Interruptions abound—a co-worker drops by to chat, the phone rings, and your boss sends you an email to handle something, pronto—all at the same time. With a flurry of activity, you respond to these various demands. All prove to be low priority, and an hour later, you return to your initial task, your energy waning. You decide you’ll work on the project in the afternoon, when your energy picks up again. Of course, after lunch, there’s some crisis, and after fielding a volley of phone calls and unscheduled visits from co-workers, the day ends, and the project is yet again unfinished. You’ve lost your momentum. Much like your car has to work harder to accelerate from a complete stop, so does your brain. Although interruptions are a normal (and … [Read more...]
Handling vendor phone solicitation with a magic mailbox
A seminar participant shared a great trick she uses for those pesky salespeople who won't take "no" for an answer: << We had an extension set up that goes directly to voice mail so when I get a sales call asking for my boss (I can always tell it’s a sales call), I just say one moment (they think they are getting through), and they are immediately directed to our message that states “Thank you for calling (XXX) Medical Corporation. If you would like to mail us information regarding your company, our address is… or, if you prefer to fax your information, our fax number is… Thank you for calling…" I love it!! They may call me back but….they go right back into my magic mailbox. It works great because I don’t have to waste my time getting them off the … [Read more...]
Even Out the Underwork and Overwork Cycle
Some of the most unenergetic employees I’ve met in my 15 years of delivering personal productivity seminars are tax auditors in an accounting firm during the off-season. They are bored during most of the year and then worked to death during tax season. This constant bouncing back and forth between underwork and overwork has really sapped their motivation and desire to devote energy to their work. Conversely, the fall is the busiest time of my year, where there’s not much breathing space to be had until November. But I make sure to keep myself occupied productively when it’s slow; in fact, I look forward to those times. If you are experiencing a slow time, don't get bored or frustrated until things pick up again! Take advantage of it and even things out. … [Read more...]
Parents Want Help Helping Kids Learn Time Management
The back-to-school season is a time of change in a kid’s life. New schedules, new activities, new friends--both parents and children need to learn how to adjust to all the change. From the first day of elementary school throughout high school, kids have school assignments, sports, music and theater practices, social activities and home obligations thrust upon them with the expectation that they will magically know how to do it all. However, without the proper guidance and an easy-to-use system, it is easy for children and parents to get overwhelmed. In fact, in a recent DayTimers® survey on back-to-school resolutions, 72% of parent respondents said they wanted to improve their time management skills. And the best way to learn is to teach it. Teaching children time … [Read more...]
Setting and Succeeding at Back to School Resolutions
DayTimers Community productivity expert and author, Laura Stack, offers easy-to-achieve tips to help families succeed at making and keeping back to school resolutions. Back-to-the-Future. The first step in moving forward with back-to-school resolutions is to take a look back. What were the situations from the previous school year that could use improvement? Did your child often miss the bus? Did they have a hard time making the honor roll or even passing grades? Was everyone too busy to sit down for dinner together? Once you figure out what areas need improvement, it will help set goals for the upcoming year. Talk to your children. Whether your school-age children are in elementary school or high school, talk to them about areas they would like to see change, both personally and … [Read more...]
Have you become more productive or just learned how?
With all of the tips and tricks that we’ve discussed in this blog (including tons of great reader suggestions), we’ve all hopefully learned HOW to be more productive, personally and professionally—but have we BECOME more productive? I’ve come up with a few questions that you can ask yourself to see where you stand. Of course, there’s always room for improvement, so if you don’t like all of your answers you can always browse the archives of my newsletters for some inspiration. Are you productive -- or just busy? Watch out for this one, because it’s an easy trap to fall into. Everybody likes to look busy. Some workers make a career out of it while actually accomplishing very little in the average day. People zoom around the office, guzzling coffee and stomping back and forth to … [Read more...]
Use laughter to boost your productivity and reduce stress levels
Have you ever had a day that had so many things go wrong, that it eventually started to be downright funny? Your toast burned. Irritating. Your seven-year-old couldn’t find his other shoe, making him ten minutes late for school and you late for work. Irritating. You dropped your briefcase, and the quarterly reports you printed for this morning’s meeting fell in a mud puddle. Irritating. At lunch with a new client, you shake the mustard bottle, the cap comes off, and a big glop of mustard flies right into the middle of your forehead. Hilarious! This is the stuff comedies are made of! Your entire morning is fodder for a sitcom. I was giving a seminar at an environmental engineering firm and was told a story of an engineer … [Read more...]
Time management joke on tracking time via time sheets
With my thanks for the laugh to Golden Jokes for this great joke on tracking wasted time on a time sheet: Dear Staff, In an effort to maximize productivity in our department I will be implementing a tool used in many industries. You will be tracking your time working on certain activities and sending me a time sheet weekly showing me how your time has been spent. Attached below is a sheet specifying a job code list based on some observations of employee activities. Please begin using this job code list immediately and let me know about any difficulties you encounter. Thank you. Your boss. Code Number Explanation 5316 Useless Meeting 5317 Obstructing Communications at Meeting 5318 Trying to Sound Knowledgeable While in a Meeting 5319 Waiting for Break 5320 Waiting for … [Read more...]
Having a Value Focus
We’ve all been there. It’s the end of the day. Your schedule was jam-packed. You crossed 27 things off of your to-do list. And still, you have that nagging feeling that the whole day slipped by before you got the chance to really accomplish anything at all. Being busy is one thing. Being productive is something else. On the surface, it can be hard to tell the difference. And that’s why it is so easy and tempting to fall into the “busy” trap. In today’s workplace, as much as we supposedly revere productivity, “busy” is the badge of honor. Stacks of papers covering a desk, a frazzled dash to the coffee machine, and all those blue streaks of Outlook (un)availability—wow, you are important. It’s easy to show how busy you are, but productivity is something much more personal—and much more … [Read more...]
Believe you’re among the top performers in your office?
An article in last week's BusinessWeek magazine made me laugh out loud. In an online study conducted from June 28 to July 5, 2007, BusinessWeek asked 2,000 Americans in middle management and above, 25 years and older, "Are you one of the Top 10% of performers in your company? The amazing result? A whopping 90 percent of managers think they are in the top 10 percent of performers at their workplace. 97% of executives, 91% of males, and 89% of females said yes. Hello? Can you say "denial"? Obviously these ostriches have their heads in the sand. While I laud confidence and a positive attitude, most of these people are statistically wrong. So how would you KNOW if you were one of the top 10 percent of performers in your … [Read more...]
