Productivity & Time Management Training, Speaking, Consulting

I haven’t had much balance in my life lately. It’s pretty much been “all writing all the time,” in order to get my book done and meet my publisher’s deadlines.  And when I wasn’t writing, I was doing my best to keep up with my clients and the rest of my business.  My personal life, and even other parts of my business, have definitely suffered.  But as a student of productivity, I have come to realize that “temporary imbalance” is ok. The definition of “productive” that guides my work is, “achieving a significant result.”  Can balance and productivity co-exist?  Sure, sometimes.  But there are other times when achieving that significant result is pretty consuming.  In order to assess whether your imbalance is temporary, ask yourself if you can define the point at which you’ll go back to “normal” – when you expect that your life will not be dominated by one area or project.  And when you get to that point when you expected things to go back to normal, stop and ask yourself if you really are making time for other parts of your life, or if that one all-consuming project has just been replaced by the next all-consuming project, and therefore you are still out of balance.

I’m excited that after this week, the hardest and most time-consuming parts of writing my book will be over.  It will be off to the publisher, and I’ll just have to approve the production version, where I’m really not supposed to change anything but the most glaring errors/omissions/problems.  I keep saying that after this week, “I’ll get my life back.”  I have many things I’ve been wanting to do in other parts of my life that I look forward to pursuing later this month.  Whether or not I get to those will determine whether my imbalance was really temporary.  I’ll keep you posted! =)

Ye olde time management techniques taught that a truly efficient person has every moment of his or her time filled with productive activity. Not only the time, but the chinks between the time. And it’s better if you have several things going at once.

So what happens if you have that kind of life, with back-to-back appointments and every minute planned out and a crisis occurs? Crisis, here, means any unforeseeable, unplanned situation that you have to respond to. It doesn’t have to mean an earthquake, it could be the flu that knocks you flat, or a car problem that leaves you stranded and makes getting to your meetings impossible.

Without flexibility in your schedule, your efficient system shatters. But if you build flexibility into your schedule, if you leave room for the unexpected, it’s a lot easier to cope with the unforeseen. And it creates opportunities to put final touches on projects or make last minute phone calls that otherwise wouldn’t have fit into your tightly-wound, intensely-planned schedule.

Building flexibility into your schedule can be approached as a simple math problem. Let’s say that you, like me, get up at 7 a.m. And at some point, maybe 8 p.m., you determine that you’re done for the day. It’s time to start unwinding. In a five-day week, that means you have 65 hours of “productive time.” If you plan up 90 percent of that—58.5 hours—and something goes awry, you will have to cancel appointments, miss deadlines and be generally stressed. But what if you only filled up around 60 percent? That’s still 39 hours a week, and there’s no law against being productive the other 19 hours. But you’ve given yourself room to make adjustments for a crisis, should it arise.

If the crises doesn’t happen, you can use the time to be proactive, knock items off your to-do list, catch up on reading, social media, bills, exercise, or whatever seems like the best use of your time.

Sixty percent may not work for you but it’s a good benchmark to start with. In any case, it will ease your stress level. Little issues like unexpected traffic or copiers out of ink don’t have to throw off your whole day.Try it out and see how productive you can be!

Thanks for reading!

Did you ever wonder why lion tamers use chairs, holding the seat of the chair or stool and pointing the legs at the lion? Do lions have some inordinate fear of chairs? Nope, lions are like us. They get overwhelmed with too much information. The lion tries to focus on all four legs at the same time. He can’t. So he becomes distracted, overwhelmed, passive.

Whether you’re an executive in a big corporation or a solopreneur, you probably have exactly the same problem. Most of us have piles of paper reflecting jobs that need tending to, pages of unread emails reproducing in our inboxes, phone calls yet to be made and blogs and other social media with embarrassingly old dates on them.

The pile of old work to be tackled produces a stressed out, overwhelmed, drowning feeling that has a paralyzing effect. When you sit down at your desk and you think to yourself, “What do I need to do now?” the sheer number of potential answers to that question is completely overwhelming. It probably causes you to retreat into some sort of busy work, something that is easy, familiar, and doesn’t require a lot of thought. For most people, this means email.

It’s just so much easier to go look at new business coming down the pike than try to figure out what to do about the pile of old business.

Like the lion, we’re reacting, and our reaction is to retreat.

As long as we don’t have a system in place to manage all the inputs, we’re faced daily with what I call Lion Syndrome: the passivity brought on by too much to think about. And the old tasks continue to pile up, or get done at the last minute, in a shower of stress. When we have an hour, or heck, 30 minutes to get something done, we need to easily, painlessly be able to answer the question: “What do I do need to do now?”

With a New Year starting, it’s a great time to resolve to overcome lion syndrome and take action that will put us back in control. This means systems of organization and action that really work. That’s what I’ll be talking about in 2012. Keep reading and step by step, we’ll overcome Lion Syndrome.

If you want some hands-on learning, about avoiding Lion Syndrome and other ways to lower your stress, get more done, and achieve your significant results, consider joining me in Austin for my next seminar.  Read more and register here.

photo by Eric Kilby

If you’re familiar with the Eisenhower Matrix, you know that one quadrant reflects “low importance, low urgency” items that you feel need to be done, yet you know will have very little impact on your life and your work if you actually complete them.  However, knowing this does not free your mind from worrying about them.  These are the tasks that I have learned to call the “shoulds:” things that you feel like you “should” do, that weigh on your mind, and perhaps languish on your to-do list, typically out of guilt.  You might think of them as the “monkeys on your back.”

Then there are the items that really need to be done in order for your life to run smoothly and according to plan, yet they aren’t nearly as important as other things on your list, and as a result, you just can’t seem to get them done.  These include routine household chores, like cleaning, laundry, and errands.  They could also include business tasks like filing, event assistance, transcription, or data entry.

My advice for these “shoulds” and low-importance needs is to get help.  If you are a busy professional and aren’t getting any help in your life, whether it’s a cleaning person, some part-time admin or household help, or specialty services, then I think you are missing an opportunity to create the time and space to achieve your significant results.  Some people call this delegating.  I like to think of it as empowering yourself or someone else.  Offloading these tasks can be empowering in several ways.  It can empower you by freeing you up to do the things that you are best at, the things that only you can do, the things that will have an impact on your life or work if they get done – your significant results. It can be empowering once you’ve found a source to get that item done for you.  It can be empowering to someone else because it can give them an opportunity to learn something new (for example a staff person or intern) or gain a new customer (if it’s outside help).

There are many resources to get “just a little help,” whenever you need it.  Websites like Elance and Guru provide specialty business services.  Many colleges and universities have resources for college students to make extra money.  Here in Austin it’s Hire a Longhorn.  Other Austin resources are Avail Assistants and Let Kelly.  There may be businesses like this in your town too.  What might be my most favorite new service is Taskrabbit.  As of this writing, they are “coming soon” to Austin but they aren’t here yet.  See if they are in your city and check them out.  I think their business model is brilliant.

The more “shoulds” and low priority items you clear from your list, the more you are free to do the things you’re best at; the things that offer you the highest payoff in your life; the things that you truly love to do – your significant results.  For example, maybe you’ve been longing to start a part-time business doing something you enjoy.  If you didn’t have to mow the lawn, organize the garage, or fix the leaky faucet on the weekend, you could devote the time instead to generating extra income from your hobby.  What have you been wanting to do “as soon as you find the time?”  Could unloading some of your “shoulds” create the time you’ve been looking for?

If you know of another service like those I’ve mentioned above, please add them to the comments!  Thanks for reading!

At some point in the past, likely around New Year’s, you may have sat down and written out your goals –  a plan for what you really want out of life in terms of business or career, finances, relationships, health. The question is, do you have any idea where you put it?

Our days are often filled with meeting deadlines, paying bills, and updating our social media, not to mention cleaning clothes and making sure there’s something besides jelly in the fridge. It can be really hard to turn away from those immediate demands and invest time and focus on distant future goals. After all, they’re not quick-hit tasks. Frequently long-term goals require multiple steps that don’t have immediate payoffs – tasks like building relationships, personal development or sticking to a schedule over a long period of time.

A long-term goal may require you to push yourself out of the house and away from all the fires you’re putting out to attend networking events where you may or may not meet your next dream client or boss. They may require going back to school, paying for a class and spending hours taking notes and doing homework that won’t help pay the bills any time soon. They may include getting to the gym every day and investing an hour or two in your health and fitness.

They’re not activities you can just check off a list so it’s easy to put them off until later, and later, and later, until they’re collecting dust.

But as inspirational leaders like Steven Covey and Tony Robbins agree, you wind up where you’re headed. You must keep your goals in front of you if you ever hope to achieve them. You must make a plan for your days that includes taking steps toward your goals. As Antoine St. Exupery wrote: “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

So go dig that goal out of whatever file you stuck it in and start applying your attention to it. First, turn it into a project. For example, “Get fit” might be a goal but it’s not a project because you won’t know when it’s completed. So the project may be, “achieve a resting heartrate under 70,” or “run the Austin Marathon in 2012.” Now decide, what specific steps does the project require? How can you work one or more of them into your schedule every day? How can you motivate yourself to focus on that long-term goal, even when all the daily tasks are pulling at you? You need a process so that you are in control, and not always reacting, because in reaction mode, you’ll never have time for your own dreams.

You owe it to yourself to move toward the destination you’ve chosen for yourself.

Thanks for reading!

Ahh the holidays. The time we not only wrap up year-end projects and make grand resolutions for the future, but many of us spend every free minute shopping for the “perfect gift,“  planning big, expensive, sparkly parties, cooking things we normally don’t and squeezing in some moments of reflection on the “true meaning” of it all.

The holidays are the one time many of us recognize how unrealistic our expectations of ourselves can be. Some people can’t wait until it’s over so they can take down the decorations and get back to burning the midnight oil without feeling guilty.

But what if, instead of piling your plate with responsibilities and then trying, like a duty-bound holiday feaster, to shove it all in, you planned exactly how much to put on your plate?  What if you came out of denial and admit that you’ve actually bitten off far more than you can chew, and actually started saying no?

Enough with the revelry metaphor.

Most of us would say that having balance in our lives is a goal and even a priority. But we have habits that prevent us from ever coming close to balance. If, for example, we don’t want to work nights and weekends, eat dinner at the computer and feel stressed all the time, we need to figure out how much we can accomplish in the time we do want to allot to work.

We need to say no to things that might be great—at a different time. But right now they would just turn into a nightmare, like remodeling the house, chairing the committee or taking on the really needy client. We need to choose peace of mind over whatever rewards would come from the activity that also brings the extra stress.

On the other hand, balance is different for everyone. For some people—say artists or inventors—working could be the way they achieve not only a sense of purpose and income but also self expression, relaxation, centeredness.  For some people, stopping work actually leaves them discontented and dissatisfied.

So the key to balance isn’t necessarily some specific split between work and play. It’s about coming out of denial about whether the schedule you’ve chosen for yourself is working. Does it work because you never stop working? Do you feel balanced or do you feel stressed out?

Let the holidays remind you for the new year: If you want to be merry, be realistic about what balance means in your life and what choices you need to make to achieve it.

Thanks for reading!

Have you ever found yourself standing in the aisle of the grocery store, certain in the knowledge that there was one more thing on your list (which is sitting on the kitchen counter instead of in your hand) but completely unable to remember? I can see you nodding, so this will come as no surprise:

The human brain is not very good at recalling details.

It’s that very reason that caused you to jot a grocery list in the first place – you know better than to think you can remember it with any kind of accuracy.

Why then, do most of us completely forget this truth when we plan and manage our daily lives?

When I’m working with a client to improve their productivity, one of the first exercises I have them do is to sit down and “brain dump” everything they’ve committed to, every task they need or want to do, every goal they have, everything they owe someone else, everywhere they’re supposed to be in the coming days and weeks.

Guess what? Most people can’t do it quickly or comprehensively. Usually, they need to rack their brain, scroll through their email, check saved voicemail messages, gather all the notes scattered around, and shuffle through the piles of mail on the desk.  And they’re always quite certain that they’re forgetting something.

This tells me that they’re trying to rely on their brain to remember what’s important, and using a mishmash of reminders to support this gargantuan task. Not only is this a pretty futile way to stay on top of the details of a busy life, it doesn’t feel very good, either. The stress of frantic searching and the fear of remembering an obligation an hour too late are uncomfortable reminders that this method isn’t foolproof.

Assuming that we have a limited amount of “space” in our brain, perhaps cluttering it with details that can’t easily be remembered is not a good idea. Not only are we particularly bad at it, but it also takes up brain power that would be better used for things like creativity, brainstorming, problem solving, and imagining.

Albert Einstein was noted as saying, “Never memorize what you can look up” and most of us honor this principle when it comes to world capitals, grandma’s recipes or friends’ phone numbers. The challenge is to view all your life details as data that you can (and should) file away and then “look up” as needed.

To solve this problem, I recommend taking all the tasks and appointments uncovered in the “brain dump” exercise above and putting them in a single place, with the goals of:

• Capturing all the required details,
• Storing them in a way that is easy to track,
• Organizing them in a way that gives you clarity, and
• Prioritizing and setting reminders to push you toward your goals.

So give yourself permission to forget! The secret is getting the details out of your head and into a system that is logical and useful; one that sophisticated enough to handle the complexity of your busy life, but is not overly burdensome; one that becomes a simple addition to your workflow that you can rely on, so you can use your brain space for more useful and productive things.

For help getting started, check out this post and this post.  Thanks for reading!

Do you work at a company where everyone is copied on everything?  My work has shown me that so much email a company generates is unnecessary, ineffective, and primarily unread.  Many of these are sent as a cc or a bcc.  The fact that these acronyms stand for “carbon copy” and “blind carbon copy” should give you an idea that their time has passed.  Who even remembers what a “carbon copy” is?

I want to point out some of the reasons I’ve seen these used, and give you some ideas for improving your effectiveness with email.

Cc for FYI

Bad Idea: Sometimes a cc is used to “keep people in the loop.”  Perhaps you copy someone on an email because you want them to know what’s going on.  This is not the best way to keep your co-workers informed.  First, your recipient has to read through the message to figure out why they got it.  And then they may not glean from it what you intended them to know.  What’s more likely, if the message is not addressed to them, they probably didn’t read it at all. Maybe they just deleted it, or perhaps they moved it to a reference folder, or they marked it as unread but kept it in their inbox.  All of these are ineffective for the recipient, because they cause clutter, but also you have not met your objective by sending it to them in the first place.  This is one of the most frequent causes of communication breakdown in an organization.

Better: If you want someone to know something you’ve put in an email, cut and paste the information and send it in a separate email directly to them.  Then there is no chance for misinterpretation and a lower chance that it will be overlooked.  Alternately, address them directly in the original message, near the top. For example, “Hi Jane – I’m writing to summarize our meeting.  Mary, I’m copying you because I wanted you to know what we agreed upon yesterday.”

Cc for CYA

Bad Idea: Maybe you’re not really sure if you’re on the right track, so you copy your boss, figuring that this will give her an opportunity to correct you if she doesn’t agree with your course of action.  See above.  She’s probably not reading it, and copying her does not absolve you of responsibility anyway.  This is another source of communication breakdown within an organization, sometimes with damaging results.

Better: Run your intentions by your boss prior to the communication.  Or, as above, address your boss directly in the message and invite her input.  For example: “Jane, I think we should go with the 5×7 flier.  Mary, please let me know if you disagree.”

Bcc for Private Communication

Bad Idea: You’ve probably heard at least one horror story about a Bcc gone embarrassingly awry.  A common use for bcc is to share a message with someone that you don’t want the recipient to know you shared.  Ethics aside, there is simply too much potential for unintended consequences with a bcc.

Better: If you want to privately copy someone on a message, send it to the primary recipient, then go into your “sent” folder and forward the message, alerting the “private” recipient  why you are sending it to them.  For example, “Mary, below is the message I sent to Jane to call attention to her frequent tardiness.”

Employing these ideas can allow you to set an example for communication within your organization, minimize communication breakdowns, cut down on email clutter, and save everyone some time.

If you have other ideas or thoughts, of course I’d love to read them in the comments.  Thanks for reading!

I’m very excited and proud to announce that earlier this summer, Wiley Publishing reached out to me and invited me to write the book on personal productivity that they wanted for their “Secrets” series.  The “i’s” are dotted and the “t’s” are crossed, the writing has begun, and the timeline is set!  We are aiming for a publication date of spring, 2012.

Some people may remember that I won a book contest last year, and that was the first event that prompted me to move forward in the book-writing process.  The prize for winning that contest was advice and assistance to get a book published, either self-published or help landing an agent and/or a publisher.  I began researching the publishing process, learning about both traditional and newer processes for bringing a book to market. I decided to start writing and figure out the publishing later, and perhaps it was the “law of attraction” at work, but shortly after, I was contacted by an acquisitions editor at Wiley.

I’m so excited to work with them, as Wiley is the oldest independent publishing company in the world, and even though I’m not an employee, their corporate practices are important to me.  Happily, they have made several of Forbes’ “Best” lists, including “400 Best Big Companies to Work For,” “100 Best Companies to Work For,” and in Australia, the government’s “Employer of Choice for Women” citation.

Given that the book is about my work, and a topic I’ve been studying for almost 20 years, I foolishly thought that writing a book about it wouldn’t be that difficult.  So far it is proving to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  Luckily, I need to employ virtually every tip, technique, and process that I teach in order to stay on track, meet my deadlines, and produce a result I can be proud of.  And chronicling the process gives me more content for the book!

Watch for a new page on my website, coming soon, which will have continual updates about the content, the publication date, and, of course, the launch party!

I have so much appreciation for my friends, my family, my clients, and the amazingly supportive business community in Austin, Texas that have helped me get to this point.  Click here for more details and to purchase.