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Snoozing Your Way to Personal Productivity: How Much Sleep is Right for You?

Posted on 02/04/2013 by ·

"Sleep that knits up the ravel'd sleeve of care, The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast..." -- William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act II, Scene II  Do you get enough sleep at night? At first glance, you may wonder what this question has to do with personal productivity. But think back to the last time you missed a significant amount of sleep. How did you feel the next day? Were you able to get your work done efficiently and professionally? Probably not. I'll bet you felt tense, irritable, red-eyed, edgy, and drowsy—in other words, TIRED. Insufficient sleep can also leave you moody, lethargic, and unmotivated, damage your creativity and problem-solving skills, and make it difficult for you to make … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Life Balance · Tagged: , ,

How to Conduct Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly Reviews

Posted on 02/01/2013 by ·

Consistent self-reviews should be a part of any time management plan, since they're easy to perform and help you maintain course with minimal effort. Yet many leaders avoid them because (ironically) they "can't afford the time." On the contrary, you can't afford not to review your progress on a regular basis. If you don't look up and adjust your heading once in a while, you're going to end up way off course...if you ever do anything more than just spin your wheels. Some people avoid reviews, because they think it looks like they're goofing off. But let's get real here: just because you've settled down to review your progress doesn't mean you're doing nothing. If you want to be a strategic enabler of business, you have to find the time to be strategic! As the old story goes, a woodsman who … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Performance · Tagged: ,

How to Create a Culture of Speed

Posted on 01/30/2013 by ·

"If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough." -- Mario Andretti, American race car driver. "The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow." -- Rupert Murdock, Australian-American media mogul. "I've always found that the speed of the boss is the speed of the team." -- Lee Iacocca, former CEO and Chairman of Chrysler Corporation. Though we like to think of ourselves as living in the Space Age or the Information Era, future historians may well label this the "Hurry Up Epoch." For decades now, we've scrambled to keep pace with technological change, ramping up our productivity to startling levels, which helps us further advance our technology, leading to greater productivity...and so on in a rising spiral. Nowadays … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity · Tagged: , ,

Super Bowl Time Management Tips

Posted on 01/25/2013 by ·

There’s a Lot to Learn About Personal Goal Setting From Football It’s that time of year again! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – The Superbowl offers a great acrostic game opportunity for learning productivity techniques. What does time management have to do with Super Bowl football? Everything! Football pros competing in the Super Bowl use great goal-setting techniques. By studying the game, you too can learn a lot about how to set objectives. Successful football teams devote a great deal of thought and time to planning how to move the ball down the field. And successful people devote time to planning what they’ll accomplish in business and in life. Ask the coaches who’ve led teams to the Super Bowl. They know you can’t win without a good game plan. The term “SUPER BOWL” … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Time Management · Tagged: , ,

Debunking Productivity Myths: An Answer to Lifehacker’s Alan Henry

Posted on 01/23/2013 by ·

"It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so." -- Will Rogers, American humorist. "We must not be hampered by yesterday's myths in concentrating on today's needs." -- Harold S. Geneen, American businessman and former president of ITT Corporation. If you haven’t already heard the expression, "lifehacking" refers to the practice of developing little ways of making your daily activities more efficient. The term derives from the practices of computer hackers, who crack open commercial code and rewrite it for their own purposes. Lifehacks focus mostly on improving personal life, so they don't always lend themselves to workplace application, but sometimes they hit the nail on the head. Such was the case with an article by Alan Henry posted on December 5, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Performance · Tagged: , ,

I’ll Pat Your Back

Posted on 01/21/2013 by ·

When you’re part of a team, each person impacts your productivity and contributes to how quickly or slowly things get done. When others are late in getting answers to you, you’re late in producing the final product. When you’re relying on your coworkers to review a document before proceeding, a month can go by before you have everyone’s input. It’s in your best interest to help your team members speed up and get things done more quickly, so you can produce better results, in less time, with less frustration. I learned this streamlining lesson from a flight attendant, who taught me a lesson in steamrolling obstacles. As a professional speaker, travel is a job hazard; I fly over 100,000 miles each year on United. I travel so much that sometimes I have to wait until the USA Today gets … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity · Tagged: , ,

Managing Your Availability

Posted on 01/18/2013 by ·

One key to leadership success is limiting your availability. To be a strategic enabler of business, you must find the time to be strategic. Therefore, you must guard what little you have, so you can complete your high-value tasks.  Managing your availability requires close attention to the truly important. Once you reach higher levels in leadership, you can't allow the mundane to distract you; you shouldn't be running around putting out brushfires, especially when others can do so less expensively. Additionally, that style of management comes perilously close to micromanaging.  Always keep this in mind as you climb the corporate ladder: in almost every case, what you do as a leader will affect the organization more than anything you did while you occupied lower rungs. You forget this at … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Leadership & Teamwork · Tagged: ,

Do We Really Need 32 People at This Meeting?

Posted on 01/16/2013 by ·

"People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything." -- Thomas Sowell, American economist and social theorist. "Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings." ― George Will, American journalist. Meetings may just be the bane of our workplace existence. I don't mean events like professional conferences; those generally represent valuable educational experiences. No, I refer to those self-proliferating time-wasters that bring co-workers together to discuss ways to maximize team productivity, but instead accomplish the exact opposite. They seem to expand as time goes by; and when everyone has to have their say, they can drag on for hours, killing productive momentum. Yet meetings remain absolutely necessary if … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity · Tagged: , ,

Closing Communication Loops

Posted on 01/14/2013 by ·

One of the traits that sets humans apart from the rest of Creation is our ability to communicate in great detail, with a minimum of confusion and unproductive "noise." Still, we fail to communicate unusually often. The annals of history contain endless episodes of poor communication (or a complete lack thereof), leading to widespread misery and pain. On a lesser scale, individuals and businesses deal with miscommunication issues every single day; in the workplace, these breakdowns can have an impact not just on individual productivity, but also on the bottom line.  Even minor miscommunications can prove costly. For example: I once worked with a corporate president who called an analyst in finance to get a figure to put into a speech he was planning. The president expected the finance guy … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Leadership & Teamwork · Tagged: ,

Prioritization: Reordering Your World

Posted on 01/11/2013 by ·

Prioritization sits near the top of any list of successful leadership skills. This holds true whether the leader involved runs an army or the night crew at the local donut shop. It holds true everywhere on Earth and has for all of human history. In general, prioritization represents the order in which you organize and ultimately accomplish the goals most important to you: your faith, your family, your friends, your career, your self-care, and your daily work. You have to look closely at each and decide which items should come first and how everything else should follow. While all these categories are important, they aren't equally important at all times. As we limit this discussion to the work arena, prioritization may involve several levels of responsibility, starting with the personal … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Time Management · Tagged: , , ,