QuietSpacing

We need a better way! A better way to deal with all the stuff; the stuff coming at us all day long; the stuff we have to do – today, tomorrow and the days that follow.

What we need is a simple, clear way to process everything that’s already in and coming into our day. A simple way to identify what each thing is, where it needs to go, and, if it’s something that needs doing, who will do it and when that’s going to occur. Oops, it appears I’ve given it away, but read on if you want to find out how this four-corner approach can work for you.

These Amazing Times – The Miracle and Its Price

We live in amazing times, but so did the generations before us for some time back. So what’s so amazing about these times? Affordable instantaneous global communication. That’s my response. The wiring of the world over the last 20 years has created the ability for virtually every person on earth to reach out and engage with virtually every other person in an affordable and nearly instantanenous manner. This is our contribution to the myriad human accomplishments over the eons.

Of course, with the good comes the bad. Joining this new ability has been mobile technology in the form of laptops, smartphones and wireless networks. We can literally communicate to anywhere from anywhere. And we do, all the time! Consequently, the number of inputs we each process daily – phone calls, emails, texts, etc. – has grown in orders of magnitude (which is a lot!).

Unfortunately, the price is an expensive two-fold whammy. First, we have to process all of the new stuff. Second, the expected response times have shrunk to nanoseconds. The result is that we constantly feel behind the curve and can quickly become mired in the sheer volume of it all.

In short, we can do so much more but we feel so much worse about it!

The Rx – An Updated Way to Process All That Stuff

I’m an ops guy – operations that is.  Good or bad, it’s what I do best – make things work better, faster, cheaper. I’ve always wanted to be better at more interesting things, like marketing or sales, but I’m stuck with this particular talent, so I’ve made the most of it.

Fortunately, this skill – known as Productivity in the professional development world – has timely application given this overwhelming number of inputs we each deal with daily. My work with clients has focused primarily on how to quickly identify and process all this stuff, then get back to focused efforts on the things that need doing today. The foundation of this work centers on the productivity method I created – QuietSpacing – and customizing it to each group’s or individual’s needs.

To spread the love a bit further than just to my clients, I’m going to lay out the basis for the method in this article and demonstrate how it solves the problem of feeling overwhelmed and out of control with your workload.

Ask and You Shall Receive

Great answers are often found when we ask simple questions. When you’re trying to power through the various things you need to process at any time during the day, try these questions and their corresponding answers to see if they help you more efficient and effective:

1.  What Is It?

In the world of Stuff, this is a multiple choice question with ONLY four answers – Trash, Archive, Reference or Work. Trash is self-explanatory – something you don’t ever need again. Archive is something you may need again but not very often, if ever – like a contract or a letter that relates to a specific project. Reference is stuff you use (refer to) to do your work – like a phone book. Work is anything that needs to be done.

In fact, if you’re not sure what a particular item is, ask yourself this yes/no question: Does anything further need to be done with this? If the answer is Yes, then it is necessarily Work. If the answer is No, then it is necessarily one of the other three – Trash, Archive or Reference.

Phew, that’s the hard part. If you’re struggling with this first question, create a sticky note listing all four types of stuff and put it some place you’ll see it regularly. Practice getting used to quickly assessing what each thing you touch is. Once the list is ingrained in your psyche, you’ll become adept at slicing and dicing the onslaught of stuff coming at you.

(Note, also, that I’ve been doing this for six years and those are the only four categories of stuff I’ve ever been able to identify. Everything easily fits into one of those four. If you come up with a fifth, email me and we can discuss why it’s not one of the four.)

2.  Where Does It Go?

Now that we know what each particular thing is, we need to put it in the right place. Things get much easier now:

• Trash = Throw it away (or delete it if it’s electronic)
• Archive = File it away in your long term storage system (file cabinets, hard drives, etc.)
• Reference = Put it away near your work area such that it’s easily accessed
• Work = We can’t move on with Work until we determine what Type of Work it is:
  • Action Item: These are things you need to do or you need to have someone else do (delegate); the ball’s in your court.
  • Awaiting Response: These are things you are waiting for someone else to get back to you on; the ball’s in their court.
  • Pending: These are things that aren’t ripe yet, things that need another event to occur or a date to pass before they become “ready” for you to do or someone else to do; the ball’s in no one’s court … yet.
  • Reading: This is professional reading, things you read to stay abreast in your field; ball’s in your court.

3.  Who Will Do It?

We have neatly and quickly dispensed with three of the four Categories of stuff in our lives leaving only the Work items left open. This next question – Who Will Do It? – is really a sub-question of Work and provides the most clarity with respect to anything you’re going to delegate to others.

If you are dealing with an Action Item, it’s often effective to ask if it’s something You should do of if it’s something you can Delegate to another. Of course, once delegated, the Action Item becomes an Awaiting Response, right?  See how this works?   Thus, this mini-question serves a focused, but highly useful, purpose in getting things into the right funnel for completion.

4.  When Does It Next Need Attention?

Notice that I have totally side-stepped the deadline question. The reason is that I believe “When is it due?” is a trap for the unwary. There are two reasons for this. First, most Work gets handled out with due dates like “ASAP” or “Urgent” or “Immediately.” The first two are unclear – my ASAP may be different than your ASAP and “Urgent” is also relative. Immediately rarely means immediately, except possibly in an emergency room. These types of deadlines are further symptoms of the problems we experience with our always-on world.

Off the diatribe and back to the point, the actual deadline is less meaningful in our analysis than the question of when do we need to think about it again to make sure it gets done “in time.” A project that will take two days to complete is best thought of several days out from that beginning date to maximize our flexibility in triaging all the rest of the inputs that constantly come at us, while also bringing the project in on time. Using some form of flexible reminder or tickler system is the best way to manage these deadlines so that you can adjust each day’s puzzle pieces in such a way as to move through your stuff in the most efficient and effective way.  This gets you back to the producing efforts quickly and with a sense of command and control over the work.

That’s right Virginia, I Didn’t Give It All Away

The framework laid out above is the fundamental workflow model I developed to help my clients quickly move through the near-overwhelming inputs that come at them every day. It’s a short process to move through several times a day or hour and leaves you feeling in command over your workflow.

Of course, I haven’t given the whole baby away, but there’s more than enough there for you to face each day with the tools you need to stay in front of the curve and feel more successful in your career.

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Today’s work world is riddled with productivity saboteurs.  You know what I’m talking about.  You’re just getting some real traction on a big project that requires your full attention when someone knocks on your door.  Oh, they “just need a minute” of your time, but that minute totally derails your productivity!  In fact, it can take up to 20 minutes to get back on task after even the smallest interruptions. 

Five Small Ways to Maintain Focus

There are a number of ways you can reduce the number of interruptions and distractions you suffer throughout the day.  Try some of these to see if you don’t end up with better results and a greater sense of success:

1.  Face Away From Traffic.  If you have an office, it’s my bet that you face the door.  It’s what I call the Command Central position – back to the wall, imposing edifice (the desk) between you and intruders, and eyes always on the lookout for those pesky interlopers.  The problem with this positioning is that your eyes are attracted to motion.  Therefore, whenever someone walks by your door, you involuntarily look up.  The results is a self-inflicted and totally unnecessary interruption.  Moreover, if you catch someone’s eye, they’re likely to come in and sit down!

Try facing away from the traffic.  This will eliminate the self-inflicted interruptions and cause those passing by to strongly consider whether to interrupt you as they can see you are working.  It’s a great way to easily increase focus and productivity.

2.  Turn New Message Alerts Off.  Turn off the new message alert feature of you e-mail inbox, your cell phone, your smartphone or, if you’re still in the 90s, your pager.  These are also self-imposed productivity saboteurs and they are completely unnecessary.  Simply check your e-mail, texts, and voice mails regularly to ensure that you’re managing everything that’s going on in a timely fashion.

I once timed a client who I was instructing in some Outlook setup steps when her head turned to view a new e-mail alert that popped during my instruction.  It took her four seconds to look down, read the subject line of the e-mail, look back up, and initiate the instruction I had given her.  Only four seconds you say?  Well, what if you get 100 e-mails each day that cause you the four-second distraction?  That’s 400 seconds or about 6.5 minutes.  6.5 minutes of activity with no corresponding productivity.  That’s over three work days lost each year!

3.  Sequestering.  Can’t get people to leave you alone?  Then leave them!  Find an empty office or conference room or even go to the library (you know, where those artifacts called books are stored) and create some uninterruptable time for yourself.  Take just one or two things with you to work on, focus on those then head back to the cacophony.  The trick here is to tell No One (except maybe your assistant) where you’re going.

To demonstrate how effective this is, I once had a client go literally to the empty office next door when she really needed to get some work done.  She was only about six feet from her own desk chair, but completely focused!

4.  Use Full Screens.  Having numerous windows open on your monitor is a terrific way to load up and reference things as needed.  However, keep each one at full screen size so you’re not distracted by something on one screen while trying to work on another. 

The biggest offender here is, again, the e-mail inbox screen.  Just minimize it or layer another screen over it until it’s time to batch process your e-mail again.  Similarly, run with tabs on in your browser instead of opening numerous browsers.  It’s quicker to click between the tabs than it is to find the browser you need.

5.  Create a Designated Workspace.  Desks have become storage areas instead of work surfaces.  This is similar to how garages have become storage units instead of places to park cars.  When you have things piled all around you on the desk, your eyes (those buggers!) take in and process everything on the periphery.  This is silently eroding your focus. 

Using the four corners of the desk to define your Designated Workspace, clear everything off it, including the phone and monitor, and put all that elsewhere.  (Note, you can leave some personal items so that your DWS is not devoid of all humanity.)   Into that space goes ONLY the one thing you are working on right now.  When that one thing is finished, move it to another location (see other posts on that issue) and place the next (one) thing into the Designated Workspace.  You’ll find this greatly increases your focus and productivity.

At the Risk of Repeating Myself

Ferreting out and eliminating the productivity saboteurs is at the core of my work.  I become evangelical when I get on message about how increasing your productivity drives a sense of accomplishment and success.  Moreover, I tend to repeat the same 10 to 15 suggestions to my audiences, but that’s for two reasons.  First, they work and until everyone in the room has at least tried them all, I won’t stop preaching.  Second, I am routinely reminded that people come to understand the significance of productivity and its results in their own time; thus, it’s my job to be repeating the gospel in the hopes that our paths cross at the right time.

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Leave Time Between Appointments

Imagine a wake of papers drifting to the floor behind you as you charge off to your next appointment (physical meeting, video conference, phone call, etc.). That’s what’s happening to all the thoughts and ideas you had in the apppointment you just left as you race to the next one.  They’re drifting into oblivion as you try to gain purchase on the upcoming subject matter. Worse, yet, you’re still thinking about those items as you enter the next meeting, resulting in loss of attention to the topic at hand. Two birds killed with one stone – with negative results.

Try inserting just a snippet of time between appointments – five to fifteen minutes. This will allow you to capture all those trailing thoughts into a  physical or electronic form, give you an opportunity to catch up on other projects in the works, and provide space for you to take a deep breath before moving forward. The net result is lowered stress, increased productivity, and a greater sense of command over your day.

Reduce Appointment Lengths By 25%

Work fills the time allotted. Not truism is more accurate in the business day. Meetings, conference calls, videocasts and the like can seem endless, sucking down valuable time that is better spent getting things done.

Try reducing meeting lengths by 25% and see what happens.  Reduce a 60-minute appointment to 45 minutes or take a 30-minute meeting down to 25. (Okay, that last is not exactly 25%, but you get the idea). You’ll find that people tend to focus more specifically on the topic de jure and cut through the side trips. If you don’t get everything done, just schedule another, shortened meeting!  The worse case scenario is that you run a few minutes long, but, thanks to the first suggestion above, you’ve got some leeway there.

Manufacturing Time Is Easy!

The two suggestions above are quite simple to implement. Other people may need some time to adjust to the new formats – shortened meeting lengths and spaces between appointments – but you can see that they go hand-in-hand. The net result of doing both is that you’ve actually used the same amount of time more effectively and efficiently. Consequently, you’re more productive, in greater command of your day, and feel less stress.

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Email has reduced us to the level of salivating dogs.  Whether we are in the office, at home, or in the line at the grocery store, we are obsessed with checking our e-mail.  Ask yourself, when was the last time you went 20 minutes without checking your e-mail or without thinking about checking your e-mail during a workday?  My guess is that you can’t recall.  I know I can’t.

I’m confident that the e-mail pioneers never in their wildest dreams thought we’d one day have state and federal legislation that prevented us from checking our e-mail (among other things) while driving!  Do we need to be told that taking our eyes of the road while hurling two tons of metal down the road at 65 miles an hour is dangerous?  Really?

Be an E-mail Support Group of One

But enough of that diatribe.  Let’s turn back to some ideas on how we can each save our self from the strangle hold this new-age form of communication has on us.  In my work with clients, we often linger on this love-hate relationship with e-mail.  On the one hand, it’s a vital, and often effective, form of communication.  On the other hand, it has created an expectation that people are always available and always responsive, a mindset that is nonsensical on its face. Yet, it persists.

So how to manage the duality that e-mail has created?  My baseline response is that we need to release ourselves from its bondage and regain command of the tool.  That’s a decision every user must make.  Once made, slight changes in the way we manage e-mail are relatively easy to implement:

• Settle on the Calendar or Tasks View.  Most productivity suites, such as Outlook, Lotus Notes, and Google Apps, provide a group of interrelated tools with e-mail being one of them.  There is usually also a Calendar and Tasks function in the suite, each with a separate screen or view.  Because e-mail is a form of communication, I recommend that it be treated as such.  Since very few people wait by the mailbox all day for letters and such to arrive, I believe that clicking to the Calendar or Tasks view of your productivity suite is a far better place to spend your time – looking at your appointments or to-dos.  Surely, you must check your e-mail regularly – maybe even three or four times an hour – but there’s no reason to hang out in that screen waiting with baited breath for the next one to arrive!
• Minimize The Screen.  Like settling on a different view, you can also minimize the screen altogether.  This is no different than closing your office door when meeting with someone.  The message is not to interrupt you right now because you’re working on X.  Again, you can check your e-mail as often as necessary, but you don’t have to open each and every one the minute it arrives.
• Turn Away From Your Screen.  Positioning your computer screen such that you can turn away from it when you are working on other things – like paperwork – is a terrific way to reduce the distraction caused by new e-mails dropping into your Inbox.  Of course, I don’t need to tell you about turning off the new e-mail alert, right?  But, then again, we did need that legislation…
• Turn Off Your Monitor.  If all else fails, take matters literally into your own hands and turn the monitor off!  Besides, this is the greenest suggestion of the bunch as it uses less electricity.

Take Charge of Your E-mail; Set Yourself Free

When you decide that you control your e-mail instead of being controlled by it, you free yourself of its grip on your psyche.  After you’ve taken that first step, you can implement any of the suggestions above to realize an immediate benefit from your choice.

Think I’ll go check my e-mail …

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I’m not that old.  I grew up with microwaves and color television.  When I started working full time, we had fax machines, overnight mail services and voicemail was gaining acceptance.  However, as the world began to move faster and faster via technological advances like e-mail, the Internet and smartphones, our workflow processing behaviors took a turn for the worse.

The Way it Was and What’s Gone Wrong

You see, “back in the day” we started our days by looking at what had to get done … first. Then we started doing.  Today, it’s the opposite.  We jump to the doing – replying to e-mail and driving ahead - before considering what’s already on our plates. 

The purpose of these old-school review periods was to organize and prioritize our tasks, folding into the mix our appointments and other things that needed our attention.  Then we would move forward into the day and deal with what came our way.  This surveying behavior was usually repeated around the lunch hour and just before going home.  Functionally, we were keeping an eye on the big picture while dealing with the day-to-day details of our work.

This surveying process has largely been lost in today’s frenetic working world.  We’ve become addicted to “right now” – checking our e-mail on our smartphone and constantly seeking updates on various things via the Internet.  Most people have reviewed the latest e-mails that arrived overnight, often making commitments in response to them, before even reviewing what’s already on today’s to-do list!  This mindset – needing to stay Über-connected and ultra-”responsive” – is dramatically affecting our productivity, as well as our piece of mind.

Retake Command of Your World

This is a subject deserving of much more than a mere missive on corrective action.  Alas, I fear no one would read it due to the lack of perceived available time!  Consequently, I’ll keep my directive short:

Review What’s On Your Plate Three Times Each Day – Morning, Noon and Night

This is just common sense, but it’s not generally followed very much anymore.  All I’m suggesting is that people review the commitments they’ve already made before jumping in to the next batch of requests (e-mail, voice mails, meetings, etc.).  The more you know about your existing level of commitment, the better-able you’ll be to accurately judge and manage new commitments.  Moreover, when you start with “What’s on my plate?” you are taking command of your world.  When you’re waiting with baited breath of the next e-mail to land in your Inbox, you’re at the mercy of others.  It’s neither productive, nor enjoyable.

Just take a few minutes first thing in the morning, at mid-day, and just before going home to conduct a complete survey of everything on your desk or in your Inbox.  Consider what, if anything, needs to be re-prioritized and feel good about the things you’ve checked off the list.  In the end, you’ll see that this old-school behavior still drives terrific results in this modern-day world.

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