QuietSpacing

Responsiveness is different than responding. Responding is an acknowledgement like “Okay, I’ll get right on that.” Responsiveness is a substantive communication, such as, “I’ve reviewed the materials you sent me and I think we should go forward.”

We spend much of our day responding to others, but it’s when we’re truly responsive that we’re being productive. Seek ways to improve our communications to make them as responsive as possible. Moreover, eliminating the unnecessary responses – “Okay, I’ll get right on that” – will increase the amount of time you can produce responsive communications. 

Communicating with Effect

Try some of these simple suggestions to make you more responsive, instead of just responding more:

• Leverage All Communication Tools Appropriately. Technology has increased the number of ways we communicate with each other. Each has its place and each can be fine tuned to increase productivity. Here are some thoughts. Asynchronous communications – e-mail, texts, and tweets – are terrific tools for providing one-way communications, such as an analysis of a topic or delegating a simple assignment. They are NOT good for discussing intricate issues or developing complex ideas. Phones provide a great way to do these higher-order efforts when distance is an issue. Of course, meetings are the very best way to get things done collaboratively – if done appropriately (a noted caution here.) Applying each of these tools appropriately demonstrates responsiveness to all those with whom you work.
• One Subject Per E-mail. The rest of these suggestions drill down on e-mail since it’s the most used, and often misused, communication tool today. A major mistake many of us make is to group subjects together in a single e-mail. This greatly increases the risk of confusion by the recipient, which leads to more unproductive time clearing up that confusion later. Discuss only one subject – no matter how trivial or complex – in each e-mail. They’re free! Moreover, when it comes time to file that e-mail, it will be much easier because it will only belong to one subject.
• Leverage Subject Lines. The subject line is like the RE line in a letter. It’s one of the first things a recipient sees when the e-mail is received. Leverage that first glance by providing detailed information there. What’s the e-mail’s subject? To which project or matter does it relate? Is there a (clear) deadline involved? These are the things most recipients really want to know when that e-mail hits their Inbox, so make it easy for them. In addition, it’ll be easier to find later if the need to refer back to it arises.
• Minimize the Use of Reply All. Reply All is the most overused button on the toolbar. Consider whether everyone who originally received the e-mail needs to see your reply. If not, just hit Reply and include only those who need your information. This will reduce the overall e-mail going around by a little. And a little bit now aggregates into a lot later.

Doin’ Yer Part

Being more responsive is not just more efficient.  It also increases the amount valuable information being passed between people.  Consequently, more people are better informed about whatever the subject of the communication is.  That’s a good thing!

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We are bombarded by interruptions and distractions all day long. They affect our focus and cause us to lose time getting back up to speed. If we can increase our productivity by just six minutes each day, we’ll increase our productivity by 24 hours each year. That’s three days of production this year over last! Imagine what it would feel like to have three days of work off your desk right now.

Quelling the Noise

Interruptions and distractions come at you from all angles.  Some are self-imposed.  Others are produced by others.  Still others are the product of the workspace itself.  Here are some ways to reduce the ones most often found in a modern work environment:

• Face Away from Office Traffic. Most people setup their workspace to face towards people passing by. Consider changing your position to face away from that traffic. There are two reasons for this. First, our eyes are attracted to movement. Consequently, our attention flickers up to those passing by. Even if it’s just for a moment, that’s an unnecessary interruption. Second, something far worse can happen – you make eye contact and into your workspace the passerby comes! This results in a complete interruption from what you were doing. A secondary benefit to facing away from traffic is that as people pass by, they see you working – giving further evidence to how productive you are.
• Establish “Office Hours.”To the extent that others report to you, establish times of the day that you are either available (like a college professor) or unavailable (a door-close work period.) If you choose available hours, this is when subordinates can come to you with questions. It forces them to gather together the various things they need your help on and allows you to process them as a batch together. If you choose unavailable hours, these should be used to accomplish those tasks/projects that require your utmost focus. Note, when you come out from behind that closed door, be sure to return e-mails and voice mails as soon as possible.
• Stand When Someone Enters Your Workspace. Some interruptions are inevitable – true urgency, your boss comes in, etc. In that event, we need to find ways to minimize the effect of the distraction. If you stand when someone comes into your workspace, the other person won’t sit down. They’ll feel a sense of urgency themselves – to leave! It’s a great trick to move things along without saying a single word.
• Move Your Physical Inbox Away from Your Workspace. People put things into your inbox all the time. If you’re like most, you keep that inbox close to your desk. This results in an unintended but significant interruption. Find a new place for it. If it can’t easily leave your workspace, place it in a manner that minimizes the distraction – near the door or behind you if you’re now facing away from traffic. Not all interruptions can be eliminated but their effects can be reduced which is still a positive result.

May the Quietest Space Win!

The key to good productivity is focus.  The more time you spend focusing on the task at hand, the more you will get done.  Not only will increased productivity make you feel more accomplished, a quieter workspace will lower your stress level.  It’s a win-win proposition.

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We entered the workforce well educated, but few entered well skilled.  Gaining skills on the subject matter of your job is critically important, but so too are skills for managing how you actually get your work done.  Workflow processing and organizational skills focus on the actual completion of your work – how efficiently you accomplish what needs to be done.  Consider, also, the perceptions others of have you based on whether you appear in command of versus enslaved by your work.

Concepts into Action

The following suggestions take these concepts – workflow processing and organizational skills – and wrap them in some productive behaviors.  Give ‘em a try:

• Develop a Mechanism for Removing Closed Items. One of the biggest organizational mistakes people make is failing to identify when something is “closed” and handling it as such. Work is closed when nothing further needs to be done on it.  Ask yourself, does anything need to be done on this?  If the answer is no, it’s closed.  Closed work converts into one of three things: trash, archive or reference.  Trash can be tossed/deleted.  Archive items belong in long-term storage, which is someplace other than the far reaches of your workspace!  Reference materials – things you refer to often to do your work – belong nearby but shelved.  Processing your closed items efficiently eliminates a tremendous amount of bulk from your workspace and visually demonstrates a greater command of your work.
• Use an Electronic Task Management System. Your e-mail Inbox is a good place to keep you incoming and unprocessed e-mail.  It’s not a good place to keep your tasks.  Written tasks lists suffer from the inefficiently of being rewritten periodically.  An electronic task management system allows you to put all your to-dos in one place and mange them more efficiently.  The result is that your Inbox gets cleaned up and you don’t have to constantly re-write your task list.  Note, utilizing the reminder mechanism built into most electronic tasks management systems allows you to spread reminders out into the future ensuring that you’ll never forget anything.
• Drive for Defined Deadlines.  There is a sense of urgency attached to everything we do today.  Unfortunately, the most common deadline associated with this sense of urgency is vague.  Specifically, “A.S.A.P” and “Urgent” are not specific.  Neither deadline appears on calendars, which, ironically, marginalizes the sense of urgency attendant with them.  Whenever you are given such a deadline, diplomatically seek to further define when something truly needs to be done.  For example, respond that you’re looking forward to working on the matter and would Wednesday at noon be satisfactory?  Remember, no sarcasm or irony.  Just present an honest, sincere question that is being asked in an effort to maintain command of your workload.  The work giver may stop-up short when first presented with this much clarity, but they’ll soon adjust.  If this doesn’t solve the problem, enlist the work giver’s assistance in determining which A.S.A.P. is the most urgent and which is second most urgent.  Again, no sarcasm can be emoted or your efforts will be undermined.
• Do One More Thing. We work about 220 days each year. Try this suggestion:  at the end of each day, before going home, do one more little thing.  Don’t do two or five.  Do just one.  And make it a little thing.  Return one quick call or e-mail.  Put something away, process a stack of files growing musty in the corner or your workspace.  If you do just one more little thing each day, you’ll get 220 more things done thing year than last.  That’s a lot of stuff!

The Benefits of Being in Command

Honing your organizational and workflow management skills does more than just increase your productivity.  It also increases your sense of accomplishment and career satisfaction.  Thus, there’s more to these work-a-day behaviors than just getting the piles off your desk.

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Time itself cannot be managed. It ticks inexorably forward. However, we can manage our behavior to make the most of the time we have. All behaviors employed to best utilize time should target one thing: sharpening focus. The more you focus on the task(s) at hand, the more productive you will be, which will also lower your stress. Increased focus is attained by reducing the interruptions and distractions that pull you away from what you’re doing.

Small Changes Make Big Differences

See if these suggestions help you stay more focused during the day:

• Turn Off New Message Alerts. One of the worst interruptions we suffer is the self-imposed new message alerts on our computers and mobile devices. When they sound or flash, these alerts disrupt what we’re thinking about and distract us away from the effort at hand. Consider this math: a four-second distraction to look at the new e-mail preview multiplied over 100 e-mails per day totals 400 seconds. That’s six and one-half minutes of activity with no corresponding productivity. Aggregating these seconds over a 220-day work year results in over 24 hours of lost productivity!
• Do One Thing at a Time. A recent Stanford University study concluded what we already know intuitively: people don’t multitask well. Consider the last time you tried to have a conversation with someone who was also checking their e-mail. Not very effective, right? The reason is simple. There’s a small cost to each switch of your attention. It’s called, conveniently, a switch cost and it adds up quickly. Just like the new e-mail alerts above, anytime you try to do more than one thing a time, your brain needs a moment between activities to cycle up. The solution is to work on only one thing at time. Work on that one thing until a logical breaking point, put it down and work on the next thing. The results are pretty amazing because you’ve eliminated the switch cost, making you more efficient and more productive. Dare we say that you’re “in the zone?!”
• Schedule Time Between Appointments. Running from meeting to meeting or phone call to phone call is the norm today. The problem isn’t that we have a lot of appointments – though there’s fodder for that cannon too – the problem is how we’re scheduling them. As you dash from one meeting to the next, details about the last meeting are leaking out of your memory. In addition, as you roll into the next meeting, your brain is still processing the last meeting and you’re not focusing on the topic at hand. It’s a lose-lose proposition. Try placing five minutes between appointments so you can jot down any thoughts you have about the meeting/call you just finished before you start up on the next. You will capture the maximum amount of information about each appointment and sharpen your focus on the next event.
• Sequester Yourself. Today’s workplaces are replete with open doors and open spaces. People passing through and by these spaces create distraction. One of the worse distractions occurs in your own workspace. There you are working away on something, intently focused and making headway. Then, all of a sudden, someone is standing there! There is no larger interruption than that. To minimize those events, simply remove yourself from the situation. Take one (or, at most, two) things you need to get done and find a quiet space to work. An empty office works, as does a conference or caucus room. A local library or meeting room in your office building/complex will also suffice. When you go to that location, sit down, do the work you have with you (remember, one or two items), then head back to your normal workspace and return any messages you received while you were gone.

What You Do Makes a Difference

You only get so much time and what you do with it affects how much you get done and how successful you feel!

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I just read a terrific post by the Time Managmenet Ninja titled 5 Swft Tips To Help Empty Your Inbox.  Each of these simple recommendations can make managing your e-mail easier.  I added one suggestion to the post and thought it worthy of posting here too!

The suggestion was to save e-mails as files outside of your e-mail application.  Here is the how-to:

Let’s say you are a professional service provider, so you have clients and matters for each client.  Thus, your  filing system for all things related to your work are set up as a folder for the client and subfolders for each matter.  (Note, you may also use numerous subfolders under each matter to further divide up the things you need to save – e.g., correspondence, etc.). 

We’re going to use this same system for storing your e-mails.  However, these folders are best created on your hard drive or network drive, not in the e-mail application itself.  The reasons are (1) you can overload your e-mail application causing it to slow down or, worse, become corrupt, and (2) you are now storing all information relating to that client/matter in one place – on your hard drive – instead of two – in your e-mail application and on your hard drive for other electronic files that you collect during the pendency of this matter.

Whenever you get an e-mail that relates to the client/matter in question, simply click File > Save As in the menu bar for the e-mail.  I prefer to save everything as Save As Type: XXX-Unicode.  (Note, I use Microsoft Outlook, so the file type is Outlook Message Format – Unicode).  This creates a saved file in my client/matter file for that message, including all the attachments.  You can also re-title the new file before clicking Save to make it easier to find in the future.

If you just want to save the attachment in an e-mail, you can click File > Save Attachment and save just the attachment.  (Alternatively, you can right click on the attachment and do the same).

Once the e-mail is saved as a “document” in your on-board filing system, you can delete it from your e-mail client.  This lightens up both your Inbox and your e-mail application!

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