Tag: Productivity

Overtime slaves

If you, like most people, feel you are working too long then I’d suggest you read “Slaves to the overtime habit fail to loosen shackles”. It talks about how Australians are chaining themselves to their desks and doing over 2 billion (yes billion) hours in unpaid overtime.

So what’s the major reason for this? Most said they had too much to do (i.e. too busy) but also confessed that something else had come up (i.e. allowed themselves to get interrupted). So what does this mean? Well, according to the article these people are:

– unable to eat properly
– unable to pay bills on time
– unable to see their partner
– unable to exercise
– unable to relax
– and so on

I especially like this example:

“…he calculated he was working probably twice the hours he was paid for.’ I have no time for exercise and no time to see my friends, let alone spend time with my girlfriend. On my one day off I’m so tired I lie down all day at home….life sucks when there is no time to live it. I am a slave’”.

Sound familiar? So many people’s of identities these days is totally tied to their work. What’s the first question people will ask when they meet you at an event? ‘So what do you do?’ is the typical ice breaker, not ‘have you read any good books?’, ‘seen any good movies?’, ‘been anywhere interesting lately?’. No, they want to know what work you perform so they can better understand who you are because these days your job is the best description of who you are.

Sad isn’t it? Here is someone basically saying they feel like a slave with no freedom and no ability to enjoy life. How is that living? Basically it’s not. We were all led to believe that technology would free us from this situation whereas, as I have said many, many times here, it has simply enslaved us. Why? Because we accept the defaults. We don’t customize the systems to suit ourselves, we modify our behaviour to suit the systems. Like D’oh!

The interesting thing is that it is easily within everyone’s power to achieve the lifestyle they desire, however like an alcoholic, first you need to admit you have a problem and secondly you have to want to do something about it. Why wouldn’t you want more time to do what excited you? Why wouldn’t you want more time with your partner, kids, hobbies, etc? Seems from this article that more and more people don’t want to lead an enjoyable life? More and more people want a life chained to a desk, forced to continue on the never ending treadmill. They are no longer in control and those who are not in control are destined to be controlled by others.

If you can admit you have a problem and do want to have a ‘life’ then I suggest you have a look at some of my work on SlideShare, especially Enough Time and Power of an Hour, or the Smarter Productivity training I run. If you want to go beyond this and save at least one hour a day (which adds up to more than a working month a year) I’d suggest you get in contact with me (director@ciaops.com) so we can develop something to help free you from your current enslavement. Remember life is about doing what excites you.

A do not do list

Since I wrote the post of ‘Being busy is just an excuse’ I’ve come across some additional information that reinforces the premises I put forward.

I came across a something that said ‘achieving perfection is about elimination’ which resonates very strongly I believe. When a sculptor creates a work they don’t do it by adding something to what they started with, they generally chip away and remove stuff to create their work of art. The same is true about life in general I believe. You need to eliminate, simply, declutter and generally do less to achieve your goals.

I’ve also found a very interesting piece by Jim Collins who wrote the books Good to Great and Built to Last. At the beginning of the year he doesn’t make a traditional ‘to do’ list he makes a ‘not to do’ list. Novel eh? You’ll find the whole article on his web site but again it demonstrates the point of achieving the things you want by not doing the things that waste your time and are unproductive.

A similar idea comes from Carl Newport who says

Fixed-Schedule Productivity: How I Accomplish a Large Amount of Work in a Small Number of Work Hours

The basic idea being that you set your ideal work schedule and then MAKE everything fit into that. The above blog post from Carl is a highly recommended read for people who claim they are ‘too busy’ to achieve things as there are also plenty of other helpful tips in there.

So if you are too busy you have no one to blame but yourself. The good news is that you can makes the changes requires to actually achieve so much more by actually doing less. The proof is in the pudding as these articles demonstrate. I’d urge you to at least give it a try and whether you can make it work for you.

Being busy is just an excuse

Now, I know that I’m not going to be very popular in what I’m about to say here but I truly believe it to be the case. There is a HUGE difference between being busy and being productive.

Lately, I’ve come across so many people claiming to be ‘busy’ and blaming this for having failed to get something important done. It is becoming that common now it is really starting to annoy me. Why? Because it is a total cop out I believe. The bottom line for most of these people is that ‘being busy’ is simply an excuse for not setting correct priorities. ‘Busy’ is typically a state in which people believe they need to be to achieve something, but in reality they are simply in motion without moving. They are merely creating action for action’s sake in the belief that they are being productive.

It’s human nature that there are things we like to do and things we don’t. Being productive usually means doing stuff that you don’t like doing AS WELL AS as stuff you do. Most however, fill their time with stuff they like doing but which is generally of such a low priority that they shouldn’t be doing it at all. In a word, they procrastinate. Procrastination doesn’t meaning sitting around twiddling your thumbs, it means failing to do what NEEDS TO BE DONE and you can just as easily achieve this by being ‘busy’. The issue for such people is that they do not value time appropriately. Just because you have eight hours a day ‘at work’ does that mean you have to spend that total time ‘working’? Definitely not! If I can get the same amount of productive work done in six hours, or four hours or even two hours why do I need to fill the remaining time with useless unproductive tasks? Because that’s what everyone else is doing I hear you say and therein lies the problem.

Just because everyone else is doing something doesn’t make it right does it? Being productive is about what works for YOU not what everyone else SAYS works for you! We all have exactly the same amount of time allocated to us each and everyday, yet why do the vast majority of people always seem to be ‘busy’? Stressed? Tired? Unable to do what they need to get done? Simply because they have failed to prioritize their time correctly. Maybe they’d prefer to re-read their emails than actually starting on that report or maybe they’d prefer to surf the web just a bit longer rather than actually resolving an urgent problem. Sound familiar? It should be, because this how most people operate.

Another painful truth I’ve come to understand is that YOU CAN’T DO EVERYTHING! Thus, you need to prioritize. I’ll pretty much bet that if you prioritize correctly you’ll find you’ve been doing stuff that you don’t need to do at all. There is going to stuff you like doing, but to get the more important things done you are going to have to stop doing stuff, period. If it produces a low return on your time investment its gotta go. Do you leave your money under your mattress earning no interest? Unlikely. Most people put it somewhere where it will earn the maximum return. That is called INVESTMENT. Now tell me, what is more valuable? Your time or your money? Hmmmm… you can never get more time but you can always get more money, so I’d have to say time. Wouldn’t you? So why the hell do most people do their best to not only waste their own time on low priority tasks but also allow other people to also waste their time? Unfortunately, it is generally the worst offenders who can’t even see this fact.

If you are finding that you’re constantly ‘busy’, if you find that you are constantly letting things slip because you are ‘busy’, I’d say you need to take a long hard look at your priorities. It is probably going to involve some pain but the payoff to your health and well-being is well worth it in the end. If you think I’m joshing, stop and take a look at those around you always seem to be ‘busy’. Are they actually getting stuff done? Are they simply creating motion for motions sake? Are they using the excuse of being ‘busy’ to prevent you from giving them something that actually NEEDS to be done?

So you’ve been warned. Don’t keep coming to me saying that you’re ‘busy’ because if this keeps happening I’m going to leave you being ‘busy’ and find someone who can make time for what I need and I am unlikely to return. The inability to prioritize your own time automatically tells me you are unlikely to value my time as important. Sorry, but MY TIME is important so I ain’t going to let you waste it.

Avoid multitasking

I was reading a blog post from David Mackie about how he finds he needs to work with the TV on in the background. He was considering this in light of the article – ‘One thing at a time’ which again further points out the fact that multi-tasking is a sure way to kill your productivity. I replied to David’s post saying that firstly, having the TV on in the background is probably not true multi-tasking merely distracting because you don’t NEED to pay attention to it. Secondly, if you find that it does improve your productivity then there is nothing wrong with that PROVIDED that it is actually improving your productivity.

I recently came across the article – ‘If you only do one thing this week, avoid multi-tasking’ which again provides ample evidence of the inefficiencies of multi-tasking but the following caught my attention in relation to David’s post:

‘And if you think that cannot apply to you because you’re a whiz at juggling tasks, consider the recent findings of researchers at Stanford University in California: people who routinely multitask are the worst at ignoring irrelevant information, regularly switch between tasks and have poorer short-term memory – in short, all the skills needed to multitask successfully.’

My point being that unless you MEASURE your productivity how are you every going to know doing something is making it better or worse? Having the TV on in the background MAY make you feel more productive but is it really? You’ll never know unless you MEASURE and experiment. There is also plenty of research about the effect that music has on concentration, especially the so called ‘Mozart effect’ which I am experimenting with now. At the end of day all this doesn’t count for squat unless it actually works for YOU!

Improved productivity is something that needs constant work and discipline because it is so easy to fall off the wagon and end up browsing the web for cats flushing toilets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49jKeGyUCJE
and as you can see I have exactly the same problems because I have found the video on cats flushing toilets!

The next question is how do you start to measure your productivity? Here’s a few of my suggestions:

Rescue Time – http://www.rescuetime.com. Great piece of software that tracks the time you spend doing different things on your PC. A free and paid version is available.

Manic Time – http://www.manictime.com. Another great free piece of software that tracks just about everything you do on your system in a huge amount of detail and provides a really nice interface to see exactly what you are doing.

OneNote – http://www.onenote.com. Part of the Microsoft Office suite of programs, which will be included in every version of the Office 2010 release. Amazingly handy for recording most ad-hoc information on a day to day basis. Combine it with an Internet hosted SharePoint and it really shines.

Theses are probably the top 3 applications I use to measure/improve my productivity but as I said it is always an ongoing process so if you have any suggestions I’d love to hear them.

Google-juice

Everyday I’m finding more and more benefit from Twitter as method of promoting my business. I am always intrigued when I get new Twitter followers who ‘protect their tweets’. Ah why? Are you saying something you don’t want everyone to know? If you are doing that, why are are doing it on the Internet? Why are you also doing it on with a third party who effectively owns whatever you post up there? It just doesn’t make sense.

After recently reading the book “What Would Google Do” I have a much better appreciation for the need to generate as much ‘Google-juice’ around my business as possible. Twitter is an excellent method of doing exactly that. Don’t believe me well I’ve just type ‘robert crane’ into Google and look what appears:

It is probably a bit hard to read but I have a Google entry on the first page thanks to my postings in Twitter (currently the 6th entry!). I don’t think I could every achieve this with any of my web sites or blog but thanks to having an open Twitter account I’m getting some excellent Google-juice. I think this is pretty good given I’m up against a very famous (or infamous name-sake).

There are plenty of reasons for keep information private and I think the best advice that I could give is that if you want to keep it private don’t post in on the Internet no matter what form. And for heavens sake don’t post it to Facebook. Conversely, if you want to promote yourself or you business take the advice from “What Would Google Do” and make your information available to Google to index at all times.

Come surf with me

Well I’ve finally gotten myself signed up to Google Wave to see what it is all about. Unfortunately, I don’t know anyone else who might be interested in joining me in a ‘Wave’ and learning what’s it all about. It’s kinda like email with out anyone to send to.

So if you have a Google Wave account and would like to collaborate with me on understanding the implications Google Wave may have I’d love to hear from you (in Google Wave) of course. You should be able to connect with me on Google Wave via ciaopsdirector@googlewave.com. If you do connect it’s probably also a good idea to send me an normal email (director@ciaops.com) so I know that we should be connected.

If Google Wave does take off I see it having implications for for many technologies we currently have, email, blogs but also perhaps SharePoint as Google Wave represents a collaboration platform. That’s why I’m so interested to understand exactly not only how it works but also how well it works. From what I’ve seen so far Google Wave has the potential to be a pretty game changing technology if it gets adopted and that is a big if. Why? Because even though people are using technology they have become so comfortable with the technology they use everyday, like email that making a major change to something like Google Wave will have to jump some major non technical hurdles in its bid for adoption. However, if it does manage to become widely adopted it will almost certainly be a major game changer.

If you don’t know much about Google Wave I suggest you visit the web site and watch the video presentation (warning, it’s long). After you have watched the video I’d love to hear your thoughts on you opinions on what ramifications it would have.

So if you have a Google Wave account I’d really love to hear from you even if you have an opinion about Google Wave then I’d also love to hear from you.

Keeping up

So many people now face an impossible challenge of keeping on top of the information that is “part” of their job that is affecting them physically. As recent article “Information Overload” notes:

Researchers now say that the stress of not being able to process information as fast as it arrives – combined with the personal and social expectation that, say, you will answer every email – can deplete and demoralise you.

Interestingly, that same article also points to the following:

Still, a survey of 2,300 Intel employees revealed that people judge nearly one third of the messages they receive to be unnecessary.

The reason for this is simply the fact that it is far too easy to ‘publish’ information now. Previously, if you wanted to communicate with someone you had to find a pen and paper, sit down, think about what you wanted to say, write down your thoughts, put them in an envelope, address the envelope, pay for a stamp and then mail the letter. Now people can readily blast off volumes of email with the click of a button. The emphasis has shifted from composition and creation to reading or consumption.

The problem with this shift is simply that the not only has the cost of publishing decreased but also too has the quality. Look at the number of irrelevant, poorly formatted, grammatically incorrect emails you receive. What does that tell you about the sender? What sub conscious message does it convey when you read a sloppy email? At the end of the day, it’s about your image, typing mistakes and poor grammar are the same as walking into a room looking unshowered and dishevelled. Good emails show you have both professionalism and class. For starters ask yourself what impression you form of a sender when you receive a “badly formatted” email? Now ask yourself whether you are in fact committing the same offence. And don’t forget that emails always end up being archived somewhere so your “bad” email can come back to haunt you in the future.

As I have spoken about many times in this blog before, one of the major reasons why emails are such a productivity drain is that they are set to constantly alert us to their presence. This means that most people are constantly interrupted by an ever increasing number or arriving emails, whether relevant or not. There are been a number of studies about the impact of these interruptions but here is a new one from the same article:

A study by Microsoft found that once their work had been interrupted by an email notification, people took, on average, 24 minutes to return to the suspended task.

Think about this. How much work could you expect to get done in a day if you receive and interruption every 5 minutes or so and it takes you 24 minutes to return to the original task? based on these numbers you have to say that it certainly doesn’t appear much of anything is getting done does it?

How has all this happened? Simple. We have allowed the technology to dictate to us. We have created a monster and allowed to escape and ruin our lives. Wasn’t technology suppose to free us from stress? Wasn’t it supposed to give us more time? Wasn’t it suppose to allow us to get more done? By simply accepting the defaults that come with technology we are doomed to become its slave in a struggle we can never win. Yet there is hope but it comes at a price that is usually too high for most people. Eliminate the distractions, only read and respond to emails at certain times because do you get paid to process emails? Generally, most people get paid to work and as this article demonstrates there doesn’t appear to be a whole lot of that going on! So turn off the emails, put the gadgets to one side and learn to live your life in control not dominated by entities that are constantly running low on power. Chances are it’ll lower your stress levels and you’ll actually start getting stuff done.

If you want some suggestions about dealing with email frustrations see my books at: http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=3557478

or visit my Slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net/directorcia) for a number of other articles on productivity improvement.

More evidence

A while back I wrote a post about the Myth of Multi Tasking which illustrates how multi tasking actually decreases our attention and hobbles our performance. Well, here’s another article that again reinforces that notion. “Multi-media use muddles the mind” quotes a study from Stanford University that found that:

“People who regularly juggle between more than one form of media simultaneously have lower mental capacity than those who do not multi-task.”

It is amazing to me that most people seem to believe that the only way to cope with growing amounts of information is to multi-task. That only makes the problem worse! It is far more effective to simplify, streamline and focus on one task at a time and do it properly. As the study concludes:

“These results suggest that heavy media multitaskers are distracted by the multiple streams of media they are consuming, or, alternatively, that those who infrequently multitask are more effective at volitionally allocating their attention in the face of distractions.”

So, the more you think you can do actually the more distracted you become and in fact, after a while, it forms a behaviour pattern that reduces your ability to concentrate. So all those web sites you are visiting with flashing animations are really doing you no end of harm and the sooner you kick the habit of so called ‘multi-tasking’ the better.