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.

Schedule your interruptions.  Perhaps one of the reasons you’re being interrupted so frequently is you’re never around and available.  This is especially true of people who travel for a living or spent most of the day wrapped up in meetings.  It’s understandable that you’ll be pounced upon by your assistant when you suddenly emerge, and she’s been waiting to ask you some questions for two days.  Here are some ways you can actually plan for and around interruptions:

·        Schedule regular check-in times. If you have an assistant, you’ll want to set up a regular time (or several times) each day or week to touch base.  Have your assistant “save up” all questions he or she has and ask them all at once during your regularly scheduled meeting.  This process keeps your assistant from interrupting you ten times a day to ask you one thing and instead uses one meeting to ask you ten things.  Similarly, if your boss is the one you aren’t able to pin down, suggest this process for yourself.

·        Block out interruptible times.  One Human Resources Director I worked with figured out she was interrupted every 11 minutes.  She had to work late just to get her work done—although talking with employees was important—because she couldn’t get the space of mind to finish a task through completion.  I suggested she block out several time periods each day and ask people to “sign up” instead.  She scheduled an “Interruption” block in her Outlook calendar from 9:00-11:00 and 1:00-3:00 each day, printed her calendar sheets, and taped them to the counter of the reception area.  Her assistant fielded interruptions, telling employees she now scheduled discussions by appointment, and people willingly checked the blocks of time and signed up for a 30-minute meeting.  If it was absolutely an emergency (the HR Director had already briefed her assistant on what issues were deemed an emergency), the appointment was waived.  Perhaps you won’t block out four hours a day as she did, but you can use the concept to communicate to peers, internal customers, and subordinates the times you’re willing to be interrupted.  Think of it as a limited “open door” policy: only open at certain times.  You might think it won’t work, but would you expect your hair stylist to allow you to drop by when she’s not working?  Would you then get upset that she didn’t respond to your beck and call?  Believe me, people will get used to it.

·        Set aside “down time.”  One architecture firm I worked with established a firm “no interruption time” during the hours of 9:00 to 10:30 every morning.  How would you like having 90 minutes of complete concentration every day, when meetings weren’t allowed, instant messaging was disabled, phones were forwarded to voice mail, no interruptions were allowed, and the email servers were turned off?  Drastic?  But wildly popular for the people who could actually focus on completing an important task without being distracted.  You probably won’t be able to swing this policy company-wide but could try to work it out with those whom you work with most.  You are probably interrupted by a “core” group of people throughout the day, so work with your team to establish this down time, dedicated to real work.  Hey, even kindergarteners know the importance of rest time.  Without it, they get really grouchy—and so do you.

Rinoa posts, “Could you post something about improving your concentration span? I know the reason why I procrastinate is because I know I won’t be able to concentrate long enough to finish the task. Please help.”

Inability to concentrate comes from three main sources:

1.      Technology

2.      People

3.      Your brain

1.  TECHNOLOGY.  First, you must disable your global email alerts, so you don’t receive a notification for every garbage email coming into your in-box but still be able to receive an alert for “important” people.  Turn off your global desktop alerts in Outlook:

• Under the Tools menu
• Select Options
• In the Preferences Tab, select Email options
• In the Email Options dialog box, select Advanced E-mail Options
• In the middle of the dialog box, under the heading “When new items arrive in my in-box,” uncheck all four boxes
• Click OK, OK, OK

Then, create a RULE to play a sound for “important” people. 

Rules help you manage your e-mail messages by performing actions on messages that match a specific set of conditions. After you create a rule, Outlook applies the rule when a message arrives in your Inbox or when you send a message.

• Right-click on an email in the In-box FROM a person for whom you’d like to create a rule.
• Select “Create Rule”
• Check the “From (user)” box
• Check “Play a selected sound” box.
• Click OK

Second, turn on your voice mail, send all calls, take your phone off the hook, hide your blinking light—WHATEVER you have to do so you’re not disturbed by your phone.

2.  PEOPLE.   Now that you have your technology under control, you must head off drop-in visitors.  (If you’re in customer service or drop-in visitors are your JOB, such as a bank teller, this doesn’t apply to you, sorry.)

Use a signal.  If several people in your department are having problems with drop-in visitors, agree on a signal that communicates to others, “Please don’t interrupt me unless it’s an emergency.” A manager I worked with at Coca-Cola had an “open-door” policy. He wanted his employees to feel comfortable talking to him about anything, anytime. Unfortunately, he rarely could find time to get his work done. At his next staff meeting, he explained the problem he was having. He said that when he had a deadline, he would put on his red Coca-Cola baseball cap. His door would remain open in case there was an emergency, but he would prefer employees didn’t interrupt him during those times. He reported it worked like a charm. Get together with your department and agree on a signal everyone will use consistently. Installing curtains across the cubicle door? Turning your nameplate around? Wearing orange armbands? Partially closing the door? One group I worked with found that coworkers respected the signal about 80% of the time. When I questioned the people who said others weren’t respecting their signals, it turns out they never took down their signals. They were never available to their coworkers, so their coworkers simply ignored their signals. If you use this system, make sure you don’t abuse it.

Consider the physical layout of your office.  Does your desk face a door or a hallway?  Humans are curious beings.  When someone walks by, it is our nature to look up to see who just passed.  If that person is wandering around looking for someone to bother, they will catch your eye and smile.  Not wanting to be rude, you smile back.  They enter your office and ask the death question, “So, how’s it going?”  Congratulations, you just bought yourself an easy ten-minute interruption.  One solution is to rotate your desk or change the layout of your cubicle so that your back is facing the door.  If someone walks by and sees that you are busy, they are less likely to interrupt you (but not always).  As an added benefit, you focus longer on the work in front of you.  If you can’t rotate your desk completely around, try at least to work sideways and use a computer screen or cabinet to block your view to the corridor.

3.  YOUR BRAIN. 

Don’t obey your thoughts. Many times you interrupt yourself. You’re sitting at our desk, concentrating on an important project, when all of a sudden you remember you forgot to tell Chris about a project update. So you get up or pick up the phone or dash off an email to tell Chris. Then you go back to your desk and start working again, only to get another thought. “Oh, that’s right!” you say, and you do that. Stop! Don’t listen to your brain or you will never complete what’s in front of you. This is why so many people have “half-done” projects all over the place!

Write down distractions, but don’t follow them. If you think of something that needs to be done while you’re working on a higher priority task, capture the thought (in your paper or electronic system) to remember it, then get back to the task at hand.

Here’s an example. If you’re working on a proposal and you think, “My living room couch is really dirty. I really should have that couch steam cleaned,” stop. When do you plan to do that? Today? I doubt it. It’s probably just something you want to remember to do at some point. Capture the thought in your time management system (Tasks, planner, notebook, whatever) but don’t do it.

Whatever you use, keep something with you at ALL times to write on to capture your thoughts.  My planner is too large to carry around everywhere, so I keep a small jotter notebook in my purse to write down things I think of or come across. If you use the Task list on Outlook or an electronic to-do tool, you still need something to write on until you get back to your computer. Perhaps you could carry around printed lists from Outlook, update them manually, and then update Outlook when you’re back at your desktop. If you don’t have something handy to capture thoughts while you’re working or out and about, you will end up with scraps of paper everywhere.  Or worse yet, you’ll just do it right then so you don’t forget and distract yourself from your priority task.

If you align with the way your brain works and work with your memory, you will not only clear the brain clutter but stay focused as well.

Hopefully this helps, Rinoa.  I’d love to hear any comments out there on what you do to concentrate.

I was mentioned in the USA Today on 3/23 in a story called "Music hath charms for some workers — others it annoys" http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/gear/2006-03-23-ipod-work_x.htm

My quote was (as is usual) taken a bit out of context.  When I said "I’m all for it," I was referring specifically to people who say they can concentrate while music is playing in their ears (look at your average teenager, listening to music, IMing with friends, watching tv, and doing homework at the same time).  Just because you can concentrate don’t mean others can.  At work, you definitely should follow iPod etiquette and not blast your music through your computer’s speakers or portable iPod speakers.  When you use your earbuds, make sure it’s soft enough that you can still hear people when they talk to you.  Always follow the office culture: in some workplaces, they are seen as unprofessional.

Also be careful as to what you’re listening to.  The article cites a man listening to ZZ Top and other hard rock songs, which aren’t exactly conducive to productivity.  Use the extensive research that’s been done on music and productivity to your advantage and listen to classical, slower beats, or CDs you can purchase from the Center for Psychoacoustical Research (I like "Music for Productivity"). 

I have a video iPod, but I’m one who can’t concentrate while it’s playing.  I load Podcasts and songs and audio programs to listen to and relax while I’m flying.  I’d love to hear your comments on what is appropriate iPod etiquette at work and how you use yours.

Laura Stack’s Website: www.TheProductivityPro.com

Changing poor productivity habits

Dixie Sanner writes an article in the Washington Business Journal called Time Smart: Too busy? Trick is habit (re) forming.  (See it at

http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2006/02/27/smallb2.html?hbx=e_sw).  In it, she outlines a 5-step process in changing your habits:

1.      Pinpoint the habit you want to change and analyze it.

2.      Describe what you’d like to do instead

3.      Develop a new routine that will help your new habit take root

4.      Be consistent

5.      Ask for help

All really good advice.  But the article doesn’t do much to give you specific ideas on new routines (step 3).  If we really want to be “Time Smart,” which habits should we change?  Perhaps the article should have focused on one specific bad habit and walked us through the process.  So let’s explore some ourselves. 

1.      The habit you want to change is to stop re-reading email and be more decisive.  You feel you are constantly checking, reading, re-reading, and re-reading your email.  ‘

2.      Instead, you’d like to practice the Superglue Rule. The first time you read an email in your in-box, you must make a decision (one of six decisions, in #3 below) on what to do with the email rather than clicking out of it and keeping it in your in-box.  You would like to get down to 0 emails once a day (you didn’t necessarily do the work; you just moved the email to the right place).

3.      Your new routine would be every time you click on a new email, pretend it has virtual superglue on it. It’s now stuck to your screen, and you cannot close the email until you do one of six things with it: a technique I call the six “Ds”: a) Delete, b) Delegate, 3) Do, 4) Date, 5) Drawer, 6) Deter

4.      You can’t save it in your in-box; you must be decisive about where it goes. If this helps, remember “Ohio”–Only Handle It Once.  You are either going to delete it, forward it, reply to it, and move it to Tasks (or print and file in a tickler file), file it in a personal folder, or use a rule to move the mail or unsubscribe. 

5.      Team up with a buddy at work who will be your accountability partner.  That person will ask you once a day what your in-box looks like.

Limit yourself to the options, force yourself to stop, think, and make one of the six choices. 

Now that spring is two days away, I’m looking forward to a boost in productivity.  When Daylight Saving Time begins on April 2, we should see greater employee productivity across the board as more sunlight returns.  The lack of sunlight during winter months is taking its toll on productivity and energy levels in the workplace, according to ComPsych® Corporation. ComPsych’s Tell-it-Now(SM) poll, responded to by more than 1,000 ComPsych client companies nationwide, asked employees whether they were affected by fewer hours of light in their workday. Some 43 percent of respondents reported feeling less productive all day during winter months. Another 23 percent reported decreased levels of energy due to less daylight, while 30 percent reported feeling the same year round. Only four percent of those polled said they work harder during winter months.

I know I personally feel listless and less energetic during the winter, to the extent I wonder if I have Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which is characterized by lack of energy, increased appetite, and irritability over at least two consecutive winters, followed by non-depressed periods in the spring and summer months.  The recommended treatment is light therapy, which has worked like a charm for me.  I use an Apollo goLITE mood relief light for 30 minutes a day, at 7:30 in the morning, while I’m walking on my treadmill.  I attach it to the rail of my treadmill and watch the news while I exercise and give my brain a seratonin boost from the light.  I’ve heard others say the light treatment helps them not only with energy and productivity, but jet lag and sleep problems as well.  I’d love to know your productivity experiences surrounding energy, winter months, and/or light treatments.