We’ve all been there at some point—you look back on the week or the month—feeling that too much has been left undone. You say to yourself, “Where did the time go?” It’s a common lament. If this sounds like you, it might be useful to try a time log for a week to discover your patterns. Time logs can help uncover wasted time that can be turned into productive time. They can also show you when you tend to be most productive, so you can organize your days to take full advantage of those productive times. You’ll quickly so who is interrupting you the most. You’ll discover your bad habits and see where you let pleasurable activities take over high-priority tasks.
There are numerous logging software tools available for download on the internet. These can be useful for those who spend their entire work day at a desk in front of a computer. If you frequently travel or spend time out of the office, using the old-fashioned pen-and-paper method works well because you can easily slip it into your planner. On my site at http://www.theproductivitypro.com/FreeStuff/Time_Log.doc, you’ll find a simple template with instructions that you can use to log your time. Give it a shot. You might be surprised at what you discover!
Victor Borge, the Danish humorist and musician, was well into a performance when a woman came in late, fighting her way through the rows to her seat near the front. Borge stopped playing and as she proceeded—trampling over people, rustling, and disturbing her way to her seat—he said (much to her chagrin, as all eyes focused on her ill-timed arrival), “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.” After she sat down, he walked over near where she was sitting and said, “Where are you from, Ma’am?” “Fifty-Seventh Street,” she said. “Well, Lady, I’m from Denmark, and I was here on time.”
While Borge might have been trying to get a laugh from his audience, his obvious annoyance speaks to the principle of Preparation in Mark Sanborn’s newest book, The Encore Effect: How to Achieve Remarkable Performance in Anything You Do, which I’ll discuss in this brief article. In the 16 years I’ve been speaking professionally on the concepts of personal productivity, one of the biggest complaints I hear from leaders who bring me in to speak to their employees on performance is something around “the inability to meet deadlines, always being late, constantly running behind, or being forgetful”—a performance that is hardly remarkable.
People are much more irritated by lateness than you can know or they will admit; it can dampen everything from promotions and raises to friendships. Late people crowd you, physically and mentally. When people show up late, it undoes your schedule and disrupts your day. Showing up late or sending something in late—no matter how well done—still means a black mark against you.
I consider myself blessed to be close friends with Mark and his wife, Darla. Since we only live a few miles apart, our families frequently enjoy spending time together. At a recent 4th of July barbeque at our home, Mark joked with me about the already-cut-up plates of tomatoes, onions, pickles, and lettuce, wrapped in plastic, and waiting in the refrigerator. I joked back, “Why, I’m just following the principle of Preparation from your book!” Does a simple act of slicing burger fixings in advance make for a better barbeque? I think so. Being unprepared would have meant trying to cut everything up while the burgers got cold. I still would have been “on time,” but I’d be half listening to them and missing pieces of conversation while focusing on my task.
This is the source of many people’s lateness, I believe: they are trying to be on time. On page 17 of The Encore Effect, Mark defines average performance as, “the best of the worst and the worst of the best.” He says further, “These performers are the best of the mediocre middle, neither hot nor cold but lukewarm. The problem is that average performance doesn’t get you noticed.” Simply being on time doesn’t get you noticed, because it’s fairly typical. It just doesn’t stand out. It’s okay…it’s just expected…yawn. Don’t be simply “average”! So don’t be on time: be EARLY.
Mark’s principle of Preparation—planning in reverse—speaks to this concept. I had to chuckle at his story of the fishermen on page 61. It reminded me of cutting up tomatoes before the barbeque. Being prepared means you do things EARLY. Not on time. Early. Done in advance. Proactive. Forward looking. With a long-term focus. We’re not talking ridiculously early here, in a way that inconveniences your host when you arrive for a party. It’s a way of thinking, a way of being, a way you frame your behavior.
The process of finding and seizing “The Crucial 5 Percent” (page 64), applies Preparation to people in this way:
1. “Late” people are perpetually behind on everything.
2. “On time” people arrive or finish a minute or two ahead or behind the goal.
3. “Early” people are remarkable and are prepared for everything.
Imagine how life would be if you were always so prepared that you arrived early everywhere, for everything. You would:
• Get the first choice of many things,
• Gain admiration and respect,
• Are able to relax and not sweat,
• Get good press and publicity, and
• Have a bit time to relax, read, or return a call.
My point is that you can never really be on time…just barely on one side or the other…so you’re never totally trusted, no matter how skilled you are. Being early makes you look remarkable and demonstrates to others you can be depended upon. Being late, however, makes people wonder if you’ll be on time next time.
Mark distinguishes between “routine” and “remarkable” on page 18. I couldn’t agree more and would frame it in this manner:
• Routine “on time” people communicate through their actions, “I might not make the next deadline.” “I’m barely in control.” “I’m not looking beyond the moment.”
• Remarkable “early” people communicate through their actions, “I don’t need deadlines.” “I’m in complete control.” “I look ahead.”
(We won’t discuss late people, since that belabors the obvious.) In trying to be early, don’t go out and simply set your watch five minutes fast to try to fool yourself, because psychologically, you know it is five minutes fast, and make up for it anyway. Keep your clocks on the correct time. Preparation is all about planning. Instead of thinking, “I have to be there at 9:00 AM,” think, “I will plan on arriving at 8:45.” Then work backward. How long should it take you to get there? Add a buffer in case there’s traffic. What time would that require you to drop off the kids at daycare? What time would you have to get them up in order to make that happen? What time do you have to get up to make that happen? And what will you do if you arrive even earlier than 8:45? Be prepared to pay bills, make calls, read a report, or write thank-you notes.
Before you close shop for the day, ask yourself, “What’s coming up next week?” “What can I get out of the way now?” Before you retire for the night, go over the next day. Know exactly where you need to be, what you need to have with you, and have everything laid out. Have clothes selected, school papers signed, lunches made, briefcase packed, and schedule outlined. As Mark says on page 58, “The future we experience depends on the preparations we make today.”
By preparing in this way, you enable yourself to be early. Soon, you won’t have “deadlines,” because they will be unnecessary. Deadlines eliminate all the job of accomplishment as you work for the deadline, not the completion of a project or task. Deadlines were made for people who would not get things done without one. You, on the other hand, are prepared, a remarkable performer, deserving of an Encore performance.
21. 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, type up your meeting notes, put in the day/time of the meeting, indicate in the Contacts field who was at the meeting, and select a Category for the meeting name or project. When you select that 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).
22. Avoid meetings on Fridays. Many departments and teams just 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 these days, 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 as well.
23. Always send or request an agenda and include it in the text portion of the appointment or include as an attachment. A basic agenda should include a statement of purpose (see #13), any logistical considerations, the decisions to be made, a list of the topics to discuss (in priority order), who is responsible for that item, and how long you are 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.
24. 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 (see #23), and you’ve determined you’ll only need forty minutes, then schedule for that. Time will expand to fill the amount of time available. If you’ve promised folks you’ll be out of there, people tend to work toward that goal. If there is slack time, more socializing will naturally take place 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.
25. For longer meeting, allow enough breaks. Give a break 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 will just start getting up randomly and sneaking out. If you clearly state at the beginning, “We will meet from now until 10:00, and then we’ll break until 10:10,” etc. It is also common courtesy that if you’re meeting over a lunch hour to provide food.
26. 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.
27. Strike a balance on when to schedule a meeting. 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 around one to three weeks in advance. Anything sooner than that or further than that is fraught with scheduling challenges and conflicts.
28. Let the meeting leader know as soon as you’re aware of a conflict with a scheduled meeting. 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.
29. Display multiple Outlook windows at one time. Perhaps you want to see your calendar while looking at an email. While in your Inbox, right-click on your Calendar (either on the Folder List or the icon) and select “Open in New Window.” Outlook will open your Calendar in a separate window, which you can resize and move to where it’s most convenient for you, while still being able to switch back to the Inbox. This is especially useful if you have a large monitor or dual monitors.
30. Customize your Calendar to your preferences. Don’t be satisfied with the standard calendar layouts—make it your own! For example, you can automatically add holidays to your calendar. On the Tools menu, click Options, then Calendar Options, and then click Add Holidays. The weekends are also compressed by default. If you want to show Saturday and Sunday as separate boxes, right click in the Calendar and select Other Settings. Uncheck the box that says Compress Weekend Days. While you’re there, change the default setting for 30-minute time slots to 5, 6, 10, 15, or 60 minute slots (I use 15). Frequently schedule with people in another time zone? Avoid confusion by displaying another zone. Under the Tools menu, select Options. On the Preferences tab, click Calendar Options, Time Zone, and “Show an additional time zone” check box. Select the desired time zone and OK out of there.
11. Keep your calendar up to date. It’s frustrating when your colleagues are trying to set up appointments, and it appears that you’re open, so they send out a meeting request to a large group. You respond, “Sorry, I have a conflict on that day/time,” to which they respond by banging their heads on the desk in frustration, asking, “Then WHY didn’t you have it on your calendar?” Truly, if an organization is going to predictably use shared calendaring to coordinate meetings, you must keep yours current. It’s fine to use a traditional paper method as well, but if you schedule something on your “other” calendar, make sure to update your electronic one at regular intervals as well.
12. Include travel time in a single appointment and put the actual meeting time in the subject. If your meeting starts at 11:30, but it’s going to take you thirty minutes to drive there and fifteen minutes to get out of the building to your car, block out your calendar starting at 11:00 (so others can’t schedule with you). Then write @11:30 in the subject line, so you know the actual meeting time.
13. Do not accept a meeting invitation if the requestor can’t state in one sentence the exact reason you are 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.
14. Send lengthy reading materials at least 48 hours in advance. Participants express frustration with wasting time in meetings reviewing materials that were just handed out. They don’t have adequate time to digest the information and formulate questions. They could have reviewed that document while waiting in the doctor’s office yesterday. Don’t waste everyone’s time by forcing them to sit there and read together like kindergarteners—their time is much too expensive.
15. If updating a meeting already scheduled, send an update to the existing appointment. If you have already set up a meeting and invited participants, sending an email about the meeting forces them to either copy and paste the additional information into the meeting or have two meeting blocks for the same event side by side on their calendars, forcing them to open two items to get complete information. If you need to add information, send out a meeting update. To contact meeting attendees with a reminder or other message, open the original meeting request, click the Actions menu, and select “New Message to Attendees.”
16. Avoid meeting request responses. If you’re sending a meeting request to a large group and don’t need or want responses, in the open new meeting request, on the Actions menu, uncheck the line Request Responses. To make this the default. Tools, Options, E-mail Options, Tracking Options, “Delete blank voting and meeting responses after processing.” Or create a Rule (under Tools, Rules and Alerts, start from a blank rule) to automatically delete messages responses with certain words in the subject line.
17. Schedule time for preparation and action. Depending on your level of involvement in the meeting, you need time to get ready. You might need to start your preparation days before if you need to create a report or give a presentation. When you accept a meeting, immediately go into your calendar and block off at least 15 additional minutes separately for prep time, a bio break, refreshing beverages, and transfer time—and add more as necessary for mental preparation and review. Don’t walk into the meeting “cold.” In the same way, block out time at the conclusion of the meeting to review action items, activate them into your time management system if you can’t complete them right then, and get organized.
18. End meetings before the top or bottom of the hour. If you’re the one scheduling the meeting, don’t use the standard Outlook settings of hour or half hour blocks. If one meeting is from 1:00 to 2:00, immediately followed by another from 2:00 to 3:00, you will by default be late to your 2:00. So use either :15 or :45 start and end times, to allow transition time.
19. Limit attendees. 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 things to do that are much better uses of their time than sitting in your meeting. Think about how much money 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 in your meeting. 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. Keeping others who aren’t invited informed can be done with a quick email summary or inclusion on the distribution list of any meeting notes or minutes.
20. Confirm everything. I’ve often shown up for a meeting and the other person “forgot.” You’d like to think adults are all responsible and will do what they say they will 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 is 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.
1. 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, 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.
2. Have meeting requests and responses go to your delegate, not to you. Don’t wade through all the responses; that’s why you have an assistant (if you do). Under Tools, Options, Delegates, select “Send meeting requests and responses only to my delegates, not to me.” Brilliant.
3. Create a private calendar to post appointments you don’t want others to see. We are all used to email folders, where we file email. Most people, however, have never created a calendar folder. A calendar folder IS a new calendar. To create one, follow the same drill for creating an email folder (right-click on the Calendar in the folder list and select New Folder). However, make sure the folder contains “Calendar Items” in the drop-down box. Give your new calendar a name such as “Kids Summer Schedule” or “Laura’s personal calendar.” I kept track of my kids summer activities in one, so my husband would know where his schedule was impacted for driving duty.
4. Check your appointments as Private when you don’t want others to read the text. Yes, you can! The Private box is a little, tiny box in the bottom right-hand side of your screen (Outlook 2003) when you create a new appointment. People who share your calendar will still see a block and that you’re unavailable, but they can’t read the appointment text.
5. Use the Category box to indicate the project, team, or committee. Every time you schedule an appointment or accept a meeting invitation, indicate what project it’s related to in the Category box. Use the Master Category List to add your labels. “Tag” each appointment with one or multiple categories. Then under the View menu, select Arrange by, Current View, By Category. Then you can see all meetings, past and present, you had with a certain group, person, project, committee, etc.
6. Can’t find an upcoming meeting with someone you know you scheduled? Tired of searching your calendar manually to find it? Instead, get into the habits of using the Contacts box at the bottom left of each appointment, to indicate whom you’re meeting with (can be multiple people). To find all upcoming meetings with a particular person, go to that Contact’s address card, select the Activities tab, and in the drop-down box, select Upcoming Tasks/Appointments. The people must be loaded in your personal Contacts list (not just your company’s global address book) for this to work. If a meeting invitation is used, this feature is automatic, and you don’t need to select the names.
7. As a courtesy to your coworkers, send a meeting invitation instead of an email when you’d like to connect. Rather than emailing colleagues and asking, “What’s your schedule today? Can we get together for 30 minutes?” take a minute to schedule a meeting invitation. While in your Calendar, select Actions, New Meeting Request, Scheduling Tab, Add Others, Add from Address Book, and select attendees. Check their availability on the calendar (this assumes you’ve been granted access to their calendars) and find an open time (or select AutoPick to let Outlook find the next available date/time). Send the meeting request. When invitees receive it, they can simply click Accept, and Outlook moves the appointment to their calendars for them. This saves the recipient time and also saves you from trying to coordinate multiple calendars manually.
8. If someone does send an email wanting to meet, convert it into an appointment. If your colleagues don’t understand the meeting feature and insist on sending emails for appointments, you can quickly turn an email into a Calendar item. Right-click on the email, select Move to Folder, and then Calendar. A new appointment window automatically opens, containing your email and any attachments. Fill in the date, time, and details, and then Save and Close. The message is moved from the Inbox into the Calendar automatically. No more manual copying and pasting!
9. Use labels to quickly “see” the layout of your schedule for the day. Right-click on any appointment in your calendar. Select Label. Select Edit Labels. Change the text to display the colors as you’d like. Pick colors consistently with your team (travel, multiple locations, training, personal, vacation, meeting, video conference, etc.) so you can quickly see where team members are working and what they’re doing.
10. Block out time to work. Sometimes you might want to actually schedule an appointment to WORK. To protect your time from others, schedule a Task on your Calendar (Outlook 2003). With the Task Pad view in the Calendar showing, click on a Task you’d like to complete. Hold the left mouse key down while you drag it to your calendar and release. An Appointment window will pop up, automatically inserting the task into the text portion of the appointment item. Fill in the time you want to work on the task on your calendar. Change the Show Time as field to Tentative, if desired. Save and close. The task will still be kept in your Task Pad, but now you’ve blocked out time on your calendar to work on it. NOTE: Do NOT put things you need to DO on your Calendar (that’s what Tasks are for), because if you don’t complete it, you’ll have to move it manually (not so with Tasks).
Time is money. Guess which group of people utters this phrase most frequently? Commissioned salespeople. Hands down. It’s almost a rite of passage that you can’t be a salesperson unless you rinse and repeat daily. Salespeople know how to turn time into money: spend a majority of time on selling activity, namely generating leads, business development, and follow-up. Simple. What makes it so hard? All the non-selling activities that need to be done.
I believe many salespeople have lost sight of the value of their time. They run for coffee, socialize with friends, check the latest blog postings, schedule personal appointments, surf the web…all which tends to increase when a sale is made…as if now they can relax a bit.
As a salesperson, if you really want to get clear about if the activity you’re currently working on is worth your time, figure out how much your time is worth. Then you can objectively ask, “Is what I’m working on right this minute generating the sales goals and income targets I’ve set for myself?”
So let’s do a little bit of math.
1. How much do you want to earn this year? (Ex: $80K)
2. If you’re lucky enough to have a base, subtract that out to get your target earnings. (Ex: $80K - $10K = $70K)
3. To realize those target earnings, how much would you have to sell to achieve it with your commission structure? (Ex: at 7% commission, you’d have to sell $1M)
4. How many weeks do you work after you subtract out vacation? (Ex: 52 weeks minus 2 weeks of vacation = 50 weeks)
5. Divide your annual sales goal by the number of weeks you’ll work to arrive at your weekly sales goal. (Ex: $1M / 50 = $20K)
6. Divide that by the number of days you work each week to get your daily sales goal. (Ex: $20K/5 = $4K)
7. IF you could meet that goal each day, how much would an hour of your time be worth? Divide your target earnings from #2 by #4 to reach your weekly income target. (Ex: $70K / 50 = $1400)
8. Find your daily income target by dividing by the number of days you work each week. (Ex: $1,400 / 5 = $280)
9. Figure out your hourly income target by dividing that figure by how many hours you work each day (Ex: $280 / 8 = $35).�
10. Lastly, determine your to-the-minute rate by dividing by 60 (Ex: $35 / 60 = $.58).
Now you start to ask yourself the tough questions. If time is truly worth money, is what you’re doing this minute worth $.58? Is five minutes of your current activity worth $2.91? If an hour goes by, did you produce $35 of value? If someone were watching, would they reach into their pocket and pay you $35 for what you just produced? My hope is that by tying the clock to your pocketbook, you might be more aware of the time…and money…that slips by when wasted.
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.
Time is your most valuable possession. What tasks do you devote the most energy to every day? You may be working hard to climb the big ladder of success, but you’ll waste a lot of energy (and time) if you discover it’s leaning on the wrong wall. An intense, personal commitment to achieving your goals gives you the vigor you need to move forward every day.
Try these time management tips on for size.
1. Practice purposeful abandonment. If you have too much on your plate, get rid of anything that doesn’t meet your objectives or have long-term consequences for your work. Your only other option is overwork and flagging energy.
2. Get some help. Don’t try to do everything yourself, especially if you’re running a business. Hire someone to deal with all the repetitive or minor tasks anyone can do, so you can get the important work done.
3. Focus on value. Work when you’re at work: don’t check your eBay listings, surf the Internet, or answer your private email. Otherwise, you’re robbing yourself of your precious, irreplaceable minutes.
4. Outsource to a third party. If you’re overloaded with tasks that someone else can do more cheaply, then by all means hire someone to do them. Specialist websites like Elance.com can be lifesavers in such a situation.
5. Do one thing at a time. Even if you’re good at multitasking, do just one thing at a time. Otherwise, you’re giving each task less than the attention it deserves, and it’ll take you longer to get things done.
6. Be disciplined. When you promise someone you’ll complete a task by a certain timeframe, do you do it? Or does the deadline slip past, with you muttering to yourself, “Stupid. What’s wrong with you?” Guilt sucks the energy right out of you, so avoid it by forcing yourself to get your work done on time.
7. Make some progress. Don’t just maintain the status quo; work to get something done every day. Understand the difference between maintenance and progress, and make sure there’s some forward momentum to at least some of your tasks.
8. Realize that your to-do list is never going to end until you’re dead. You’re not going to get it all done; there will always be more things to do than time to do them in. It’s called life. That’s okay; what would you do with yourself if your to-do list did end?
When you work on a task, your capacity to work on other tasks will slowly decline. When your energy is depleted, you don’t work well until you catch your “second wind” and your energy is replenished. So you must select tasks purposefully, making sure the most important things get the lion’s share of your energy and attention.
(c) 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. Visit www.TheProductivityPro.com to sign up for her free monthly productivity newsletter.
