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

Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R) shares how to make mornings easier by planning at night. (c) 2010 Laura Stack. All Rights Reserved

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Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. — John Steinbeck

My father had a saying he used to repeat often. He always carried around one of those little Mead spiral notebooks, which he liked to call “his brain,” and whenever an idea would strike him he’d write it down and say, “If you think it, ink it!”

That used to just drive me crazy…but Dad was absolutely right. You can’t depend on your meat brain to remember everything, especially when you’re in the middle of another task. Nor is it a good idea to drop the task you’re working on and go haring off after the new idea. Oh, you can do that, but if make a habit of it you’ll never finish anything—and your productivity will be shot to heck.

So when you have a random thought that sounds good, get it down on paper (or electrons) down ASAP. You can use a little notebook like my father’s shirt-pocket “brain,” a handheld device like a Blackberry, a compact voice recorder, 3 x 5 index cards, or a standardized planner—whatever works for you. According to his autobiography, whenever science fiction writer Piers Anthony gets a new idea while writing one of his novels, he just sets off a new paragraph in brackets, types the new idea, then goes back to the project he’s working on. The idea will be lifted out and documented elsewhere during an editing draft, when he has time to deal with it.

Angling for Ideas
It’s been said that ideas are like slippery little fish that you have to capture with a pencil, or else they’ll get away. And as the saying goes, “the dullest pencil (pixel?) is keener than the sharpest mind.” So capture your great idea however you may, and get right back to your original task.

Another great thing about recording your ideas is that when you do so, your brain will think you’ve done something about it and stop bugging you, so you can focus. Even if your idea is of the non-bugging kind, if you write it down, you don’t have to waste any energy trying to remember it later. It’s recorded right there in black and white. By “inking” it, you’ve made it real.

And oddly enough, writing down your ideas often seems to make you have more of them. That may simply be a function of the fact that you’re just not remembering them all when you don’t record them; but on the other hand, some would argue that it’s some Higher Intelligence trying to tell you something.

By the time you review your notes, you may have forgotten the idea altogether, so you may just be pleasantly surprised by what you find. And what do you end up with when you’re done? Why, a little list of things to do…now, why does that sound familiar? Yep, you got it: your ideas (or at least the best of them) end up on your to-do list, so that you can focus your attention on them properly. And if you come up with another brilliant idea while you’re working on your new tasks, well…if you think it, ink it!

From Fish to Seeds
Now, I’ve compared ideas to slippery fish, which you have to capture; but once you’ve done that, they turn into something else. (And I’m not talking about fishsticks here). These ideas you’re struck with—whether while working on something else, during your daily commute, or in the middle of the night—become seeds once you gather them in. They may never germinate, of course; and even if they’re viable, you may never use them. You can’t do everything you imagine, because there’s just not enough time!

But if you carry those little idea seeds around with you like Johnny Appleseed, you may very well come across fertile soil in which they can sprout. That’s when you stick ‘em in the ground and stand back, so you can see what they’ll become.

Ideas are important, folks. Even the most audacious and ambitious of undertakings, from the Great Wall of China to the International Space Station, started as nothing more than an idea that someone eventually recorded. Once they did that, it went from meditation to action—and changed the world.

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1. Don’t take personalities personally.
I have heard many stories from admins whose boss was a grouchy type of person, who say to me, “Oh, he doesn’t like me. We just don’t get along.” When the boss gets a promotion she thought, “I’m going to be left behind.” He said, “Are you kidding? I can’t do anything without you.”
Do not think that just because someone is in a bad mood that it reflects on you, or if someone has a crotchety personality that s/he doesn’t like you. Always be your capable, competent, positive self.

2. Change your focus.
Focus on the 175 things that you did right today, not the one thing that you did wrong. So many people get upset when they make a little mistake. They made a typo in a letter or sent an email to the wrong person or copied someone they shouldn’t have.
Mistakes happen. That does not mean that you are a failure. That means you can learn from that one thing. But really focus on all of the ways you do provide value, and that you are an asset to your manager.

3. This is not brain surgery.
Take your job seriously, but take yourself lightly. Ultimately, on your deathbed, you are not going to say, “Oh, gee. I wish I would have spent a little more time typing up that document. Oh, if I had just reviewed that email for another ten minutes, it wouldn’t have gone out with that mistake.”
You can love your career, but you exist beyond what you do for a living. Take pride in what you do, but remember to keep a sense of humor when things that go wrong.

4. I am not just an admin!
Repeat these words to yourself frequently: “I am not just an admin!” When someone asks you, “What do you do for a living?” do not reply, “I’m just an admin.”
You are a valuable member of the team. Your position is important. Admins are the heartbeat of an organization, and much falls apart when you are not around. Look what happens when you take a day off! You are an important contributor, so hold your head high and be proud to be an admin.

5. Practice preventative assertions.
When things go wrong and deadlines aren’t met, go back to the person who missed it after-the-fact and explain what you need in the future.
Say, “It’s important that I receive this information in a timely fashion to make the deadline. This time was rushed, and some mistakes were made. The next time, I need this information from you on this date. How far in advance do you want me to provide it, so you can return it to me on time?”
Set those criteria, so that people know better how to interact with you. Don’t just always be the fall gal or the scapegoat.

6. Do not cross your ethical and moral boundaries.
Some admins confided that people have asked them to break the rules. “Oh, I know you’re supposed to send this through Processing, but can you just do it really quick and not send it through there?”
Just respond back, “I don’t want to make a mistake. I need to follow the procedure in this case to ensure that this goes out as it should.”

7. Be assertive.
If you are under the gun and someone’s hovering over your shoulder watching you, and they won’t go away, you are probably feeling a little more nervous because they’re standing there!
Be assertive. Say to them, “I’d get this done much more efficiently if you can come back in 30 minutes.” Speak your mind. Do not be passive and just let everybody take advantage of you. Do not be aggressive and make enemies, but come from the heart in an honest place and state what you need.

8. Manage in advance.
Don’t wait for crisis. Always be looking ahead. Be proactive. What’s happening next week? Is there a meeting coming up that you need to help with documents and copying?
Plan ahead. Is there a trip that’s coming up in a couple of months? What could I do to prepare my manager for that trip long before he or she ever asks me for the information?

9. How can you help your manager be more efficient?
Always exude the attitude, “I am here to help. It is my job to help you be successful.” The more the people you support who are successful, the more you will be successful.
Hopefully these nine tips have given you ideas on great strategies for success as an administrative professional.

To find out more about The Productivity Pro®, Inc. or have Laura Stack speak at an upcoming meeting or event, please visit at www.theproductivitypro.com.
Make it a productive day! ™

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Intercall recently published the 2010 study on Technology In the Workplace. The findings of the study make it clear that today’s workers are feeling the pinch of tough economic times and increased pressure to do more with less and stay connected to the office even in off hours.

Almost half of American workers who use technology at work believe that in this economy they must produce more even though they have fewer resources. Twenty-five percent of American workers feel their job security “is partially dependent on their supervisor seeing they are connected to work even after hours.”

Even with the increased workloads, Americans do see technology as a key part of productivity in the workplace. Job satisfaction increases when companies provide technology tools to help workers do more in less time and most workers believe technology does help them be more productive on the job.

Find more on the 2010 Technology In the Workplace study here.

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Join Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R), and Day-Timer on Monday, March 29 for a one-hour webinar on using Tasks in Microsoft Outlook. We have sessions for both Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003. The Tasks module is third in a ten-part series on using Outlook effectively.

The classes on March 29 will cover:

Tasks—the Daily To-Do List, Create a New Task, Recurring Tasks, Regenerating Tasks, Remove Completed Tasks from the List, Change the Sort in Your To-Do Bar, Change Preferences, Capture an Email as a Task on the Task Pad, Collapse Your Tasks, Assigning Tasks, View by Person Responsible, Status Updates, Master Categories Lists, Tag with Category, Project Management, View Tasks for by Category/Project, Filter the View, Sort Tasks, Task Options, Paper To-Do Lists, Finding Tasks, Task Folders, Schedule Tasks from Your Calendar.

Sign up for the webinar.

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Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R) talks about the productivity killer – procrastination!
(C) 2010 Laura Stack. All rights reserved. http://www.theproductivitypro.com

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Are New Years Resolutions really productive? Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R), talks about how resolutions and how to really make positive changes for the New Year. (C) 2009 Laura Stack. All rights reserved. http://www.theproductivitypro.com

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Meetings can absolutely eat up your day if you let them. Ever seen the Dilbert cartoon about preliminary pre-meeting meetings? Does it feel like you’re stuck in that Dilbert cartoon and can’t get anything effective done? Well, you don’t have to take it anymore! Keep these things in mind when dealing with time-stealing meetings. 

Refuse Face-to-Face Meetings When Unnecessary
Determine if you really need to meet in person. How many times have you attended a meeting and asked yourself, “Why am I here?” Hopefully, by now you’ve started protecting your time from every person who wants a piece of it. If my clients want to meet in person, I charge a consulting fee. For telephone calls, no charge. Ninety percent of the time, a conference call will suffice. Extra travel time and expenses are involved when meeting in person, so avoid it unless dialogue and brainstorming are required. 

Do not accept a meeting invitation if the requestor can’t state in one sentence the exact reason you’re meeting. For example:

 ·        To inform our department of changes in the holiday pay policy.

·        To sell management on our division’s plan to automate payroll processing.

·        To brainstorm the best way to resolve the association’s budget deficit.

·        To determine realistic sales goals for each region for next year.

·        To discuss the critical skills required for successful performance as a first-level supervisor.

Cancel Meetings
Meetings can be important; they allow for the exchange of ideas and play an important role in the dynamics of the workplace. But not all meetings have the same value. With a limited number of hours in the day, you need to pick and choose when a meeting is appropriate and when it isn’t. Always think twice before calling a meeting. If you have the flexibility to choose, you should always think twice about agreeing to attend one, too. If you feel like a good deal of your day is wasted by meetings, consider the following:

 Is the meeting simply to exchange information? If so, an email might do the trick just as well, and save everyone a lot of time.
Is there travel involved? An elevator ride is one thing; real travel is quite another. Whether the meeting will include attendees from across town or across the country, always stop and consider whether a conference call or webinar meetup might be just as effective (I use www.gotomeeting.com).  Sometimes the face-to-face is critical. Other times, it just doesn’t matter, so why waste travel time?
What’s your role? Maybe your place could be taken by an assistant who can take good notes. Just make sure that if decisions need to be made, whoever’s taking your place is capable of filling in for you. Others will be annoyed if your absence turns into an inconvenience for them.
If you do need to be there personally, find out exactly what’s needed of you. If only one item on a two-hour agenda involves you, perhaps you can handle that matter first and leave the meeting early. Or ask what time to show. Spending half of your day in meetings waiting for your agenda item can be a frustrating time-waster.
 

Limit Attendees
More is not merrier. Think through who really needs to be there. Don’t worry about hurting someone’s feelings if they aren’t included. If you simply want to keep a stakeholder or player in the loop, select them as “optional,” instead of “required.” Always assume that higher-ups have much more profitable things to do than sit in your meeting. Think about how much people are paid, and ask if your meeting is worth an hour of their pay PLUS what they otherwise could have been doing if they weren’t stuck there. Only invite people if they have a direct contribution to make to the meeting objective, and the desired decisions would not be able to be made without them. If their presence is only required for ten minutes, give them the first ten minutes, and then allow them to graciously depart.

Multiply Your Hands
Have meeting requests and responses go to your delegate (if you have one), not to you. Don’t wade through all the responses; that’s why you have an assistant. In Outlook, under Tools, Options, Delegates, select “Send meeting requests and responses only to my delegates, not to me.” Brilliant.

Avoid Meetings on Fridays
Many departments and teams decide as an informal policy to schedule meetings Monday-Thursday if at all possible. Too many people try to take long weekends or duck out early, making scheduling and rescheduling a nightmare on Fridays, plus you’ll end up with a lot of no-shows. I try to leave Fridays open for personal appointments. I find if I put a doctor’s appointment in between business meetings, something always happens to derail one or the other. It’s hard to get my mind switched between different realms in any case.

Distribute Your Agenda Early
Always send or request an agenda and include it in the text portion of the appointment, or include it as an attachment. A basic agenda should include a statement of purpose, any logistical considerations, the decisions to be made, a list of the topics to discuss (in priority order), who’s responsible for that item, and how long you’re allotting for each one. Ask participants if they have any changes to the agenda items to let you know in advance of the meeting, so you can make adjustments if necessary. Once you get into the meeting, follow the agenda diligently, so you can ensure all points are covered, decisions are made, and the objective is achieved.

Set Your Meeting’s Length Yourself
Don’t let Outlook pick the length of your meeting; the default is one hour, so that’s how much time people normally schedule meetings. Instead, match the length of the meeting to the purpose. If you’ve done an agenda and you’ve determined you’ll only need forty minutes, then manually change the invitation and schedule for that. Otherwise, time will expand to fill the amount of time available. If you’ve promised folks you’ll be out of there quickly, people tend to work toward that goal. If there’s slack time, more socializing will naturally occur, and an hour will definitely get used. Some people try to build in “buffer” time; don’t cave to this habit. I purposefully under-schedule and announce the goal at the beginning, so everyone is actively moving forward.

 Use Online Scheduling for Outside Parties
According to an international research of online scheduler Doodle, professionals spend 5 hours a week with setting up meetings alone (see 1st International Study on Scheduling Trends 2009 http://www.doodle.com/about/mediareleases/survey.html).  Doodle.com is an online polling tool to find a good day/time for participants to meet, especially helpful when they don’t work at your company. I particularly like the Outlook plugin. It provides an online display of optional meeting times allows all participants to indicate their preferred times and enables the organizer to choose the final slot. Done. There is no toggling between participants’ calendars and no inefficient email chains—obtaining the availability of external parties is made effortless. By engaging participants, Doodle makes scheduling transparent and very flexible, regardless of whether they use online or offline calendars, paper planners, or no system at all.

Allow Enough Breaks
Provide at least one break for every hour and 15 minutes, max. Let attendees know at the outset what to expect. If you keep rambling on, and they aren’t sure when they’ll get a bio break, they’ll just start getting up randomly and sneaking out. Clearly state at the beginning, “We’ll meet from now until 10:00, and then we’ll break until 10:10,” etc. If you’re meeting over a lunch hour, it’s also common courtesy to provide food.

 Be Considerate of Those in Other Time Zones
If you’re in the Pacific Time zone, and some of your meeting participants are calling in from the East, a 2:00 meeting puts them into departure time. Realize that people may have childcare commitments at the end of the day; an afternoon meeting (or vice versa for early mornings on the West Coast) can severely inconvenience folks and reduce the odds of attendance.

Strike a Balance on Scheduling
If you schedule a meeting too far out, you’ll get a bunch of cancellations and requests to reschedule as you get closer—or you’ll just get trumped by someone higher up. If you wait to schedule a meeting until the last minute, it’s hard to find a block of time when most people are readily available. So it’s best to schedule 2-3 weeks in advance. Anything sooner or further off than that is fraught with scheduling challenges and conflicts.

Immediately Inform the Meeting Leader of Conflicts
If you have a change in your calendar but don’t want to “rock the boat,” you inconvenience more people the longer you wait. It takes effort to work schedules around appointments, so as soon as you know, raise the flag. The chair can determine if they can make it without you or if the meeting should be moved.

Confirm Everything
I’ve often shown up for a meeting but the other person “forgot.” You’d like to think all adults are responsible and will do what they say they’ll do, but it’s always better to dash off a quick email: “Looking forward to seeing you on (date) at (time) at (location). Let me know if something comes up.” I don’t make people confirm that things are correct; I ask them to let me know if there’s a change. Also make sure you get directions and map it out well in advance of trying to run out the door. I look at my calendar for the next day before I leave work and make sure I’m ready to roll on everything. Confirm with attendees, too, when it’s your meeting. Open the original meeting request, select Actions, and then New Message to Attendees.

Journal Your Meeting Notes
Many people don’t know how to use the Journal feature in Outlook, or even what it’s for. If you’ve ever accidentally clicked it, you’ll get a pop-up box that asks you if you’re SURE you want to turn on the Journal. Most people freak out and click NO. Next time, click YES. Open a new Journal entry, select Meeting in the Type dropdown, type up your meeting notes, put in the day/time of the meeting, indicate in the Contacts field the people at the meeting, and select a Category for the meeting name or project. When you pull up a Contact and click the Activities tab, you’ll be able to see the Journal entries (notes) from every meeting you’ve ever had with that person. You can also pull up your Journal entries by Category to review meeting notes as far back as you’d like. OR give your notes to your assistant, have him type them up in the text field of the original meeting notice, save, and send a message to attendees (under Actions).

Get Tough
Here are three questions you should ask yourself whenever you schedule a meeting:
 

Do we really need all these people? Make sure you aren’t inviting anyone who doesn’t need to have a seat at the table. Not only does it make scheduling more difficult, but you’ll either (a) waste their time or (b) bend over backwards to accommodate someone who isn’t going to show up anyway.
Can we keep people in the loop without inviting them to every meeting? Some meetings are full of wallflowers who need to know what’s going on but don’t necessarily need to contribute. Publishing meeting minutes or distributing essential information electronically can save time and shorten the attendee list. Also, take a look to see if some work areas are sending multiple representatives. By choosing a single designee from each area, you can make sure everyone is represented without having everyone in the room.
Do we need to meet at all? This is a question you should ask about EVERY meeting, not just the hard-to-schedule ones. Any meeting that doesn’t have a clear objective (if not a formal agenda) should be on the chopping block.
(C) 2010 Laura Stack. All rights reserved. http://www.TheProductivityPro.com

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Are your employees bogged down with business processes that make no sense? Laura gives an example of a United Airlines policy that not only inconveniences customers, but also wastes employee time. Eliminate business processes that don’t make sense! (C) 2009 Laura Stack. All rights reserved.

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Speaker: Laura Stack (SL: LauraStack Ghost)
Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, is a personal productivity expert, author, and professional speaker.

Where: Sun Campus in Second Life (SLURL:http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sun%20Microsystems%201/141/132/23)
When: October 13, 2009 – 9am SLT / PT (check your local time)

Topic: Digital Quicksand: Time-Draining Habits in a Web 2.0 World
Businesses and individuals worldwide keep finding interesting ways to use social networks and other interactive online media to do some pretty amazing things – from building their brands to getting to know their customers. Like most technology, social networks and other social media tools are great resources but lousy masters. You could spend all day hopping around to different sites, updating your information, and connecting with people all over the world. But how does that add to your daily productivity? Laura Stack discusses how to take advantage of the best aspects of social media, without letting it take advantage of you.

Come and listen to Laura, chat with her and participate in an engaging and dynamic conversation!

NOTE: This event is in Second Life. Please be sure you download the client software and register an avatar prior to the session: http://www.secondlife.com

Learn more about Laura on her website and on Twitter. You can find her books at this site as well. Information: http://blogs.sun.com/vw/entry/expert_chat_digital_quicksand_time

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