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

Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R) discusses how “I’ll do that later” can affect your productivity. (c) 2010 Laura Stack. All Rights Reserved

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Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R) Talks about finding the best use of your time in the morning. (c) 2010 Laura Stack. All Rights Reserved

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HOW TO SAY NO WITHOUT SAYING NO: REFUSING REQUESTS WITH TACT AND GRACE

1. Try to negotiate.
When someone asks us to do something, when do we assume they mean they need it? We assume they mean now. But that’s not always the case. Instead of doing a task immediately, try to negotiate. Can you extend the deadline a bit? Just ask, “Do you need that today? Or would Monday be okay?” You will often be pleasantly surprised.

2. Simplify.
Can you reduce the scope of the task? Asking, “At what level of detail does this need to be done? Does it need to be to the second decimal place or can I just round a little bit?” Find out in advance.

3. Communicate.
Simply be honest about what’s on your plate. Saying “Here’s a list of all the things I’m working on in priority order. Where would you say this one falls?”
When you manager gives you a task, you can give an estimation of the deadline and the due date that you can have it returned.

4. Reduce quality.
What do I mean by reduce quality? It involves asking if the task can be done at 85% rather than 100% perfect. Ask what level of perfection is required here? Do you need me to spend two hours crossing every T and dotting every I? If so, I’m happy to do that. Or do you simply want me to get it out the door in five minutes?

5. Delegate.
Usually you’re the delegee. But you could try to get someone else to help you. You could form a committee. You can call in some temporary help. You could outsource it. So ask specifically, “Can I get help on this? Or do you want me to do this myself?”

6. Streamline.
Do it a little more efficiently. Can you change the process? Ask, “Can we skinny this down a bit? Rather than doing this report once a month that takes me four hours, can I do an executive summary once a quarter? That would only take me two hours.” Much more efficient.

7. See what can be eliminated.
Have you ever asked yourself the question, “What would happen if this just didn’t get done?” What a great productivity concept! “If I didn’t do this at all, would anybody notice?” Great question. If the answer is no, see if your manager would let you skip it.

8. Get creative.
How else could you meet this request? Figure out an alternative way to get the result, other than the way it was originally outlined. Say, “You know, it might be more efficient if I had access to your calendar, rather than sending you an e-mail every time I want to put a phone call on your calendar.”
Your manager can grant you Editor permissions for her calendar, so you can schedule appointments directly for her.

9. Can you try partial delivery?
Ask the requestor, “Can I do a piece now and a piece later? I complete this portion immediately and give you the rest next week, if that’s okay?” Meet the immediate need and work on the rest when it’s not pressing.

10. Redirect.
Send the task elsewhere if it truly doesn’t belong on your plate. If your boss has a computer problem, rather than crawling along on the floor checking wires, tell her, “That request actually goes through IT. I’ll make sure they know about this problem and schedule a time for it to be fixed.”
The point is to take as much as possible off her plate. Getting it handled doesn’t mean that you have to do it.

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

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Getting People Out of Your Office Quickly

1. Always choose to visit a colleague, if given a choice.
When scheduling a meeting, you’ll have to decide where to hold the conversation: your office or mine? During a face-to-face conversation, it’s always better to go to them.

Why? You can leave! If someone’s in your office in your comfortable guest chair, “feet up,” so to speak, it’s much harder to get them out of your office than to walk yourself out of their office.

2. Be honest.
If they say, “Got a minute?” and you don’t, you can say, “Actually, I have my back up against the wall right now on a deadline. If it’s okay with you, can I call you back at 3:00?” And actually let them see you type the appointment in your calendar. They walk out feeling like I have an appointment! It lets them feel that they’ve been heard, but you didn’t take on the interruption right then.

3. Deflect low priority interruptions with alternate scheduling.
In our quest to be helpful and to provide great customer service to our coworkers, we are always willing to jump in and complete whatever is asked us of, regardless of what else is on our plates.
You can’t always do things in the order they appear. Some things aren’t that important right now. It’s okay to say, “That meeting’s in three weeks. Would it be okay if we connected the week prior?” By deflecting requests that aren’t mission-critical at the moment, you keep your attention focused on the critical things.

4. Use verbal tactics and body language.
When someone is in your office, do you ever have a problem getting them to leave? They’re still there chatting away and can’t take a hint. Try these verbal tactics.
Sometimes it helps by talking in past tense, such as, “It was nice having talked with you.” Or tou can try to summarize your conversation and the action items. You can even try some body language cues like turning back to email or shuffling papers. But what if the visitor still doesn’t get it?

5. You’re going to have to be assertive.
There comes a point when you can’t get someone to leave your office, you need to smile pleasantly, and say, “You’re going to have to excuse me now.” And keep smiling and don’t make excuses. There is nothing wrong with communicating, “I need to get back to work.” Because sometimes, honestly, people don’t get it. They will say, “Oh! Sorry!” and jump up and walk out. Just smile and wave.

6. Put a clock strategically behind you on the back wall.
When you are talking with a visitor, you can casually turn around and glance at the clock on the wall behind you. It’s perceived as rude to look at your watch, but when you quickly turn and glance at the clock on the wall, guess where they look? It’s a subtle, psychological cue that says, “Okay, we are on a deadline here. I think we need to get moving.”

7. Practice the “slow stroll.”
If the person still doesn’t get it, you could actually get up and walk out of your own office. Have you ever tried this? It really works! Keep a pile of copying on the side of your desk or something that needs to be delivered.

If the person does not stop talking, get up, tap them on the shoulder, say, “Come with me while I make these copies” or “Come with while I get a cup of coffee,” and walk right out of your office. Guess what? They will follow you! Hey, if they’re going to talk, you may as well get something done.

8. Get creative with your chairs.
Several people have told me they keep a pile of papers or folders in their guest chair. When people walk in, there is nowhere to sit, so they stay standing. Because they are standing, they can’t get comfortable. If they are not comfortable, they will leave.

If you want someone to sit down, you can actually move the pile of paper and offer them a seat. But, if not, hopefully they’ll get out sooner.

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.

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Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R) discusses advanced planning. (C) 2010 Laura Stack. All Rights Reserved

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Looking for a better way to keep track of your time, log hours for various clients, or see where time is being wasted? You’ll want to check out Chrometa’s Automatic Time Tracker.

Chrometa automatically records the time while you work — both on and off the PC. You’ll discover previously undocumented billable time, save time on billing reconciliation, and improve personal productivity.

Once your time is automatically captured, you can categorize your time quickly and easily by client or project. Use smart alerts to remind you to log time away from the PC such as meetings or phone calls. And easily export the data into Microsoft Excel.

If you’re serious about boosting your personal productivity, and getting paid for every second you work, Chrometa is THE ideal time management software for you. You can use it free for 30 days – we highly recommend you download Chrometa’s Time Tracker now, and regain control of your time today.

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If you or someone in your company or organization occasionally brings in outside speakers for training or meetings, please keep reading.

As the economy turns around, we are finding training hasn’t yet returned to 2006-2008 levels, budgets are still suppressed, and attendees can’t get out of their offices for a full day of training. So after successful pilots in Sioux Falls, SD, and Tampa, FL, we think we’ve stumbled on a solution: we are playing MATCHMAKER. Rather than flying out to work with a single company, we will help you find someone in your area to split the costs.

Here’s how it will work. I will book a two-day tour in select cities based upon interest. We will use the same discounted in-state “piggybacking” rates we use for Colorado. Four companies will each get a half-day program and split travel expenses four ways. The tour will look something like this:

Laura flies in the night before.
DAY 1, Company 1, AM session
DAY 1, Company 2, PM session

Drive to nearby city if necessary, spend night.
DAY 2, Company 3, AM session
DAY 2, Company 4, PM session
Fly out

Each company’s share will be $3K plus ¼ the travel expenses. (This is calculated at $6000 per day (discounted rate) x 2 days = $12,000 / 4 = $3,000 per company plus ¼ travel costs per half day of training.)

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Available productivity courses with Laura Stack

We will still design a custom program for you, based on your development needs and specifications!

Click here for a current list of sample productivity training programs.

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At this point, we just need to know if you’d like to be put on the list to be contacted if we have enough participants in your geographical area. There is NO OBLIGATION to express possible interest. Please reply to this message or email our office manager, Becca Fletcher, at Becca@TheProductivityPro.com.

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You can know all the productivity tips in the world, but nothing will work if you don’t have the energy to give 100 percent. Personal energy is a measure of how strong, invigorated, or up to a task you may feel at any moment. If you feel down, your zest ebbs, and you tend to produce mediocre work. So know your own rhythms and plan your work around them. If you tend to have a lot of energy first thing in the morning, then do your most challenging work then. High energy gives you the ability to concentrate well, make critical decisions, perform complex analysis, or do any task requiring creativity or problem solving.

When your energy is low, however, these tasks become more difficult, take longer, and often have poor results. So if the afternoons are difficult for you and you experience low energy, choose a healthy way of dealing with it rather than coffee. Pick something that will bring you back to a state of alert productivity. When you feel like you simply cannot start a new task, take a break. Go for a brisk walk, eat some protein, or stand up, stretch, and move your body. Nobody has an unlimited supply of personal energy, so know and honor your patterns and match your tasks to your energy level.

(C) 2010 Laura Stack – All Rights Reserved

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What do you do when you have the perfect plan set up for the day, then everything and everyone tries to blow up your plan?

Part of that could be your fault. Perhaps you’re responding to e-mails as they’re coming in or otherwise wasting time. But the other part is no fault of your own. You need to learn some language, verbiage, and techniques to use when someone asks you to do something not on your plan. If you’re thinking, “This is just not that important right now,” you need to know how to decline gracefully. Certainly there are some things that are worth stopping what we’re doing and handling; however, there lots of things that aren’t important and don’t qualify to be handled immediately.

One of the things you can do is always negotiate a due date with the person as they make a request. I’ve have some people tell me, “I’m an administrative assistant I can’t possibly negotiate or say no.” You don’t have to use the word “no,” but you have to get creative in how you respond. For example, when someone comes in and asks you to do something, when you assume that they need it? You might assume people need their requests handled now, but do they always need it handled immediately? Of course not. It’s your job to find out.

Asking a simple question such as, “Do you need that now, or would Monday be okay?” is perfectly fine. But if you don’t ask, if you don’t take that quick second to check in with a person, you don’t really know what the priority is, so you do it right away. It’s your job to query and negotiate the deadline.

Another idea is to find out at what level of perfection the person may be expecting you to complete that task. Yes, some things need to be perfect. If you have a multi-million dollar contract going out to your biggest customer, go ahead and spend the time to cross every “t” and dot every “i.” But sometimes there are things that just don’t need to be done perfectly. I’ve seen people take hours composing the “perfect” e-mail, and it’s not even going outside the company. You don’t need that level of brain damage for a little internal memo.

Another idea on saying no creatively is to have the other person help you prioritize. You could, for example, keep a running list of tasks and projects that the people you work with and support give you. As people come in your office or email or call you, simply ask what the priority is relative to the other priorities on your plate. Say, “I’m working on this database project that you’ve given me and running these reports. Do want to me to stop work on that and start work on this?” People need to get very specific about their needs. If you have a list of 57 prioritized tasks and this is number 14 on that list, you can be more realistic about a completion date. Have the other person help you determine where items fall, helping them to be realistic. Clearly communicate to others, “Hey I’m only one person. I can only get so many things done. What you want me to attack first?”

How do you make sure that you’re on the same page with the people you work with, so that nobody ends up disappointed, and everybody gets what they need, when they need it? Can you share some tips in gracefully saying “no” or negotiating? I look forward to learning how you handle these situations!

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An important part of being and staying productive is knowing the right time to accomplish a task. This is true not only in the business world, but in our personal lives as well. When we’re working on getting things done, we don’t always know exactly what the best time is for certain things. I ran across this helpful list of 100 tips and tricks for the best times to do things: Time is Money: The Best Times to Do Everything (100 Tricks & Tips).

I hope you find a few tips to help you make the most of your time!

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