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

Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R), travels extensively. She shares tips on packing for maximum efficiency. (C) 2011 Laura Stack, All Rights Reserved http://www.TheProductivityPro.com

Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R), travels extensively. She shares tips on packing for maximum efficiency. (C) 2011 Laura Stack, All Rights Reserved http://www.TheProductivityPro.com

Why do distractions and interruptions tend to disrupt our focus so easily?

The answer is at least partly biological. Despite modern myth, the brain isn’t a marvel of infinite capacity; we are, after all, only human, with all the limitations that implies. One limitation lies in our capacity to process what’s happening in the world around us. We’re flooded with so much sensory data at any one time that our brains have to filter out most of it to avoid overload, working with what’s left to create a structured reality that we can function within.

One result, as Winifred Gallagher points out in her intriguing book Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, is that “when you focus, you’re spending cognitive currency that should be wisely invested, because the stakes are high.” That is, you have to make a significant mental effort to truly focus on something; hence, you’re literally “paying attention,” with attention being a limited resource in the hustle and flow of your consciousness.

This selectivity allows you to draw order out of chaos, but to do so, you have to home in on a few things at the expense of all else—which is why any interruption or distraction can be so damaging. You’re already dealing with an immense quantity of information rushing in on you, everything from the room temperature to the quality of the lighting, and your brain’s already processing that, like it or not. Adding anything more detracts from your limited ability to pay attention to other phenomena. It pulls you out of your trance focus, forcing you to lose track of what you were doing, at least temporarily. This inevitably slows you down, so you take a hit productivity-wise.

Now, it’s true that some of us can handle more distractions than others without completely losing focus, because some of us just naturally have more cognitive cash to pay attention with—just as some of us are better singers or dancers. Furthermore, with enough self-discipline, you can also build your cognitive fortune beyond its normal limitations. But no matter how much capacity for receiving and processing information you may have, you still need to focus tightly, in order to get the maximum return from anything you do—whether it’s learning, working, or dancing the tarantella.

Therefore, you must deliberately choose what you spend your attention on, and do everything possible to trim out the excess fat of distractions and interruptions—no matter how minor they may seem. Whether it’s the phone ringing or someone talking across the hall, any distraction is vying for and stealing from your limited store of attention.

Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R) talks about productivity. How do you know when you are being productive and not just busy? (C) 2011 Laura Stack, All Rights Reserved http://www.TheProductivityPro.com

“It isn’t just what you know, and it isn’t just who you know. It’s actually who you know, who knows you, and what you do for a living.” — Bob Burg, American business writer

“Your power is almost directly proportional to the thickness of your Rolodex, and the time you spend maintaining it. Put bluntly, the most potent people I’ve known have been the best networkers — they ‘know everybody from everywhere’ and have just been out to lunch with most of them.” — Tom Peters, American business writer

“The currency of real networking is not greed but generosity.” — Keith Ferrazzi, American marketing consultant and author

Make no mistake: who you are and what you know, and the facility and flair with which you wield both your talent and knowledge, are key contributors to your success in the workplace. But the people you know can also be important—so to truly stay ahead of the game, you also need to build your networking skills.

Now, given the recent advent of online social networks like Twitter and Facebook, “networking” can be a loaded term. But let’s leave the frivolity aside, and look at the subject from a purely practical perspective. As defined here, networking is the art of cultivating productive personal relationships for business reasons. The tools you use to network can vary widely. They may in fact include specialized social networks like LinkedIn, but many people do just fine with their Rolodexes, business cards, and email. However you do it, no matter the venue, networking means reaching out to other people and making connections that benefit all involved.

Here are four simple tips to help you network in the most productive way possible.

Be Gregarious
For networking to work at all, you can’t be a shrinking violet…so if you’re shy, you need to get over it. You have to make a sincere effort to present yourself as someone worth networking with in the first place. So jump right in there and be friendly. You don’t have to be someone you aren’t—in fact, you should be as genuinely you as possible—but don’t hesitate to introduce yourself to new people, hand out business cards, ask germane questions, and listen to what others have to say. Know what your goals are, and don’t hesitate to articulate them. Otherwise: smile, be outgoing and confident, and pretend there’s no such thing as rejection.

Become Active in a Professional Organization
Find a local chapter of a trade group for professionals in your field, and join it. In fact, join more than one, if you can. Attend meetings regularly, and don’t be a wallflower: circulate, get to know people, and get your name out there. Volunteer for committees and events, and run for offices. Attend the conventions, workshops, and seminars. As long as you keep your ultimate goals in mind, any investments in time and dues will be more than paid for by the relationships you establish. Among other things, membership in a professional organization can help you:

• Keep abreast of current affairs within your field
• Cross-fertilize your business ideas with new ones
• Find new employees
• Find a job when you’re looking
• Identify guest speakers
• Locate joint venture partners
• Add to your professional development

Nurture Your Contacts

Always follow up with the people you meet, especially when you’ve promised them something. Not only does this ensure a good impression, it helps build the relationship into something more than a simple handshake and smile. Let them know you enjoyed meeting them, and invite them to get together with you every once in a while to talk and share ideas.

Don’t let that initial follow-up be the end of it, either. At the very least, touch bases every once in a while, and don’t be afraid to send someone an article or website link you think they may be interested in. If you have a habit of letting people slip out of contact, set up a tickler file to remind you to get back in touch with them. Just be sure you do it individually; nothing will kill a sense of personal connection as quickly as an email fired off to dozens of people at once.

Become a Powerful Resource in Your Own Right
An excellent way to draw new contacts to you with a minimum of effort, and to maximize the contacts you have, is to be a strong networking resource. Be helpful and generous, always ready to lend a hand with a name, organizational contact, idea or suggestion. The more you help people, and the more graciously you do so, the more contacts you’ll end up with—and thus, the bigger and more useful your network will be.

Final Thoughts
Needless to say, there’s more to productive networking than I’ve outlined here, but you can’t go wrong if you keep these pointers in mind. And let me re-emphasize a point made earlier in this article: don’t try to be something you aren’t, except insofar as it’s necessary in order to come out of your shell (assuming that it is necessary). You’re most interesting to people if you seem genuine, and the easiest way to seem genuine is to just be you.

After speaking at the SHRM Talent Management conference last week, Laura Stack discusses the ways HR professionals are using her best-selling book, SuperCompetent: The Six Keys to Perform at Your Productive Best.

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” — Hans Hoffman, American abstract painter

“As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.” — Henry David Thoreau
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” — Confucius, ancient Chinese philosopher

We’ve all heard the lifestyle guru’s favorite mantra: “Simply, simply, simplify,” after that paragon of simplicity himself, Thoreau. That’s actually pretty good advice, and not just for your personal life. Simplifying has its place in the office as well; in fact, it may be more critical there than elsewhere, since it’s another part of the grand mosaic that results in increased workplace productivity.

Why It’s Necessary
Simplifying, purging, de-cluttering, or organizing—whatever you want to call it—can be a daunting task, especially for the packrats among us who fear letting go of anything just in case. But if you don’t purge, things can get clogged up, and your systems are likely to become slow and unwieldy. Something that normally takes five minutes might take ten times as long. Furthermore, it becomes difficult to integrate new items into the system, further impairing your productivity.

So every once in a while, you need to stop working, take a look around, and decide what you can safely get rid of.

Purging can be painful, no doubt about it. It’s easy to second guess yourself, because what if you make a mistake and get rid of something you need? Well, that might happen; but you can’t let yourself fall prey to the paralysis of analysis here, any more than you can with any other aspect of your work life. You have to be draconian about purging, because it will inevitably have more positive effects than negative ones.

And honestly, it doesn’t require any earth-shattering changes in your life. It’s not like you have to get rid of your Blackberry and email, although I do have colleagues who recommend that!

What To Purge
Precisely how you need to simplify your work life is up to you to decide, as it varies from person to person. But certain things that can often use a de-clutter session are found in nearly every organization or workplace. They might include your:

• Desk
• Storage system
• Bookshelves
• Filing system
• Email
• Computer
• File structures of your handhelds

The basic method is very much the same, whether you’re dealing with the electronic or the physical: you go through everything, look closely at each item, and decide whether you need it or not. If not, it should go. If it’s an old contact on your Blackberry or a program you never use on your computer, delete it. If it’s old paper—outdated contracts, meeting notes from 10 years ago, whatever—recycle it. Some things you may even be able to sell. For anything else, either give it to someone who needs it, or throw it away. Incidentally, if you give anything to charity, keep track of it, so you can take it off your taxes.

The Rules
Decisions, decisions. It may seem like an über-pain to purge, but here’s the deal: if you set up a series of hard-and-fast rules for handling your purges, those decisions will become much more automatic. The precise rule set is something you’ll have to formulate on your own, based on your needs, but the experts recommend that you ask yourself these questions:

• Do I really need this?
• Have I used this lately?
• Am I likely to use this anytime soon?
• Will this help me achieve any of my goals?
• Instead of owning this, could I borrow or rent it—or use something else instead?
• Do I have similar or identical items that work better?
• Can someone else get more benefit out of this than I can?
• What’s the worst thing that could happen if I get rid of this?

Once you’ve developed your criteria, it’s a lot easier to decide whether or not to keep something, especially if you hold this overriding guideline in mind: when in doubt, throw it out.

Beyond the Basics
You don’t have to limit yourself to electronics or physical objects during your purging spree; you can also work to clear the deadwood out of your work-flow and managerial systems, and cut fiscal waste where you find it. Needless to say, the purging criteria will have to change to fit the situation.

You can even purge unprofitable projects. The primary consideration in this case is whether the project is ever going to be profitable, or if it’s just sitting there eating up resources better spent elsewhere. Don’t keep the project running just because it’s someone’s baby (even yours) or because you’ve already invested so much in it. It’s never smart to throw good money after bad.

This is where you have to be especially harsh in applying your criteria, because more than just wasted time is involved (and that’s bad enough). If you maintain too many unproductive, unprofitable projects, your bottom line—and potentially, your organization’s survival—is at risk. So cut away the fat and serve up the lean. Once you give unproductive projects the boot, you can focus better on what really needs to be done.

Moving Forward
Don’t hesitate to purge. It may hurt somewhat at first, and you may worry a bit, but if you’re cautious and reasonable about what you keep and throw away, it’ll all work out in the end. Plus, once you’ve put your rules in place, you can use them on a daily basis to decide what to keep and what to toss, and your purging sessions will become much less frequent and intense.

Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R) talks about lurking stressors and how they affect our productivity. (C) 2011 Laura Stack, All Rights Reserved http://www.TheProductivityPro.com

“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.

Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R) shares tips on completing mundane tasks. (C) 2011 Laura Stack. All Rights Reserved http://www.TheProductivityPro.com