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

Availability is driven by Activity.

Just as setting valid priorities and goals is important, so is accepting your responsibility in carrying them out. You have to structure your schedule very carefully to ensure that things get done—because if you don’t, other people will be perfectly happy to structure your schedule for you.

Think about it: how many times have you attended a meeting and asked yourself, “Why am I here?” Often, it’s because someone decided you should be—without bothering to consider if that was best for you and your productivity goals.

You have to be willing to protect your time from everyone who wants a piece of it. Among other things, you must learn to say no when appropriate, to delegate, to cancel unnecessary meetings, to let some tasks go, and to eliminate bottlenecks—whatever’s necessary to take back your time and use it the way you need to.

More importantly, you must learn how to leverage technological productivity tools that can lighten your scheduling load. Webinars, teleconferencing, and services like Jott or GoToMeeting can accelerate productivity and streamline your schedule. So can the effective use of organizers and other paper-based methods. The trick is finding which one works best for you, and that takes some experimentation.

Try these tips to hone your Availability toward SuperCompetence:

1. Refuse requests when appropriate. Learn how to say no graciously. Because you’re good at what you do, you’ll always be fielding requests for help and input. It’s human nature to want to please others, but you can’t do it all. There’s no need to be rude, but there are polite ways to avoid being overworked.

2. Set appropriate boundaries. Learn how to protect your time from others. You’re always going to face what I call the six D’s of Interruptions: Deadlines, Disruptions, Dependencies, Discrepancies, Distractions, and Drop-Ins. You can’t let others use any of these to slow down your productivity.

3. Push a task down to the lowest level of responsibility. Trust others to do their jobs; “delegation” is a popular business buzzword for a reason. Don’t waste your time and productivity on tasks other people can do more cheaply. Hand them off to someone else, and let them do their jobs without micromanagement.

4. Schedule your day realistically according to your key activities. While it’s normal to make an effort to accommodate other people’s needs, your own should come first. Learn to manage your time properly, and take control of your own schedule. Don’t let other people do it for you.

5. Weigh the results of attending any meeting against the results you could produce instead. Meetings can take up your entire day if you let them. Instead of dropping everything to attend a meeting, see if you can send a proxy, attend by phone, or just cancel it altogether.

Availability is a loaded word, at least in business terms. It means so much more than just being there—any decent worker can and should be there for their employers, subordinates, and co-workers when they’re needed. SuperCompetent people need to be keenly aware of time management. After all, time isn’t like money, office supplies, or Brussels sprouts: we’ve each got a very limited amount of it, and we’re not going to get any more.

If you say yes to everything someone asks you to do, you’re going to be so overburdened that you won’t be available to people when they need you, except on those rare occasions when you manage to clear a task off your schedule. You require some flexibility, which means that you not only have to learn how to say no to some requests (or creatively negotiate them somewhat), but you also need to learn how to effectively deal with distractions and diversions—from people demanding your time to “helpful” technology that seems to command all your time.

And stop trying to be such a perfectionist! You don’t have to do everything; the idea is to be SuperCompetent, not SuperHuman. Superman’s a fantasy—and even if he wasn’t, you have to remember that he’s supposed to be an alien from another planet, not a human being. Knowing how to delegate and/or outsource tasks whenever you can, and having the wisdom to do so, is a must.

You’ll also need to learn effective scheduling techniques to make life easier for both you and everyone else, and hone them to maximum effectiveness so things don’t get out of hand. The same is true when it comes to meetings. As I’ve said elsewhere, a task will expand to fill the amount of time available; that’s something called Parkinson’s Law (after naval historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson, if you were wondering). Meetings are a prime example of the tendency for that to happen.

You don’t have to let time-stealers eat into your productivity! Stand up, step up, and take back your time!

Make it a productive day! ™

© Copyright 2010 Laura Stack. All rights reserved.

Tweet This Post

Okay, let’s face it. We’re all trying to do more with less.And chances are that you and your company have already made the big, tough decisions needed to streamline operations. But what about the little things?You can still boost both personal and team productivity in lots of smaller ways that are easy to implement and provide immediate results. Read on for quick tips on getting more done.

(C) Copyright 2009 Laura Stack. All rights reserved.

Tweet This Post

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 13-year-old daughter, Meagan, would text on her phone: “TMI” (translation: Too Much Information). If the 21^st 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 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.  Listen to the full podcast episode

(C) 2009 Laura Stack.  www.TheProductivityPro.com

Tweet This Post

http://www.theproductivitypro.com/newsletters/num115Dec2008.htm visit for full newsletter

Importance of Productivity during Down Times

In the summer of 1900…

• The average life expectancy in the United States was 47.
• A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11, which was an incredible sum because the average American made .22 cents an hour, or about $400 per year.
• Most women only washed their hair once a month and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
• Only 6% of all Americans had graduated from high school.
• Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores.
• There were about 230 reported murders in the US annually.

Amazing what a century will change. Amazing what a few months will change. Growth ends, recession sets in, the stock market stops booming, and companies go bust. The recession is impacting our clients in various ways: we’re hearing of layoffs, hiring freezes, reduced budgets, not rehiring for positions as people leave, go on maternity, etc.

Tough economic times are packing a one-two punch in the workplace.

First, everyone is forced to do more with less (POW!).

Second, you have to do it all while dealing with the nagging anxieties that come with an uncertain economy—threats of downsizing, bankruptcies, cost containment, you name it (POW, again!).

So how do we cope—as leaders and as productive employees?

To succeed and keep their doors open, companies must make more money but spend less money and create greater results with fewer resources. You could attempt to cut salaries, benefits, staff, costs, or the quality of your products—all poor options. A better choice? Increase employee productivity. If you have 10 people, and you can get them to improve their productivity by 10%, you just effectively added another staff person without increasing salary expense—a much more attractive response. To do this, your employees need your help.

First of all, get a grip on your personal negative feelings that result from your lack of control. You DO have control over your friends, your love relationships, and your career. You decide for yourself what’s right and what’s wrong, whether you should stay in this weekend or go out, whether to vote Democrat or Republican. You decide who to see, what to wear, what to eat.

However, you have VERY LITTLE control over the government, economic policy, the rise and fall of the stock market, Mother Nature, international events, and even your company direction. Changes can often disrupt your life and force you to change your plans. Often there is little you can do and yet you are overwhelmingly affected by it. Accepting what is means realizing you can’t control certain things and to stop trying. You can sit around and wonder, “Oh, my gosh, how is this going to affect me? What if I’m next to go? How will I pay the bills? I’m going to be a bag lady!” You stew and worry and literally make yourself sick.

These things will happen. They just will. You will get no warning, and nobody will prepare you. And that’s frustrating. Because people will tell you to “reach for the stars—you can achieve whatever you want!” But they don’t mention you might get hit by a comet in the process.

It’s time to accept the things that you cannot change and focus on the things you can. What can you do?

Give yourself a break. Try to stay positive, despite the doom and gloom. Overdosing on pessimistic, overly dramatic news coverage is just going to weigh you down with bad thoughts—not good for those looking to clear their heads and get things done! It’s important to be informed about what is happening in the world, but you definitely don’t want to overdo it.

For months now, we’ve been bombarded with bad economic news every time we turn on the television or pick up a newspaper. No wonder everybody seems to be in a rut. Follow the daily news as much as you need to so that you feel in the loop and understand the issues that affect your industry. Other than that, it might be time to shut off the TV and catch up on some fun reading or spend some more time with family.

Know your job. Seems like this one should be a no-brainer, but you’d be amazed at how often our responsibilities can change and evolve without our even knowing it. Small incremental changes in how employees or departments do business can add up over time, leaving groups of people that work hard, but aren’t contributing to business objectives as effectively as they once did.

For example, in an effort to provide an exceptional level of service, you might find yourself doing work that is below your pay grade. Maybe you end up doing a large portion of the administrative work associated with a project that needs your input. Consider the value of your time!

Make sure that the things that occupy your time are worthy of your talent and expertise and hold your staff to the same standard. With any project, you should be able to look at the time spent, multiply by the pay rate of the ones doing the work, and still feel that your resources were well spent.

If you’ve got a $40,000/year employee stuffing a bunch of envelopes (even just that one time) or a six-figure manager assembling an important presentation page-by-page, then that work becomes awfully expensive!

These examples might seem outrageous to you, but believe me, it happens all the time. Never make the mistake of treating your time like it’s free. Time and other resources are limited, and we need to treat them that way.

As your company and your department are undoubtedly being asked to do more with less, now is the time to step back and take stock of the type of work you’re doing. Many times roles and responsibilities change, but job descriptions do not. As a result, we end up drifting away from core priorities and towards dong work that, while challenging, doesn’t really meet the organization’s immediate needs.

Now might be a good time to step back and ask that all important question: “Why am I (or we) doing this?” If you can’t answer that, or the answer doesn’t make sense, it’s time to purposefully make a change.

Break habits, build systems. Every office that has been around for any length of time has certain unwritten policies and procedures that exist simply because “we’ve always done it that way.” Now is a great opportunity to analyze your existing business practices and find opportunities to break the bad habits that may be bogging your operation down. Take you entire department for example. Do you and your people have a clear idea of your area’s specific responsibilities? Do you have the confidence and determination to say “no” when someone is asking you to do work that is outside your scope of responsibility?

Perhaps over the years your group took on the responsibility of coordinating quarterly meetings with senior managers. It might have made sense for you to be doing the legwork then, but now that the work has become routine, is it really the best use of your talent and resources?

That’s just one specific example, but there are many more out there. Usually, these are the kinds of tasks and responsibilities that make employees want to ask the all-important “Why am I doing this?” question. Rather than spend another day mindlessly plowing though projects that may or may not be a good use of your time, force yourself to take a hard look at what you are doing and why you are doing it.

If you had to pick three tasks or responsibilities that should be the top priorities for your department, what would they be? Once you know, evaluate how much time and energy is dedicated to those things. You might be surprised at how much time we can spend doing things that aren’t even close to the top of that priorities list.

It isn’t always easy to say “no,” but fortunately, that’s where your systems can come in. As you work to create smooth, efficient systems to do work within your department, you can give yourself some ammunition to fend off others in the company that might be inclined to slide work onto your plate where it doesn’t belong. If you don’t have firm policies and procedures in place to identify who should be doing what, it is much more difficult to make the case for “no.”

Analyze your relationships with other departments. Have trouble turning down work coming from other areas of the company? Now is a perfect time to start fresh and rebuild your department’s boundaries. In a frank and honest way, simply explain to others that in light of the current economic situation, your group has taken a critical look at its daily operations and needs to decline certain types of requests in order to build efficiency.

Perhaps you need to apply a little systems thinking and rethink the flow of information. Is there a procedure in place for other business units to request your assistance or input? If there’s not, you’re probably being hit from all angles with requests that may or may not be the best use of your time. Diagram how work moves through your department. Where does it come in from and go out to other departments? Interview your internal customers and find out how you can provide value through reduced services. Can you provide a report monthly instead of quarterly? Can you cancel the weekly project meeting and get everyone to email updates instead? Question travel requests if you feel a conference call will do. One of the best ways to take stock of the situation is to survey your group, ask them what gets in the way of productivity, and to genuinely ask how they would redesign things if they could.

Find the bottom line. Right now, businesses everywhere are taking stock of their must-haves versus their nice-to-haves. From an organizational perspective, which are you?

Economic necessity can force budget cuts and cost containment that might otherwise be unnecessary. One way to prepare yourself for this reality is to make sure you have a good understanding of how you and your people contribute to the company’s bottom line.

Sometimes, it’s easy. If you work in sales, for example, the correlation between what you do every day and the company’s financial success might be very straightforward—my group sells our most profitable product, which makes the company money.

Sometimes that correlation is not so obvious. If you operate in a support role, like Human Resources, you may want to start looking at your various responsibilities and deciding which among them have the greatest influence on the company’s bottom line—either by somehow driving revenue or by controlling expenses. Perhaps you help contribute to developing talent within the company, which clearly has an impact on the overall success of the organization. Employee development always seems to be one of the first things to go during down economic times, but this is not the time to reduce training if you’d like to get more work from fewer people. Or maybe you’re managing clerical or administrative functions that would be expensive to secure elsewhere.
If you can’t draw a line from what you do each day to the financial well-being of the company, then it might be time to do some hard thinking. Your other contributions might be valuable, but in difficult economic times, corporate leadership often becomes must more focused on dollars and cents, for better or for worse.

Where am I going with this? If it isn’t obvious how your contributions benefit the company, be prepared to explain how they do. If you CAN’T explain why certain aspects of what you do are valuable, then it’s time to stop doing them.

At the end of the day, productivity is about more than getting things done. It’s about getting the RIGHT things done and getting them done efficiently.

Make it a productive day! (TM)

(C) Copyright 2008 Laura Stack. All rights reserved.  www.TheProductivityPro.com

Tweet This Post

I recently interviewd Dave Kutayiah, SR. VP of HR at ING Clarion Partners about how to increase employee productivity during down times.  I specifically asked him,”How do you get more work out of fewer people?”  He gave me permission to share his reply, because I believe my readers will also benefit:
Laura,

I am currently going through the same scenario with my HR team and my business partners are experiencing the same due to a recent workforce reduction.

In a case like that, as a manager, you have to do the following:
- ensure everyone understands why the team is leaner and meaner,
- make sure everyone understands the strategy or gameplan and how they fit into the refined organization,
- reinforce the importance of each team member and the fact that the stakes are much higher than before,
- define your expectation for each member as well as the collective group,
- inform them of the accountability framework that you are putting in place (ie consequence at an individual level if they don’t get the job done according to the new rules of engagement),
- identify resources that they may access to help get the job done, and
- ensure they know that you are supportive, available and understanding of the limitations of the smaller team, but you see opportunities for them to step up and take on stretch assignments and learning opportunities that might have otherwise been more limited with a larger team.
Dave G. Kutayiah
Senior Vice President
Human Resources
ING Clarion Partners

Tweet This Post

Have you ever taken an honest look at how you are perceived around the office?  Your behavior, attitude, and reputation play a huge role in how you interact with coworkers and subordinates.  Others may listen to you because of your job title, but if that’s the only reason, you have a serious problem on your hands.

I’m not talking about superficial issues like dressing well or keeping a tidy office.  It goes deeper than that—to your attitude towards work and your attitude towards personal productivity.

Do you have a reputation of exceptional organization, follow-up, and time management? 

Or do people dread sending you an e-mail, because they know there’s a slim chance that they’ll ever hear back?

Is your desk a black hole, where papers and requests go in, but never come out? 

Does it take you thirty minutes to find something that you would expect someone else to find in thirty seconds?

The bottom line is that to be an effective leader and coworker, you need to be a good role model that others will choose to emulate.  Your employees and coworkers might pay attention to what you say, but they’ll ALWAYS pay attention to what you do.  You’re a role model—good or bad—through your image.

Take a personal inventory of how others see you in the workplace.  Your goal is to identify—and correct—your own personal productivity demons.  Need help getting started?  Begin by asking yourself these questions:

Are you the bottleneck?  The only thing worse than the person at the office who seems to do nothing is the person who tries to do everything. 

Say it with me folks, “I can’t do it all.”

The sooner you come to terms with that troublesome fact, the better off you’ll be.  In pursuit of being the undisputed office superstar, you may in fact be buried.  The more you try to do everything, the less able you are to do anything.

Sure, the business world can be demanding, but nine times out of ten, helplessly buried office workers put themselves in the overworked situation they’re in.  As a leader (and as a human being) you need to understand how to prioritize, which means understanding how to say “no.”

If you constantly accept additional responsibilities, without being able to keep up with what you’ve already committed, you will eventually be unable to devote proper attention to any one of your many duties. 

If you think that being overextended and perpetually frazzled sounds bad, imagine reporting to someone in that situation.  Being spread too thin generally leads to missed deadlines, poor response times, and a constant source of unnecessary stress.

Do your subordinates, coworkers—and yourself—a favor.  Keep your priorities focused and your schedule realistic.  You need to be able to work as hard for your people as they do for you.

If it takes you days to respond to a voicemail or weeks to review a proposal, you aren’t setting others up for success.  Don’t be the bottleneck!

Do you micromanage?  You have a staff at your disposal…so why are you still doing everything yourself?  The best thing you can do as a manager is to put people in place whom you can trust—and then trust them.

Always remember, however, that your way isn’t the only way and that sometimes “good enough” is, well, good enough.  Does that mean that you keep slack standards and let people get away with sub-par work?  Of course not!  It just means that you pick your battles and allow your team to do their jobs without having to constantly worry about your “helpful” interventions.

There will always be some things that absolutely need to be done a certain way and kept to a certain standard.  These are the tasks and priorities that you should keep a close watch on to ensure that they are completed properly. 

But what about the others?  Just ask yourself what would happen if a given task was completed adequately, instead of perfectly.  Or if a project was done correctly, although perhaps not in exactly the same way you would go about it if you were to do it yourself.  Most of the time, you’ll find that it really isn’t that big a deal.  In these cases, it is important to step back, let go, and focus your energies on more important initiatives. 

Is your schedule realistic?  Take a look at your schedule for this week.  Are you booked solid, running from one meeting to the next all day every day?

If you’re overbooked, not only will you leave yourself no time to accomplish important, high-priority tasks, you’ll also make yourself unavailable to your team.  It doesn’t do any good if a project is completed on deadline if it takes three days for you to have a moment to take a look at it.

Besides, what does it say about the value of your time if you are booking yourself silly day in and day out?  By accepting every invitation you receive, you are letting others control you time and determine your priorities.  That isn’t what leadership is about!

Don’t attend any meeting where the organizer can’t clearly articulate the objective.  And make sure that when you do attend a meeting, others understand why you are there and know what they can expect in terms of your involvement.  If you regularly find yourself in meetings “just in case” you’re needed, you aren’t placing much of a premium on your time. 

What are your other productivity demons?  Everyone has their downfalls, and the ones discussed above are just a starting point.  Take a good, hard look at yourself and come up with a fair assessment of the impression you give others at the office.  This is no time to tell little white lies or shy away from the truth.  The only way to fix the problem is to tackle the issue head on.

Whatever your demons are—too much socializing, excessive email surfing, time management problems, over scheduling your time, responding slowly to e-mail, dealing with personal issues on work hours, or procrastination—identify them and then work to put them to rest.

That’s the beauty of it.  You really can fix many of these problems right away.  If you’re honest with yourself, you know the right things to do.  You just need to listen to that nagging voice in the back of your mind and make it happen.

Make it a productive day! ™
© 2008 Laura Stack.  Laura Stack is a personal productivity expert, author, and professional speaker 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 firm specializing in productivity improvement in high-stress organizations.  Since 1992, Laura has presented keynotes and seminars on improving output, lowering stress, and saving time in today’s workplaces.  She is the bestselling author of three works published by Broadway Books: The Exhaustion Cure (2008), Find More Time (2006) and Leave the Office Earlier (2004).  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.  To have Laura speak at your next event, call 303-471-7401. 

Receive a free eBook “111 Ways to Improve Your Personal Productivity“!

Tweet This Post