QuietSpacing » QuickTips

QuickTip: Four Tips to Being More Responsive

Paul H. Burton — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:13:27 +0000

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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QuickTip: 4 Ways to Minimize Interruptions and Distractions

Paul H. Burton — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 16:21:22 +0000

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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QuickTip: 4 Tips to Better Command Your Workload

Paul H. Burton — Fri, 28 May 2010 20:32:48 +0000

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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QuickTip: 4 Time Management Tips

Paul H. Burton — Mon, 24 May 2010 16:51:15 +0000

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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QuickTip: Saving E-mails As Files

Paul H. Burton — Sat, 01 May 2010 15:33:30 +0000

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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QuickTip: Playing in Traffic is Dangerous – Increase Focus via Workspace Arrangement

Paul H. Burton — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 19:34:44 +0000

Whenever I speak to audiences about productivity, be it during a training seminar or a keynote presentation, I always, always, always recommend that they face away from passing traffic. The urge to look up is so strong and whenever we fall prey to that urge, we lose our focus.

The natural tendency to look up whenever someone passes by is instinctive. It’s probably a survival mechanism long-instilled in our psyche to observe the “threat” before it consumes us. Instead of trying to change our genetic conditioning, let’s see what other options we have.

Position A – Command Central

Most work spaces are configured such that people can see who enters them. Whether you’re in an office or a cubicle, you usually face those who approach you. I fashion this Command Central – you command your space by knowing all who enter.

Innocuous as that seems, the problem is that the human eye has a vision arc of approximately 120 degrees (see Vision Span at Wikipedia). Thus, when you’ve got your head down focusing on the work at hand, you can see quite a ways “up” in front of you. That’s why you tend to look up whenever someone passes by your work area.

Each of those slight interruptions add up over the day. Assume it’s only a two-second interruption and that it only happens 30 times per day. That’s one minute each day of “lost” time. Over the course of the average work year – about 220 days – you’ve lost four hours of productivity. That’s 1/2 of a day in head nods!

Of course, the bigger problem lies in what can happen when you look up. What’s that, you ask? That the person passing by makes eye contact, comes into your work area, sits down and starts talking to you! Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of strong working relationships with co-workers and colleagues. But impromptu team building is not the way to accomplish that goal.

The oft-quoted figure on the time it takes to regain focus once interrupted is 20 minutes. Assuming this drop-in interruption only happens once a week, you’re still losing about 17 hours of productivity each year just trying to get back on task after that impromptu conversation! Do you really want to spend two extra days each year getting your work done all in the name of unintended team building?

Position B – The Non-Feng-Shui QuietSpacing® Workspace Positioning Recommendation

The solution is to position yourself such that you face away from passing traffic. If you have an office, position your desk against the wall furthest from the door. That way people are passing by off your left shoulder. In addition to eliminating the twitch response to look up on your part, those passing by can see you are working and are more likely leave you alone! This arrangement also opens up your workspace, giving you a number of furniture arrangement options - like placing a small round table between you and the door so people have a place to come and work with you right in the office.

If you don’t have an office, you can still position yourself to face completely away from passing traffic or mostly away from passing traffic. Any reduction in the chance you’ll look up pays dividends in terms of increasing your focus and your productivity.

Less Twitching is Always Good

When you position your work space away from passing traffic, you reduce the number of instances that your attention is diverted from the task at hand. The result is increased productivity and more time on your hands to do other things – like head down to the water cooler to catch up on the latest!

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QuickTip: Are You LIFO or FIFO?

Paul H. Burton — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 21:23:09 +0000

While talking with a client last week, it occurred to me that the accounting concepts of LIFO and FIFO are a perfect way to distinguish between the way we historically processed our stuff and the way we currently process our stuff. (“Stuff” includes all the inputs that stream into our lives throughout the day.) My observation is that the rapid development and adoption of technology have fundamentally shifted the way we manage all the information we need to process … for the worse.

Quick Definitions

Before explaining my position, let me first define LIFO and FIFO. They are terms (ancronyms actually) used to financially account for inventory as it enters and leaves a business. LIFO stands for Last In First Out; the notion being that the cost of last item put on the shelf (the newest) is used when determining inventory value. In contrast, FIFO stands for First In First Out and dictates that the cost of the item first put on the shelf (the oldest) be used.

There are a number of reasons for these distinctions which go beyond the point of this article, as well as my limited understanding of advanced accounting principles. My use of these concepts here is focused more on when a particular item is addressed – is the oldest or newest of higher importance? It seems to me that we’ve moved from the old-school behavior of managing our stuff in a FIFO manner to a LIFO manner. That is, for the most part, we used to take that which was oldest on our to-do list and get it done before moving “up” the list to things that were newer. Consequently, things never got too dusty on the to-do shelf and we stayed reasonably current with our workload and deadlines.

However, as the inputs started to come at us faster and faster because of technologies like laptops and the Internet, we began to shift to LIFO behaviors – addressing things as they pounded us on the fly, leaving those that were older to rot a little longer on the to-do shelf. That behavior became firmly entrenched when smartphones started delivering the tsunami of inputs to us wherever we went.

It’s gotten so bad that people routinely send a second email or text a few minutes after the first one if they haven’t received a response yet! Huh? What about focusing on the to-dos that were already on my plate? What about client/customer service? How is that advanced when I’m yanked from input to input never having time to actually think about the right solution? Think about it for a minute. Great service and performance comes from concerted, focused effort, not lightspeed reactions and herky jerky efforts. (Note, I just deleted an entire diatribe about “ASAP,” “Urgent,” and “Top Priority.” Consider yourself on notice that they may appear in a later post.)

Relearning the Lost Art of Taking Stock

So what’s the solution? How do we regain some semblance of control and sanity in a world where inputs continually stream at us 24×7? My answer, as you’ve already guessed, is to return to a FIFO model of managing your workload. Simply put – conduct regular surveys of what’s on our plate. At least three times each day – morning, noon and night preferably – stop and look at what you’ve accomplished, what you’ve got to do and when you think you’ll get to each item. With your stock taken, adjust any deadlines that were or have become unrealistic and communicate those changes to others.

Taking stock in this way will give you a much better understanding of the existing commitments on your time. This will, in turn, allow you to better estimate when things currently on the list will get done and when those that will soon be there will get done. As you regain control and command of what’s “in inventory” and what’s coming into inventory, your sense of accomplishment and success will also rise.

Small Changes Make Big Differences

Returning to the historical way of managing your to-do list is not reverting to old, outdated habits. It’s channeling the new data inputs into a proven process for maximizing your productivity. When you’re racing against things moving at nearly the speed of light you will lose every time. If you force the inputs to slow down to human speeds, you stand a chance of managing them more effectively. Adopting the LIFO model of to-do list management will help you make that transition.

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QuickTip: Manufacturing Time – A Two-Fer

Paul H. Burton — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:37:48 +0000

Running from meeting to meeting and phone call to phone call is very stressful and it can be very unproductive. This is often an area I work with clients on and what follows are some ideas on how to make your day both less stressful and more productive. (Note, if you aren’t in a position that allows you to make these changes, consider forwarding this post on to someone who is!)

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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QuickTip: Fixing The Pavlovian E-mail Twitch

Paul H. Burton — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:31:04 +0000

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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QuickTip: The One More Thing Rule

Paul H. Burton — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 02:05:12 +0000

Several years ago, I was having lunch with a new client – the managing partner of a law firm – and we were talking about the struggle to just stay caught up with all the stuff coming at us each day. As the conversation continued, he mentioned to me that one of the little tips he’d developed was something called the One More Thing Rule.

Specifically, at the end of each day, right before shutting everything down and walking out of the office, he’d do one more little thing – return a quick call, send one last e-mail, etc. These little things literally took a minute or two, but in doing this one little thing, he was able get over 200 more things done each year. Yes, 200!

The Upside

I’ve incorporated this rule into my own workday and regularly recommend it to others. There are several direct benefits to this rule:

You get the aforementioned 200 extra things done.
You appear, and are, more responsive and effective.
You have a definitive way to determine when the end of the day has arrived.
You have one less niggly thing on your plate the next day.

The Downside

There are two risks inherent in adopting this rule:

You pick something that takes more than a minute or two and end up at the office much longer than expected.
You like the rule so much you fail to stop at just one.

The true purposes of the One More Thing Rule are to get you just a little more productive and to give you an identifiable point at which to end your day. If you start diving into larger efforts or do numerous things, you’re defeating both the spirit and benefit of the rule. So, take care when applying this principle and you will reap the benefit of increased productivity and the reward of getting home to your family earlier accompanied by a sense of greater accomplishment.

Time for me to go home!

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