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Archives for Time Management
Winner announced for time management seminar with Julie Morgenstern
Thank you to EVERYONE who participated in the Julie Morgenstern online seminar giveaway. We never expected to have 270 entries for a time management seminar!!
At 10:00 EST this morning, I closed the comments and counted up the entries (and deleted 19 entries that were spam). Then, I headed over to the Random Integer Generator at random.org and entered in the data:
Out popped the following numbers:
#110: Michele
#40: Anita
I have contacted the winners and they will be receiving additional information from The Knowledge Economy about their participation in the online seminar. Congratulations to our winners!
If you were like me and weren’t one of the winners, you can still participate in the online seminar, you just need to pay the $20.00 admission fee. You can register for the event through the Knowledge Economy website. I’m pretty certain that I’m going to sign up, so we can be in the seminar together!
Popularity: 1% [?]
Win a time management seminar with Julie Morgenstern
On January 13, author and organizing guru Julie Morgenstern is going to be giving an online seminar through The Knowledge Economy website. The two-hour seminar, “Time Management for the New Year,” starts at 6:45 p.m. EST/3:45 p.m. PST and tickets are $20.00 if you wish to participate.
The Knowledge Economy knows that we are big fans of Julie Morgenstern, and they have kindly given us two free tickets to give away to Unclutterer readers for the event. If you are someone who could benefit from sage time management advice and are available to participate in the seminar on January 13, then you should definitely enter to win this contest!
To enter for a chance to win, simply leave a comment to this post indicating that you want to participate in the drawing. Tomorrow, January 6, 2009, at 10:00 a.m. EST, I will enter the number of comments into the Random Integer Generator at random.org and select a random winner. Good luck!
Warning: If you leave a comment to this post that isn’t an entry, I will delete it. Nothing personal, I just don’t want to select a winner for the seminar who isn’t interested in participating in the giveaway.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Uncluttering your schedule to keep clear of unnecessary stress
Being human can be difficult some days. I most often notice the difficulties when I’m stressed, full of anxiety, things are chaotic, and/or under pressure. Little problems that are usually dealt with easily turn into big issues because my abilities to see the whole picture or keep my cool are gone.
Last week, I completely unhinged in front of one of my colleagues. I was quietly working at my desk one minute, and the next minute I threw a tantrum because a project we were working on took a turn I didn’t expect. Instead of reacting like a normal person, I chose the path of awful person. I used my “outside voice” for at least a full minute before I realized I was being a complete idiot. Thankfully, my colleague burst into laughter (instead of yelling back or quitting) and asked if my outburst helped me feel better.
It took me two hours to calm down and figure out what had happened. Many elements in my life were to blame:
Stress + Anxiety + Disappointment + Poor Planning = Awful Erin.
As full disclosure, one of these elements was completely out of my hands. I had no way to control the event that happened that triggered my disappointment. No matter what the day or how prepared I possibly could have been, I still would have been disappointed.
The other elements were all my fault, however. My poor planning resulted in stresses and anxieties that were wholly unnecessary, and which made me blow the incident with my co-worker completely out of proportion. If I had planned appropriately, I would have been able to move with the ebbs and flows of the day and not let the stress and anxiety overwhelm me. More precisely, I wouldn’t have been experiencing stress and anxiety — at least not at the level I was.
Later in the afternoon, I made a heartfelt apology to my colleague, we had a good laugh, and then I headed home to re-evaluate my schedule. This time, I needed to be realistic about my abilities.
I revisited my initial estimations and doubled them. What I thought would take one hour, I doubled to two. What I thought would take a day, I scheduled to two days. I made phone calls and adjusted others’ expectations of my timeline accordingly.
With all things in life, the more stress and anxiety you feel, the less able you are to think and respond to the best of your abilities. Proper planning — being honest with yourself about how long it will take to complete action items, setting a schedule, and having the diligence to keep to that schedule — will keep you from feeling overwhelmed and in control of the things you can control.
Since my tantrum last week and retooling of my schedule, I have noticed a significant decrease in my stress and anxiety levels. I am not super human, and my new schedule is realistic and maintainable. Unfortunately, it took making a fool out of myself to realize I needed a change. How do you organize your time to keep stress and anxiety at bay, and how do you avoid potential stress meltdowns?
Popularity: 4% [?]
Deadline: The bare bones online calendar application
I stumbled upon the calendar application Deadline the other day and thought I would pass it along to you. After using it for a few days and exploring its features, it seems to be a stable system that is good for folks who aren’t interested in a cumbersome program.
Unlike other calendar systems, you just type the event into the program the way that you would say it. If you want to meet up with your buddy for drinks after work, you would type, “Drinks with Buddy after work.” That’s it. You can add a date and specific time if you want, or keep it vague:
The application also works with instant messenger programs (just make your Deadline account one of your friends and it will IM you reminders), e-mail, and RSS feeds. There is a mobile phone app and the API is available if you want to build your own apps onto the system.
It’s super simple, and perfect for the person who doesn’t want many bells and whistles.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Increase productivity by learning a lesson the first time
One of my major productivity challenges is that I have a difficult time learning lessons from my mistakes the first time they happen. I’ll get an idea in my mind for how something should work, and then when it doesn’t go as planned, I take little or no notice that my procedure was flawed.
Here, let me give you an example: I’m currently working on an article for a magazine. According to my calendar, I should have been working on this article every morning this week from 8:00 until 10:00. So far this week, I have yet to work on the article between 8:00 and 10:00. This is the busiest time of my day. I have been interrupted with important endeavors every time I’ve tried to work on the article. But, did I adjust my schedule to work on the article at a different, less chaotic time? Nope. Not a bit. For FOUR DAYS this block of time hasn’t worked for me and this article, but I haven’t done a single thing about it. Instead, I’ve stayed at work an extra two hours every evening to get the work finished.
This is what I should have done: On Monday evening, before I left work, I should have rearranged my schedule for the next day so that I could try working on the article from 2:00 to 4:00 in the afternoon. If things went well, then I should have rearranged my schedule for the remainder of the week. If they didn’t go well, then I should have tried a different time slot for the next day.
To help overcome my inability to learn lessons the first time, I have devised a new strategy for the end of my work day. I’m going to keep up with my practice of preparing my desk and materials for tomorrow’s work day, but I’m going to add a routine before this process.
I’m going to take five minutes to ask myself questions and evaluate my work that occurred during that day:
- What processes went well today?
- Why did those processes succeed?
- What processes didn’t go well today?
- Why did those processes not succeed?
- What changes can I make in the future to turn these non-successful processes into successful processes?
How do you analyze your work to keep from making the same mistakes repeatedly?
Popularity: 6% [?]
More project management application reviews
I’m always on the lookout for project management tools that are simple to use and worth their price. I’ve written about a few of my favorites that can be found online, and personally continue to use Basecamp for work projects and LifeTick for non-work goals.
Last Thursday, SmashingMagazine.com completed an in-depth review of 15 project management applications — many of which I didn’t know existed before I read the article. The applications are excellent for people working in technical and creative jobs, and can certainly help you to increase your productivity and organization at work.
The article explores basic project management, wiki-based project management, bug and ticket tracking, collaboration and conferencing, invoicing, and time management applications.
If you’re in the market for a new project management system, I recommend reading the SmashingMagazine review.
Do you have a favorite project management application not mentioned in this set of reviews or in our previous article? If so, please let us know about them in the comments. I’m interested in learning about the tools that help you to be an more organized worker.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Save time and effort with a personal shopper
I’m not someone who enjoys spending time shopping for clothes. When I need to update, enhance, or replace items in my wardrobe, I write the information down on a list that I keep on my computer. Then, usually twice a year, I will go shopping to collect the items I need from my list.
In every sense, I am a utilitarian shopper.
One of the frustrating things about being a utilitarian shopper, however, is that fashion trends and my list usually don’t mesh well together. Styles, cuts, and colors change from season to season, and I don’t keep up on these things so it takes me days to find matches for my list.
Recently, I discovered that I can greatly improve my shopping experience with the help of a store’s personal shopper. In every case I have encountered, the service has been free. And, in all but one case, when I offered the shopper a tip, the shopper refused to take it. Free help is my kind of help!
Here’s how it works: You put together a list of what you’re looking for and take your measurements. Then, call your favorite department store and ask to speak to a personal shopper. The shopper will ask you basic questions about your life and your price range, and then you give him or her your list and measurements. You’ll also set an appointment for when you will come in to meet with the personal shopper. At your scheduled time, you arrive and the personal shopper will have clothes already pulled for you that you can try on and see if you like. You have no obligation to buy any of the clothes, and the shopper sticks around while you’re trying on items to see if you need different sizes or different cuts. Usually, at least some of the pieces work, and you’re out the door and on your way home in half the time of a normal shopping experience.
I’ve even tried this process in shops that don’t officially have personal shoppers. When a clerk in the store asks if he or she can help me, I whip out my list and discuss what I’m looking to buy. Nine times out of 10, the clerk will ask you about your size and then go and find some pieces for you. I’ve even had clerks tell me to go ahead and make my way to the fitting room and they brought the items to me. The clerks know their merchandise and find items much more quickly then someone coming into the store.
I also feel that I dress a little more hip now than I used to. The personal shoppers and clerks know the latest trends much better than I do, and they always seem to find things that flatter my body better than I find when I’m left to search a store on my own. For a utilitarian shopper like myself, a personal shopper saves me time and energy when I need new pieces for my wardrobe.
And, it should go without saying, but only use these services when you need to replace or improve your wardrobe. I like to follow the one-in-one-out philosophy with clothes: If I bring something new into my wardrobe, at least one old piece in my current collection has to go to charity or the rag bag.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Remember the Milk: Now with iPhone and Gmail integration
Of all of the software-based GTD “solutions” I’ve managed to get my hands on, there’s a fairly common theme among all of those that didn’t really cut the mustard: they simply tried too hard to build something that encompassed each of the main tenets of GTD, but have very little flexibility. In other words, these apps shoehorn you into the “canonical” GTD configuration without giving you room to customize the system to best suit your needs. Thankfully, Remember the Milk has managed to not only hang in there (for 3 years now), but pull ahead of the pack through integration with other products and services. And, as of this past month, these services now include Gmail and the iPhone.
RTM’s new native iPhone application (which requires a Pro account at RTM, which will set you back a scant $25 per year) is what got me to switch from my previous solution (OmniFocus on OSX + iPhone). The app is an excellent first release, much moreso than most of the other 1.0s that appear in the store. Launching and synching are both blazingly fast, unlike most local-storage-heavy iPhone apps. It also supports landscape mode for just about every view, which is a killer feature for me. It lets you fully manage the service, all from the comfort of, well, wherever you are with your iPhone.
The other new feature that really cinched it for me is the availability of an in-Gmail gadget where you can add/edit/complete todo list items without leaving Gmail (where many of my tasks and projects originate, which I’m sure is true for many of you). This is exactly the type of integration that really puts RTM a cut above the rest of the list management applications I’ve used. Couple this with the excellent Twitter integration, and RTM is never more than a few clicks/taps away, no matter where I am or what I’m doing.
One great OmniFocus feature that I’d truly love to see in RTM is the ability to incubate tasks or projects until a given date/time. For example, if I know I need to send a birthday card to my Mom in 3 weeks, OmniFocus would let me set a start date for the project, so that it (as well as any associated tasks) wouldn’t show up in my lists until that date. A consistent weekly review would make sure this type of thing doesn’t sit fallow in your task list for weeks before it is actionable, but I’m a lazy programmer who likes to let computers do the thinking that I don’t really feel I have to do.
Honestly, there isn’t much I’d change about RTM’s current set of features, other than perhaps some SMS integration, but that problem is solved easily enough with the Twitter integration. Otherwise, I find it to be quite useful - not to mention a total bargain, and well worth some investigation if you’re a productivity-minded technophile like myself.
Brett Kelly is a sometimes-independent writer, software developer and productivity nerd from California. You can read more about his unending adventures online at brettkelly.org, or you can just follow him on Twitter.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Being an uncluttered and responsible adult
When I was first out of college, I eschewed the dentist for a hefty five years. I loathed going to the dentist. My irresponsible philosophy was “No problems, no need to go!”
Oh, how I regret that philosophy now.
The first time I went to the dentist after the five-year break was a complete disaster. I had three cavities, my wisdom teeth had come in and ruined my perfect smile, and all of it could have been avoided if I would have just made regular appointments during that time.
Since learning this painful and expensive lesson, I have forced myself to be a responsible adult and do all of the yucky things I don’t want to do but should. Prevention is much less expensive than emergency treatment, and much less traumatic.
To stay on track, I make appointments for my next visit before I leave any doctor’s office. My annual physicals are scheduled a year in advance, my dentist appointments six months early, and even my haircuts are planned seven weeks ahead of schedule. I type them into Google calendar and forget about them. I can reschedule if I need to, but rescheduling seems to be psychologically less work than remembering to call and make an appointment.
I also make appointments for our heating and cooling system’s annual maintenance for the following year before the technician leaves the house. Same goes for gutter cleanings and our pets’ vet appointments. The service providers appreciate knowing that they will have a repeat customer and a guaranteed appointment in 12 months, and I get the benefit of not having to remember to make the appointments.
If you aren’t already making regular appointments when it is the most convenient, let me recommend that you step up to the plate and get started. I agree that being a responsible adult isn’t always fun, but it will save you money and pain in the future.
What other appointments do you schedule way in advance? I would love to learn about it in the comments!
Popularity: 9% [?]
Being an organized worker is essential in today’s market
As I’m writing this, I’m waiting for a video conference call to start. It was scheduled to begin at 9:15 a.m., but it’s 10:30 a.m. and the call hasn’t happened.
I have received four e-mail messages, however, saying that the people on the call are running late and they expect the call to begin in 10 minutes. I’ve been given no further explanation, and no efforts have been made to reschedule the call.
This is a play-by-play of the thoughts going through my mind:
- Since I’m receiving e-mails, there must not be an emergency. Everyone is probably safe and okay.
- I bet the other people on the call believe that their time is more important than my time.
- It could also mean that the people on the call are completely disorganized and could really use my help, so I should be more compassionate.
- Wow, it’s now 10:45 and I’m still waiting. This call is an hour and a half late. I find this to be incredibly rude.
- If I don’t leave my office in the next two minutes I’m going to be late for my 11:00 appointment.
- I’m leaving.
***
It’s now 1:15, I’ve gone to my appointment, returned to my desk, and the call still hasn’t happened. There is, however, an e-mail in my inbox asking if the call can be rescheduled for 5:00 p.m. Anyone want to take bets on what time tonight the call begins? (Added later: It started at 5:18 p.m.)
***
Situations like this are unfortunately common practice in the business world. Disorganization flourishes in many corporate cultures. One person misses a deadline and that missed deadline is like a stone thrown into a pond where the ripples eventually reach everyone and everything in the water.
If you look back over my thoughts from when I was waiting, you’ll see that my frustration clearly builds. I went from worrying about the people’s safety to finding the delay to be extremely rude. The people involved obviously aren’t rude, they just have poor time management skills, but their lack of time management skills speaks to their work. At the very least, it says, “Be on guard when working with this company!”
In today’s economy, employees can’t afford to be disorganized. It’s no longer a matter of personality, it’s a matter of keeping one’s job and retaining or obtaining clients. If an employer is trying to decide whom to layoff and whom to keep, the most organized, profitable, and productive workers usually get to keep their jobs. Workers who consistently miss deadlines, run projects over budget, and upset clients and vendors with their inconsiderate behavior are the people who are let go. Additionally, current and potential clients won’t do business with your company if they don’t receive the product they expect on time and on budget.
If you’re worried about the level of disorganization in your work, here are a few items that may help you:
- Clear the paper clutter from your office
- Start using project management and goal systems to help organize your work load
- Invest in a watch with a timer on it to keep you on schedule
- Learn how to run efficient meetings
- Work on managing expectations for deadlines and deliverables through ongoing communication with the client and/or your manager
What additional suggestions would you add to this list? What are your favorite ways to stay organized at work?
Popularity: 14% [?]
Overwhelmed by online social networks?
Recently, Erin was interviewed by the Washington Business Journal for the article “Social Organizer,” which hit newsstands Friday, Oct. 3. The article addresses how an employee can get the benefits from these social networks without seeing a drop in their productivity and work product.
With so many new distractions, new discipline is required. To help, there are now Web sites designed to do all the login and password remembering and organizing for you. There are also some easy tricks to harness the online social flood.
Pick just one
“I think that the same principles that you address in any project, definitely apply to your online relationships,” says Erin Doland, editor-in-chief of Unclutterer.com, a Reston-based Web site that focuses on home and office organization. “You have to start by picking and choosing. You have to make choices about what you do.”
Take Twitter, for example. The social networking site, which enables users to send short messages about their activities, has competitors that you can use, such as Pounce.com and Plurk.com. But do you really need them all?
“For most people, you can’t have three blenders,” Doland says. “At some point, you have to decide which blender you’re going to buy.”
The article has numerous tips and tricks to help you keep your social networking behavior under control. What additional advice would you give?
Popularity: 12% [?]
Lifetick: Goal-setting software that actually helps you achieve your goals
On Thursday, I wrote in my column on Real Simple’s website about a few goal-setting systems that might not currently be on your radar screen. Today, I wanted to talk here in more detail about my love affair with one of the programs I mentioned, Lifetick.
As the tagline on the website mentions, Lifetick is “Goal setting. Made simple.” And, after a couple weeks of using the service, I have to agree that it is simple. It’s also well designed, stable, and extremely useful.
When you first log into the system, you are asked to set up your core values. I based mine on the main areas of my life I address in my Strategic Plan. (For example, three of my core values are health, marriage, and career.) After you establish your core values, you then create goals and tasks for these areas of your life. Each time you create a goal, the system prompts you to write a task and provide a deadline to help you achieve that goal. I also like that the system then asks if my goals are SMART.
If you’re unfamiliar with the SMART philosophy, it states that goals are easier to achieve when they are: S-Specific-State what the goal will achieve, M-Measurable-How will you measure if you have achieved a goal, A-Achievable-Can the goal actually be achieved, R-Relevant-Is the goal relevant to your life’s values, and T-Time Specific-When do you want to achieve the goal?
One of my goals was to plan a weekend getaway with my husband. I assigned it to my marriage core value, and then created tasks for how to plan the getaway. One of my tasks included calling the resort and finding out their weekend availability, another task was to sit down with my husband and coordinate our schedules, and the final task involved calling the resort to make the reservation. When I finished the tasks, the program asked me if I had completed my goal or if I needed to assign new tasks. I clicked the button saying that my task was complete, and it gave me a gold star. Who doesn’t love a gold star?!
You can also set Lifetick to send reminders to your e-mail account before tasks need to be completed, and it will also drop you a note when you’ve failed to complete a task on time. It’s a simple nudge to keep you on track, and keep you involved with the service. It syncs with iCal, Outlook Calendar, and Google Calendar, too, so that task items automatically appear on your daily schedule.
I initially thought that I would just use the system for personal goals, but I’m starting to use it for some of my Daily Grind work goals, too. Since it pushes data to my Google Calendar, I don’t have to enter tasks into multiple locations. Also, it’s helping me to remember that some of my work is done for a larger purpose than just keeping my head above water.
There is also a Lifetick application for the iPhone, and you can keep a private Lifetick journal to comment on your progress with your goals.
You can sign up for Lifetick and create up to four goals for free. If you want to work on more than four goals at a time, then there is a $20 a year charge. I suggest starting with four and seeing if the program helps you to keep on track with your goals. I really like the program and am enjoying putting it to use.
The screen shots used in this post were courtesy of Lifetick. I felt weird about putting up my personal goals for all the internet to see, and they happily supplied me with generic alternatives.
Popularity: 20% [?]
Creating a personal strategic plan
Setting goals, working on projects, and tackling action items are three things I do on a regular basis to keep my work and personal life afloat. They’re the backbone of what I refer to as the Daily Grind.
The Daily Grind doesn’t happen by accident, though. I’m not a person who sits around and lets things fall into her lap or wish for the perfect opportunity to open up to me. I try to have purpose to my actions and am proactive in my dealings. Because of my desire to live with purpose, guiding my Daily Grind is a personal Strategic Plan. Much like a Strategic Plan that guides a business, my plan guides who I want to be. It keeps me on track, helps me reach my goals, and keeps me from feeling like I’m in a rut or walking through life as a zombie.
Similar to how a business creates a Strategic Plan, I created a plan for myself. In the book How Organizations Work by Alan Brache, strategy is defined as “the framework of choices that determine the nature and direction of an organization.” If you replace the words “an organization” with “my life” you get a solid idea of a personal Strategic Plan.
Brache continues in his book to discuss how to create an effective Strategic Plan for a business. Building on his ideas, but with a bent toward the personal, I created the following process for how to create my plan and how you can create a plan, too.
Five steps to living with a personal Strategic Plan
- Collect data and analyze your current situation. What are your strengths? (The book Now, Discover Your Strenghts can help you answer this question.) How do you process information? What in your life do you love? What activities in your life do you look forward to or wish you had more time to complete? What are the activities you loathe and want to get out of your life completely or reduce dramatically? What competes for your attention? What are your core beliefs and how does your life reflect those ideals? Do you like the things you say you like, or is habit guiding your behavior?
- Make the tough choices. How far into the future are you willing to work with this Strategy? (I recommend no more than three years.) Review the data you collected and analyzed in the first stage, and put into words your core beliefs that under no circumstance are you willing to break. State what obligations in your life you must fulfill. State your strengths and which of these should continually be highlighted in your life. What stands out the most in your life as being the positive force for your actions? More than anything else, what makes you happy?
- Communicate (draft) your personal Strategic Plan. Put into words the plan that will guide your Daily Grind. Write it in words that you understand and trigger memories of why and how you chose your plan. Your Strategic Plan isn’t a mission statement, it can fill more than one sentence of text. It probably won’t be a 20+ page document like many businesses create, but it should be at least a page or two containing the gist of your vision. Be realistic and let the document wholly reflect who you are and who you want to be. This is just for you, not anyone else, so let it speak to and for you.
- Work with your Strategic Plan as your guide. Make decisions about how you spend your time and all aspects of your Daily Grind under the guidance of your plan. Try your best to keep from straying outside the bounds of your Strategic Plan. Live with purpose.
- Monitor and maintain your Strategic Plan. Sometimes life throws us a wrench when we were looking for puppies and rainbows. Or, something even better than you ever imagined can happen. Update and monitor these changes and see if your Strategic Plan needs to be altered as a result. If no major change has taken place, evaluate your performance within your plan and check to see if you’re getting lazy and letting things slide. Maybe you realize that your plan wasn’t broad enough, or maybe it was too specific. It’s your plan, so work to keep it healthy.
Ideas and Suggestions
What you choose to put into your plan is a deeply personal choice and how your plan looks is as unique as your finger print. If you’re looking for ideas or suggestions to get you started, consider the following:
- Your relationship with your children, spouse, parents, siblings, friends.
- Your spiritual and philosophical beliefs, how you practice those beliefs, and how you incorporate them into your daily life.
- Your career goals and how much energy and focus you choose to commit to these achievements.
- Your time and how you choose to spend it.
- Your health and your objectives regarding your health.
Your strategic plan shouldn’t be a list of goals about these topics, but rather the guiding philosophies behind those goals. For instance, if in your Daily Grind you have action items about losing five pounds, those action items might reflect your Strategic Plan: “I enjoy the time and active relationship I have with my growing children. Staying healthy and in good physical condition allows me to have energy for this time with my children and allows me to work when I’m at work. Good health also is one way that I can work to have more years with those I love. It is important to me that I make healthy choices with regard to nutrition and exercise.”
Do you have a Strategic Plan? Does it help to keep clutter — especially time and mental clutter — from getting out of control? If you haven’t written a personal Strategic Plan before, do you think this is a tool that can help you?
Popularity: 20% [?]
E-mail: The great time waster
Yesterday, Lauren Halagarda discussed a number of tips for clearing clutter from your inbox. Today, contributor Sue Brenner explores how to keep e-mail from cluttering up your time.
Maybe it’s anxiety about e-mail that causes this form of communication to create so much stress? The sheer volume of messages piling in our inboxes begs us to sort through them first thing every morning to feel like we’ve made some progress. What starts as an innocent peek into Outlook can end up devouring an hour, a morning, and, in some cases, a whole day.
MSO.net, a UK and Australia-based web agency, reports:
“As the quantity of e-mails in workers’ inboxes increases steadily, productivity suffers as people spend less time doing the work for which they were employed and dedicate too much time dealing with the unwelcome e-mails. This increases anxiety since office hours may increase and thus the work/home life equilibrium is affected - ultimately more stress is heaped on the individual.”
How about setting periods of time when you’ll sift through e-mails and then let them gather again for later? For some, especially in the high-tech industry, this might seem impossible. But, getting a handle on e-mail time has its benefits. MSO’s study revealed that people underestimate how often they check e-mail, which potentially amounts to more wasted time.
“Of those surveyed, 34 per cent said that they thought they checked their inbox every 15 minutes. However, monitoring software reported a different story when fitted to those users’ PCs. In reality, many were viewing e-mails up to 40 times an hour. The burden to respond quickly to e-mails appears to be partly to blame and when combined with the volume of e-mails being received, stress is the outcome for 33 per cent.”
It’s true that wanting to reply quickly to e-mails is part of the culprit. However, when we’re compulsively clicking on our inboxes 40 times an hour (unless you’re in a job that warrants that amount of e-mail checking such as customer service or tech support), productivity declines.
E-mail can be used to keep busy, deceiving us into thinking we’re getting important work done, when half of the stuff we open is a YouTube forward. There’s some funny footage out there, but it seductively steals time.
And, when you’re already stressed–a looming deadline, an important interview–e-mail is as easy a distraction as turning on the TV at night.
Unless I’m meeting with a client or have an early appointment, I check e-mail in the morning. As a small business owner, I like to be responsive.
Keeping it under control
When I start working for the day, I first check my calendar. Then, I write down on paper my top three priorities for the day. (I don’t want my e-mails influencing these priorities just yet.) The act of putting pen to paper helps me concentrate and hone in on what’s important for my day.
If I have a morning meeting, then I’ll head out the door. If my schedule is clear, it’s then that I will quickly dip into e-mail. If my e-mail unveils something urgent, I might replace one of my priorities on my top three list. Then, I draw a line under the top three and put other to dos there, in case I have extra time.
Throughout the rest of my day, I only check e-mail once every few hours. I get more done that way and my focus stays sharper. Every once in a while, there are a few important e-mails that sneak past me, but not many. If an emergency arrises, people will find me if they need me.
What helps you stay on top of e-mail enough without too much time loss? What strategies do you use to focus, block distractions and make the most of your time?
Popularity: 14% [?]
Clearing mind chatter
When you get home from work, is it hard to turn off your mind: The spilling-over-list of to-dos, the important meeting that’s coming up tomorrow, project A-1 that’s due on Friday, and oh, you forgot to attend the team meeting today?
Worse yet is when you’re winding down to go to sleep and your mind switch stays ON. The more you worry about the missed meeting and how you’ll pull off the project, the more your mind keeps spinning around, obsessing on things you can’t control at 11:00 at night.
What to do?
Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman offers these simple “thought-stopping techniques” in his book Learned Optimism.
Put a Halt to Your Thoughts
If someone was shouting loudly into their cell phone right next to your cube, you’d tell them to stop, right? That’s what Seligman says to do to your own mind, too. Make the command urgent and firm. You can say it aloud, in your head, or write “STOP” in large letters on a sticky note and post it on the edge of your computer screen. Print out a stop sign and tape it to your ceiling at night when you’re trying to catch some rest. If you prefer a more intense approach to behavioral modification, Seligman recommends that you put a rubber band on your wrist. He says to give it a good SNAP when your mind chatter races.
Switch Channels
Has someone ever said a joke in the middle of a heated debate and you laughed so hard you forgot what you were arguing about? Interrupting your train of thought also works for clearing mind clutter. As soon as the chatter fires up, give your mind something else to focus on, such as returning an important phone call. If that still spins you into obsessing, look out the window and focus on the orange leaves blowing in the wind. You’re not going to sit there and day dream, it’s just a quick diversion to switch gears and then re-focus your mind in a more productive way. Moving around can snap you out of it, too. Jog over to the water cooler for a cold drink. Check off a fast action that’s not related to your mind chatter.
Reschedule to Another Time
Be the aikido master of your own mind: turn the force of the mind chatter against itself. It has a survival purpose, after all. Your mind knows instinctively to repeat things over and over to fend off danger. (”Turn off the stove, turn off the stove, turn off the stove”) But in mind chatter’s effort of self-preservation, it’s too lizard-like to know when it’s no longer serving a survival purpose and is making you edgy in the process. The solution? Seligman says to reschedule with yourself. If your mind ruminates on stopping by your boss’ office on your way out, reschedule that thought. Say to yourself, “I’ll think about you at 4:55 p.m.” Of course, be sure to enter it into your calendar and set a reminder. Then your mind is free.
Try these mind tricks to unlock chatter mind’s grip and get back to what’s important.
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Sue Brenner is a regular contributor to Unclutterer and also can be found on her personal blog Action Symphony.
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