“The Productivity PRO!”® news"E"letter

Number 34, March 2002

by Laura M. Stack, MBA, CSP (Certified Speaking Professional)

“The Productivity PRO!”®

 

“The Productivity PRO!”® news"E"letter is a monthly electronic newsletter distributed to our clients, human resource personnel, and colleagues.  Laura Stack helps people leave the office earlier, with less stress, and more to show for it! 

 

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MESSAGE:  Happy Easter!  This is my absolute favorite time of year.  Spring is in the air, the sunshine lasts longer and arrives earlier, and the days warm up.  I can almost feel my spirits rise and my enthusiasm renew as I hold my face up to the sun.  Ahhhhhh!  This is the time to regroup, to reassess, and to reenergize.  We’re almost ¼ through 2002!  Take some time to sit down, revisit your yearly goals, assess your progress, make adjustments, and renew your commitments.  Hop to it!

 

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IN THIS ISSUE:

 

*                     Article: “Procrastination? Can We Talk About This Tomorrow?”

*                     NEW FEATURE!  “The Productivity PRO®” answers your questions!

*                     Time Tips and Traps

*                     Words of Wisdom

*                     Featured Program: “Looking at Time Through the Lens of Leadership: Becoming a More Productive Leader”

 

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ARTICLE: “Procrastination? Can We Talk About This Tomorrow?”

 

Well, I guess we’ve put it off long enough!  Time to talk about a tough issue.  A newsletter subscriber wrote me, asking, “Laura, I work hard all day, I’m organized, and I control time wasters.  So why can’t I seem to get on top of things?”  Hmmm…could it be that you’re busy working hard on the wrong things?  Do you have a little nagging voice in your head saying, “I’ve got to get started on this…”? A possible explanation for less-than-stellar productivity could be a lack of discipline in doing what you know you should be doing.

 

Quick quiz: Let’s say you have a to-do list with only 10 items on it for the entire day.  You get a bit of time and have an option to check something off.  What do you do first?  If you were like the majority of folks, you’d pick something easy.  Something fun.  Something trivial.  Something you can check off.  It feels good to check things off!  It gives you a real sense of satisfaction.  Another block of time, another item checked off!  Wow, look at that.  You’re already 1/5 of the way through the list. 

 

It’s now the end of the day.  Let’s say you have nine out of ten items checked off…what’s the one that’s left?  The most important item!  The hardest.  The yuckiest.  The most valuable. The one you’ve been putting off for a week.

 

Isn’t it easy to put off the things that you know you should be doing?  Procrastination is actually quite understandable.  Human nature is to avoid pain.  When you put off a task, it rewards you twice:  once when you get to do something else that is more fun, and second when you don’t have to do the undesirable chore.  When the task comes back to haunt you, it only punishes you once.  So it’s easy to see why procrastination wins out!  Unfortunately, in the end, the cost of putting things off outweighs the reward.  The pain is ultimately worse than the pleasure you derived from procrastinating.  You end up operating in perpetual crisis mode, acting out a consistent state of drama, and becoming a big nasty stress-monster.

 

“But look how productive I was!” you argue.  “Nine out of ten things checked off my list!” News flash…productivity does NOT equal check marks.  You must detach your sense of accomplishment from the quantity of items completed on your list, and instead, use the quality of the items completed as your gauge.  If you only have four items of ten completed, but one was the most important of all, that was a far more productive day than completing nine low priority items.  Your value as an employee will consistently outpace your co-workers if you spend your time focusing on the critical few tasks that lead to the highest performance, value, and output as an employee.

 

Convinced?  So how do you stop procrastinating?  Here are a few tricks.  Is the task:

 

Overwhelming?  Perhaps the task is too large.  Instead of viewing it as one huge project, break it down into manageable chunks you can schedule over a period of a week or two.  Twenty-hour project? No!  Look at it as ten two-hour tasks.  Getting it down on paper can help you see how to best approach the project.  The key is to do something to move toward completion.  If you must write a long, detailed report on some research findings, don’t sit in front of your computer and stare at a blank screen.  Writing a few sentences or the section headings may give you some momentum.

 

Unappealing?  Perhaps the task is boring or tedious.  Post written reminders to yourself where you will be sure to see them:  your bathroom mirror, car dashboard, or refrigerator.  The rule is:  if the sticky note falls off, you’re still procrastinating.  Or you can schedule a five-minute appointment with yourself to begin the chore.  When the designated time arrives, start working on the task.  If you feel like stopping at the end of five minutes, you can stop.  The only rule is you must schedule an additional five minutes for tomorrow.  When you begin to see some progress, five minutes soon becomes ten, fifteen, twenty . . . 

 

Unpleasant?  Perhaps the task is making you anxious, such as returning a complaint call from a customer.  Select a simple, low effort part of the task to get you started.  For example, you could pull the customer’s file.  Then perform another leading task, such as reviewing the file.  Then pull the phone closer.  In other words, complete everything up to the part of the activity you dread.  Then the ONLY thing left to do is pick up that phone.  It might help to write down your thoughts before you call to help discharge some negative emotion and figure out what you’re going to say.  Complete these unpleasant tasks first thing in the morning so they aren’t hanging over your head all day. 

 

Trivial?  If you are you rewriting an item on your to-do list for the third day in a row—STOP!  Before you transfer that task, ask yourself why you haven’t completed it.  Perhaps other tasks with higher priorities have justifiably pushed it forward.  If the task seems unimportant, quickly do an analysis to determine if you can justify your procrastination.  Draw two columns and list your reasons for procrastinating on one side and your reasons for getting started on the other.  If your reasons to start are longer and more convincing, perhaps it will persuade you to get going.  On the other hand, perhaps the reasons for procrastinating outweigh the reasons to start.  This objective analysis may prove the task is indeed trivial and deserving of your procrastination.  If so, completely remove it from your daily to-do list and add it to your master to-do list.  Review your master to-do list each month to see which items have changed priority.  If you don’t have to look at the item every day, you will stop feeling guilty and stressing out over not getting it done.

 

No Accountability?  To solve procrastination for good, find yourself a “ruthless friend” (a person who likes you, but not too much).  This could be a colleague, friend, coach, or your mother.  Tell them what you’re going to do, by when.  Ask that person to remind you at set intervals and bug you about your progress.  Sometimes going public creates self-imposed pressure to perform. 

 

Action Item.  Right now, grab a piece of paper.  Draw four columns and label them “Item,” “Cause,” “Action,” and “Due.”  Jot down at least three things you’ve been procrastinating on, why you’ve been putting it off, one idea about how you can get started, and by when you will have the task completed.  Writing an action plan may be just what you needed (or a good kick in the pants)!  Ask me if you need the latter.

 

 

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THE PRODUCTIVITY PRO® ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS!

 

I’ve been writing this newsletter since February 1999.  Each month, I write about something that I hope interests you.  It’s time for YOU to tell ME what to write about!  This new “Ask Laura” section features my answers to questions you pose on any aspect of personal productivity. 

 

Let me help you get started.  Here are sample questions you could ask yourself: 

·        What are your greatest time management challenges? 

·        What organizational difficulties do you face? 

·        What is the biggest waste of time in your work? 

·        What keeps you from being productive each day? 

·        What is the #1 thing that negatively impacts your effectiveness? 

·        What stresses you out the most?

 

Let’s consider this a virtual classroom, a continuation of the class where we met.  Simply email your questions to me at [email protected].  If no one sends me a question, I’ll assume you have no interest in this new column. <grin>

 

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TIME TIPS AND TRAPS

 

·        Consider the physical layout of your office.  Does your desk face a door or a hallway?  Humans are curious beings.  When someone walks by, it is our nature to look up to see who just passed.  If that person is wandering around looking for someone to bother, they will catch your eye and smile.  Not wanting to be rude, you smile back.  They enter your office and ask the death question, “Hi, how’s it going?”  Congratulations, you just bought yourself an easy ten-minute interruption.  One solution is to rotate your desk or change the layout of your cubicle so that your back is facing the door.  If someone walks by and sees that you are busy, they are less likely to interrupt you (but not always).  As an added benefit, you focus longer on the work in front of you.  If you can’t rotate your desk completely around, try at least to work sideways and use a computer screen or cabinet to block your view to the corridor.

 

·        Catching Up on Reading—How should you tackle your reading pile?  How about considering a revolutionary step—throw the entire pile away and begin again.  Or, if that’s too drastic, throw away all but the current issues of Newsweek or USA Today.  The rest is old news.  Don’t read magazines cover to cover.  The task is simply too overwhelming.  Go through the table of contents, allow yourself a maximum of three articles per issue, rip them out, and then throw the rest of the magazine away.  When you’re through weeding through your stack, the actual task will be much less formidable.  Then spend the rest of the weekend catching up on the important reading.  You could try the timer technique for each article.  Get an egg timer and set it for 15 minutes for each item.  When it goes off, toss the article.  Another tip comes from Nobel laureate Herbert Simon, speaking in People magazine, “Reading daily newspapers is one of the least cost-efficient things you can do...read the World Almanac once a year.  What’s happening you’ll hear by lunch anyway.”  To get rid of reading piles permanently, try subscribing to a clipping service, downloading articles to your PC from the internet, or taking a speed-reading course.  Or, try a newspaper diet by shifting to liquid television.

 

·        Handling Correspondence—To whom do you owe letters?  Make a master list of the birthdays and anniversaries for all your friends and family you plan to buy for next year.  Then take a trip to your local card shop and buy ALL (yes, all) of the cards at once.  I go so far as to address them.  Mark the important date lightly in pencil in the upper right-hand corner, so the stamp will cover it when you mail it.  File the cards in your tickler file.  Stock up on all your stationery, envelopes, postcards, and stamps.  Put them in a little basket in your nightstand or next to your easychair and in your briefcase so you can dash off a letter when you have a free minute.  Take some time to put return address labels and stamps on a stack of blank white envelopes.  Then if you’re reading an article you think your mom would enjoy, you can simply rip it out and get it going out the door to her.  Or if you have to mail bills that don’t have a pre-addressed envelope, you have envelopes ready to stuff and mail.

 

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WORDS OF WISDOM

 

“When life demands more of people than they demand of life - as is ordinarily the case - what results is a resentment of life almost as deep-seated as the fear of death.”  --- Tom Robbins

 

“Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.” ---Douglas Noel Adams (b. 1952), British author, “Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”

 

“The middle of every successful project looks like a disaster.”  --- Rosabeth Moss Cantor

 

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FEATURED PROGRAM:

 

“Looking at Time Through the Lens of Leadership: Becoming a More Productive Leader”

 

Good leaders understand that time management is not about squeezing more into their days; it’s about you and your people spending time productively toward the accomplishment of organizational goals.  This innovative program discusses three key time management principles for leaders: (1) avoiding organizational “speed bumps,” (2) eliminating activities that waste your time and the time of your people, and (3) modeling effective time management behavior.

Text Box:

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Course Objectives:

·        Eliminate “Speed Bumps” (Feedback, Communication, Decision Making)

·        Manage Meetings Effectively

·        Delegate Appropriately

·        Empower Others to Accomplish Your Most Important Objectives

·        Help Your People Move Through Change More Quickly

·        Model Effective Time Management Behavior  (Priorities, Scheduling, Organization, Saying No, Procrastination)

·      Keep People From Burning Out and Maintain Proper Balance

·    Remove Things That Waste Your Time and The Time Of Others (Interruptions, Mistake Correction, Undefined Roles)

 

New client offer: Until April 30, schedule this program on-site at your organization and receive a one-time 20% discount off our regular rates! 

 

Psssst, best-kept secret: forward this newsletter to your colleagues whom you think might be interested in having me speak on-site at their organizations or at an association conference.  I appreciate your referrals!

 

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CONTACT US 

 

Visit Celebration Presentations on-line! 

http://www.LauraStack.com

 

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