I’m excited that after this week, the hardest and most time-consuming parts of writing my book will be over.  It will be off to the publisher, and I’ll just have to approve the production version, where I’m really not supposed to change anything but the most glaring errors/omissions/problems.  I keep saying that after this week, “I’ll get my life back.”  I have many things I’ve been wanting to do in other parts of my life that I look forward to pursuing later this month.  Whether or not I get to those will determine whether my imbalance was really temporary.  I’ll keep you posted! =)

So what happens if you have that kind of life, with back-to-back appointments and every minute planned out and a crisis occurs? Crisis, here, means any unforeseeable, unplanned situation that you have to respond to. It doesn’t have to mean an earthquake, it could be the flu that knocks you flat, or a car problem that leaves you stranded and makes getting to your meetings impossible.

Without flexibility in your schedule, your efficient system shatters. But if you build flexibility into your schedule, if you leave room for the unexpected, it’s a lot easier to cope with the unforeseen. And it creates opportunities to put final touches on projects or make last minute phone calls that otherwise wouldn’t have fit into your tightly-wound, intensely-planned schedule.

Building flexibility into your schedule can be approached as a simple math problem. Let’s say that you, like me, get up at 7 a.m. And at some point, maybe 8 p.m., you determine that you’re done for the day. It’s time to start unwinding. In a five-day week, that means you have 65 hours of “productive time.” If you plan up 90 percent of that—58.5 hours—and something goes awry, you will have to cancel appointments, miss deadlines and be generally stressed. But what if you only filled up around 60 percent? That’s still 39 hours a week, and there’s no law against being productive the other 19 hours. But you’ve given yourself room to make adjustments for a crisis, should it arise.

If the crises doesn’t happen, you can use the time to be proactive, knock items off your to-do list, catch up on reading, social media, bills, exercise, or whatever seems like the best use of your time.

Sixty percent may not work for you but it’s a good benchmark to start with. In any case, it will ease your stress level. Little issues like unexpected traffic or copiers out of ink don’t have to throw off your whole day.Try it out and see how productive you can be!

Thanks for reading!

Did you ever wonder why lion tamers use chairs, holding the seat of the chair or stool and pointing the legs at the lion? Do lions have some inordinate fear of chairs? Nope, lions are like us. They get overwhelmed with too much information. The lion tries to focus on all four legs at the same time. He can’t. So he becomes distracted, overwhelmed, passive.

Whether you’re an executive in a big corporation or a solopreneur, you probably have exactly the same problem. Most of us have piles of paper reflecting jobs that need tending to, pages of unread emails reproducing in our inboxes, phone calls yet to be made and blogs and other social media with embarrassingly old dates on them.

The pile of old work to be tackled produces a stressed out, overwhelmed, drowning feeling that has a paralyzing effect. When you sit down at your desk and you think to yourself, “What do I need to do now?” the sheer number of potential answers to that question is completely overwhelming. It probably causes you to retreat into some sort of busy work, something that is easy, familiar, and doesn’t require a lot of thought. For most people, this means email.

It’s just so much easier to go look at new business coming down the pike than try to figure out what to do about the pile of old business.

Like the lion, we’re reacting, and our reaction is to retreat.

As long as we don’t have a system in place to manage all the inputs, we’re faced daily with what I call Lion Syndrome: the passivity brought on by too much to think about. And the old tasks continue to pile up, or get done at the last minute, in a shower of stress. When we have an hour, or heck, 30 minutes to get something done, we need to easily, painlessly be able to answer the question: “What do I do need to do now?”

With a New Year starting, it’s a great time to resolve to overcome lion syndrome and take action that will put us back in control. This means systems of organization and action that really work. That’s what I’ll be talking about in 2012. Keep reading and step by step, we’ll overcome Lion Syndrome.

If you want some hands-on learning, about avoiding Lion Syndrome and other ways to lower your stress, get more done, and achieve your significant results, consider joining me in Austin for my next seminar.  Read more and register here.

photo by Eric Kilby

Then there are the items that really need to be done in order for your life to run smoothly and according to plan, yet they aren’t nearly as important as other things on your list, and as a result, you just can’t seem to get them done.  These include routine household chores, like cleaning, laundry, and errands.  They could also include business tasks like filing, event assistance, transcription, or data entry.

My advice for these “shoulds” and low-importance needs is to get help.  If you are a busy professional and aren’t getting any help in your life, whether it’s a cleaning person, some part-time admin or household help, or specialty services, then I think you are missing an opportunity to create the time and space to achieve your significant results.  Some people call this delegating.  I like to think of it as empowering yourself or someone else.  Offloading these tasks can be empowering in several ways.  It can empower you by freeing you up to do the things that you are best at, the things that only you can do, the things that will have an impact on your life or work if they get done – your significant results. It can be empowering once you’ve found a source to get that item done for you.  It can be empowering to someone else because it can give them an opportunity to learn something new (for example a staff person or intern) or gain a new customer (if it’s outside help).

There are many resources to get “just a little help,” whenever you need it.  Websites like Elance and Guru provide specialty business services.  Many colleges and universities have resources for college students to make extra money.  Here in Austin it’s Hire a Longhorn.  Other Austin resources are Avail Assistants and Let Kelly.  There may be businesses like this in your town too.  What might be my most favorite new service is Taskrabbit.  As of this writing, they are “coming soon” to Austin but they aren’t here yet.  See if they are in your city and check them out.  I think their business model is brilliant.

The more “shoulds” and low priority items you clear from your list, the more you are free to do the things you’re best at; the things that offer you the highest payoff in your life; the things that you truly love to do – your significant results.  For example, maybe you’ve been longing to start a part-time business doing something you enjoy.  If you didn’t have to mow the lawn, organize the garage, or fix the leaky faucet on the weekend, you could devote the time instead to generating extra income from your hobby.  What have you been wanting to do “as soon as you find the time?”  Could unloading some of your “shoulds” create the time you’ve been looking for?

If you know of another service like those I’ve mentioned above, please add them to the comments!  Thanks for reading!

Our days are often filled with meeting deadlines, paying bills, and updating our social media, not to mention cleaning clothes and making sure there’s something besides jelly in the fridge. It can be really hard to turn away from those immediate demands and invest time and focus on distant future goals. After all, they’re not quick-hit tasks. Frequently long-term goals require multiple steps that don’t have immediate payoffs – tasks like building relationships, personal development or sticking to a schedule over a long period of time.

A long-term goal may require you to push yourself out of the house and away from all the fires you’re putting out to attend networking events where you may or may not meet your next dream client or boss. They may require going back to school, paying for a class and spending hours taking notes and doing homework that won’t help pay the bills any time soon. They may include getting to the gym every day and investing an hour or two in your health and fitness.

They’re not activities you can just check off a list so it’s easy to put them off until later, and later, and later, until they’re collecting dust.

But as inspirational leaders like Steven Covey and Tony Robbins agree, you wind up where you’re headed. You must keep your goals in front of you if you ever hope to achieve them. You must make a plan for your days that includes taking steps toward your goals. As Antoine St. Exupery wrote: “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

So go dig that goal out of whatever file you stuck it in and start applying your attention to it. First, turn it into a project. For example, “Get fit” might be a goal but it’s not a project because you won’t know when it’s completed. So the project may be, “achieve a resting heartrate under 70,” or “run the Austin Marathon in 2012.” Now decide, what specific steps does the project require? How can you work one or more of them into your schedule every day? How can you motivate yourself to focus on that long-term goal, even when all the daily tasks are pulling at you? You need a process so that you are in control, and not always reacting, because in reaction mode, you’ll never have time for your own dreams.

You owe it to yourself to move toward the destination you’ve chosen for yourself.

Thanks for reading!

The holidays are the one time many of us recognize how unrealistic our expectations of ourselves can be. Some people can’t wait until it’s over so they can take down the decorations and get back to burning the midnight oil without feeling guilty.

But what if, instead of piling your plate with responsibilities and then trying, like a duty-bound holiday feaster, to shove it all in, you planned exactly how much to put on your plate?  What if you came out of denial and admit that you’ve actually bitten off far more than you can chew, and actually started saying no?

Enough with the revelry metaphor.

Most of us would say that having balance in our lives is a goal and even a priority. But we have habits that prevent us from ever coming close to balance. If, for example, we don’t want to work nights and weekends, eat dinner at the computer and feel stressed all the time, we need to figure out how much we can accomplish in the time we do want to allot to work.

We need to say no to things that might be great—at a different time. But right now they would just turn into a nightmare, like remodeling the house, chairing the committee or taking on the really needy client. We need to choose peace of mind over whatever rewards would come from the activity that also brings the extra stress.

On the other hand, balance is different for everyone. For some people—say artists or inventors—working could be the way they achieve not only a sense of purpose and income but also self expression, relaxation, centeredness.  For some people, stopping work actually leaves them discontented and dissatisfied.

So the key to balance isn’t necessarily some specific split between work and play. It’s about coming out of denial about whether the schedule you’ve chosen for yourself is working. Does it work because you never stop working? Do you feel balanced or do you feel stressed out?

Let the holidays remind you for the new year: If you want to be merry, be realistic about what balance means in your life and what choices you need to make to achieve it.

Thanks for reading!

The human brain is not very good at recalling details.

It’s that very reason that caused you to jot a grocery list in the first place – you know better than to think you can remember it with any kind of accuracy.

Why then, do most of us completely forget this truth when we plan and manage our daily lives?

When I’m working with a client to improve their productivity, one of the first exercises I have them do is to sit down and “brain dump” everything they’ve committed to, every task they need or want to do, every goal they have, everything they owe someone else, everywhere they’re supposed to be in the coming days and weeks.

Guess what? Most people can’t do it quickly or comprehensively. Usually, they need to rack their brain, scroll through their email, check saved voicemail messages, gather all the notes scattered around, and shuffle through the piles of mail on the desk.  And they’re always quite certain that they’re forgetting something.

This tells me that they’re trying to rely on their brain to remember what’s important, and using a mishmash of reminders to support this gargantuan task. Not only is this a pretty futile way to stay on top of the details of a busy life, it doesn’t feel very good, either. The stress of frantic searching and the fear of remembering an obligation an hour too late are uncomfortable reminders that this method isn’t foolproof.

Assuming that we have a limited amount of “space” in our brain, perhaps cluttering it with details that can’t easily be remembered is not a good idea. Not only are we particularly bad at it, but it also takes up brain power that would be better used for things like creativity, brainstorming, problem solving, and imagining.

Albert Einstein was noted as saying, “Never memorize what you can look up” and most of us honor this principle when it comes to world capitals, grandma’s recipes or friends’ phone numbers. The challenge is to view all your life details as data that you can (and should) file away and then “look up” as needed.

To solve this problem, I recommend taking all the tasks and appointments uncovered in the “brain dump” exercise above and putting them in a single place, with the goals of:

• Capturing all the required details,
• Storing them in a way that is easy to track,
• Organizing them in a way that gives you clarity, and
• Prioritizing and setting reminders to push you toward your goals.

So give yourself permission to forget! The secret is getting the details out of your head and into a system that is logical and useful; one that sophisticated enough to handle the complexity of your busy life, but is not overly burdensome; one that becomes a simple addition to your workflow that you can rely on, so you can use your brain space for more useful and productive things.

For help getting started, check out this post and this post.  Thanks for reading!

Aside from the effect on the developing brain, what is paper’s place in managing the details of a modern life?  I always have many people in my trainings who are “list-makers,” and many of those people still make lists on paper, even younger ones.  I was one of millions of people worldwide in the 80′s and 90′s who carried the huge paper-based planner inside the zippered leather binder, and I managed my life very efficiently with it for many years.

In the early 2000s, I reluctantly made the switch from paper to electronics.  I knew this was where the business world was headed, and I wanted to be prepared to teach my clients.  While my paper planner was efficient, I quickly realized that the increased efficiencies and productivity gains offered by electronic tools were so great, paper simply couldn’t compete.  I realized that one would have to work much harder and take so much extra time to use a paper-based planning tool, that the financial and time investment made in the technology would provide returns almost immediately.  That was more than 10 years ago, and the technology has advanced still more to bring so many conveniences, I find it hard to remember how I lived without them!

I still believe that it’s worthwhile to hand write notes, but I also believe that the most efficient thing to do is to then transfer the relevant parts of those notes into an electronic planning tool. (I now do most of my handwriting on my iPad using the PenUltimate app, which gives me the best of both worlds.)

First, for those “list-makers,” a handwritten list on paper is simply no match for all the ways that modern technology has created to distract us.  In your work environment, you are probably facing at least one computer screen (maybe two), a screen on your handheld device, and maybe even a screen on your desk phone and a television or two, depending on your industry.  Matt Richtel, technology writer for the New York Times, calls this “screen invasion.”  Each of these screens has motion and lights and colors and sounds and all methods of stealing your attention.  Unfortunately, your handwritten list is simply no match for current technology.

Just a partial list of other advantages of electronics over paper for managing the details of your life:

• you never have to rewrite or otherwise spend time recreating anything generated electronically
• paper can’t remind you of things
• paper can’t be backed up in any realistic way
• duplicating paper takes time and is cumbersome
• paper takes up much more space than electronic storage
• writing things on paper usually takes more time than capturing them electronically
• electronics provide more media offerings – such as pictures, videos, audio, or text
• a living document on paper is difficult or impossible to share with others in different locations

Because of all this, I found it curious that David Allen has just released for 2012, the “GTD Coordinator(R),” a paper planning tool.  This is a joint effort between David Allen and MeadWestvaco (a paper company).  I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that Mr. Allen, author of Getting Things Done, would launch a paper planning tool, since his book is full of advice on using note cards, notebooks, and endless file folders, but I always thought that was just because the book was written so long ago (although it was published in 2002, at the end of the year that I was making my switch to electronics.)   While his methodology is great, I just can’t imagine why someone who teaches productivity systems and processes would advise a tool that is so woefully outmatched by current technology.

I believe that handwriting and paper still has its place, and paper might work best for you.  But we have so many more technology conveniences today, and I’ve found that your productivity can improve significantly by harnessing those conveniences.  (Check out this post and this post for some suggestions.) So to best capitalize on the productivity improvements of the 21st century, I suggest you pass on the GTD Coordinator.

Thanks for reading!

I want to point out some of the reasons I’ve seen these used, and give you some ideas for improving your effectiveness with email.

Cc for FYI

Bad Idea: Sometimes a cc is used to “keep people in the loop.”  Perhaps you copy someone on an email because you want them to know what’s going on.  This is not the best way to keep your co-workers informed.  First, your recipient has to read through the message to figure out why they got it.  And then they may not glean from it what you intended them to know.  What’s more likely, if the message is not addressed to them, they probably didn’t read it at all. Maybe they just deleted it, or perhaps they moved it to a reference folder, or they marked it as unread but kept it in their inbox.  All of these are ineffective for the recipient, because they cause clutter, but also you have not met your objective by sending it to them in the first place.  This is one of the most frequent causes of communication breakdown in an organization.

Better: If you want someone to know something you’ve put in an email, cut and paste the information and send it in a separate email directly to them.  Then there is no chance for misinterpretation and a lower chance that it will be overlooked.  Alternately, address them directly in the original message, near the top. For example, “Hi Jane – I’m writing to summarize our meeting.  Mary, I’m copying you because I wanted you to know what we agreed upon yesterday.”

Cc for CYA

Bad Idea: Maybe you’re not really sure if you’re on the right track, so you copy your boss, figuring that this will give her an opportunity to correct you if she doesn’t agree with your course of action.  See above.  She’s probably not reading it, and copying her does not absolve you of responsibility anyway.  This is another source of communication breakdown within an organization, sometimes with damaging results.

Better: Run your intentions by your boss prior to the communication.  Or, as above, address your boss directly in the message and invite her input.  For example: “Jane, I think we should go with the 5×7 flier.  Mary, please let me know if you disagree.”

Bcc for Private Communication

Bad Idea: You’ve probably heard at least one horror story about a Bcc gone embarrassingly awry.  A common use for bcc is to share a message with someone that you don’t want the recipient to know you shared.  Ethics aside, there is simply too much potential for unintended consequences with a bcc.

Better: If you want to privately copy someone on a message, send it to the primary recipient, then go into your “sent” folder and forward the message, alerting the “private” recipient  why you are sending it to them.  For example, “Mary, below is the message I sent to Jane to call attention to her frequent tardiness.”

Employing these ideas can allow you to set an example for communication within your organization, minimize communication breakdowns, cut down on email clutter, and save everyone some time.

If you have other ideas or thoughts, of course I’d love to read them in the comments.  Thanks for reading!

Some people may remember that I won a book contest last year, and that was the first event that prompted me to move forward in the book-writing process.  The prize for winning that contest was advice and assistance to get a book published, either self-published or help landing an agent and/or a publisher.  I began researching the publishing process, learning about both traditional and newer processes for bringing a book to market. I decided to start writing and figure out the publishing later, and perhaps it was the “law of attraction” at work, but shortly after, I was contacted by an acquisitions editor at Wiley.

I’m so excited to work with them, as Wiley is the oldest independent publishing company in the world, and even though I’m not an employee, their corporate practices are important to me.  Happily, they have made several of Forbes’ “Best” lists, including “400 Best Big Companies to Work For,” “100 Best Companies to Work For,” and in Australia, the government’s “Employer of Choice for Women” citation.

Given that the book is about my work, and a topic I’ve been studying for almost 20 years, I foolishly thought that writing a book about it wouldn’t be that difficult.  So far it is proving to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  Luckily, I need to employ virtually every tip, technique, and process that I teach in order to stay on track, meet my deadlines, and produce a result I can be proud of.  And chronicling the process gives me more content for the book!

Watch for a new page on my website, coming soon, which will have continual updates about the content, the publication date, and, of course, the launch party!

I have so much appreciation for my friends, my family, my clients, and the amazingly supportive business community in Austin, Texas that have helped me get to this point.  Click here for more details and to purchase.

To me, control is the secret to productivity.  But not only to productivity.  Control is the secret to living a life of choice.  To living the life that you want to live.  Specifically, control over your own attention.

Consider this common problem.  Have you ever had the experience of going to work knowing that there were just two or three really important things you had to get done that day?  They are weighing on you as you start your day, but before you know it, it’s four o’clock, and you’re dismayed (and a little astonished) to discover that you haven’t had a chance to tackle those things yet!  This means you’ve allowed other people dictate your day.  At the micro level, it is detrimental to your productivity.

Now consider a larger scenario:  have you ever reflected at the end of a year, or around New Year’s Day, or on a birthday, and found yourself thinking, “Wow, another year has gone by, and I still haven’t made any real progress on XXX.”  You haven’t gotten the promotion, you didn’t go back to school, you didn’t start the side business, you’ve made no progress on your “bucket list.”  If you’ve ever found yourself a little disappointed that you haven’t made any progress on those life goals that you’ve set for yourself, then you have experienced this lack of control at the macro level.

If too much time goes by without your exerting control over your attention, not only does it affect your productivity on a daily basis, but you may eventually realize that your life is not on the track you originally intended.  Your days are the building blocks of your life.  If you manage your attention and what it produces each day, then you can orient your productivity toward the larger, and more rewarding, goals of your life.

Thanks for reading!

Let’s say you’re having a communication with someone over email about some subject, and you’ve created a folder for this topic where you file these communications so you have a record.  But then at some point, one of you picks up the phone and you bring some issues to a conclusion verbally.  Now your email record is incomplete.  “Post to this Folder” is designed to accommodate exactly this situation.

Here’s how to do it:

In any window in Outlook, clicking on the “New” button will bring a new item for that window.  For example, in the email window, clicking on “New” will bring up a new email. However, in every Outlook window, there is a little drop-down arrow right beside the “New” button. If you click on this drop down arrow, you will see a list of your choices for a “new” item.

1. Click on the folder that contains the history of the email communication you want to add to.
2. Click on the drop down arrow beside the “New” button, and select “Post in this Folder.”
3. Here you can add a subject and then the content of the conversation. When you click “post,” it will appear in the email list above the most recent message you’ve moved to that folder.

Read here about keeping lists in Outlook’s “Notes’ feature. For more Outlook tips, and ideas on productivity and organization, visit regainyourtime.com.

Research suggests that the concept of the “new” and the “novel” creates a “dopamine squirt” that reinforces the behavior. But it’s not only about how often we check it. I think there is a certain comfort in the stability of it, the understanding, the sense of accomplishment, no matter how brief or false. But there is something that feels “easy” about knowing that a big part of your day must be devoted to emails. It’s like having a big long list that we can check something off of every few minutes. It’s not hard, it often doesn’t require a lot of brain power…in fact it could even be called “busy work.” There is an attraction to that, which reinforces the already-present lure of the dopamine squirt.

My recommendation for managing email is to review as often as you feel is necessary, process to zero at least a couple of times per week, and do what needs doing at the appropriate time. So let me explain each of these in a bit more detail…

Personally, I can let days go by where I just skim my messages on my phone, address some that need no response or just a quick reply, and potentially address others by making a phone call instead of emailing back. This is what I call reviewing. I only allow myself to do it on my phone, because using my computer introduces too much temptation to get drawn into email and then nothing else gets done. During this time, I don’t take the time to really process any or most of them. I only address email on my computer when I’m prepared and ready to process.

But after a few days I know that I’ve let it go long enough…there are items that need more attention, that perhaps didn’t start out as urgent, but I know I’d be shirking my responsibilities and commitments if I didn’t address them soon.

Which means that at least one day per week, I know I have to set aside a stretch of hours where all I have to do is process my inbox. Merlin Mann, of 43 Folders.com and Inbox Zero, describes process as “more than checking, less than responding.” David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, describes process as “deciding what actions to take on stuff.” Process to me means dealing with every single message, and either deleting it or otherwise moving it out of my inbox. When I’m done, my inbox will be empty, but this can only be accomplished if I halt the messages from downloading. I have my client set so that the messages only come in when I press the Send/Receive button. So on these days, I know that all I have to do is get myself a cup of coffee, press that Send/Receive button (because I might as well deal witheverything, right?) and just move on down the list, one after the other, reviewing, answering, deleting, filing as necessary,if it won’t take more than a few minutes, and I have all the information I need to dispatch it. When I’m done, my inbox is empty, and I know I’m current on my communications (at least for the moment, because I know if I press that send receive button, more messages will come). But I don’t press that button, and so for the moment, the processing is complete, and my inbox is at zero (great feeling!)

However, this doesn’t mean I’ve taken action on all of them. Some things I will have to save to do at a later date, maybe because I need more information, or because it will take many minutes or hours to complete, or because I need someone else’s help. In this case, whatever action is required gets moved to my to-do list, so that I can do it when I have the answers, time, and resources available to me.

Review, Process, Do: this is the methodology I recommend for dealing with the constant barrage of email most people are subjected to on a daily basis, and it’s an important piece of my Empowered Productivity System. There is no question that it takes time and if email is part of your world, you should plan for that time. I disagree with David Allen on many things, but on this we agree: managing your email inbox is part of your work.

Usually people can’t predict the relief they get from an empty inbox until they have one. I suggest you try it. Thanks for reading!

As I tell my clients all the time: you can only be productive when you’re being proactive.  And you can only be proactive when you’re not being reactive.

So my suggestion is this: rather than stopping what you’re doing to immediately react to (take action on) every communication that reaches you…instead, tackle those items on your to-do list, and in between, set aside times in the day when you will respond to communication.  The action required by the communication may fit into your plans for your day.  If you expect that it will take longer than you have time to allocate that day, based on the priorities you’ve set for yourself, then make the conscious decision to either rearrange your priorities, or simply respond and say that you will take action at a later time.  This is thoughtful action as opposed to reaction.

Dwight D. Eisenhower is quoted as saying, “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”  This led to what began as the “Eisenhower Matrix.” Decades later, Steven Covey adapted it in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  The basic idea is to be sure to understand that “urgent” does not necessarily mean “important,” and that “important” is often not “urgent.” So spend as much time as possible on the things that are important but not necessarily “urgent,” (what I call proactive time) and spend as little time as possible on the things that seem “urgent,” but are not necessarily important (reactive time).

Implementing this distinction puts you in control of your attention and your time, attending to the things you deem important, rather than constantly working on everyone else’s schedule.  As I like to say, this behavior “empowers” your productivity.

Thanks for reading!

Studies have shown that people who exert more control over their lives are more likely to describe themselves as happy.  Personally I find that it not only makes me happy, but also productive, and my experience with my clients also confirms this.

I recently reached out to Dr. Craig Knight, of the University of Exeter, to ask him about a study on this topic that he conducted with Dr. S. Alexander Haslam that was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.  The study measured the well-being and productivity of employees based on their control over their work environments.

Drs. Knight and Haslam explored the affects on productivity of three different approaches to office organization: lean, enriched, and empowered.  The lean approach prescribes a work space free from everything except that which is required to get the job done – a rather austere environment devoid of decoration, ornamentation, or personal touches.  The enriched approach suggests that plants, art, and other furnishings (i.e., an office “decorated” by corporate owners or managers ) create a superior environment in terms of worker well-being and productivity.  The empowered office is one that puts workers in charge of the decor of the office, providing input into common spaces and having total control over their own work space.

Their experiments led them to draw the conclusion that the empowered workers report both greater well-being and productivity:

In both experiments, well-being and productivity were enhanced by enriching a space…and then further enhanced by empowering participants…within the same working environment. However, disempowering participants…had the effect of significantly compromising both well-being and productivity.

One of the greatest difficulties of the technological advancements of the 21st century is that it leads us to a life so full of opportunity, information, and communication, that we can be left feeling like we are at the mercy of all of the details necessary to run this life successfully: working hard to simply keep up with all of the commitments, communication and information that bombards us relentlessly.  Through RegainYourTime.com, I teach a work-and-life-management process called the Empowered Productivity System, which is designed to put you back in the driver’s seat of your life and work.  I take this approach based on the belief that the more control you feel you have over the details of your life, the happier and less stressed you will be.  And that’s a much better way to go through life.  =)

To learn more about how I can help you turn chaos into control, feel free to browse the site or call me at 424-226-2872.

Thanks for reading!

Be sure to put an out-of-office message on your voicemail and email, even if you are only out for a day or two.  It will relieve the pressure you will probably feel to stay on top of messages while you’re gone.  If you know that you have alerted people to your absence, you’re more likely to allow yourself some breathing room and actually take a break from your work communication.  This is critical if you’re out for vacation, even if it’s only one day.  If you still feel compelled to check in on your messages, you won’t be able to truly unplug and recharge, and then what’s the point of taking a day off?

If you’re going to be out for more than a day, I suggest that you change your voicemail and email out-of-office messages to say that you’ll be gone one day before you actually leave, and that you get back one day after you actually return.  Everyone is always rushing around, trying to complete a million things before they are going to be out of the office, so this will give you a little “cushion,” perhaps a few extra undisturbed hours on the day before you leave to tie up loose ends.  And often the pressure of “catching up” after we get back from a trip can ruin the last day or two, and the journey home.  If you know you have one day upon your return to get “back to zero,” before people expect to hear from you, it will make your return quite a bit less chaotic.  Remember, it’s always better to under-promise and over-deliver:  people may hear back from you before they expected, which is a better position than not getting back to them until days after they know you returned, simply because there was to much to respond to in just one day.  This is not about deceiving people, it’s just about setting appropriate expectations with others.

One other great travel tip I’ve learned:  check in early online & print your boarding passes, but leave a little extra time to check in at the kiosk at the airport as well, because by that time, the airline may have released seats and you can often get a better one than when you originally booked, and even better than when you checked in online.  What makes a better seat?  I love the Exit Row.  Advantages of the exit row:

• tons more legroom
• easier to slip by the person beside you to stretch your legs or use the restroom
• often among the first to board, which means plenty of space in the overhead bins if you need it

Disadvantages of the Exit Row:

• usually the arms don’t go up
• sometimes the seats don’t recline (especially true in the first exit row of two)
• colder – grab a blanket as you board or be sure to bring something with you if you tend to get chilly.
• often can’t use the tray table in front of you, have to use the one in the seat arm instead.

To me, the extra space far outweighs all these disadvantages, but you’ll have to decide for yourself.  For more advice on good seats, take a look at SeatGuru.

I hope these tips make your next trip a little less stressful and a little more enjoyable.  If you have learned some travel secrets along the way that save you time or make your trips easier, please share them in the comments!

Thanks for reading, and for more awesome photos by Shawn Thomas, check out his Flickr page.

Color-Coding

If you are already overwhelmed and unorganized, why would color coding your calendar and the effort it takes, be worth it? One reason is that it creates a time-use report card that can pat you on the back or get you back on track.

If you have outlined some goals for yourself, such as how many hours you’d like to spend in a week doing “x” (volunteering, exercising, billable hours, etc.), then color coding your calendar items is a great way to quickly see, at a glance, where you are out of alignment with your goals.  For example, if you’ve decided to spend four hours each week volunteering, and you’ve coded the volunteer time on your calendar as blue, a quick glance at a weekly or monthly view for all the “blue” will give you a sense of whether or not you’re reaching your goals in that area.  It also helps you to get a sense of what your week is going to look like, how it will be segmented, without having to read every appointment.

If you don’t know how to color-code your calendar, a quick search on the “help” feature of your program should provide the answer.  If you use paper, consider carrying one of those triangle-shaped highlighters that has three colors in one pen.

Block vs. Linear

Monthly, Block View

Is your default a monthly (block) view?  If so, I think you’d save some time if you switched to a weekly (and linear) view.  A block calendar shows that you have activity on a certain day, but gives you no idea how much of your day is booked without clicking on each individual item.

A week is often enough of a “big picture” view, and a linear

Weekly, Linear View

arrangement allows you to see, at a quick glance, when you are committed and when you are free.

Combining color coding with a linear view allows you to use your calendar more efficiently because it gives you the maximum amount of information in the minimum amount of time.

Thanks for reading!  And if there is something you’d like to see me cover, please request it in the comments and I will do my best to accommodate you!

Because your brain is not obedient, thoughts jump into your mind unbidden, and often at inopportune moments:  when you can’t do anything about it.  Perhaps you’re trying to focus on that client proposal, and the fact that you need to submit your expense report jumps into your mind.  Or you’re having dinner with your family and you remember that you forgot to respond to that important email.  Thoughts are often uninvited but this is the only way your brain has to remind you of those things you are trying not to forget.  The only way to quiet your mind so that you can:

• control your attention
• be present in the moment and
• focus on the task at hand,

is to capture that thought and enter it into your workflow management process so that you can take action at the appropriate time.

One popular way that people capture these thoughts is to carry a voice recorder, or utilize the voice recorder feature of their smart phone.  The idea does get captured that way, but unfortunately, without a prompt to remember to listen to the recordings, this could just become a black hole of thoughts and ideas that never see the light of day again.  Since most people are in the habit of checking their voicemails, leaving yourself a message could be a good alternative.  I find this somewhat inefficient because then my voicemail box gets cluttered with messages to myself, and those from other people tend to get buried.

Ideally, a good capture tool will not only capture the information, but it will then present it to you at a time and place that it is convenient to act upon.  For this reason, I like to use email as a capture tool.  Then I know the message will appear to me again when I am sitting at my desk and can move the item through the proper process of immediate action, delegation, suspense for future action, etc.

A smartphone offers several options for emailing myself and I take advantage of all of them.  Sometimes it’s appropriate to type, but not to speak.  In those cases, I use my iPhone to send myself an email.  Sometimes it’s appropriate to speak but not type, like when I’m in the middle of doing something else.  When this is the case, I use the Voice Memo app that comes pre-loaded on the iPhone.  Here you can record a note to yourself, and then email the audio recording to you or to someone else.  There are many voice recording apps for all smartphones, just search the app store of your device.

If the voice recording isn’t enough, there is a service-app called ReQall that will not only record the item for you, but also provide voice-to-text transcription, and in some cases automatically add the item to your calendar or to-do list.  It can also send you a reminder about that item, by text and by email.  This can be handy for location-based reminders.  For example, let’s say you’re meeting a friend for coffee at Whole Foods tomorrow from 9-10am.  While you’re there, you want to remember to pick up some muffins from their bakery.  You could set up ReQall to text you at 9:55, so you’ll receive the reminder to buy the muffins while you’re still sitting in Whole Foods, and wrapping up with your friend.

A capture tool is critical to keeping everything out of your head, because you can only manage what you can see, and you can only see what’s outside your head.  Storing things outside your mind gives you clarity about what needs to be done, and clarity brings piece of mind and lowers your stress level.  That’s why keeping everything out of your head is a critical piece of any successful workflow management system like the Empowered Productivity System.

What’s your capture tool?

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For more great images from Shawn P. Thomas, check out his Flickr page.

The best way to “remember” to do something new is to make it as automatic as you can.  Do as much as you can think of to ensure that the new behavior will occur.  Studies show that it takes at least 30 days for a new behavior to become a habit.  It’s also much easier to do things that don’t require any thought, because those take less energy.  Ask yourself, “what’s standing in the way of this happening?” and set yourself up so that any new behaviors happen as automatically as possible.  Trying to create a habit of working out in the morning?  Set your alarm clock on the shelf across the room.  Lay out your exercise clothes the night before.  Make plans with a friend to meet you at the gym.  Pay for a class or a personal training session.  All of these things will make it more likely that you will actually do the workout you scheduled on your calendar.  And every time you do that thing, it makes it more likely that you will do it again.  And again.  Until it becomes a habit.  Just like brushing your teeth. (You do have a habit of brushing your teeth, right?

Brainstorm other ways to make your new behaviors routine, easy, and requiring no thought.  Tony Schwartz, author of The Power of Full Engagement, and all around genius in my book, wrote a great article about this for the Harvard Business Review.  You can find it here.  Definitely worth the read, as is most anything that he writes.

Creating a new habit is not as easy as creating a recurring appointment in your calendar.  But you really can do anything you set your mind to.  I hope these ideas help get you started.  Thanks for reading!

The most important element of using productivity tools successfully is the “how,” or what I call the process. In my prior article, I referred to this in an analogy, which is that having a great set of clubs does not automatically make you a great golfer.  Think of adopting a good process in terms of having a good golf swing: it’s how you use the clubs that makes the difference. The better your process, the farther your tools will take you in a given work day, and the more productive you will be.

In my 17 years in the productivity industry, I have created and refined what I call the Empowered Productivity System^TM.  I chose the word “empowered” because I have come to realize that the secret to peak productivity, really to living the life you want, is regaining and maintaining control, specifically over your attention.  Controlling your attention means that you decide what gets done in your day, rather than just being swept away by all the external forces constantly demanding your attention.  Control is the difference between being proactive and being constantly reactive.  Time management is no longer relevant.  What matters now is attention management.

As you may recall from my earlier article, there are five components that a good PIM should manage well. These can be all in one tool, such as Microsoft Outlook, or in several tools, as long as they work well together. Following are those five components, and some tips on using them inside the framework of a workflow management process.

Contacts
The Contact section of any tool is primarily a storage place for contact details. Some tasks relate directly to Contacts, such as phone calls or emails, and these should be captured in your Task list. Certain professions, such as sales, may require a more complicated tool, such as a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager), however many people underestimate the Contacts features available in the PIM that they choose.

Notes
The important thing to remember about Notes is that they are for reference material. Reference materials are things that do not currently require action.  Notes give you a place to capture ideas, instructions, lists, even project details. But if an item requires action, it belongs on your Task list.

Email
Email is one of the primary culprits of lost productivity among entrepreneurs and professionals. My advice is to set aside one or two times in your day to dispatch your messages. Clear them from your inbox by deleting, filing, or creating a Task rather than letting them accumulate.  Hundreds or thousands of messages piled up in your inbox results in unproductive clutter. It’s more efficient to process email in batches a couple of times per day, than to stop what you’re doing to respond to every message when it arrives in your inbox.

Calendar
There is a distinct difference between calendar items and task (to-do list) items. A Calendar is a time-based organization tool. Anything that has a strong relationship to time goes on your Calendar. An example of a strong relationship to time is something that is absolutely happening on a certain day (like a birthday), or happening on a certain day and at a certain time (like a customer meeting). It makes perfect sense to organize these items on a Calendar.

Tasks
You may, however, have many things to do that have a weak relationship to time, meaning that you have some discretion as to when they get done.  They may have a due date at some point in the future, or may have no due date at all, but are still important to complete.  I find it useful to treat these items as Tasks and put them on a list. Your Task list tells you how to spend your time in between your calendar appointments, and is the driving force that enables you to be proactive instead of always reactive.  I suggest that you prioritize your task list by due date, instead of by “A B C” or “High Medium Low.”  You can read more about that here.

In order to be your most productive, you need a set of tools that matches the complexity of your life, but you also need a good workflow management process for using those tools effectively.  The ideas here are enough to get you started.  To learn more about the Empowered Productivity System^TM for yourself or your team, call me at 424-226-2872 or email questions at regainyourtime dot com.  Also connect on Facebook and Twitter.

Thanks for reading!