can use to promote the day in your workplace and get others to commit to working 8 hours, which includes a letter to your boss, a press release, articles, and a workplace flyer.

Here’s a great article in Fitness Magazine.com on how to make time for your friends and family without getting overscheduled.  Oh, wait!  I’m quoted in it.    Enjoy!

Now here’s a pharmeceutical company selling non-drowsy allergy medication that came up with the 2007 Reactine Quality of Life Report and the impact allergies have on sufferers of the condition.  Highlights from the report include:

    -   Allergic and Unbearable. Three out of four Canadians with allergies
        say symptoms increase irritability and fatigue, and 55 per cent claim
        reduced productivity (housework; on-the-job, academia).

    -   It’s not in Your Head: And this doesn’t come as a surprise to health
        experts. This season 71 per cent of health professionals agree
        allergies can regularly or often affect a person’s quality of life.

    -   Love, Labour & Snoozing. According to the Quality of Life Report,
        allergies permeate all facets of life, including sleep patterns, work
        performance, and even libido.

Although I could crack about salespeople doing anything possible to sell a product and convince people how miserable they are to sell product, I happen to have seasonal allergies.  I’ve been getting allergy shots twice a month for a couple years now.  When the season started this year—nothing—absolutely no symptoms.  Yes, you can medicate and should.  But why not see if you’re a candidate for shots, invest a little bit more time short term, and reap the long-term benefits?  I’ve been medication-free and enjoying the great outdoors.

Geez if all these studies tell us how much our productivity is decreased from allergies, smoking, obesity, watching football, surfing the Internet, being sick, etc., it makes me wonder how they ever find a single worker with "normal" productivity to study!

An article called "Japanese Housewives Win Right to Share of Ex-Husbands’ Pensions" describes a new law now in effect in Japan to allow Japanese women to take half of a man’s pension following divorce, women are filing in droves.  In response, a new organization was established called Japan Aisaika — the Devoted Husband Organization — to urge men to leave the office earlier and change the way they behave at home.  The group encourages husbands to stop being such workaholics, pay more attention to their families, and when they retire, become more independent and stop hanging around the house so much, which creates "husband at home stress syndrome" in women who have been used to their workaholic husbands never being home.  Finally!  A law that actually stands a chance of changing the social fabric of workaholism and a culture that has oppressed women in that country for years.  This should trim their public debt and ease poverty-relief spending on women.  Kudos to the Japanese Social Insurance Agency for the wonderful productivity legislation!