Tag Archives | productivity

20 Strategies to Recharge and Refocus to Increase Your Productivity

By on September 14, 2010 in Energy, Fun!, Health, Personal Growth

Did you know that taking time to rest and recharge are possibly the most valuable productivity and success strategies you can practice?

What do you do to recharge and boost your energy and focus?

Here are some suggestions on steps you can take to restore your energy and revitalize your focus in no particular order. Choose one or several and practice them this week:

  • Meditate – start with a few minutes and work your way up to whatever is comfortable for you
  • Take a walk out in nature – try a park, the woods or near the water
  • Spend time with friends – share, connect and receive and offer support
  • Read a book that inspires you or stretches your imagination
  • Get active – go running, cycling, swimming, tennis, golf
  • Do yoga or Pilates – a regular practice helps both body and mind
  • Practice Pranayama breathing – or try another kind of deep breathing practice
  • Get more sleep – take a nap or go to bed early one night per week
  • Drink lots of pure water and eat really fresh food – try a visit to the local farmer’s market
  • Take in some culture – attend the theatre to watch a performance or a symphony
  • Get outside – take pictures, draw or just sit and soak in the beauty of nature
  • Have fun – play games, tell jokes
  • Treat yourself to your favorite indulgence – a fine glass of wine, a soothing cup of tea, a delicious coffee creation, a scrumptious bakery delight
  • Do something thrilling – cliff diving, bungee jumping, hang gliding, sky diving
  • Get some “bodywork” – schedule a massage, facial, Reiki, reflexology treatment or acupuncture
  • Learn a new sport or activity – try dance lessons, rock climbing, quilting, scrap-booking, bird-watching; the possibilities are endless
  • Spend some time in solitude
  • Listen to music – whatever kind appeals to you. Rock music can be relaxing and energizing for some and classical tunes can be an energy booster
  • Dance – Just get up and let yourself go
  • Brain dump – Get everything out of your head and turn off the worry machine
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Clarify Your Objectives

By on August 31, 2010 in Goals

Many people confuse goals and objectives and in fact it’s true that the terms are often used interchangeably. I prefer to differentiate between the two for my own purposes and those I work with. Goals are usually more general in nature and less tangible. Objectives tend to be more specific and “vision-able.” I think I might have made that word up, but it suits my definition so I’m using creative license here. What I mean by that term, “vision-able” is that you can picture the objective in your mind – see it, hear it, taste it and feel it. I like to think of goals as “big picture” ideas.  Objectives are more nitty-gritty.

For example, I want to lose 20 pounds by January 1st is a decent goal. It meets all the S.M.A.R.T. requirements. But it’s sort of “flat.” I will lose 20 pounds so that I can fit into my size “whatever” pants, be healthy and run a 5k by January 1st is a better objective. You can almost see yourself wearing your smaller pants and feel the exhilaration of running that race. It is more “real” and therefore much more effective for our purposes. I am not knocking goals, but for today let’s focus on clarifying your objectives instead.

Let’s try another example. I intend to start my own business, replace my income and quit my job by June 1st. Okay.

What does the objective look like?

  • What type and form of business?
  • What is the real purpose or intention?
  • What is the specific amount of income needed?
  • What will your work schedule look like?
  • What will your work environment consist of? At home or in office?
  • Will you have employees?

I intend to start a catering business for parties operating out of my home kitchen by June 1st. I will employ two part time employees and gross $200,000 annually.

Do you see the difference? This objective is much clearer and more “real” to me. This also makes it much more motivating and actionable.

Take a look at each one of your objectives and make sure it is so clear you can almost reach out and touch it!

This is part of an ongoing discussion on my rules to maximize productivity. To read more see Golden Rules of Productivity.

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Manage Your Energy

By on August 5, 2010 in Energy, Health, Personal Growth

Learning how to manage your energy goes along with the post I wrote a few days ago explaining the importance of knowing yourself and what works for you. Another part of that strategy is also knowing and managing your energy cycle, levels and preferences. Then the next step is figuring out how to use that knowledge to your advantage to help you work smarter, be more effective and have more free time.

Personal energy considerations:

  • Are you a morning person or a night owl?
  • Do you get a lunch time or mid-afternoon energy slump?
  • What is your optimal length of focus or work period? For some people it’s 30 minutes spurts with short breaks in between, for others it’s 60 or 90 minutes and for a rare few it’s 3 or 4 hours.
  • How often do you need to eat to maintain your concentration and energy? For health purposes you should eat every 3-4 hours, but perhaps a snack every 2 works better for you.
  • Does the type of food you eat matter? Perhaps pasta isn’t a good lunch if it makes you want to take a nap!

You may not know the answers to these questions and you are not alone. The best method to use to get a better “map” if you will of your energy cycle is to track your workday activities with energy notes for a week. You should already have some type of calendar that you use for work and/or home. Simply make brief notes as you go through your week about the type of task you are doing and how you are feeling each hour. When you look back at the end of the week, you will see a pattern that you can use to help you schedule tasks, meetings, breaks and other activities during the times that are more appropriate for you.

For example, I have discovered that I am a morning person and that my brain gets fuzzy late at night. However, when I first wake up it takes me a while to calm my mind and focus; it’s usually like a whirling vortex of ideas and task. This is not a good time for me to write a blog post or do project work. It is a great time for me to scan social media, read RSS feeds, answer quick emails (things that only need a few minutes focus) or alternatively to exercise which helps to calm my mind. My energy and focus “curve” slowly climbs throughout the morning and peaks late morning. So 10AM-12PM is great project/writing time. This is why I frequently get caught up in a project and do not want to stop to eat lunch. I will keep working until 1 or 2 some days and then I am starving. So, the lesson for me here is not only when to schedule high focus activities, but also to make sure I take a mid-morning break and have a good snack in case lunch is later. I am almost useless many days late afternoon, so I best get everything done before 3PM or else it has to wait until mid-evening. I do get another spurt of energy between 6-8PM, which I like to use for those household chores, being active with the kids or occasionally writing or other business tasks that I may not have time for during the traditional work day (i.e. finances, marketing, technology issues.) The other things I discovered are that I work better in 90 minute blocks of time (30 minutes is too disruptive for me) and that I need to eat every 2 – 3 hours.

To read more on the other Golden Rules of Productivity, click here.

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Brand Yourself as a Productive Person

By on August 3, 2010 in Uncategorized

Productivity is about more than getting things done. It is also about positioning, branding or marketing (whichever term you choose) yourself not only as a productive person, but as a dependable, responsible and hard-working professional.  You really want to build a reputation as a person or business who gets things done, who can be counted on and who is respectful of others efforts and time. You may not think about your demeanor, your communication or your business practices as being markers of productivity, but in the eyes of prospective customers, clients and colleagues they increase your competitive advantage. I may not be the most experienced in my field or arguably the most talented, but I certainly try to be the most reliable. That is one of my major differentiators along with my honesty which you are about to get a dose of.

I have to warn you, if you aren’t prepared for some professional coaching tough love, then stop reading now!

I have assembled a short list of those “best practices” that help me to determine whether I want to do business with a professional or their company.  They are compiled from years of dealing with professionals who I have witnessed or interacted with in professional, personal and volunteer situations.

  • If someone leaves you a voicemail, return it – It really doesn’t matter what form of communication you use to reply; what matters is that you do reply and in a timely manner (within 24 hours is dependable, 2 – 3 days is adequate and 1 week is poor, but better than nothing.) I once had a volunteer committee member tell me that she got my VM the week before, but did not call back because she didn’t know the answer to my question – I no longer work with her on my committee.
  • Leave a detailed message – This may be a subset of the prior practice, but phone tag drives me so nuts that I’m making it separate. Don’t just say “Call me,” say what you are calling about and what you need. This way the other person can be prepared with the necessary information for the return call and if a return voicemail is necessary, then the answer can be relayed in a message.  (Hint: I try to also leave in the message when the best time to reach me is.)
  • Finish your projects on time – Be reasonable in your estimated due dates and let the other party know if you cannot meet the deadline and the reason for the delay. Remember, under-promise and over-deliver.
  • Stay on top of your email – Clear your inbox every day (preferably by noon, though my goal is much earlier.) I get approx. 80 emails per day through several email accounts. About half of those are waiting for me when I open my inbox in the morning with a few being spam. I allow myself an hour to process those 35 – 40 emails and then the rest of the day I check my inbox every hour or two. Your volume or work schedule may be different, but you need to find a way to make it work. It is a terrible thing to have missed an opportunity or to be known as the person who never responds to their email. The time frame is the same or shorter than voicemail. Don’t make people send reminder emails; it is waste of time for both of you. If you have trouble with this; either you are getting too much email – unsubscribe to some newsletters (not this one of course) or delegate more (you probably don’t need to be copied on everything) or you don’t have an efficient way to process your inbox. (Hint: it is not meant to be storage.) If you need a refresher read, Get Control of Your Inbox.
  • Be very good at follow-up – When you have finished a project or completed follow – up actions, let the person who requested the work know that it’s done and if possible provide a brief summary. This may be as simple as a quick email just saying “This task is done” or it may be paragraph or bullet points describing what actions were taken and what was the end result. 

I would be glad to hear your comments on these practices of mine. Agree or disagree! One thing I know is that having a reputation for being Miss Reliable has paid off for me and may help you be more successful as well.

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Critical Core Concentrations

By on July 20, 2010 in Goals, Life Balance, Personal Growth

You must concentrate your focus on the critical core components of your life in order to increase your overall effectiveness.

This is a crucial strategy in your quest for improved productivity, efficiency and success. The first and arguably the most important step is to determine what your critical core concentrations are, or rather what you want them to be. Take a look at your goals or think about your long term plans in each area of your life. To give you a frame of reference; think about what you’d really like to accomplish or what’s important in the next three months. I recommend re-evaluating quarterly as plans and priorities change. Consider all the relevant areas of your life and work:

  • Self – mental, emotional & physical health – includes personal growth and creativity
  • Relationships – marriage, children, family, friends
  • Spirituality – in whatever definition that means to you
  • Community – local or global, contribution
  • Home – purchase and/or care
  • Career – job, business, education
  • Finances – income, investments, debt, retirement, etc.

To illustrate this, I am willing to share my personal and professional second quarter core list as an example:

Mental & physical health – Focus on increasing endurance and strength, eat to maximize energy and health, and take time alone every day to decompress.

Family – Focus on maintaining communications and reinforcing my relationship with my husband during military deployment and support and deepen the connection with my children.

Career – Focus on building my business, writing productivity and deployment books and building my reputation.

Finances – Focus on planning and conducting my savings and investment plans in a more disciplined fashion.

Friends – Focus on strengthening my network of support and companionship, both in-person and virtual.

Keep in mind that everyone’s list will be different and will vary depending on the life and work situation that you are currently in. My list will be different in 6 months and was certainly different last year. Also, many business owners create a separate list for their business as an entity in addition to their personal list.

Once you have this list save it, print it or write it on an index card, tape it to your desk, hang it on the wall, whatever you need to have a constant reminder. You will then use this list as the basis for setting goals, determining weekly and daily priorities and selecting which projects and activities make the cut.

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Productivity is a Valuable Tool in Every Area

By on June 4, 2010 in Health, Motivation

Productivity comes in many forms and manifests itself differently depending on your work, life or focus. It really is just a matter of getting results or accomplishing a goal or task that brings you closer to a desired, meaningful outcome. That may be a new or better job, higher revenue or income, enhanced relationships, improved health or simply a more organized or efficient home of life with less stress. The skill or strategy of being productive is highly transferrable to every aspect of your life and is unquestionably worth the investment of your time and resources to cultivate as often as possible.

Whatever your goal; true personal productivity involves:

  • Having a clear outcome
  • Defining your purpose
  • Timeframe for either completion or progress
  • Method of accountability
  • Outlined steps or tasks required
  • Reward yourself if possible

Let me share with you a simple example from my own personal life to illustrate the concept in very basic terms. My son and I recently began a practice of reading together before school. We both love to read and used to read together at bedtime, but that just doesn’t happen anymore – he prefers to read by himself quietly before bed and my evenings are just so busy much of the time. At any rate, I decided to take my own advice and look at this personal issue from a productivity standpoint – what would I advise someone else to do?

  • Outcome – Read The Mysterious Benedict Society with my 11 year old son
  • Purpose – Spend quality one-on-one time with my child doing something we enjoy
  • Timeframe – One month
  • Accountability – Son as partner – he waits for me in our reading place and reminds me
  • Steps/tasks – Read for 15 minutes each school morning while waiting for bus
  • Reward – Breakfast in the park & a new book for next month

In this case since I was working with a partner, so commitment on both our parts was necessary to make this work. There were obstacles of course – days I had to leave home early or when one of us was ill – but even then we would treat this as a firm commitment and work around those roadblocks by rescheduling for afterschool or a “make-up” session on the weekend.(Yes, I added these sessions to my calendar!)

Simple, easy and remarkably effective!

What project or goal can you apply this too?

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7 Principles of Good Time Management

By on June 2, 2010 in Time

“Do we have a shortage of time? No, we don’t. Time is the medium in which we exist. To complain about a shortage of time is like a fish in the sea complaining that it has a shortage of water.” — Mark Forster

Seven Principles of Good Time Management from “Do It Tomorrow” by Mark Forster.

The book lays down the following seven principles of time management:

  • Have a clear vision to bring clarity and focus to everything you do. Your vision allows you to decide what to do, as much as it helps you to decide what not to do. This is because once you choose a course of action you’re rejecting all other alternative courses of action.
  • Do one thing at a time. Establishing limits is an important way to get things done, and one important limit is to do one thing at a time. Forster explains that most unsuccessful people don’t sit around doing nothing all day; instead, they try to do so many things at once that they never get anything done. It’s much more effective to focus on one task, and when you’re done, move on to the next.
  • Little and often. It is more effective to exercise five times a week for forty minutes each day than it is to do nothing for two weeks and then exercise for four hours. At the same time, it’s more effective to work on a report for a couple of hours each day than it is to leave it all for the weekend before it’s due.
  • Define your limits. We’ve already discussed setting the limit of doing one thing at a time. Another limit is to work on clearly defined goals with clearly defined boundaries. Still another is to give yourself a definite period of time in which to complete tasks instead of leaving it open-ended. There are many ways in which you can set limits to make sure that you get things done.
  • Closed lists. A closed list is any list that has a line drawn on the bottom so that nothing more can be added to it. For example, deal with your email in batches once a day instead of checking your email each time a new message comes in. Another example is to create checklists for tasks that you carry out repeatedly so that you can clearly see which steps you’ve taken and how many more you have left to complete the task.
  • Reduce random factors. Interruptions, or random factors, are the main reason people don’t complete their work during the day. Although you can’t get rid of all random factors, the goal is to eliminate as many of them as possible.
  • Commitment v. Interest. Nothing much is likely to come out of an interest unless it turns into a commitment. There’s no limit to the amount of things you can be interested in, while there is a limited number of things you can be committed to.
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Does the Way You’re Working Work for You?

By on May 26, 2010 in Energy

If not, you may be interested in the new book by Tony Schwartz, “The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working.” I am very intrigued by Tony’s concept of “Energy Management” and our 4 unmet needs. It’s a good read if you are interested in looking at productivity in a new way.

The way we’re working isn’t working. More than 75 percent of employees around the world feel disengaged at work every day. We’re in a new kind of energy crisis — and this one is personal.

THE WAY WE’RE WORKING ISN’T WORKING: The Four Forgotten Needs that Energize Great Performance makes a compelling case for a new kind of workplace, a better way of working and a more deeply satisfying way of life.

Employers and employees alike share an unspoken assumption that human beings are capable of operating in the same way computers do: continuously, at ever higher speeds, running multiple programs at the same time.

In fact, we’re designed to pulse. We’re more productive and more satisfied when we move rhythmically between spending and renewing energy to meet our four key needs:

physical (sustainability); emotional (security); mental (self-expression) and spiritual (significance).

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Questions to Ask When Prioritizing

By on April 22, 2010 in Personal Growth

Prioritizing is an essential function of being productive in business – your own or your employer’s – and in life. It is an ongoing process that should never be static, but evolving and adapting to your situation, current goals and resources at hand. The mind process and outcomes will vary from person to person, but there are some fundamental questions that need to be answered.

Questions to ask when prioritizing:

How important is this task/project to my business, my employer or my life?

Is this task urgent or important?

Will completing this save me time in the long run?

Does this task have a deadline? And what are the consequences if I fail to meet that deadline?

Does this task affect others? Is someone else waiting on my response or action?

Will completing this task move me closer to business or personal goals?

Do I have readily available the resources necessary for completion?

Will completing this task save me money? Or cost me money if I wait?

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Lack of Sleep Has a Serious Effect on Productivity

By on April 16, 2010 in Energy, Health

There are only so many hours in the day and so much to do. The loser ends up being sleep. But sleep is a crucial factor in your ability to function. You can sacrifice sleep to gain extra time, but ultimately you are sacrificing your ability to use your time with purpose and efficiency.

Sleep statistics from the Better Sleep Council estimate that sleep deprivation currently costs U.S. businesses nearly $150 billion annually in absenteeism and lost productivity. And Better Sleep Month survey respondents reported sleep deprivation impaired their quality and accuracy of work (31 percent), clear thinking or judgment (31 percent) and memory of important details (30 percent)

Even worse, health implications can be disastrous according to WebMD.

In the short term:

  • Decreased Performance and Alertness: Sleep deprivation induces significant reductions in performance and alertness. Reducing your nighttime sleep by as little as one and a half hours for just one night could result in a reduction of daytime alertness by as much as 32%.
  • Memory and Cognitive Impairment: Decreased alertness and excessive daytime sleepiness impair your memory and your cognitive ability — your ability to think and process information.
  • Stress Relationships: Disruption of a bed partner’s sleep due to a sleep disorder may cause significant problems for the relationship (for example, separate bedrooms, conflicts, moodiness, etc.).
  • Poor Quality of Life: You might, for example, be unable to participate in certain activities that require sustained attention, like going to the movies, seeing your child in a school play, or watching a favorite TV show.
  • Occupational Injury: Excessive sleepiness also contributes to a greater than twofold higher risk of sustaining an occupational injury.
  • Automobile Injury: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates conservatively that each year drowsy driving is responsible for at least 100,000 automobile crashes, 71,000 injuries, and 1,550 fatalities.

In the long term, the clinical consequences include:

  • High blood pressure
  • Heart attack
  • Heart failure
  • Stroke
  • Obesity
  • Psychiatric problems, including depression and other mood disorders
  • Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
  • Mental impairment
  • Fetal and childhood growth retardation
  • Injury from accidents
  • Disruption of bed partner’s sleep quality
  • Poor quality of life

This weekend try to give your body some extra rest. Fore-go a party or TV show and go to bed early or live on the wild side and take a nap! Your body will thank you and your productivity will improve!

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