QuietSpacing

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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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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“Multi-tasking” is part of the modern-day lexicon.  In spite of scientific evidence to the contrary, people who multi-task “well” continue to be applauded as truly accomplished magicians by those of us who struggle whenever too many things compete for our attention.

The Proof’s in the Pudding

The reality is that no one multi-tasks well. Of course, some are better at it than others, but everyone is always less effective when trying to accomplish more than one thing at a time.  There are plenty of readers who will object to this position and begin citing examples of multi-tasking efficiency.  To prove my point, try this simple exercise that I learned from David Crenshaw’s terrific book “The Myth of Multi-Tasking.”

• Take out a piece of paper and a pencil or pen.
•  Think of a longer word, like “impossible” which has 10 letters.
•  On your paper create two lines of 10 dashes each, one over the other, like this:

____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____

____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____

• Find someone to time you or time yourself.
• When your timer says “Go!,” begin spelling the word “impossible” out on the top row while alternately indicating the number that letter represents in the word in the bottom row.  It’ll look like this mid-stream:

  I      M      P    ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____ ____

  1      2   ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____

• When you’re done with the exercise on this first pass, jot down how many seconds it took you to perform it.
• Now, setup the exercise exactly the same way as you did the first time, thus:

____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____

____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____

• This time just write the word “impossible” out straight through sequentially on the top line, then write the corresponding numbers each letter represents straight through on the bottom line, so that mid-stream it looks like this:

  I      M      P      O      S     S    ____  ____  ____

____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____

This is a fairly simple example of doing two things at once – spelling and numbering.  In the dozens of situations I’ve used this exercise it routinely takes people about twice as long to complete the first pass as it takes to complete the second pass through.  The reason is simple enough, you have to refocus your mind on a different activity each time you switch between spelling and numbering in the first pass, but you don’t incur that “switch cost” in the second pass.

Through Clarity Comes Focus

With the urban myth about multi-tasking debunked, we can now get down to business.  And that business is how to truly increase your productivity and, in so doing, increase your command over your workload and your sense of success when getting more done.  We all feel better when we get something done, so why not benefit from that result on the career side as well?

Attempts to multi-task negatively affect our ability to focus.  Focus is at the core of productivity and accomplishment.  The more we can focus, the more we get done. 

Achieving and maintaining a high level of focus in the modern workplace is difficult indeed.  Distractions and interruptions abound, many of them self-imposed.  My work with clients often starts with unlearning numerous bad work habits that actually reduce focus and productivity even though they were promoted as more efficient!  Let’s focus on those, if you’ll pardon the pun.

One is not the Loneliest Number

The exercise above points out that focusing on a singular task is more productive than trying to alternate focus between two tasks.  If you have fallen prey to the multi-tasking myth but are now ready to move to a higher level of productivity and success, these suggestions will help:

• Identify TODAY’S One Thing.  Most of us have dozens of things on our to-do list with more coming in each day.  Of course, everything is an “emergency” with an “ASAP” deadline.  (Note, I have yet to find ASAP on any calendar, so I’m not sure how it can be a deadline, but that’s for another time.)  A simple way to retake command of your workload is to identify the ONE thing that you WILL get done TODAY.  You are determining that this is the very most important thing in your world for today.  Hold yourself to that commitment and start knocking things off your list that you’ve been “meaning to get to” now for days, weeks, and months.
• One Thing At A Time.  This may be obvious, but if you want to increase your focus, then focus on only one thing at a time.  You can accomplish this by doing several things to your workspace.  First, clear a space on your desk (your whole desktop?) into which nothing but your one thing will reside while you work on it.   Move your computer monitor away from this space so that it’s not a distraction or, if your one thing is on your computer, minimize all other screens and turn OFF your new e-mail alert.  Finally, place your phone on Do Not Disturb and close your door.  Now, you can actually DO one thing at a time!  Of course, return voice mails and e-mails as soon as you come back online, but I’ll guarantee you that you’ll get that one thing done faster if you follow this simple procedure.
• One More Thing.  At the end of each day right before you close everything up to go home do One More Thing.  One little thing – return an e-mail (ONE), a voice mail, put something away, send out a quick instruction.  If you do that every work day of the year, you will do over 200 more things this year than last!

Recalibrate Your Behavior to Regain Command

Over the last 10 to 15 years, the pace at which we receive information has grown in orders of magnitude.  The notion of multi-tasking arose as a method for handling all these inputs.  Unfortunately, we’re just not wired that way and attempts to accomplish more than one thing at a time actually reduce our productivity and increase our stress levels. 

Finding ways to increase our focus will not only increase our productivity, but it will return us to sense of command over our work and careers.  Give the suggestions above a try and I wish you the best of luck!

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Before getting started on the substance of this post, I must give credit where credit is due. Much of the conceptual framework for this post is based on a fabulous article penned by Mary Goulet and published in Speaker magazine in April 2008. I found the content so compelling and clearly stated that I wanted to share it with my readers. Any praise you have for that part of this material must definitely be directed to Ms. Goulet.

The Difficulty of Making Decisions

We all struggle with decisions. Whenever there are options presented to us, we must always choose a path down which to go or fail to choose, which is still making a decision. The attendant risks of decision making engender stress and confusion in everyone - the more important the choice, the greater the stress endured. Yet, day in and day out, we continue to make decisions and weave our way through life.

What if there was a better, more straight-forward way to make decisions? What if we could greatly reduce the anxiety we experience when faced with options - both in our personal and professional lives? What if we could train ourselves to be more effective and efficient (and accurate) in our decision making?

The Body Parts Involved

Of course, all decisions are “made” in the mind. However, Ms. Goulet smartly identified three separate parts of the body that participate in all decision making - both euphemistically and literally. They are the Head, the Heart and the Gut. Though we could quibble endlessly about whether “gut” is really “intuition” and “heart” is really “emotion,” I like the sharp physicality of Ms. Goulet’s selectiosn and will stick with them here.

The Head

The Head brings analytical thinking to the mix. What are the facts and what do they mean in this situation? What else do I need to know about this decision? How will this play out and what are the risks of failure? What are the benefits?

The conscious mind loves to delve into these details and turn them around and around to see what shakes out. In fact, analysis paralysis - getting so caught up in the analysis that no decision is made - can result from too much “figuring.”

There has been and will always be a place for analytical thinking. The most valuable application of this type of thinking is in discovering new things. In fact, I would posit that much of what is called inspiration is often the result of dogged analysis - How can I make this better? or What else could be done to improve this process?

The big risk the Head brings to leadership decision making is over-thinking the situation and engaging in inefficient (and often ineffective) analysis. Facts are facts. No amount of analyzing them will change them. All decisions are fraught with the risk of choosing the wrong option. An extended analysis of those facts/options does not measurably change the inherent risk in the choice. Fear must be overcome, not accepted.

The Heart

The Heart contributes emotion to the process. Our hopes, dreams, and desires all deserve a nod in most every decision – personal and professional. The problem with “listening to your heart” is that the Heart is fickle. Our emotions change constantly, day by day, minute by minute. If we actually listened to the Heart all the time, we’d end up with a different version of indecision – ping ponging back and forth between options.

The lack of clarity this communicates to others is very harmful in any group dynamic, either family or professional. It is also hugely inefficient as people begin reacting to one decision only to have a second, countermanding decision issue later. This occurs even within an individual as your efforts in one direction become largely wasted if a different direction is later chosen.

Success comes from moving forward in a single direction with a concerted effort. Succumbing to fickle emotion produces a lack of clarity and diminished results.

The Gut

This is the part of Ms. Goulet’s framework that I especially liked. For me, it turned on the proverbial light bulb. I experienced one of those epiphanic “Aha” moments that we all enjoy so much. Here’s what she said:

The Gut delivers the decision. There no fuss, no muss, just a decision. Many times it’s that very decision that the Head and the Heart are working so hard to overrule. In fact, much of the energy expended in decision making is actually the efforts of the Head and the Heart to change the Gut’s decision.

It can also be said that many of us lose the decision in this cacophony of noise created by the Head and the Heart! That is, the decision is usually short and sweet, terse even. Moreover, there are rarely fireworks involved because the decision is simply a choice. It’s not a discovery. Thus, all of the analysis and all of the histrionics associated with decision making can be categorized as subterfuge, an attempt to blur and obfuscate the underlying correct decision being proffered by the Gut.

Worse, though, are the consequences of falling victim to this game played by the Head and Heart. We’ve all made decisions we’ve regretted. Many of them were clearly wrong in hindsight. Yet, the logic or emotion at the moment of decision seemed so very clear! Our minds are powerful tools and they are weapons that we use against ourselves if care is not taken.

Five-Word Decisions

As stated above, most decisions are concise statements:

Let’s purchase it.
This is not a good opportunity.
She’s the right person.
I trust him.

In fact, by their very nature as choices between divergent paths, most decisions can be stated in less than five words. Consequently, we need to seek out the five-word answers our Gut is communicating to us whenever a decision must be made.

No fanfare accompanies these decisions. Yet, they are some of the most important decisions we make as leaders and humans. Getting caught up in the hysteria of decision making reduces our ability to make good decisions. Learning to listen to the Gut - that quiet, firm, clear provider of the path to take - takes some practice.  The most effective way to do this is to clear your mind (and physical world) of all distractions for just a minute or two. Then, instead of “thinking” about the decision, listen for the Gut to give it to you.

More Efficient, More Effective and Less Stressful

The benefits of learning to hear, then trust, your Gut’s decisions means that you’ll make those decisions more quickly, which is more efficient. You’ll also make them more firmly, which is more effective. And, finally, you’ll make them with less stress because of the trust you have developed in your Gut.

Will all those decisions be correct? Probably not, but they’ll be as or more often correct than the current mechanisms you’re using to make decisions and it will provide the additional benefits listed above in the process.

Good luck!

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