Most of us spread ourselves thin at the best of times. This is only heightened with year-end deadlines and all of the holiday busyness. It’s enough to turn a calm, cool & collected professional into something akin to dried out turkey dinner … dry, burned out and downright nasty.

The challenge is that we only have control over so much of our time. There are the non-negotiable deadlines, the meetings the emails, and additional holiday gatherings that leave little time to get “our” work done.

And while I love the thought of cloning myself, we really do have to work with what we’ve got.

Here are some key strategies to keep us calm and cheerful right through into the New Year:

1)      Pick your top goal or project
Sure – you want to get through 18 projects.

So do I. But we both know that ain’t gonna happen this year.

Pick your number one goal. Focus on that. If you get it done, pat yourself on the back. And then move on to your next goal. Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek calls this ‘selective ignorance’ (which incidentally was the Webster’s 2010 Word of the Year). Essentially, Ferris recommends that we turn off and tune out the distractions so we can focus on what we really care about. I couldn’t agree more!

Related article: Why can’t we get this prioritizing thing right?

2)      Set short-term deadlines
It is much easier to stay productive in the short-term. Deadlines that are far off in the future are easy to ignore. Break a big goal down into small chunks and set short-term deadlines. Small, consistent wins do a great job of motivating us and add up to big changes rather quickly.

Related article: Does Procrastination Boil Down to Temptation?

3)      Tell someone
We can let ourselves off the hook too easily at times. So it can be pretty powerful to tell someone else. Pick someone who will do a good job of holding you accountable.

4)      Get rid of other jobs
What can you get rid of to lighten your load? The Pareto Principle states that 20% of what we do brings 80% of the impact. What low-value tasks are sucking up a lot of your time?

Once we know what our top priorities are, we need to seriously consider off-loading the other stuff.

There are lots of great approaches for identifying the lower-value activities. Mike Cloutier uses the 3 Balls approach to manage an overwhelming workload. In this article, he talks about glass balls (for the things that must be done), rubber balls (the things that should be done) and lead balls (the things that could be done). Stever Robbins uses the “prune, prune, prune” approach as a means of “coping with too much to do”.

5)      Leave a buffer
If you abide by the above tips, this one should be a breeze. Things come up – they always do. So build in some free time. And get to sleep early. It is amazing how much more productive we are after a good night’s sleep.

Related article: Is it time for a break yet?

Hopefully these five tips will help you from spreading yourself too thin. What are your sanity saving plans? I would love to hear your suggestions and tips.

Establishing a strong team has been a strong focus of mine throughout my career.  And fortunately, it has benefited both me and my fellow team members.

I’d like to share three of my top tips for establishing a strong – and productive – team.

Step 1: Your Ideal Team

The first step is to make sure you are working with the team that you want to be working with.  Success for any leader begins with having the team you want. 

I recommend that every manager clearly think through the qualities they want in their team members.  I’m referring to both “above the line” (skills and knowledge) competencies that can be easily trained and “below the line” (behavioural) competencies such as empathy, results orientation, drive which are more difficult to train and develop.

If you inherit a team, you very quickly need to evaluate how productive each member is.

It is equally important to be upfront and clear about your expectations.  You also need to check that people understand your expectations. 

If you are starting from scratch, you need to build the team with those desired competencies as mandatory.

Step 2: Set Productivity Expectations

The second step is to establish productivity expectations – as individuals and as a team.

I tend to endorse the Clear Concept approach to productivity:

Your Information: Get organized; Establish one central task tracking system and apply the Touch it Once principle for any quick hits.

Your Time: Determine how you want to allocate your time; establish a general routine around your priorities and focus (instead of multi-task).

Your Plan: Prioritize your work by category and stay focused; plan each day; plan your projects; set and plan around deadlines; and manage the root causes of procrastination as it arises.

Step 3: Regular Feedback

The third step is to establish a plan around how to give (and get!) feedback.

I really like the formal monthly sit down where we talk about the current work  and general issue management. I will also ensure regular informal communication throughout the month via phone calls, emails and informal chats.

While my preference is not to micro-manage, I also strive to keep myself available and responsive.  I will be clear about the rules of engagement.  In other words, I want my team to know what my expectations are around their response time when I reach out to them.

While leading teams is a dynamic and changing process over time, once you have these basics in place, anything is possible.

I like to be organized.

Ok – I admit it. I like to be organized. In fact, I sometimes find myself procrastinating by organizing. When I walk past an unorganized office, I need to resist the urge to jump in and start sorting. But enough about me …

Simple Improvement

Getting organized is one of the easiest ways to boost our productivity. It doesn’t strain the brain, yet it yields some immediate positive results.

Getting organized offers many compelling benefits:

• We save time by not having to look for things
• We significantly reduce chaos and distractions
• We are able to focus more on our most important work

Getting organized is actually pretty simple.

Most of us know what we need to do to get organized. The biggest challenge is likely finding the time. So my first tip would be to clear your schedule for 2-3 hours. My second tip would be to recruit some help. An assistant, an eager colleague or a dutiful friend all work. Finally, make it fun! Bring some snacks, turn on some music or even uncork some wine.

A few simple tips will help focus your efforts.

As you dust off your piles, consider the following organizing tips:

• Clear your desktop. Only keep the task that you are currently doing on your desk.
• Set up a staging area (for example, on a back credenza) for work you plan to complete later that day or week.
• Establish a home for everything. Create files. Group like with like. House things where you use them. Purge anything that is unnecessary.
• Put everything else away. Worried you’re going to forget about it?  Write it down on your To Do list.
• Commit to maintaining your organized office. Avoid creating a ‘to be filed’ pile. These piles multiple faster than rabbits. Instead, file it right away.

So there you have it – a low-key, easy project that can boost your productivity. Perfect for these lazy-hazy summer days.

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
Steve Jobs, Apple Computer

You might be wondering what creativity has to do with productivity. As professional managers, bankers, lawyers and other traditionally “non-creative” types, we might lull ourselves into believing that creativity is the dominion of those wacky marketing folks down the hall. But as information becomes increasingly commoditized through easy 24/7 web-access, the clear competitive advantage becomes not what we know but our ability to put data and ideas together to solve problems or drive innovation.

Creative Thinkers Soar

As author Daniel Pink claimed in a New York Times story about the new creative economy, in which even old-school corporations like GM increasingly value imaginative “right-brain” thinkers, the Master of Fine Arts degree is the new MBA.

According to the research of Micael Dahlén, a professor at Stockholm School of Economics, a company’s success in terms of sales, market share, profitability and customer satisfaction can be correlated to two primary areas: creativity in marketing and creativity in product development. Everything else is secondary to creativity. All the elements we typically focus on, efficient operating systems, financing and supply-chain management, are not going to make a difference if you don’t get the creative part of the equation right first.

Building Creative Panache

Coming up with smart solutions fast or new ideas efficiently is becoming a requirement for us all. And that means keeping our creative “right-brain” muscles in shape so they’re at the ready when we need them most. Here are some simple “steps” you can use to boost your creative style:

Step Up: Letting yourself off the hook by saying you’re not creative is a rookie mistake that becomes the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy. Everyone has the potential to tap into their creativity. You just need to start by stepping up to the challenge. The more often you demand yourself to be creative, the easier it will become for you.

Step Away: Ideas are delicate and creativity is easily spoiled by stress. Sitting at your computer coercing ideas to make a command performance just doesn’t work. When you’re stuck, try stepping away from the problem by engaging in a physical task that requires only part of your mind’s attention. This is an easy way to trick yourself into shifting the focus away from the problem so ideas can flow more naturally.

Step Out: Change your location. Step out of the office. Change the meeting venue. Or just have everyone sit facing the back of the room. You’ll see that a change of scenery can help create new connections in your mind that will take you in new creative directions.

Step Into: Consider how a similar problem is solved in other worlds. Step into the world of soap operas, religion or nature and explore whether there are any lessons you can borrow from these other worlds that might open up different possibilities.

Under pressure to perform at our best, we challenge ourselves to find new ways to work smarter and increase productivity. Our aim is to set ourselves apart from our peers. So why make the mistake of assuming creativity is a fad that will quickly go out of fashion? As experts increasingly assert creativity as the new black, with a little training you’ll be able to add creative flare to dress up your business profile in style.

Franca Miraglia is a senior PR professional who provides media interview, storytelling, presentation and creativity training. With over 25 years of experience, Franca has worked with hundreds of executives, Olympic athletes, recording artists and television personalities.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to stretch your team’s creative muscles please contact us at info@clearconceptinc.ca.

There are lots of reasons why people don’t take all of their vacation.  According to an Ipsos-Reid poll, many Canadians have trouble coping with stress during the vacation cycle (30%) or feel guilty about taking time off (28%).  (“The emails keep coming in and the work keeps building up.”)  Others just don’t get around to booking the time off.  And still others don’t want to deal with the backlog when they return so they check email frequently while on vacation. 

At the risk of stating the obvious, vacations are critical.  Clearly, they serve our personal life well.  But they also improve our productivity.

A recent Air New Zealand study found that people experienced an immediate 82% improvement in performance and a lasting 25% improvement after a vacation. 

Interestingly, mini-vacations (two or three days off) are not found to have the same stress-reduction benefits as vacations that last one and two weeks.

A very busy professional woman once told me that there would never be a perfect time to take a vacation. She simply advised me to book my vacation far in advance and find a way to make it work. This was such simple advice, but so wise at the same time.

Have you booked your summer vacation yet?

Yes, we all need to be available to our colleagues, but sometimes our willingness to help others comes at the expense of helping ourselves.  If I had a dollar for every time someone told me “I need to say no more often” I would be one wealthy individual. 

Some people can naturally say no.  The rest of us need to have a few other tricks up our sleeve.  Read on for some of the best ways to say no without using that oh-so-hard to vocalize word.

1.       Know your plan

Plan what you need to accomplish and when you plan to do it.  Obviously, you need to leave some time open for the unknown.  Once you have a plan, it becomes much clearer for you to evaluate whether you have time to help someone else.

2.       Say “Yes” instead of “No”

Consider what you can do to help your colleague.  It might be relatively easy for you to do part of what they are requesting. 

Example: “If you need help writing a press release, I suggest that you talk to John in Marketing.  He has an intern working with him right now and they may even be able to write it for you.  I’ll send an email to John for you.”

3.       Don’t offer up your prime time

Your involvement may be mitigated if your availability is in ‘off-prime’ hours (i.e., before 8am; after 5pm; during an evening call).  Your colleague may be more inclined to keep the conversation ‘tight’. 

Example: “I’m pretty booked today, but I could go over it with you at 5:30pm.”

4.       Who’s Got the Monkey?

I am a fan of this Harvard Business Review article that advises us to avoid taking on problems as our own.  You alone do not need to solve everything. 

Example:  “Have you tried …” (instead of “Let me try …”)

5.       Cite Your Current Workload

Be honest.  Let the person know that you would like to help them but you are fully booked until [insert date that works for you].     

Example: “I’m pretty busy until the end of January.  Can this wait until early February?”

So there you have it.  My (up until now) secret tips for getting out of work.  Just please don’t get offended if I use these lines on you.  Remember – I’m trying to role model productive working.

How can you make sure that your requests are acted upon quickly? Read on for tips to encourage “express lane” responses.

1. Be strategic with email: Keep business emails brief. Proof read your messages and cut non-essential information. Stick to one subject per email. Bold/underline key messages and deadlines (i.e., please get back to me by Friday). Avoid attachments (which are often perceived as extra work) unless necessary. A simple paragraph or table can easily be embedded in the email.

2. Describe the ‘so-what’: State why the task needs to be completed and link your request to a main goal. If you briefly address the “so what?” of why something needs to be done, your client or colleague will be more likely to respond with timely action.

3. Make face time: Follow-up your requests with a suggested meeting time. Having someone’s direct attention is often exactly what’s needed to make a commitment and move forward on a project.

4. Learn how others work: Pay attention to when other people are most receptive. If you know that someone is highly responsive at 7:30AM, try to catch them then. If you find that someone responds better to phone/voicemail, try to catch them that way. Your goal is to focus their attention on your request – in whatever way works best for them.

5. Train people how to work with you: Let people know the best way/times to reach you. This helps minimize phone-tag and makes it easier for people to follow-up with you (which is precisely the goal!).

6. Keep momentum: If someone sends you an interim question about your request, get back to them quickly to keep the momentum. Delaying your response sends the message that your request isn’t urgent and, consequently, it may drop down on their priority list.

These six solutions will help make it quicker and easier for people to respond to you. Soon you’ll be operating in the “express lane” of responses.

I’ve interviewed several CEOs and Presidents and, one after another, they talk about consciously adhering to a decision making process. In fact, Executive Intelligence Magazine states: “When it comes to foretelling management success, the real proof is one’s ability to quickly and effectively process large amounts of information and use it to make decisions that drive the right kind of actions.”

While everyone is unique, I generally recommend the following decision making process:

  Clearly frame the action required

  Link it to one of your key priorities

  Review your assumptions

  Determine whether there is enough information to act

Even with the best laid plans, however, various pressures and habits prevent managers from making decisions efficiently. Excessive multi-tasking is a common culprit. When we’re working on several things at once (often the case these days) it’s natural to avoid harder decisions in favour of easier tasks.

Waiting for the perfect information can also create setbacks in your decisions. It’s natural to be concerned about making mistakes without all the facts, especially when many of our decisions seem mission critical. In most cases, experts agree that opting for a more immediate decision based on sufficient information is better than a delay. If you need to sleep on something, create a draft capturing your initial ideas and input. This avoids the need to rethink the whole issue the next day.

But what about making decisions based on gut instinct? Our “gut” is based on valuable experience and connections that we may not be able to consciously articulate. Given this, we should pay attention to (or at least seriously consider) our first instinct. Be aware, however, of assumptions and hidden biases, which can heavily influence our intuition. For more on this, check out Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2007) by Malcolm Gladwell.

In our professional lives we are often facing one urgent matter after another. Opportunities for rest and recovery are few and far between. Professional athletes are similarly faced with intense moments. However, professional athletes often have much more time built in for rest and recovery. Games and competitions are intermittently spaced with practices and off-seasons.

If you’re watching the Tour de France, you’ll appreciate that one of the things making it such a gruelling competition is the lack of recovery time between each stage. The business world can be a lot like the Tour de France. Each day brings a new mountain to climb in terms of tight deadlines, increased competitive pressures and new stresses. Rest and recovery periods (such as vacation days) are few and far between.

A Harvard Business Review article title The Making of a Corporate Athlete (2001; Loehr & Schwartz) highlighted the importance of rest and recovery for both professional athletes and corporate executives. The article argues that executives need to learn what world-class athletes already know: “recovering energy is as important as expending it.”

Extensive sports research tells us that to build a muscle we need to stress it to the point that the fibers begin to break down. This needs to be followed by an equally important recovery phase during which the muscle not only heals, but grows stronger. Loehr and Schwartz remind us that “chronic stress without recovery depletes energy reserves, leads to burnout/breakdown, and ultimately undermines performance.”

Physical activity, appropriate nutrition and adequate sleep are all critical to maintaining peak form. We all know that we need to make exercise a part of our everyday life. We also know that frequent, small nutritious snacks throughout the day are better than heavy large meals and high doses of caffeine. And finally, we know that it is important to get a full night’s sleep.

Loehr and Schwartz recommend that executives “train in the same systematic, multilevel way that world class athletes do” and they validated this theory with research on thousands of executives. Executives who are performing at their best describe feeling “more relaxed, less resentful about relentless work demands, and able to work fewer hours while getting more done.” Now doesn’t that sound productive!

One of the executives Loehr and Schwartz worked with began incorporating a 1pm workout into her day. Consequently, this executive reported feeling “reenergized and better able to focus” during the afternoons when she would have otherwise been sluggish. She also reported that she was in a better mood and a better boss.

Another executive shifted his eating habits from heavy meals late in the day (resulting in poor sleep and feeling sluggish in the morning) to multiple lighter, more nutritious meals throughout the day. He also integrated a more consistent exercise routine into his week. He reported: “At the age of 59, I have more energy than ever, and I can sustain it for a longer period of time.” He also reported to be better able to deal with complex issues at work and people management.

So there you have it – nature’s way of boosting your productivity. As the summer months invite us into the great outdoors, I challenge you to find ways to use fitness, nutrition and sleep to optimize your productivity. Do you have specific time allocated for exercise each week? Are you surrounding yourself with healthy food options? Can you commit to finishing work at a specific time each day? (Note: many people who do this are surprised to realize how ingenious they can be in order to get their work done during the day).
Good luck and I’ll see you at the gym.

© Clear Concept Inc.  For distribution permission or complimentary copies, please contact Clear Concept Inc.

What does a focused mind look like?
A focused mind shuts out distractions, stays engaged in the present activity, and has a clear vision about what it is trying to accomplish. A focused mind is extremely productive. It is well versed in the present task (including the context and detailed background) and easily learns about, analyzes and generates ideas.

How does ‘focus’ impact productivity?
Your efficiency level drops every time your mind wanders. When your mind wanders you lose a number of things including the background/context, ideas that still need to be captured and momentum towards completing a task.
How many times have you gone back to a task and said “Now, where was I?” This is a reflection of needing to spend time reviewing the background, recalling undocumented ideas and building momentum once again. The more time you take a break from a task, the more time you need to ramp up again.

How can you improve your focus?
I invite you to look for ways to improve your focus. The first step is to identify a reasonable amount of time that you will be able to focus on any one thing. Personally, I like to work in 30 minute blocks. The second step is to identify what you plan to accomplish during this time.

Wherever possible, resist giving in to distractions during this time. Let your phone go to voicemail. Close your e-mail account. Ask drop-by visitors if you can follow up with them later in the day. Pull your mind back to the present task if it starts to wander (and by all means, make a quick note if you don’t want to forget something that pops into your head). In most cases, the world (including e-mails) can wait for 30 minutes.

At the end of your time, reward yourself for your intense focus by shifting activities. Check your e- mail, follow-up with your colleague or stand up for a stretch break.

Celebrate being one step closer to optimizing your productivity.