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

“We…can strategically train our attention. When it comes to email and the Internet, it’s critical that we do so to give ourselves more time to think more reflectively, creatively, and deeply in an increasingly complex world.” — Tony Schwartz, president and CEO of The Energy Project

“If left unchecked, ‘info-mania’ will damage a worker’s performance by reducing their mental sharpness. This is a very real and widespread phenomenon.” — Glenn Wilson, British psychologist
“When you log on, you feel like you’re in touch with everything that’s going on in the world. But what you really are is out of touch — literally. There is no touching anymore.” — Judith Regan, Regan Books

Would it surprise you to learn that paying too much attention to your email can lower your IQ by as much as 10 points? That’s the conclusion of a recent British study, which suggests that constant connection to the info-world via your handheld, smartphone, or computer can affect you as badly as missing a night’s sleep—and worse than smoking marijuana.

Electronic technology can be a boon to productivity; that’s indisputable. Nowadays, it’s easy to contact just about anyone at the touch of a button. You can accomplish tasks almost anywhere, during what would otherwise be unusable downtime. With access to the Internet, even doing research is a snap, whether you’re sitting in a Starbucks or in your corner office.

The problem is, it’s easy to forget that email, cell phones, Blackberries, iPads and the like are supposed to be tools. You should be using them to maximize your productivity; they shouldn’t be controlling your behavior. But somehow, many of us have gotten to the point where we’re terrified to be disconnected even for a moment, just in case we miss something. When the incoming message alert chimes, we drop what we’re doing to check it, like Pavlov’s dogs drooling when the bell rings. Worse, we’re like dogs on leashes, pulled this way and that whether we like it or not.

To be truly productive, you need to slip your electronic leash.

You have only so much energy, so you can’t waste it on trivial things like answering emails or cell phone texts the moment they appear. You need to be able to focus like a laser beam on your important tasks, without letting distractions yank you away from what really matters. No matter how minor the interruption, it takes time to refocus and get back into the flow, which can’t help but impact your productivity.

Back in 2009, I introduced the concept of Obsessive-Compulsive Social Media Disorder (OCSMD). As the name suggests, OCSMD is associated primarily with compulsively checking Facebook and obsessively tweeting away on Twitter, but I think it’s applicable for electronic media of any kind, including email and texting. Sure, these media may be important to you, even productive in some ways—but you don’t need to check any of them right this minute. This is especially true when doing so interferes with your work or (ironically) with face-to-face social interaction.

Short of completely eschewing this technology, which is no longer a reasonable option, you have to set real, solid strictures on its use. Look, you’re not a machine. You can’t always be on, and you certainly shouldn’t stay connected when you should be recharging. Truly productive people realize the need to get away from work occasionally, to socialize and be human, to take breaks when they need to—even to disconnect from the workaday world for a while and take a vacation. Given enough rest, completely disconnected from your electronics, you can accomplish more when you are connected.

When you refuse to set boundaries to limit your use of electronic technology, then you’re setting yourself up to fail. You may still be able to function, but you’ll never be able to achieve your full potential.

To recapture your productive techno-edge, start small. Disconnect for a half-hour a day first, then stretch it to an hour. At lunchtime, step away from your desk, turn off your Blackberry, and leave the building. Sit in the park. Go out to eat. Visit with a friend. Get to know a colleague better. In other words, do the directly social things that humans have done for 99.9% of our history.

When you’re working, don’t leave your social media sites open just so you can watch things come in, even if you think they may be business-related. Turn off all your message alerts, whether visual or auditory, because they’ll absolutely derail your train of thought. Even if you don’t answer a message immediately, just knowing it’s waiting will inevitably affect your productivity. All you really need to do is check electronic media once or twice a day. Ditto with returning phone calls. Pick a block of time when you can do both efficiently, and stick to it.

Remember that your electronic tools are intended to help you be more productive. That’s it. Ultimately, they’re your servants: so to maintain your productive edge—and your sanity—never, ever let yourself become theirs.

“Life is one big pitch, so you’d better start practicing.” — Dan Shawbel, personal branding expert

“What’s a brand? A singular idea or concept that you own inside the mind of the prospect.” — Al Ries, coauthor of The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

“All of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me, Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.” — Tom Peters, American business writer

Back in 1997, Tom Peters articulated a concept that had been around for decades: “Brand You.” In an influential article in the magazine Fast Company, Peters argued that it’s no longer enough to be quietly talented and hardworking in order to get ahead. While skills remain crucial, he noted, success in the modern global marketplace also comes from self-packaging.

In other words, to really get ahead, you have to become your own number one product. You must be uniquely you, the CEO of Me, Inc., selling yourself before you can sell anything else. You can no longer be defined by your job title; you have to be your own recognizable brand in all ways. In addition to your skill-set and knowledge base, which must constantly evolve, your personal brand must also include your appearance, attitude, and an active positioning strategy.

At first glance, this concept may seem to have little to do with productivity; but I think it does, at least in a wider “metaproductivity” sense. Brand You is a way of refining your focus so that you can maximize your ability to attract “buyers,” which in turn keeps you personally productive (and solvent).

Keeping ahead of the game requires frequent review and revision . Consider the pop singer Madonna. Love her or hate her, she’s been at the top of the music industry for decades, mostly because she’s been savvy enough to grow and evolve her personal style, reinventing herself as necessary. That’s a necessity in any business, even more so now than it was when Peters first called the trend to our attention. You have to remain focused on Me, Inc., or you’ll be left behind. It’s as much a matter of survival as success anymore.

Everything you do, from your domain name on the Internet to your personal business cards (and you should have both) must be about presenting yourself and your brand unapologetically to the world. In my case, I’m Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro®. That’s Brand Me, from my perspective: instantly recognizable and entirely unique. What’s your personal brand?

If you don’t know yet, then you need to start figuring it out fast. The idea is to position yourself clearly in other people’s minds, so that you’re the first person they think of when they’re looking for someone with your skills. Here’s how you do that:

• Know yourself. What are your specialties, and what do you want to accomplish? How do other people perceive you? What do you want to be known for? Start with that raw clay and use it to mold Brand You. Be frank when assessing yourself and your abilities, accepting who you are and where your strengths lie.

• Create a personal style. This should start with a relaxed, professional appearance. Now, this is a difficult guideline to set hard-and-fast rules for, since professional attire varies from field to field. Do some research in your field, and choose a non-objectionable look that will attract attention without being overwhelming.

• Learn to sell yourself. Develop a brief, pithy pitch that conveys who you are and what you’re selling in just a few minutes. Imagine if you were in an elevator with someone, and had only a few minutes to sell yourself. You must be able to project credibility and authenticity quickly in order to sell Brand You.

• Provide fantastic customer value. It’s not all about you, you, you. A large part of Brand You is giving people so much more than what they ask for that they come back repeatedly. Even if you remain within the corporate structure, you need to establish a series of skills and behaviors that you’re famous for in the organization. Maybe you’re the go-to girl for Java apps, or the company-wide expert on database management.

• Get social. These days, the use of social media is absolutely necessary in order to publicize yourself. Become active not just on Facebook and Twitter, but also on professional networking sites like LinkedIn and Biznik. Start your own blog. If there are local professional groups in your field, join them and attend meetings religiously. Talk to people. Start aggressively developing your professional contacts, and never let up. You never know where the next gig will come from.

• Communicate your brand. Get your name known in your field in every way you can think of without being obnoxious. Post on message boards, forums, and discussion groups. Send out an electronic newsletter to your clients and prospects. Relentlessly hand out business cards. In addition to establishing your own self-named website domain, set up an email address is this format: firstname.lastname@you.com. Include a title that encapsulates your specialty in all of your communications, and if necessary, create a logo and use it liberally.

I realize that the advice I’ve provided sounds selfish—but if you want to maximize your likelihood of success (and survival), don’t you need to be selfish? It’s not like you’re building a clever façade to hide behind: your goal with personal branding is to present to the world the very best You possible.

As Seamus Phan points out in his book DotZen, “The core of branding, beyond telling the truth, is to be true to yourself.” Do that in an honest, attractive way, and the world will beat a path to your door.

SOCIAL MEDIA UN-PRODUCTIVITY – HOW TO AVOID ADDICTION

I’ve coined the term Obsessive Compulsive Social Media Disorder. Do you have it?

Many people confess, “Facebook is my secret addiction. I’m obsessed! I don’t really know how to cure it, but I spend hours every day on Facebook, plus LinkedIn, Twitter, and all my other social media sites. I’ve not yet been able to monetize the results of this activity and am not really sure whether I am getting any business off of it.”

It’s a common complaint. You absolutely need to have a presence in social media and spend time doing it; however, it can be a huge productivity drain if you are not careful.

Here are a few tips to make it more manageable and more productive:

1. Do not leave your Twitter feed open and observe posts in real time.

There are a lot of 3rd party tools to help you sort through all the clutter and pay attention to the posts you really care about. I use www.tweetdeck.com and turn off all the alerts. The last thing you want when you’re trying to concentrate on an important document is for alerts to sound and text boxes to be pop up all over the place, distracting you from what you’re trying to work on. Use a tool that will help you consolidate all the information, keep up with favorite people and search terms, and reply to direct messages.

2. Get as much automatic linkage as you can get.

For example, each day I post the Productivity Pro Tip of the Day to Twitter. I don’t post these manually. I went to hootsuite.com, loaded 365 tips for the next year, where automatically, every day at 8:15 a.m., hootsuite posts that day’s tip to Twitter.

That automatically posts to my Facebook and LinkedIn. Everything has a dual purpose. You want to be able to post in one place and have it show up on another. When I post an article or video on my blog, it’s automatically cross-posted on my Facebook fan page.

3. Try to limit how many times a day you check your profiles.

See if you can get yourself down to checking/posting three times a day: morning, noon, and afternoon. I only check twice. I check once about 10:00 and once about 3:00. You have to figure out what the formula is for you, but always being on and never having more than a four-minute block at any one time to do your work is truly going to sabotage your results. Your goal with social media is to achieve maximum results in minimum time.

Get creative about how you can cure your Obsessive Compulsive Social Media Disorder. Here is to getting rid of the addiction!

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! ™

© 2010 Laura Stack. All Rights Reserved

When it comes to time management, social media can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can help you make connections and expand your professional network faster than ever before. On the other hand, you can dump countless hours into social networking sites and see little return on the investment. Here are five things you can start doing right away to help you use social media efficiently and productively.

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

The Top Ten Commandments of Social Networking Etiquette:

1. Thou shalt develop a purposeful social media strategy.
2. Thou shalt dedicate yourself to really learning how to use the ones you choose.
3. Thou shalt not sell yourself before earning the right to do so.
4. Thou shalt not keep your browsers open all day.
5. Thou shalt turn off all notifications and alerts.
6. Thou shalt do real work during the day.
7. Thou shalt not use social media to waste time.
8. Thou shalt limit the number of visits to your social media sites.
9. Thou shalt post once and let the third-party software post the rest.
10. Thou shalt not update us when you go to the bathroom.

What would you add to this list?

When it comes to time management, social media can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can help you make connections and expand your professional network faster than ever before. On the other hand, you can dump countless hours into social networking sites and see little return on the investment. Here are five things you can start doing right away to help you use social media efficiently and productively:

1. Separate your business life from your personal life. Not only is this a good idea in terms of maintaining professionalism and not boring your friends, but it also has big implications for productivity. If you comingle your personal social networking with professional social networking, you are basically inviting your friends and family into your workday and your clients into your personal life. That means that when you are at work and decide to focus, for example, on marketing yourself, that you will almost certainly be distracted by updates and messages from family and friends. Just glancing through those personal posts is going to make your social media activities take a lot longer than they need to.

I use Twitter (www.twitter.com/laurastack) and LinkedIn for my business network (clients, prospects, vendors) (www.linkedin.com/in/laurastack). I use Facebook for my personal network (actual friends, family, speaker buddies). I do have a Productivity Pro® tip of the day that gets posted to both, but the rest is separate. I announce business seminars, news, and updates on LinkedIn. I put personal updates on Facebook and don’t want to wonder what a client might think. Instead of “friending” my clients, I invite them to become a Fan at my Laura Stack Fan Page instead (www.facebook.com/ProductivityPro), so I can choose what business items to post separate from my wall. I only visit Facebook when I’m on personal time, rather than thinking of it as a marketing activity.

2. Get into a regular social media routine. Keeping current on social networks really doesn’t take that much time – provided you are approaching the task efficiently. It’s easy to spend the better part of an afternoon reading blog posts and checking status updates, but generally speaking, that’s not what you’re there for. In fact, the things that eat up the most time for social media users are typically not things that add value at all; they are just another form of procrastination, like lingering at a coworker’s desk or surfing the web.

The best way to approach building a social media routine is to establish dedicated blocks of time to handle social media. This might be a single 15 minute session each morning or maybe a few quick sessions spread throughout the day, whatever makes sense with your needs and situation. If you keep the time period short you will be more likely to maintain focus and accomplish what you logged on to do and less likely to fritter away time with idle chat or mindless wandering.

Or do what I did: write a year’s worth of postings at one time. Yes, I wrote 365 daily Productivity Pro® tips over the course of a couple focused days, so I don’t have to think of something new to say each day. I currently have over 1500 people following on Twitter, doing nothing more than posting once each day. And I don’t post them manually…read on.

3. Embrace third-party applications to automate manual processes. If you’ve determined that it makes good business sense for you to participate on several social media platforms, it probably won’t be long before you realize just how big a time commitment it takes to keep current on each one. It was hard enough back when we just had to keep our blogs up-to-date. These days, that’s just the beginning. Chances are, at some point, you’re going to need a little help.

That’s where third-party applications come in. Rather than posting to multiple places, sites like Ping.fm allow you to go to one place to make updates to all of your social networking sites. That will save you the trouble of jumping from site to site and generally streamline the experience across the board.

To get even fancier, load your future postings into hootsuite, and have that update Ping, which updates Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, delicious, typepad, aim, gtalk, myspace, etc. That means that while you are sitting in a meeting, it can keep your account looking alive. Obviously you don’t want to be disingenuous with such a tool, but it is perfect for reminding followers of special events, sharing professional wisdom, or anything else more strategic than a simple status update.

I also like www.SocialOomph.com (formerly TweetLater) to help manage multiple accounts. It also provides a number of business tools to help you leverage social media effectively. For example, it automatically follows back anyone who follows you on Twitter with a custom message. I also get a digest every day of key words I’m searching for on Twitter.

Last, blip.tv is a video uploading site that posts to YouTube, TubeMogul, iTunes, your blog, etc. automatically. I definitely recommend at least checking out Ping.fm, HootSuite, SocialOomph, and Blip.tv. Your specific needs and personal tastes will influence which platforms makes sense for you, but the best way to learn about them is to give it a try.

4. Decide what you’re really trying to do with SM. The biggest reason that otherwise productive, well-intentioned people end up wasting a ton of time on social networks is that they never sat down and figured out what they were trying to accomplish with social media. It isn’t just about how many friends/followers/readers you have. It’s about what your business has to gain. That might mean interacting with existing clients, reaching out to new prospects, or simply building your online reputation. Whatever makes sense for you, be sure to have a goal in mind whenever you commit yourself to another online profile. Otherwise, you could spend 40 hours a week bouncing from thing to thing without ever adding real value to your business. Meaningful goals might be based on sales (establish one new lead per week), generating awareness (post industry-related content once per day), or even something more subjective, such as establishing a reputation as a valuable online resource for customers and prospects. The bottom line is that you need to know what you are trying to accomplish. After all, if your goal is simply to create an account and make some noise, that’s probably all you’ll do.

5. Connect, listen, and contribute. This is the easiest one to forget. You’ve already decided that you are going to invest time and energy into social networking, don’t forget that you aren’t there to simply broadcast your sales pitch to anyone who will listen. Just like you make time to Tweet, update Facebook, or post on LinkedIn, you need to set aside a few minutes just to see what other people are saying. This will give you great insights into the needs of the community and help you better focus your message when you do have something to say. Even just carving out five minutes twice a day to pop in and see what others are saying can add tremendous value to your social networking activities.

Just as an example, Twitter provides plenty of great opportunities to listen, but realistically, this social media network that is famous for broadcasting what millions of users are eating for lunch does come with its fair share of background noise and low-value information. A third party application like TweetDeck and Twhirl can help you scan, sort, and filter the conversations taking place on Twitter and help you hone in on things that matter without wasting time on things that don’t. If I were to just scan the tweets of everyone I am following , I would be overwhelmed by mundane updates (“eating lunch”), annoying promotions (“retweet to win XYZ”), and complete nonsense (“which Harry Potter character are you?”). TweetDeck allows me to focus on the handful of people that I know well and even keep an eye on important topics through search terms like “productive” or “Outlook.” That saves time and keeps me focused. And make sure YOU don’t post ridiculous updates.

Hopefully I’ve given you a thing or two to think about as you pursue whatever social media endeavors make sense for you and your business. I also hope you’ll drop me a line out there in the social media sphere. See below for my social networks of choice.

Make it a productive day! (TM)

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

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

Obsessive Compulsive Social Media Disorder

You absolutely need a presence in social media as a business strategy, but do you have Obsessive Compulsive Social Media Disorder? Listen to Laura Stack explain how you can be involved in social media without living in social media. Learn how to increase efficiency, reduce multi-tasking and reduce wasted time using social media.

(C) 2009 Laura Stack. All rights reserved.

http://www.TheProductivityPro.com

Like it or not, social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are here to stay – and it isn’t just kid stuff anymore.  In fact, 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. How do you keep it from sabotaging your productivity?