Tag: too busy

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AD/HD file systems Get Organized More time in my day prioritize procrastination Productivity productivity in the workplace project systems Time strategies

An Easy Way to be your Best Self

Most people I run into say they’d like to be more productive. So, I offer a magic pill for $9.95. I’m kidding, of course.

…Do you ever beat yourself up for not being perfectly productive 100% of the time?

The first step (really) in the ABCs of Productivity is to Accept your reality. This means you must accept yourself. To accept yourself, you must understand yourself. Here’s a snippet entitled “Understand Thyself” from a recent workshop: CLICK HERE

Once you do two things, (1) accept yourself and (2) understand yourself, the stage is set. You are getting closer to being “100% productive.”

In this article, we’ll review the four steps to take you through this self-discovery process. By taking the time to complete this process, you’ll be rewarded with a renewed self-understanding, setting the stage for personal and professional growth and productivity. For you readers who are ready to start achieving, please Contact Me and set up a complimentary Discovery call to eliminate those productivity gremlins for good.

Ready? Let’s get started right now with step one, which is a 4-part question:

Step One: Ask yourself, when are you at your best? (note: This is something most of us never consider. Yet, when considered and followed, a BIG DIFFERENCE can be seen.)

– What time of day do you have the most energy?
– How much rest and/or sleep would you have had?
– What foods would you have eaten (or avoided)?
– What would your family relationships look like?
This may seem simple, and not really related to productivity or achieving more. You may have been looking for that magic pill. It may surprise you to learn that while STRATEGIES are important, knowing where you are at a baseline is critical.

Step two: How are my current work systems doing? What is working great, and what could use some upgrading? Systems to consider: calendar, correspondence, task management, file management, priority management, long range planning.

Step Three: Dare to detail your TRUE desires (know thyself)! With this exercise, you have permission to think big, be brave, and be bold. If you don’t stretch you may never grow. So go ahead and ask yourself…if I am REALLY TRUE to myself….
– What does my work look like?
– What is my life like?
– What qualities do my clients have?
– How do I feel?

Step Four: What do you think might be preventing you from achieving the desires you just outlined above?

Bonus Step: Do something- anything- no matter how small- today. What one tiny step can you take to achieve your true desire? For example, if you think you might want to someday get your Master’s at the local college can you spend 15 minutes at lunch perusing the fall offerings?

I hope this article helps you understand yourself.

To get the most benefit, and fill it in yourself. Refer to it daily, just for 5 minutes. Remember, what you do every day shapes our future. Success, then, is a habit. Remember, your coach and accountability person are just a call or email away!

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EpS Events Get Organized GO system More time in my day prioritize Productivity productivity in the workplace Time strategies

Did someone say “interruptions”?

early bird speaker
early bird speaker

Recently, I had the true pleasure of presenting one of my signature talks, “4 Ways to Produce More While Staying Sane” to a fine group of Human Resource Professionals at the Granite State HR conference in Manchester, New Hampshire.

 

Here’s a INTERRUPTION STOPPER snippet from a workshop I gave to the VT Recreation and Parks Department, click here.

 

One issue that everyone related to – loud and clear- was the apparent disconnect between “saying no” (i.e. not being interrupted) and providing excellent customer service.

 

When most people “want something”, they want it immediately. Few have the self-discipline to add it to a list or to a schedule, and then wait for the right time. Now, if a person has sliced his finger and blood is gushing uncontrollably, immediate action is the only choice.  Most questions are not blood gushing, hospital-rushing ER questions, but, they are treated this way.

 

The late Steve Covey called this living in Quadrant One, “Firefighting.” Our instant-messaging, texting, constant-scroll email culture has exacerbated this issue many-fold. This immediacy becomes our normal, and we no longer have the ability to discern immediate needs from everything else.

 

What’s the issue? Well, there is no issue if you are an ER technician or a firefighter. That’s your job! If, however, you are a MANAGER then this can pull you off track again and again until you find yourself (metaphorically) in Kansas, asking, ”how did this happen?” The answer is…inch by inch.

 

The good news is that you can take back your work life. This workshop is jam packed with tips and strategies, but here are some to get you started:

  1. Work on one thing at a time.
  2. Establish a daily default priority.
  3. Ask your interrupter, “can I get a headline?”

 

These all sound so simple. Ask yourself, are you doing all three? If not, why not? Well, because it’s Not Easy! Here’s a little more about each tip:

  1. One thing at a time: The power of focus is not to be underestimated. At this workshop, we did an exercise proving that working on more than one thing at a time reduced participants’ productivity by OVER HALF. Would you like to double your productivity? Try doing one thing at a time. I dare you.
  2. Daily Default Priority: I know you will do more than one thing in a day. You’ll do a lot more. But how often have you had “that project” that you’ve managed to…skirt around again and again? Keep it simple, keep it clear, write it down, do this exercise every morning and every night. Commit to doing that one thing. And you know what? It WILL get done!
  3. “Can I get a headline?”: This is a great response to all those people who ask the dreaded question….”Got a minute?” That minute turns into an hour- or more -when you then need to do the follow-up, right? And what happened to the project on which you were working? When you ask this question, it causes the interrupter to think before throwing information or questions at you. One s/he summarizes, you can then decide, do I ask him or her to return later, or, is this issue more pressing than my current work? There is POWER IN THE PAUSE.

 

The three tips will get you started back down the path to productivity, taking back control of your workday. Contact me today if you’d like to learn more about how she can infuse motivation, participation, and productivity back into YOU and/or YOUR TEAM. I’d be honored to help boost you to levels you never dreamed possible.

 

With warm regards,

Carol

Your Productivity Coach

 

book-carol-now

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Get Organized More time in my day Time strategies Uncategorized

How will I do it? Practical Strategies to Get Moving NOW.

Are you saying…I know WHAT gets in my way. I know what I WANT.  I know WHY. Now…HOW will I do it?

That’s right, it’s the H in the W+W+W+H = Woo Hoo! Process…Where you can now really fly.

I join again with SUE WEST to provide this podcast in our series…the HOW click HOW no 1 or read on…

So many people want a quick fix; an answer to a “problem” about getting more organized and/or getting more out of their life BEFORE they’ve gone through the process. They want the HOW first….the proverbial cart before the horse.

So much needs to be fast, fast, fast. But as a favorite author, researcher and speaker, Brene Brown tells it well in her book “The Gifts of Imperfection:”

When we skip the hard stuff, it just doesn’t work.

We don’t change. We don’t grow and we don’t move forward without the work.

My work is about the things that get in the way. I’m not about the ‘how to’ because in my experience I’ve never seen any evidence of ‘how to’ working without talking about the things that get in the way.

So, own your story. Tell it. There is freedom,  relief and more when we do.

Again, Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

We will be sharing our “best practices” for the HOW over this and subsequent podcasts. Here’s the first one: the time inventory. Some students have referred to this practice as a time diary. To do this, record your time each day. Record it as you are actually working (or playing!) Do not wait until the end of the day, or the next day, and say “what did I do?” You will lose precious minutes and hours. Over a series of days and weeks, you will begin to see patterns. It does not matter if you record it on a piece of paper or electronically; only that you do it consistently and in a timely manner.

Perhaps you intend to get up at 6am, exercise, eat breakfast then get going with your day by 8:30 am. But, time and time again, it’s 9:00 am or later and you have not eaten, have not showered, and you are just catching up with “a few emails” first.

Once you actually begin to record your day you will see that you may wake up at 6, but stay in bed routinely until 6:30. Then you may quickly check facebook and you are not having that first cup of coffee until 7 am. By then you may figure you’d better exercise and when you return it’s 8 am and you want to answer an email quickly. As 9 am approaches you are “fighting fires”, are still in your lycra, have not showered or eaten.  This knowledge empowers you to change the pattern.

That’s enough fieldwork and practice for our listeners this time. The first step is always noticing. Seeing where exactly the issues are, because if you don’t diagnose the problem correctly, you’ll try something and it won’t even be the solution to the right problem! So step back and just observe yourself this week.

This is a good start to opening our HOW bucket. We’ll continue with practical strategies to get you started in taking back your time and life in the coming podcasts.

If this topic struck a chord with you, we know you’ll get much more benefit from our Design Your Days workshop. We offer public workshops periodically; check out our facebook page for the latest ones.

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Get Organized More time in my day Time strategies

All I really want….

Wanting. Hundreds of thousands of songwriters continue to use this theme. It seems we all “want” something- presumably something we cannot have.

Our podcast – Sue West and Carol Williams of the Design Your Days Team- is about the “3rd W” of the W+W+W+H = Woo Hoo! Process (What, Why, Wants, and How)

Listen: what do you really WANT? or read on:

A friend introduced me to Alanis Morrissette’s  song “What I really want” a few years ago. And it reminds me of what we talk about …

The lyrics go something like this:

All I really want is some peace
a place to find a common ground
All I really want is a wavelength
All I really want is some comfort
A way to get my hands untied
And all I really want is some justice…

Wanting. It seems so selfish to WANT, doesn’t it? Yet, when we stop Wanting, we stop growing.

One person from a workshop WANTED to know “how to get back on track” with her intended tasks. This was expressed at the beginning. However, toward the end, it became clear that what she REALLY wanted was the time and space to PONDER what she wanted “next” in her life. In fact, both were applicable. But, how much more powerful is it to find the time and space to ponder your LIFE versus what’s right in front of you on your “to-do” list?

Since we all have to find our own way, here’s another approach. If you feel like: you don’t have time to ponder your life, or maybe your family isn’t supporting you, or you just don’t think of yourself as a dreamer, ponderer, creator, you can:

  • Keep track each day for about a week of what you love about your days, what you’re doing, who you’re doing it for, how healthy you feel – or how energetic, what mood you’re in as the days go along, what gives you energy and what takes it. Keep track right in your planner, on your iPhone – not in your head; it is more difficult to see patterns.
  • That’s a first step. Just notice. Become a little more aware of how your time is used. Keep doing this until you start to see some patterns emerge for things you want to change.
  • Tying this example back to our song lyrics, you’ll note that Alanis talks generally – she wants peace, common ground in her relationship, justice. She does not get specific. She talks about themes, feelings, and values. And behind those lyrics, she is saying what she knows she does not want, too.

One client I had went through a process of determining her Big Wants. I asked her to think about one big dreamy goal, that seemed almost “too big” to accomplish. She wrote it down. Then I asked her to find 3 small steps that pushed her just a LITTLE CLOSER to that goal. She did not do that right away. When she came back, she realized that she had the wrong Big Goal because she was Not Excited about that big goal anymore. She was an entrepreneur who wanted to hold a day long workshop. But she realized that actually, what she really wanted, was to spend more time with her family while earning the income she required and not necessarily any more. She determined what she REALLY wanted. Although it may sound trite, we must determine what we REALLY want before we can achieve it.

Did this help you in determining, like Alanis, “what you really want?”

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AD/HD Get Organized prioritize productivity in the workplace

On-the-Wall Business Tip.

Want a Business organization and prioritization tip? Use Ideapaint on your wall.

Use this tip if you consider yourself a “visual thinker.” You might be a designer or artist. Idea paint is not paint at all; rather, it is a sealer that acts as a giant dry-erase board.

If you have ever had the occasion of “too many to-do’s” to the point of overwhelm, Ideapaint is a tool to help de-clutter your brain. And when your brain is de-cluttered, you feel better organized, can prioritize better, focus better, and get more done.

  1. The brain spill. Often, I will have “so many ideas” that they cloud my head. When this happens, I walk over to my ideapaint wall, grab a marker, and start writing. Soon, I will begin drawing arrows and charts and graphs and numbered priorities. The act of standing, drawing, and writing frees up my brain.

    prioritize in style
    Ideas and concepts redefined on your wall
  2. Use color to help prioritize on the wall. Once you “spill out” your to-do’s, you can start to see them more clearly. It becomes obvious which ones need to be done first, and which can wait. You can use red for your top 3, blue for everything else, for example. Things that are a lower priority can be grey.
  3. You can use this to organize your projects. My graphic designer used idea paint on his wall to organize his clients into “website clients,” “newsletter clients”, “social media clients”, etc. so that he could run through the list and remember various tasks and deadlines he had for each client. Yes, he could have done this via spreadsheet or through another method, but, having this on the wall was an easier way for him to “see” everything all at once and respond to his “visual thinking” tendencies.
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EpS Events Get Organized More time in my day

Are you Stuck in the Back?

Are you feeling the Push and Pull of Life…as if you were a piece of paper stuck in the back of a file cabinet? When the door is open you can see the light, then the door gets slammed shut again. You wonder, how do I put myself back where I belong? What do I WANT from my day?

In this Perspectives Podcast, Sue West, AD/HD and Life Management Coach, and I bring forth the important question of what you might really WANT from your days- a precursor before we discuss HOW to get it.

Read on or listen by clicking: WANT-What do you Want from your Days

Barbara Sher said, “I could do anything if I just knew what it was.”  And that is the title of one of her wonderfully written books. So do you know what it is you would want to do? That’s the first step, isn’t it?

So, the question (or questions) is, then, What do you WANT more of? Taking a step back, we have arrived at the WANT in the W+W+W+H = Woo Hoo! process. We’ve talked about What gets in your way, Why you want to design your day differently, and now we are hitting WANT. What do you Want from your day?

By focusing on what you WANT, it becomes easier to eliminate what you do NOT want. I’m providing the first example and Sue explains the second.

Here’s the first example:

Perhaps you WANT more time. This is a common reason people come to Design Your Days. Well, we all KNOW that there are only 24 hours in every day, period. So how can we “make” more time? We can’t. We can, however, choose what we do with each precious minute in a very conscious manner.

One of my clients wants more time so that she “feels less rushed and more balanced”. One first step in determining how to help her choose her activities in “making more time” is to take an inventory. What is she spending her time on now? Are those activities adding to her goals and/or life satisfaction, or are they draining it? You, the listener, can do this. Try this exercise with every activity you begin for one week. Ask, will this energize me or drain me?

ELIMINATING activities that are low value yields much time, if time is what you want MORE of.

Here’s Our Second example, from Sue:

“I want to spend more time on my business, because ultimately, my goal is to leave my legacy in the business I have built, not just to sell it, but because of the skills and leadership I’ve taught people who have worked with me, and because of the products and services we have provided. These things live on after us.”

And I also might hear from the same person: “I want more time with my grown children or with my grandchildren.” And “I want a less cluttered office space. The clutter holds me back from beginning my next chapter.”

So here, you might look at a typical week’s calendar and list of what you did, and simply guesstimate how much time you spent:

  • working on the business and not in it;
  • with adult children and/or grandchildren;
  • and on dealing with clutter (lost items, doing things twice).

How does this feel to you: is it enough, too much or just right for each of these important areas you’ve identified? You’ll need this to know where you are now, to know how much you need to shift your time. Without a starting point, how will you know you’ve arrived? Second question: what might be a “good enough” number of hours for the week or maybe even the month, for each of these areas? How much is “enough time” for you to feel that you’re getting closer to your goal? Remember that goals begin with smaller steps.

Want More?

If these struck a chord with you, we know you’ll get much more benefit from our Design Your Days workshop. Our next public workshop is coming right up- on Tuesday March 18 from 9 to 11 am at the Academy of Design and Decorating in Peterborough, NH. Register here. Or you can check our Facebook page, Design Your Days, which will point you in the right direction.

In the next podcast we dig deeper into the WANT question. What do you want more of, or less of? Be sure to listen and see how to get both of these!  We will continue to move through the Design Your Days process. At the end of about 12 podcasts, you will look back and find that we’ve provided an excellent overview of our process.

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