Archives for Time Management

Three time-wasting traps at work

We’ve all lost huge chunks of time during the workday to unproductive activities. The following are three of the biggest time-wasting traps:

  1. Gossip and office politics. You are paid to do a job, and that job doesn’t include spending hours of your day talking negatively about or plotting against your co-workers. When you withdraw from these activities, you’ll have more time for your work and people will likely follow your lead.
  2. Lack of training on equipment or software. The more you know about the tools you have to do your job, the faster you can do your work. Buy a book, thoroughly read the manual, have a colleague teach you, or take a class so you can navigate your equipment and software as efficiently as possible.
  3. Unproductive e-mail exchanges. The moment you suspect information wasn’t conveyed as intended or there is confusion in the communication, pick up the phone and call the recipient or walk to your co-worker’s office. What might take you hours to resolve by e-mail can take mere minutes to solve with verbal communication.

What time-wasting traps do you notice in your office? How do you resolve them? Will making the changes recommended above help you to be more productive in your work? Sound off in the comments.

Posted by Erin on Feb 4, 2010 | 48 Comments | Tweet This

How is disorganization and clutter affecting your job performance?

If you showed up late to a meeting or missed a deadline, it would be obvious to you that disorganization and clutter were affecting your job performance. There are less obvious ways, however, that being disorganized can impact the quality and efficiency of your work. Take this quick quiz to see if it might be worth your time to become more organized:

  1. Do you spend less than 60 percent of your day focused on the most valuable work for your job?
  2. Do client/supervisor requests often linger unanswered for more than 24 hours?
  3. Do you ever feel like you don’t know where to start working on a project?
  4. Do you have action items on your to-do list that have been there for more than a week? a month?
  5. Have you led a meeting without providing an agenda to its attendees?
  6. When you come into work in the morning, does it take you more than 15 minutes to start doing work-related tasks?
  7. If something happened to you, and a qualified replacement would need to step in to work for you for awhile, would she be constantly frustrated or have to pick up the phone to have you help her find things she needed?

If you answered “yes” to any of the questions above, disorganization and clutter may be negatively affecting your job performance.

Start by opening your calendar and scheduling an hour every day this week to focus on organizing. These hours will not be wasted, as your improved efficiency will quickly make up for the time expenditure. Here are some tips that correlate to the questions above.

The first question: To ensure that you are spending 60 percent or more of your day on your most valuable work, you need to plan each day before you start work. You may not follow your plan exactly, but the act of creating your plan will help you to stay more focused on the important work.

The second question: Even if you’re just sending an e-mail or making a quick phone call saying that it will take another day to get back to someone, contact within 24 hours is essential for good client/supervisor relations. Schedule 15 minutes after lunch and at the end of your work day to process these requests.

The third question: If you work in an office that has a preferred project management software, take a class or online seminar and learn how to effectively use this system. If your office doesn’t have such software already in place, research online project management tools and find the one that works best for you. Then, learn how to use it and take advantage of its features.

The fourth question: When planning your day, schedule 30 minutes to focus on these lingering tasks. Keep scheduling time for these activities until you are able to cross all of them off of your to-do list. Then, make a commitment to never let an action item linger on your to-do list for more than a week (or two, based on your type of work). These lingering items create a great deal of anxiety, and that anxiety can slow you down.

The fifth question: A meeting without an agenda can be a waste of time for everyone involved. Learn how to organize a business meeting so that it’s valuable to you and its attendees.

The sixth question: Before you leave work for the day, make sure your desk and supplies are prepared for tomorrow. You need to be ready to “hit the ground running” immediately when you arrive to work.

The seventh question: If you’re out of the office for any reason (emergency, illness, vacation, sudden promotion), someone should be able to come in and take over your work without much difficulty. Unless you are self-employed (and even then, you may have legal responsibilities to your clients), you do not own your work or the materials used to complete that work. Keeping this simple fact in mind can often help to keep you more diligently organized.

Good luck, and I hope that in a matter of days your organizing efforts begin to show you great rewards.

Posted by Erin on Feb 1, 2010 | 21 Comments | Tweet This

Free yourself from distractions with Concentrate

If you’re a Mac user and often find yourself tempted to goof off when you should be working, I want to introduce you to Concentrate.

Here’s how Concentrate works:
Name an activity you complete at your computer that requires focus. This activity might be something like creating presentations, reading PDFs for class, or laying out a newsletter. Once you’ve identified the activity, you can edit the specifics of how you want your computer to function. Determine what applications you’ll use and which ones you definitely won’t, specific websites or documents you’ll need and ones you won’t, your online status, which spaces to use (if you use the multi-desktop program), customize your desktop image, and even launch scripts. You can also set a timer to help keep you focused for a specific period, with sounds and recorded messages that can cheer you on along the way. You can set your preferences to have an icon automatically appear at start up so turning on the activity environment only takes one-click.

You can get 60 hours for free to try the service, and $29 if you choose to purchase it. My favorite part of the program is its incredibly simple user interface. Setting up the preferences takes very little time and effort, and turning on the activity is even easier. A program that is a breeze to use increases the likelihood that I’ll actually use it. And, I’m using Concentrate as I write this.

Posted by Erin on Jan 27, 2010 | 25 Comments | Tweet This

E-mailing yourself reminders for future actions with Google Calendar

In the comments section of an old post, reader Diana recently left a tip about a creative way to use Google Calendar in conjunction with Gmail. Since the post might be off your radar screens, I wanted to highlight it on the main page because I found it to be a terrific tip.

Simply stated, she suggests that if there is a future action you wish to accomplish (call your mom each Sunday, pick up the dry cleaning, follow up about a job lead) that you add it as a single or recurring event in Google Calendar with an e-mail reminder. In Google Calendar, select “Create Event” in the left-hand column be sure to set the reminder to “E-mail.” It might look like this:

I really appreciate reminders that are pushed into my e-mail account because I have a tendency to forget to check my calendar, especially when I’m traveling. Google Calendar also has a nice feature where you can have your daily calendar e-mailed to you each morning.

Posted by Erin on Jan 4, 2010 | 35 Comments | Tweet This

Cure your e-mail addiction

I ran across an image yesterday on 43folders that I wanted to share with you:

If you check your e-mail every 5 minutes when you’re at work, then you are checking it 12 times an hour. Multiply 12 times an hour by 8 hours a work day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year (assuming you aren’t checking your e-mail while you’re on your two weeks of vacation) and this is how Merlin determined the 24,000 total.

If you’re checking your e-mail 24,000 times a year, what are you sacrificing? What are you not working on during that time? Could you reduce your rate to every 15 minutes (a yearly total of 8,000) and be more productive with other aspects of your job? Could you reduce it to once an hour (2,000)? Three times a day (750)?

How often are you checking e-mail currently? If you don’t know, track your productivity to see how you’re really spending your time at work.

How can you break an e-mail addiction? Start by turning off your notification indicator and setting an alarm for every 15 minutes. Only check your e-mail when the alarm indicates you do so. Every client I’ve worked with has found that they will not face any trouble at work if they only check e-mail on a 15-minute or 30-minute schedule. Most come to find that once an hour is sufficient, but it takes awhile for them to build up confidence to make this change. I try to check my e-mail fewer than 5 times a day (some days I’m more successful than others).

What will you do with your newly discovered time? Simply taking the time to plan your perfect day will help you manage your time more wisely.

Posted by Erin on Dec 15, 2009 | 28 Comments | Tweet This

Do you do your most important work first?

Late Friday morning, our Internet connection bit the dust. A tree in the forest behind our house decided it no longer had the will to live and fell over, uprooting and destroying our FiOS line with it.

Conveniently, the tree fell minutes after I had finished my “must complete these tasks or lose my job” items on my to-do list. I had a lot of work left to do in the day, but all of it could wait until the connection was re-established or until I made it to the local coffee shop that has free WiFi.

While I was driving to the coffee shop, I thought about how getting the most important work out of the way first saved me a great deal of frustration. Had I put off the most important work, I would have been angry and stressed and worked into a frenzy about nature simply being nature. Instead, I was more entertained than anything else. A dead tree took out my connection — possibly the best reason ever for losing service.

I structure my day by doing the most important tasks first. This means I sit down at my computer and start writing before checking e-mail, Twitter, voice mail, or even comments on Unclutterer. If I’m at my desk at 6:00 a.m., I won’t get to the other tasks until usually 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. These other activities are a reward for getting through the high priority assignments.

When I leave work at the end of the day, I’ll often open up the most important task for the following day and place it at the center of my screen. (I learned this tip from Glen Stansberry, I would like to note.) Then, when I sit down to work in the morning, I can immediately start on what I need to do.

How do you structure your work day? Do you get your most important tasks completed first thing in the morning? Or, do you procrastinate and put off the hard work hoping that maybe it will just go away? Tell us how you structure your work and what works best for you in the comments.

Posted by Erin on Nov 2, 2009 | 44 Comments | Tweet This

Excerpt: Participating in Meetings

Below is another excerpt from my book Unclutter Your Life in One Week — this time on how to efficiently participate in a meeting.

This is from the Wednesday chapter, “Communication Processes” section:

“You might not realize it, but meeting attendees have some control over how quickly a meeting runs and they certainly impact the quality of the discussion.

  • Be prepared. Read the agenda at least a day in advance of the meeting. Come to the meeting with relevant materials. Have a pen and pad of paper with you. Turn your BlackBerry to vibrate. Know who else will be at the meeting. Know the goal of the meeting, its location, and its start time. Arrive at the meeting on time.
  • Respect others. How many times have you been in a meeting where a presenter has had to repeat information because Gary and Stephanie were focusing on their laptops instead of paying attention the first time something was said? Not only does this type of distraction waste Gary’s and Stephanie’s time, but it also wastes the time of everyone attending the meeting. Focus your attention on who is speaking. Make eye contact. Show that you’re listening. Avoid making snide comments to your neighbor. If you’re having trouble concentrating, write down in excruciating detail everything the speaker is saying. It will give you something to do, and you can review your detailed notes later if you spaced out on what was being said.
  • Think before you speak. Before you contribute to a conversation in a meeting, ask yourself: 1) Is this comment helpful and relevant to the topic being discussed right now? (If it’s not, save it for after the meeting.) 2) Will this comment be helpful to everyone in the room or just one individual? (If the comment is only helpful to one person, save everyone else’s time and talk to that specific person after the meeting.) 3) Can I craft my comment so that it takes less than thirty seconds to express? (If you can’t, keep crafting. If you’re not presenting, your comments should be brief.)”

What do you do during meetings to help speed them along? Add your ideas to the comments.

Posted by Erin on Oct 27, 2009 | 19 Comments | Tweet This

Excerpt: Eight strategies to stop procrastinating

The following is an excerpt from my book Unclutter Your Life in One Week, which comes out next week on November 3. If you have pre-ordered the book, THANK YOU! and also don’t forget to sign up to receive the special PDF bonus worksheets. And, to let you know, the electronic Kindle version is now available for pre-order (still no word on the other e-book formats).

Now, on with the excerpt from the Thursday chapter, “Working While at Work” section of the book:

“… try these strategies for improving your productivity when you don’t really want to work:

  • Similar to what you might do when exercising, play music with a fast rhythm.
  • If you drink caffeine, consume it in small, frequent amounts instead of just one large cup at the beginning of the day.
  • Set time-specific goals in two-, five-, or ten-minute increments. Identify what you want to accomplish in a very short amount of time, and then set a timer and go for it.
  • Isolate yourself. Remove the desire to procrastinate by not having any other options but to work.
  • Acknowledge that you’re procrastinating. Often, just realizing that you’re putting something off is enough to get you working.
  • Challenge a colleague to see who can get the most work done in a set time period.
  • Ask someone to help you stay accountable. There are professional motivators who will call you once a day to see how you’re doing, but a trusted and willing friend or coworker can do the same thing for free.
  • If the task doesn’t require much though, listen to an audiobook while you work. Agree to only listen to the book when you’re working on the project you don’t want to do. This way, you’ll be interested in hearing more of the story each time you take on the undesirable task.”

Posted by Erin on Oct 27, 2009 | 10 Comments | Tweet This

How stress can benefit your productivity

Earlier this month, the article “Stress and productivity: friends or enemies?” on the site HR Management caught my attention. In it, writer Matt Buttell defines productivity as the equation:

Productivity = outputs / inputs (within a time period, quality considered)

He then goes on to claim that stress — both rational and misplaced — impacts the inputs variable in the equation. Stress can help you to be motivated and creative (Only two more hours to get this done, let’s get working!), but it also can make you freak out about small, irrelevant factors in your work (Who keeps putting the hole punch away? Can’t you see I’m using it!).

Buttell goes on to quote a 1999 study by Robert Ostermann, professor of psychology at FDUU’s Teaneck-Hackensack Campus, on the link between stress and productivity:

No one reaches peak performance without being stressed, whether an athlete, an office worker or a manager.

Looking at your average day, how do you manage stress to let it work to your advantage? How do you use stress to influence your inputs variable?

Posted by Erin on Oct 20, 2009 | 23 Comments | Tweet This

Keep notes close with a pocket briefcase

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a huge fan of using 3×5 cards to capture and organize tasks and ideas, but they can be somewhat inconvenient to use. Various cases and Hipster PDAs attempt to make note cards easily accessible, but they rely on carrying around yet another item in your pocket.

Last year, I picked up a Pocket Briefcase, which has now become one of my favorite organizational tools. Instead of carrying around a wallet and a stack of note cards, I’m able to carry just a wallet, because the cards fit inside. This particular briefcase has a pocket for cash, slots for a few debit and ID cards, and two pockets to organize used cards. I recently went on a trip out of the US and discovered that my Pocket Briefcase will even fit my passport.

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This works for me because even when I don’t want to carry a notebook, I’m always carrying my wallet, so I’m never without a pen and paper. If you use note cards with your personal information on them, then you’re carrying business cards too!

Levenger’s pocket briefcase isn’t cheap, so if you want to see if this kind of tool will work for you without spending a lot of money, you can find similar items in many stores that carry office supplies.

Posted by Brian on Oct 12, 2009 | 22 Comments | Tweet This

Routine cards to help kids organize their schedule

Website LivingLocurto has a wonderful set of cards to help young children establish a morning routine. The Kid’s Morning Routine free printable cards are a simple way to help organized habits get started early:

There is also free for download on the site a beautiful After School Routine Poster. Check out more back-to-school printables from Living Locurto.

(Image from Living Locurto. And, a special thanks to LobotoME for the introducing me to these wonderful free prints.)

Posted by Erin on Sep 29, 2009 | 33 Comments | Tweet This

Free time-tracking applications

Keeping track of how you spend your time is a necessity when you’re billing segments of your workday to multiple clients, but it’s also valuable for determining your efficiency and productivity. Lifehacker recently reviewed and rated the Five Best Time-Tracking Applications and awarded Klok (free and usable on all platforms) as the top application:

Built with Adobe AIR, Klok is a lightweight and cross-platform tracking solution. You can create a hierarchy of projects and sub-projects in the task-management sidebar and then track the time spent on each by dragging and dropping them into the workflow for the day. While you can delve into the details of each block of time, simple adjustments like expanding the amount of time you’ve worked on a project is as easy as grabbing the edge of the block with your mouse and tugging it down.

Also on their list are Manic Time (Windows), SlimTimer (web-based), RescueTime (Windows and Mac), and Project Hamster (Linux). All five of the applications mentioned in the article are free to access or download.

If you haven’t tracked your time before, I recommend keeping records for at least two weeks to see how you spend your time. The data you will acquire will give you insight into your most productive hours of the day, your low-performance times, when people tend to interrupt you, and how much time you waste during an average day. Then, you can start to tweak your work habits to get the most out of your time in the office.

Posted by Erin on Sep 23, 2009 | 16 Comments | Tweet This

Recovering from an e-mail interruption

The October issue of Real Simple magazine quotes a Microsoft and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign study that claims it takes 17 minutes “for a worker interrupted by e-mail to get back to what she was doing.”

If this statistic is true, and I know from experience that there is a refractory time after any distraction, it is strong evidence against leaving the notification alert active on your e-mail program. Instead, you should schedule time in your day to check your e-mail. Based on the type of office environment you work in, you might need to check your e-mail at the top of every hour. However, most people can get by only checking their e-mail two to four times during the work day.

I also recommend checking e-mail during the times when you are usually distracted during the day. Whether this is when others tend to interrupt you or when your mind typically wanders on its own, it’s best not to try to do high-functioning activities when you plan to work through your e-mail inbox. For me, this is right after lunch when I find it difficult to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time. I check e-mail, return phone calls, and do a little bit of filing.

Try turning off the notification alert on your e-mail system and only checking e-mail on a schedule and see if it improves your productivity. If the interruption refractory period really is 17 minutes, you should immediately notice significant gains in your focus.

Posted by Erin on Sep 17, 2009 | 23 Comments | Tweet This

Flattening the Never Finishing Monster

We want to again welcome guest author Alex Fayle, the writer and professional organizer behind the helpful anti-procrastination website Someday Syndrome. This is his third post of three in a series on fighting procrastination.

We’ve vanquished the Getting Started Monster, conquered the No Momentum Monster and now all that’s left is to finish up. You’ve uncluttered your space and managed to keep at it until everything is nicely streamlined. You’ve even put things back where they belong.

Well, almost everything. You have a few things that don’t fit in your current storage spaces, so you’ve left them on top of your desk while you figure out what type of storage you need for them exactly.

And then months pass with them still on your desk. A few bits and bobs not done don’t really matter you tell yourself every time you see the pile of things waiting to be given a home.

But it does matter because from that pile of things not put away the clutter starts to grow again, creeping out from that spot to take over the office again.

When we don’t finish projects we leave the door open to chaos. We let the Never Finishing Monster into our lives and everything around the place needs just a few adjustments to finish, but nothing’s totally completed. The baseboard is missing on the living room trim. The bedroom needs curtains. The email inbox still has a few dozen messages from two months ago waiting to be looked at.

Why don’t we totally finish? Because often we leave the fiddly bits to the end, the stuff that we’re not quite sure what to do with, or the stuff that we hate doing.

Dedicating Time

Fortunately, unlike getting started and moving forward, there is a trick to kill the Never Finishing Monster — it’s called the Get It Done Sprint.

I use this all the time with my writing. I’ll start a project and move it forward slowly and steadily but as I get closer to the end of something I slow down to a crawl that wouldn’t win a race against 80 year old snails.

When I notice that I’ve reached this point, I schedule a block of time (for my writing projects a week is usually a good amount of time) where I dedicate several hours a day getting the project done. The Never Finishing Monster doesn’t stand a chance against such dedicated effort.

It’s like the end of a 10km race — you pace yourself throughout the race until the finish line comes into sight and you sprint to the end.

Apply this same thinking to your organizing projects. When you almost reach the end, change your approach to the project and commit to getting it done within a very specific (and very short) timeframe. Schedule a day to go buy the supplies you need and enlist (or hire) help to put in that extra bit of effort to wrap up the project.

And don’t delay. Schedule the sprint as soon as possible. The longer you leave the project unfinished, the less likely you’ll get around to it and the more likely all your hard work will undo itself.

So tell me, what’s left to get finished in your house and when will you schedule the Get It Done Sprint that will squash the Never Finishing Monster flat?

Posted by Alex on Sep 15, 2009 | 9 Comments | Tweet This

Handling change and being a little organized in the process

I am still on cloud nine since our little man joined our family last week. He is happy, healthy, and beautiful. We have spent most of the past two weeks in a hotel room half-way across the country from where we live. It took 10 days to receive permission through the ICPC to travel home, and on Thursday we were finally back to normal.

A lot has changed in the past two weeks — all of it very welcome change — but still a schedule upheaval. Students, teachers, and others going through major life changes are also experiencing similar schedule changes right now. Whenever these types of changes happen, I recommend the following to help handle the change but being (a bit) organized in the process:

  • Relax your standards, at least temporarily. While you’re adjusting to the new schedule, it’s okay to let things slide a bit. You don’t have to be at the top of your game from the word “go.”
  • Minimize. Get rid of the unnecessary things in your schedule and only focus on the most important tasks at hand. Many people also find that they go through an uncluttering of stuff during this time. Do whatever works best for you.
  • Sleep. Change of any kind can be physically and mentally taxing, so be sure to sleep.
  • Lean on others. You don’t have to go through this change without help. Whether it’s a supervisor at work who can provide guidance for a new job, a babysitter who can come over and watch your baby for a few hours while you sleep, or a therapist with whom you can talk through your situation, it’s okay to turn to others. You’re less likely to feel like you’re on a sinking ship if you turn to others for support.
  • Plan, as best as you can. You can’t predict everything, but mentally prepare for your new schedule. Even if what you predict is wrong, it’s fine. The simple act of envisioning the future will help you prepare for whatever does happen.
  • Learn from your failures. If something isn’t working, adapt, adjust, and tinker until you make it to smoother waters.

How do you plan for and handle change? Sound off in the comments.

Posted by Erin on Sep 5, 2009 | 18 Comments | Tweet This

Setting goals when you don’t know what you want

Today, Ali Hale has a wonderful post on goal setting over on the blog Dumb Little Man. The post, “How to Set Goals When You Have No Idea What You Want,” talks about how to set goals for the less-ambitious things in life.

We’ve written in the past about how determining what matters to you most is an important aspect of uncluttering. Not only does focusing on what matters most to you keep up your motivation, but it also helps you to decide priorities for your time, energy, money, and space. “How to Set Goals When You Have No Idea What You Want” is a great resource for getting you thinking about the day-to-day things that are important to you.

A “goal” is simply something which you’d like to do or achieve. It could be buying a house or a car, yes, but it could also be something which might matter to no-one in the world except you — perhaps your goal is to learn to bake cakes as good as the ones your grandma used to make.

Goals aren’t things that you feel you “should” do, and any good life coach will steer you away from goals that have been imposed upon you by other people.

Spend 15, 20, or 60 minutes working on determining what matters most to you. Uncluttering will be easier and more productive when you know why you’re simplifying your life.

Posted by Erin on Sep 1, 2009 | 3 Comments | Tweet This

Lazy productivity

There are many reasons why I have chosen to live an uncluttered life, and one of those reasons is that I’m lazy. If I need to do something I’m not super excited about doing, I want it to take the least amount of time possible and I want it to cause me little or no stress. I’ve created simple routines for things like cleaning and getting ready in the morning because I need to do these things but don’t want to waste mental energy on them.

An example of this is processing mail when I come home: I instantly shred, recycle, or respond to the mail right when I walk in the door. This routine usually takes me two to three minutes, and then I don’t think about the mail or see it again. I used to just collect it and place it on the dining room table, then I would have to touch it again to move it so that we could sit down to dinner, then I would see it after dinner and think about it again, and then I would have to deal with it after worrying about it some more. In the past, I would spend 15 to 20 minutes thinking about the mail each night. Being “lazy” and organized with my mail saves me quite a bit of time over the course of the year. That, and I never have to worry about paying bills late.

Back in January, Leo Babauta wrote a post on this issue on his blog ZenHabits titled “The Lazy Manifesto: Do Less. Then, Do Even Less.” I like his perspective on doing less to increase productivity:

Do Less: The Ultimate Simple Productivity

It may seem paradoxical that Do Less can mean you’re more productive — and if you define “productive” as meaning “get more done” or “do more”, then no, Do Less won’t lead to that kind of productivity.

But if instead you define “productivity” as a means of making the most of your actions, of the time you spend working (or doing anything), of being as effective as possible, then Do Less is the best way to be productive.

Consider: I can work all day in a flurry of frenetic activity, only to get a little done, especially when it comes to lasting achievement. Or I can do just a couple things that take an hour, but those are key actions that will lead to real achievement. In the second example, you did less, but the time you spent counted for more.

Let’s take the example of a blogger: I can write a dozen posts that really say nothing, mean nothing, but take up my entire day … or I can write one post that affects thousands of people, that really reaches to the heart of my readers’ lives, and takes me 1.5 hours to write. I did less, but made my words and time count for more.

If you’re lazy, as I often am, then the choice is simple. Do Less.

But do it smartly: Do Less, but make every action count. Send fewer emails, but make them important. Write fewer words, but make each word essential. Really consider the impact of every action you take, and see if you can eliminate some actions. See if you can achieve a great impact doing less.

This doesn’t mean “less is more”. It means “less is better”.

I don’t agree with everything in his post, but his viewpoint speaks to the heart of uncluttering. Read his post and then come back here to share in our conversation. I’m interested in reading about what your views are on lazy productivity.

Posted by Erin on Aug 31, 2009 | 22 Comments | Tweet This

Reducing unnecessary distractions from colleagues at work

Mark at Productivity501 has some great tips for keeping office distractions to a minimum in his post this week “People Who Come to Distract You.” I have found that his second point works extremely well:

2. Stand and come out from behind your desk — If you conduct your conversation standing, it will likely be much shorter. This is a good thing to do before you know if they have something valuable or if they are just coming in to shoot the breeze. If you want them to stay, pull out a chair and return to your seat.

I’m not super fond of his fourth tip (probably best not to destroy your company’s furniture), so I’d replace it with the following:

4. Close the door to your office or face a chair backward at the entrance to your cube. Then, hang up a sign on either the door or the back of the chair that states: “Please only disturb in case of emergency.” People will self-censor, even if you’re in a cube.

What tips would you add? Let us know what has worked for you in the comments.

Posted by Erin on Aug 20, 2009 | 31 Comments | Tweet This

Uncluttering your personal time

An acquaintance of mine recently told me about a problem she is having in her retirement. After decades of working and thinking, “I’ll have time for that when I retire,” she’s now overwhelmed by all the things she promised herself she would do with her free time and resources.

I read about the injustices in the world — now that I have time to read — and I want to help out in all of the causes. I want to give my time, energy, and money to help others. But there are so many causes, so many people in need, and I can’t possibly give to all of them.

Her home is primarily uncluttered, yet her dining room table is piled high with magazine articles, donation solicitations, and printouts from websites detailing organizations, people, and causes in need. Her heart and good intentions are pulled in numerous directions. Most of us face similar situations in our lives — maybe not with looking for ways to help charitable causes but how to spend our personal time.

I gave her the following advice, and I suggest the following for anyone who feels pulled in too many directions.

  1. Take the time to reflect on and determine what matters most to you. We’ve written about this process before, and I believe it is the most important step to determining how best to spend your time.
  2. Choose ONE opportunity that aptly reflects what matters most to you to account for 80 percent of your available resources. Out of all of the possibilities that stand in front of you, pick the one thing that you feel comfortable making a true commitment to.
  3. Budget the remaining 20 percent of your resources (time, money, whatever it is that you wish to commit) for all other projects that are in line with what matters most to you. For example, if you have $1,000 to donate to charity every year, $800 will go to the ONE organization and $200 might be distributed in $20 gifts to 10 other charities.
  4. Stick to this arrangement for at least six months. Give yourself a decent chunk of time to commit to the new system. After six months you will be able to re-evaluate and decide how to proceed into the future.

In this list, I give the example of budgeting money, but you can budget your time just as easily. Commit to volunteering eight hours a week at the local animal shelter, one hour to your grandchild’s PTA, and one hour to sorting food at the food bank. Or, maybe you have a young family and you’ll commit eight hours a week to coaching your son’s soccer team, one hour to a professional organization, and one hour to a committee for your neighborhood association.

(With my job, I try to budget 80 percent of my time to writing and 20 percent of my time to administration. It doesn’t always happen, but I’ve found that focusing the majority of my work day on the most important aspect of my job makes it more enjoyable and more productive.)

If you look at the situation as “what do I get to do” instead of “what don’t I get to do,” it makes saying no to other opportunities simpler. You stop feeling overwhelmed and your attention is focused on what matters most to you.

Posted by Erin on Aug 11, 2009 | 14 Comments | Tweet This

Clear bad book clutter from your life and bookshelves

Economist Tyler Cowen talks about the sunk cost fallacy and why continuing to read a bad book is unproductive and a waste of time in the article “Closing the book on a bad read” in the July 24 Washington Times:

“People have this innate view — it comes from friendship and marriage — that commitment is good. Which I agree with,” he says. That view shouldn’t, he says, carry over to inanimate objects.

It’s not that he’s not a voracious reader — he finishes more than a book a day, not including the “partials.” He just wants to make the most of his time.

“We should treat books a little more like we treat TV channels,” he argues. No one has trouble flipping away from a boring series.

Do you have a pile of books on your nightstand that have been lingering for months or years because you can’t seem to bring yourself to finish them? Are your bookshelves filled with books that you plan to get to one day but just can’t muster the energy to slog through them? If so, I vote to abandon the books. Say farewell to the bad to make room for the good.

Posted by Erin on Aug 6, 2009 | 61 Comments | Tweet This