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Personal Productivity as a Habit

Posted on 05/18/2012 by ·
Personal Productivity as a Habit

By this point in your career, you've most likely figured out the basic requirements for achieving workplace productivity. No doubt you have a good idea of how to manage your time, set goals, break big tasks into smaller ones, prioritize your task list, keep your email inbox empty, shake off procrastination, and dodge perfectionism. In other words, you've learned the principles of high performance. But knowing what to do doesn’t matter if you don’t do it: day in and day out, in all circumstances, even when you don't feel like it. Fortunately, human nature serves you well here. Once used to a task, you can generally shift into a semi-automatic mode that allows you to perform the task efficiently, without having to constantly remind yourself about what comes next. Having a routine saves … [Read more...]

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Delegation and Workplace Productivity in the Global Village

Posted on 01/25/2012 by ·
Delegation and Workplace Productivity in the Global Village

Modern job descriptions, especially those at the managerial level, often specify more responsibilities than anyone can accomplish within an ordinary workweek. This may seem ludicrous at first blush, but it reflects the reality of the business world as it exists today. No one really expects upper-level managers to directly handle all their responsibilities; nor could they. Trying to do so would wreck their lives inside of a week. It’s called "management" for a reason. True achievers know to parcel out most of the items on their plate to subordinates or even to people outside of their organization, before focusing on the few things they do best that profit the company the most and produce the highest value for the time worked. In other words, leaders delegate like crazy to those who can … [Read more...]

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Time Management Skills and the Extreme Work Week

Posted on 12/05/2011 by ·
Time Management Skills and the Extreme Work Week

Let's face it: despite the management cliché claiming otherwise, you can't just "work smarter" if you expect to compete in the modern workplace. You'll also have to work harder, and probably longer. In today's high-pressure office environment, the real go-getters generally put in half again more hours than their 9-5 co-workers; and in many cases, management expects and requires them to do so. Indeed, some professions now view a 40-hour work week as part-time, at best—which means that if you limit your hours to the traditional number, you also limit your opportunities for advancement. As a result, many white collar professionals end up working a minimum of sixty hours a week in order to meet their job requirements. And that doesn't include drive time, work-related calls and email, … [Read more...]

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Telecommuting: Creating a Productive Home Working Environment

Posted on 11/05/2011 by ·
Telecommuting: Creating a Productive Home Working Environment

These days, telecommuting (a.k.a. telework) is simpler and more cost-effective than ever before—which means that many office workers can pursue their careers without setting foot in a traditional office, except when absolutely necessary. Although some businesses still resist this option, others have begun to embrace it in a serious way. As overhead and transportation costs continue to rise, and other benefits pile up, there's little doubt that this trend will accelerate. That being the case, you may very well end up working from home at some point, whether you initiate the change or your company does. Thus, it pays to learn how to create the most productive home office environment possible. In this article, I'll outline the basics. Set Up Your Workplace One of the nicest things … [Read more...]

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SuperCompetent Speaking: How to Cram Lots of Information into Limited Time

Posted on 07/14/2011 by ·

Is giving presentations a part of your job? One of the biggest constraints you face when making any presentation is a limited amount of time to get your point across. This is true whether you're the keynote speaker for a convention and have a solid hour to speak, or you're pitching your proposed budget to the Board of Directors and are lucky to get ten minutes. Get tips from my latest "SuperCompetent Speaking" article at Training Magazine online. … [Read more...]

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How Leaders Can Get More Done Through Others: How Micromanagement Can Kill Productivity and Creativity

Posted on 07/05/2011 by ·
How Leaders Can Get More Done Through Others: How Micromanagement Can Kill Productivity and Creativity

If you want to destroy worker initiative, blast a hole in productivity, and scribble the bottom line with red ink, there's no better way to do it than by micromanaging your employees. Keeping workers on tight leashes and constantly interrupting them ruins their ability to find thoughtful, profitable ways to do their jobs, and it wastes your valuable time as well. True organizational productivity requires engaged, informed personnel willing and eager to work toward the organization's mission and vision. And it all starts with a simple concept that's amazingly hard for some people to implement: trust. Learn to Trust This can be a tough sell, especially if you've built your organization from the ground up. It's your baby; you know all its quirks, and it can be hard to trust even … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Leadership & Teamwork · Tagged: , ,

Dealing With Distractions and Interruptions: Strategies for Staying Focused on Important Tasks

Posted on 05/05/2011 by ·
Dealing With Distractions and Interruptions: Strategies for Staying Focused on Important Tasks by Laura Stack #productivity

More than ever, modern workers are bedeviled by distractions and interruptions that pull us away from the key activities of our jobs. If it's not your noisy office-mates, it's the siren song of the Internet, or an over-fascination with email. Therefore, it's imperative that you learn to trim your activities down to the few things that are truly important, so you can actually get your job done and become both the envy of your peers and the apple of your boss's eye. Proper focus requires discipline and mastery to achieve, like any other skill. In this article, I'll help you get started in your quest to wield your focus like a blade, stripping away the things that keep you from getting your work done on time and under budget. Let's start with one of the worse culprits: your … [Read more...]

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Implementing Employee Engagement in Your Organization

Posted on 02/05/2010 by ·

Several months ago, I published an article on the importance of employee engagement to any organization's effectiveness and bottom line. The topic has proven to be a fruitful one, and I've gotten some excellent responses from my readers. The original article soon led to an application of the concept to the ideas I outlined in my recent book SuperCompetent, which directly resulted in last month's topic: the Productivity Management Employee Engagement/Performance Matrix. The Matrix classifies employees based on the factors of engagement and performance, which, as I've indicated, aren't necessarily congruous. In fact, it's possible to be highly engaged, but an absolute zero when it comes to productivity, and vice versa. However, if you can bring together maximum engagement and high … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Leadership & Teamwork · Tagged: ,

SUPERCOMPETENT™ KEY #6: ATTITUDE

Posted on 11/05/2009 by ·

This month’s article correlates to the sixth key in my newest book SuperCompetent: The Six Keys to Perform at Your Productive Best (Wiley), to be released on August 9: ATTITUDE. Attitude is your motivation, drive, and proactiveness. The most effective people in any endeavor are those with a hard-working, positive, can-do attitude. Their attitudes exude the kind of passion that commits fully to a course of action and sees it all the way through. It's infectious, and it keeps them and others in their team moving forward, even when the way becomes difficult. In order to succeed in a competitive work environment, you have to be a self-starter, consistently driven, consistently flexible, and consistently innovative. You must also learn to be a good communicator in all directions: up to … [Read more...]

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Engaged Employees Are More Productive

Posted on 07/05/2009 by ·
Engaged Employees Are More Productive

Hopefully by now we all get it: this economy is challenging, things are changing, and everyone is looking for ways to do more with less. Unfortunately, as many companies struggle to adjust to this new reality, opportunities are being missed. Often we are so focused on stretching an organization’s financial and other resources that we become less effective in managing our human resources. Why do you think that is? A lot of the time, it’s just a matter of focusing on the tangible rather than the intangible. If you can improve a machine’s output by 10 percent, that’s obviously a good thing. But improving an employee’s productivity…that’s much more difficult to turn into a percentage (or a dollar figure). Regardless, it is the manager’s job to get the most out of his or her employees. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity · Tagged: ,