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...]
Workers’ Average Commute Round-Trip Is 46 Minutes in a Typical Day
The results from the Gallup Organization's annual Work and Education survey show the average American averages 46 minutes commuting to and from work in a typical day. If you take out those who work at home, the average increases to 48.1 minutes per day. However, if you have above-average income and work more than 40 hours a week, your commute is greater than the average, and so is your stress level. Since the advice "move, earn less, and work fewer hours" doesn't work, let me instead give you some ideas to make your commute more productive, efficient, and stress-free: Use the phone. Now I’m one of those people who get aggravated while people are chatting away on their cell phones while driving…generally because they’re not, well, driving. Many people have no idea how slowly they’re … [Read more...]
Teleworkers happier than office dwellers, study finds
A new study of 10,000 workers by Kenexa Corporation found that employees who telework from home at least on occasion were happy than those who had to put in "face time" every day at the office. I hope managers who still insist on measuring employees by the hours in the office vs. results are reading this. Just because they are in the office doesn't mean they are producing anything of value. You can have one employee work an eight-hour day and another work a twelve-hour day, and the eight-hour worker can be FAR more productive than the twelve-hour worker. It doesn't matter how long you're there; it only matters what value you created in that time. If one "loyal" worker toiled the office all day for 12 hours but played solitaire, bought plane tickets for a vacation, checked their … [Read more...]
Becoming more efficient
Time management isn’t about finding more hours in the day—it’s about making the most of those you have. The best thing that you can do to manage your time is to stop hunting for spare minutes and start thinking about how to become more efficient. When facing a task that just doesn’t seem to fit into your tightly packed schedule, there are a few questions that you can ask yourself: How can I complete this task in less time? Sometimes we are so busy looking for an extra thirty minutes to complete a task that we don’t realize that it could be done in ten. Make sure you aren’t over-researching, over-analyzing, or just plain over-thinking what you’re trying to do. Some fish will grow to fit the size of their tank. Tasks will do the same thing. If you’re convinced that putting the … [Read more...]
Being Productive While Working Out of a Suitcase
Not everyone has the natural ability to live out of a suitcase or do business from a laptop bag. However, with a little practice, you can learn how to make the most of your travel time. It’s amazing what you can get done when you put some miles between yourself and the usual distractions of everyday life.So how do you make the most of your time away? Here are some tips that work for me. I hope a few of them will help you become as efficient when you’re away from the office as you are when you’re there.Pack efficiently. It all starts with being organized and thinking ahead. Did you ever stay up half the night packing and spend an entire trip frustrated, exhausted, and wondering what it is you forgot? Don’t let it happen again. It’s pretty rare that a trip will pop up at the last minute, but … [Read more...]
Management of Mobile Workers
According to Interactive Data Corporation (IDC), mobile workers will account for one quarter of the world’s working population by 2009. As a manager and/or as a organization, you must be able to hire the right people for this type of position, as not every person is suited. Back in 2004, I identified the personality traits required people who successfully telecommute: 1. Self-Motivated—Do you tend to get things going on your own, or do you prefer to be directed by others? Are you the type that when someone says, “Here’s this project, go figure out how to do it, the deadline’s this,” you get it done. 2. Disciplined—Do you have to push yourself to work your hours? Do you procrastinate? Do you stay strapped … [Read more...]
Addicted to Email
I have a friend who jokes there are always three people in her bed: herself, her husband, and her Blackberry. I was in California last week on vacation with my family and witnessed people typing away on their Blackberries while at Disneyland, with their children tugging at their pants legs, asking to go see Cinderella. I was presenting a seminar yesterday, and one participant kept looking up to say, "Would you repeat that"? not because I wasn't clear, but because she wasn't paying attention to me---you got it---checking her email during class. Examples abound but the bottom line is Americans are addicted to email. Slaves to the Send/Receive button, countless workers sit at their desks, waiting for the next Desktop Alert, beep, cursor change, envelope in … [Read more...]
