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How Getting Overwhelmed Helps Improve Productivity

By Royale on April 30, 2012 in Productivity

Guest post by Krisca Te

Ridiculous Suggestion

How could becoming overwhelmed — the end of productivity, efficiency, accomplishment — be tweaked to render some benefit to those finding themselves overwhelmed? Well, it may seem ridiculous to suggest, but being overwhelmed can bestow some benefits.

Bad Math

To be overwhelmed is simply to have one too many (or two too many, or three) things to do. As a result, you will be dealing with some unpleasant effects, all of which overlap to a degree:

Too many things demanding attention.
Inability to figure out where to begin.
Flitting from task to task.
Lack of concentration.
Poor productivity.

Taking some time to pause is necessary to glean some worth out of being overwhelmed. Ask yourself these questions:

How did you get overwhelmed in the first place?
Did you overestimate yourself?
Did you underestimate the tasks?

No matter the answers to those individual questions, the broad answer will be that you simply have more work than you can do. Just as in mathematics, when the results of your calculations don’t work out, it’s time to go back over them and figure out where you have made a mistake.

Not Purely Negative

Look at the positive side of being overwhelmed. Like any negative aspect of life, it is an invitation to reflect and consider yourself, perhaps even the way you look at life and earning a living. And you should ask yourself still more questions:

Where am I over-extending myself?
Which tasks are essentials?
Which tasks can be completed later?

As you’ve always heard, mistakes make the man. They are lessons, sometimes-unpleasant ones that are teaching situations. Learning is learning but you will hopefully, be that much stronger and wiser for having endured them.

What Do I Need to Do?

What are your needs? If you were taking a course in managing your personal finances (banking, investing, taking loans, etc.) you would be asked to differentiate between your needs and your wants. You may think this is obvious until you really start concentrating. Needs and wants can both be very strong, almost emotional, and both can strongly compete for your attention. But needs, no matter how distasteful at the moment, come first.

Moore’s Law Often Kicks In

Cast a critical eye upon your undertakings. What can you reasonably do? Not what you could do if you were perfect, but what you can expect to accomplish as a human prone to error and missteps. Also, at some point Moore’s law will probably kick in, inspiring smarter, more adaptive problem solving that optimizes task integration at a greater speed while reducing your energy consumption, just like a semiconductor.

What Can I Do?

Knowing what you need to do isn’t enough. Humans tend to underestimate enterprises and overestimating their productivity. Sift through your tasks to prioritize things. If you do, need two things at the same time, better go with the one you know you can do first, followed with the other. Being overwhelmed is not an entirely a negative thing. It can be turned into a positive thing if you see it as an opportunity for re-evaluation and learning. And perhaps prompt you to critically ponder the philosophy of life that you are presently following.

Krisca Te works with Open Colleges, Australia’s leading provider of TAFE courses equivalent and counselling courses. When not working, you can find her actively participating in local dog show events – in support of her husband.

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Motivation + Perseverance + Meaning = Life Success, Part 2

By Royale on April 24, 2012 in Goals, Habits, Motivation, Personal Growth, Productivity, Work

Perseverance is the second steppingstone to a higher quality life. We covered motivation in last week’s post. If you miss that post, I suggest you read Part 1 first.

What is perseverance?

Perseverance, according to the dictionary is a “steady and continued action or belief, usually over a long period and especially despite difficulties or setbacks.”

Perseverance is what keeps us from giving up, when the going gets rough. It’s what helps us get up when we’ve been knocked down. It pushes us to knock on that door, when the last 100 have slammed in our faces. It even helps us keep our focus on the goal when the path seems exceedingly boring. Most of all, it enables us to strive for the goal, even when it doesn’t seem within our reach.

Most of the important things we hope to accomplish in life will require at least a small dose of perseverance. The really important things, a huge dose.

“The more we must persevere, the greater the accomplishment.”

Real-life examples of perseverance

Building a successful business or career
Ahieving a weight goal
Running a marathon
Completing your education
Having a long-lasting, satisfying marriage
Parenting through the teen years (enough said)

Perseverance can be learned

Perseverance is a trait, a behavior, a skill that can be learned like any other skill. It’s a muscle. It takes time and effort. But it does get easier with practice. We practice perseverance by being a completionist. By setting smaller goals as well as large ones. By pushing ourselves, a little further beyond the point to which we think we cannot pass. A little bit more each time

Perseverance strategies:

1. Follow through on promises, to others as well as yourself.

2. Set small goals that are just a bit beyond your comfort zone. Repeat.

3. Envision achieving success in your endeavor when your hard work will finally pay off.

4. Use affirmations or motivational strategies to get in the proper mindset.

5. Finish everything you start! (Barring major catastrophes)

6. Tie up loose ends. Everything you leave undone is a constant reminder of your failure to successfully complete a project.

7. Get an accountability partner that you can count on to push you.

8. Celebrate! You are building your perseverance muscle.

All of these strategies help to build confidence in your ability to persevere when faced with obstacles. Building your perseverance skill, it’s all about believing that you can do it. Once you have done it, you know you can do it again. And over and over and over…

We know you can do it. We have faith in you. Now you just have to convince yourself.

Your turn

Where do you most need or want to persevere in your life?

Choose at least one strategy and get to it. Care to share?

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Round-up: Great Reminder Apps for iPhone

By Royale on April 12, 2012 in Inspiration, Life Balance, Productivity, Time

Despite text messages, email and a constant stream of notifications, it’s still easy to forget things. We can all use a little help staying on track and bringing a little life back into our days. Any app that can help me do that is a wonderful thing.

I recently wrote a review for Lifehack.org on three reminder apps that I have personally found very helpful on my quest for better life management. Read the entire post…

Alarmed - An all-in-one time app for iPhone/iPad that is packed with useful features; a pop-up reminder, timers, wakeup alarms and sleep timers available in the iTunes store.

TellMeLater – Simple and easy to use, it’s a great little app for all those times you want to remember something later. $.99 in the iTunes store.

Timeless Reminders – Timeless Reminders allows you capture your most inspiring photos, videos, music, audio, and text to create personally meaningful reminders that inspire you to take healthy and productive action in your life. It’s free in the iTunes store.

One is simple, one is multi-faceted, and the other is highly motivational. The most important thing is to choose which approach best works for you, so you will actually use it.

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5 Minutes in the Morning Will Make a World of Difference in Your Day

By Royale on April 10, 2012 in Health, Productivity

A good plan is like a road map: it shows the final destination and usually the best way to get there. - H. Stanley Judd

Do you have a plan for how you spend your time each week? Each day? Whether you are a working in the corner office, a tiny cubicle, from your home or on the road, you need to plan how you will spend your time. If you don’t, there’s a good chance you will look back at the end of the day and ask yourself where all the time went and why don’t you have more to show for your efforts.

I know you’re anxious to get down to the nitty-gritty task of getting more accomplished in a hurry, but quick fixes just don’t work. You have to do the prep work and set up the foundation first, and then take small steps each day. It’s very similar to the process of losing weight. If you go on a crash diet, the weight will eventually all come back. If instead you embark on a process of changing your eating and health habits, you can have significant, sustainable success.

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much. – Jim Rohn

So, how do you decide what to do each day and when to do it? Well, that depends in part on your personality and temperament. You can make this process as simple as 5 minutes each morning to quickly run through it or take 20 minutes to break everything down into GTD categories, context filters, and calendar slots. However, one thing is absolute; you must have a list to work from! No matter which approach you prefer, the linchpin of your system is your task list.

I don’t know anyone, and I truly mean anyone, who is highly productive, effective, and successful without some sort of ongoing list. You might prefer to keep it on paper, your computer or your smartphone – I discourage the use of sticky notes though, they’re too likely to get lost into that void of the “unknown tasks that fall through the cracks.”

Simple Planning

1. Start with your brain dump; quickly brainstorm any tasks you need to add to the list. If it’s a simple task add it to your master task list, if it’s a project, break it up into individual tasks.

2. Add any due dates or time constraints.

3. Prioritize those tasks that are due today or are big picture (cash flow, health, meaningful relationships) as “important.” You can rearrange tasks in order of importance if you choose – I just place a star next to the important ones, so I don’t have to keep moving the items on the list.

4. Choose 5-10 tasks to do today; depending on how full your schedule is and how much time you have available. Don’t overload your list. That’s just setting yourself up for failure and then you’ll beat yourself up, because you failed.

5. Do your top priority task first. Get it out of the way. Alternatively, you may choose instead, to do the task you’re dreading most. That will help eliminate the tendency to procrastinate and make you feel a whole lot better about crossing that dreaded task off the list.

Bonus – Schedule a period of at least 30-60 minutes of uninterrupted work or chore time. If you can do this first thing great, if it’s home chores, block out chunk of time in the evening or on the weekend to tackle them. Resist the temptation to be distracted and wander off to do something else. Make yourself focus.

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Why You Need to Go with the Flow

By Royale on April 4, 2012 in Energy, Productivity, Stress, Time

The entire course of our life follows a cyclical pattern of good and bad, up and down, more then less. Everything flows this way, years, months, weeks, days, hours. High energy, then low energy, creativity, then boredom, tremendous focus, then distractibility.

The key is in understanding how to use these shifts to our advantage. We can channel these fluctuations, if we understand how they affect our moods, actions, and productivity. It can be a valuable tool lower stress and improve the quality of our lives.

How can we do this?

Analyze

When are you the most focused? The most distracted? The most tired? Energized?

How does lunch affect you? Difficulty concentrating or energized?

Are their times when you prefer to be more social? Periods when you want to be left alone?

Are there periods when you can’t seem to sit still?

When do you find it easier work on long projects?

Do you see a pattern starting to emerge?

Utilize

Look at what you do each day…each week…each month.

Shift whichever projects, tasks, or activities you can so they better match your energy?

Propose changes for activities that involve others. Altering the schedule may help them as well.

Schedule detail work or highly creative activities; designing, writing, idea development for times when you are better able to focus?

Do social tasks/activities during times when you feel the most social; meetings, calls, project collaboration.

Save tedious or repetitive tasks, like data entry, billing, reports, filing for when you can be quiet and alone.

Everyone is unique. Don’t conform to other people’s cycles or moods.

Some things are beyond our control. Manage what you can. Deal with the rest. You’ll be surprised at how flexible other people can often be once they understand why you’re making this type of request.

Big Picture

Think about what happens throughout the year. Some months are usually busier, while some are quieter and more flexible.

Consider commitments that you have in the other area of your life. If you have young children, parent who needs care, or a spouse who travels or works a lot, take that into account when taking on a new project, role, or responsibility.

Our persistent tendency to compel our brains and our bodies to conform to a schedule that conflicts with our individual energy patterns adds stress to our already unbalanced lives.

Stop fighting it and go with the flow…at least sometimes.

Your turn…Thoughts?

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How to Stay Productive and Focused

By Royale on March 28, 2012 in Goals, Inspiration, Life Balance, Motivation, Personal Growth, Productivity

I was recently cleaning out old files and documents on my computer. I came across the transcript of an interview I was asked to give about a year ago or so, on how I stay productive, maintain my focus and enjoy life.

As I was reading through, I had to ask myself if the answers are still true and more importantly if I’m living by them. Yes and no. The answers are still true. Definitely. But I don’t consistently translate them into daily actions, and when I don’t my productivity, my connection and my happiness in life falter.

It was an important reminder to me. And I hope that by sharing, you will ask yourself the same questions and that your answers might make your path to life fulfillment and successes clearer.

Questions:

How do you stay productive?

I think the key to living a productive life and making productivity a consistent practice is in having clearly defined goals or outcomes, knowing what actions you need to take to accomplish what you desire, then making it a habit to follow through to completion on tasks and projects. Then you need to make sure you have some balance in your life. There has to be some fun on the flip side.

Where do you find motivation on a daily basis?

I am motivated by a burning desire to connect with others and to share any wisdom or insights I may have that might help them in some way. I see an epidemic of busyness both in the work place and at home. People are frustrated and overwhelmed in their lives and careers. We’re working harder, enjoying life less and spinning our wheels much of the time.

It doesn’t have to be that way! I think life is a journey of growth and we are meant to continuously evolve. I think we design our lives by the actions and choices we make each day and I truly believe that if I can help others make wiser choices and take better actions then I’m doing something worthwhile with my life.

How long have you been doing what you do?

I have been blogging for about two years. I actually started out with a completely different blog and focus, but gradually evolved both my personal (GuardWife.com) and professional (ProductiveLifeConcepts.com) blogs until they were a more comfortable fit for me.

What inspires you?

I am constantly inspired by the world around me. I read incessantly…I always have. I find people interesting and am fascinated by what makes them tick and why they behave the way, they do. I also have a genuine love of nature. The simple beauty of flowers, trees, animals, even the weather provides me with endless inspiration and ideas. I try to get out into nature every day. It calms and centers me, which allows me to be more creative as well.

How did you develop a talent for writing?

I’m not sure honestly. I have always been good at writing, especially on non-fiction topics, but never pursued it professionally until I decided to get into blogging. My writing has definitely improved with practice. After writing hundreds of blog posts and writing my first book, I have gotten much more efficient and clearer with my writing, both during the writing process and in the end result.

Once I discovered my personal writing style, which happens to be very conversational in nature, I found that my writing flourished. I write as I speak, as if I’m having a conversation with a colleague or friend, share a bit of myself, break a few rules, and have fun.

Your Turn

You’ll obviously want to substitute whatever you do and what your talent is for mine, but the questions are still relevant, and I hope useful.

I’d love to know your answers if you’re willing to share. By sharing something of ourselves, we inspire others.

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Are You Up for The Challenge?

By Royale on March 26, 2012 in Productivity, Time

I challenge you to a race…

A race against time. A race against yourself.

What could you do faster? Where would a bit lower quality be OK if it saved you time? What is necessary, but you’d like to spend less time on it?

Perfection is the enemy of time. Distraction is the enemy of time. Overwhelm is the enemy of time. Mindless activities are the enemy of time.

We are often our own worst enemy of time.

In many cases, we can do something to save, recover, and take back that time.

Challenge yourself to a race.

I’ll be doing it along with you.

Great candidates for a TIME CHALLENGE:

Email –always at the top of the list

Social media – another top contender

Household chores – vacuuming, mopping, dusting, clean up

De-cluttering and purging – tackle those pile, closets, shelves

Organizing – rearrange, put items back, restore order

Filing – just do it

Phone calls – keep it brief, no chitchat

Meetings – agenda, timer

Writing – stop censoring and editing as you write; edit later

There are many others. Tasks you dread. Activities that are time wasters. Necessary, but tedious. Whatever may be on your, “Oh no, not again,” list.

Here’s the simple challenge.

Choose an activity. Decide the amount of time to allot. Settle on the acceptable quality. Set a timer. GO!

How many emails can you get through in 20 minutes?

How many words can you write in an hour?

Can you get the filing done in 15 minutes?

What can you cover in a 30-minute meeting if you stay on topic?

How many calls can you make in 45 minutes if you cut chitchat?

Dusting race – 10 minutes. Good enough is the key phrase.

Sort, purge, piles. 30 minutes. 60 minutes. When in doubt, throw it out.

So many options. So much time saved.

The best part. When you’re done, use some of that recovered time to treat yourself.

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10 Things You Could Do With an Extra Hour per Day

By Royale on March 7, 2012 in Happiness, Health, Inspiration, Personal Growth, Productivity

Image via Wikipedia

Have you ever stopped to think about how you could spend an extra hour a day if you had one? I surely have, quite often actually…and here are some of my suggestions.

1. Write the novel you’ve always wanted to write

At the normal average of writing 500 words per hour, you could finish and proof a typical 80,000-word novel in 6 months. See you on the bestseller’s list…

2. Participate in a daily exercise program

Even just walking an hour a day, burning the minimum 300 calories, you could lose 30 pounds in a year. Or not gain 30 pounds…

3. Play with your children

If you spent an average of 60 minutes a day interacting with your children each day, you would add an impressive 365 hours a year to your parenting journey. That’s quality and quantity time…

4. Read that stack of books sitting on your shelf

If you read an hour per day, you could finish nearly 50 books in one year. That’s amazing…

5. Work an extra hour a day

I don’t recommend this, but if you in need extra money or are working toward some large career goal, you could earn an additional $5,000-$15,000 in a year, depending on your hourly rate. That’s not chump change…

6. Learn a new skill

In an hour a day, you could learn to play an instrument, a new sport, or a new hobby in less than a year.

7. Make a Difference

Volunteering in America data shows that the average person who volunteers their time gives around 52 hours a year. Even more interesting, the average value of one volunteer hour to an organization is $21.36. That means that by volunteering an hour per day, you could effectively donate nearly $8,000 worth of volunteer time. That’s really making a difference…

8. Find inner peace

If you used your extra hour to meditate, journal or do yoga, you would be giving yourself the gift of literally 15 days per year dedicated to peace, calm, and inspiration. As an added bonus, lowering stress and cultivating a positive attitude can lengthen your life span as much as 9 years. If that’s not incentive to meditate, I don’t know what is…

9. Laugh and have some fun

Laughter raises serotonin and dopamine levels, which increase happiness, and decreases stress levels. It also makes you more enjoyable to be around, which may improve the relationships in your life. Moreover, if you are going to live longer, you may as well have fun while you’re doing it…

10. Spend time really connecting with the people in your life

Think about all of the relationships you could improve if you invested only an extra hour per day. You could have a more active love life, strengthen your marriage, call your mother, make new friends, or participate in a club or organization that interests you. Aren’t relationships what life is ultimately about anyway?

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How to Live a More Productive Life by Changing This One Thing

By Royale on February 29, 2012 in Productivity, Time

I read an article a few weeks ago about a writer who decided to radically change her writing schedule and found as a result that she was able to see a significant increase in her ability to be productive and get things done. I was inspired to adapt this for my own writing and work life, but I thought the strategy could also be applied to my home life as well.

After a couple of weeks of changing this one thing, I decided that my experiment was a resounding success. I got more writing done than ever before. I completed projects in less time. As my productivity increased, my stress level decreased, and as an added bonus, the side effect was that my life and work satisfaction level rose as well. Now, it’s time to share.

Concentrated Effort

This strategy takes time blocking and task focus to a whole new level. It is useful on both a mental and physical level.

The secret, use an Extreme Focus Blitz whenever possible. What this means is not only do you focus on one job, one task, or one project at a time, you do it for as long is reasonably possible. It can be applied both in the office and at home.

Some work examples:

Instead of writing three blog posts at a time in a block, I now write an entire month’s worth in an eight-hour day. How? By sticking with this same task all day, I become more efficient with the repetition, I avoid the time and effort necessary to start and stop and the quality of my writing is increasing. Once I stay in the zone for a long period the ideas and words flow more freely, which also makes the tasks more enjoyable.

I complete client projects and articles, marketing, administrative tasks and anything else I can in that same manner. Projects now take me less time, so I’m effectively earning more per hour and I’m finishing well before deadlines.

This could also work for meetings, appointments, team projects, billing, data entry, creating documents and lots more. Clearly, there will be some jobs that are unable to be done this way, but if you think outside the box, you’ll see that this could apply to more than you might think.

Try this at home:

I was skeptical about how I could use this practice at home. I have specific routines and I am pretty organized as a rule, but I decided to just give it a try for a week or two and have been pleasantly surprised by the result of changing this one thing.

Instead of doing laundry every day, I now do it once a week. I am a bit a data nerd, so I tracked my results. It used to take two hours (wash, dry, and fold,) to do each load, about 10-14 hours per week depending on volume. It now takes me 6-8 hours on Saturday or Sunday to do all 5-7 loads. That saves me 4-6 hours. While I know that the hamper never stays empty for long, at least for a time all the clothes in the house are clean.

I used the same strategy to wash my windows, do errands (shopping, post office, library, dry cleaners, etc.,) mop floors, and any other cleaning or household management task I could think of.

I’m still working at finding ways to apply this, but I have discovered, much to my shock, that I will literally save more than 20 hours per month. That’s a whole day! Imagine what you could do with an extra day each month…

The added bonus is that by accomplishing such a significant amount of progress in one area instead of a bit of progress in many areas, you experience a greater amount of satisfaction in a job well done. And with more visible results. This has enabled me to better enjoy the remainder of my time and look forward to the next project I can put to rest.

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A 2 Step Process to Generate Ideas, Cultivate Creativity, and Achieve Your Goals

By Royale on February 22, 2012 in Health, Inspiration, Life Balance, Personal Growth, Productivity

The key to a successful life is to keep moving forward. When you face a challenge, but are unsure what step to take next, or seem to be standing still, unable to achieve your goals, pause and give your mind the time and space to generate solutions.

The best way to accomplish this is to set aside structured “Idea Time.” The initial inspiration for this process came from Todd Henry’s book, “The Accidental Creative.” I adapted this concept into a process that works best for me. You may need to adapt it further to suit you as well.

How to Use Your Idea Time

Step 1

Choose a question or problem to ponder.

Brainstorm possible solutions.

Contemplate potential actions.

Choose one or a few to implement.

Add these action steps to your task or goal list.

Step 2

Let your mind wander. Allow any and all ideas to float in.

Ask what else. What else could I do? What ideas or inspirations would I like to explore?

Record those ideas in your idea book (this can be an actual notebook or journal, an electronic document or mobile app.)

Decide if any of these ideas are useful or relevant now.

Leave the rest to marinate for future consideration.

The mind is most effective when we allow it to slow down and contemplate solutions. The answers to how to achieve our goals, find happiness, attain life satisfaction, and realize career success lie within us. We have an inner wisdom that we can tap into, if only we give it the time and freedom to come alive.

Try to schedule “Idea Time,” on your calendar each week. If you can’t find an hour, try 30 minutes at least.

Do you think this might benefit you? Why or why not?