Tag: productivity

Productivity Where Ever You Work

Over the weekend, I found myself out of the house and half an hour early for an event.  Luckily, there was a nearby coffee house with wi-fi, nice music and a quiet place for writing, so I got some work done.  Which proves:

a. you should always check the time on your invitations; but more importantly for today,

b. we can work from anywhere these days.  Let’s call any hours worked outside of a traditional office setting “working virtually”.

Having the capacity to work from anywhere presents challenges.  How to focus on work amid the distractions of home, family, the people at Starbuck’s or in someone else’s home?   What should the workday look like in an un-traditional setting?  Working from everywhere, all the time?  Productivity is the same, no matter where we work.  We want to be able to get down to business, accomplish today’s necessary tasks, do them well and confidently, then move on to something else.

Regardless of where we work, we can reap benefits from structure and routines, just like a traditional work environment.  Keep these ideas in mind:

  • Regardless of where you work, clearly begin your day.  Shower and get dressed, check in with your co-workers or community, grab a cup a coffee, turn on the music that helps you work, check your email.  Set a timer for 15 minutes of transition time, then get to work.
  • Take a lunch and take breaks (but not too many!).  I read a suggestion recently of “Work For 50 minutes, break for 10”.  This works well for me, and helps me take advantage of working from home to take care of home tasks like laundry.
  • Give yourself many opportunities during the day for a Re-Set.  I read an article from the blog the Daily Om that suggested an “Inner Sunrise”.  The idea was that any time during your day is a good time to re-focus energy to what we are supposed to be doing.  This keeps us from working hard all day, but having nothing to show for it at the end!  I try to do this every few hours.
  • No one  needs to know that you are working virtually, or that your conference call requires a hard stop by 3 so you can pick up your kids.  In all likelihood, the others on the call are working virtually, too.

We are on the move, right?  So create a work environment that travels, too.

  • Bring along the laptop or IPad, and Communications and Information (IPhone, in      my case).
  • This could also be a phone and Your reliable planner with your schedule and      contacts, as a decision making tool
  • Also, use the same naming conventions for your paper management system and your computer hard drive.  For example, “Client – last name, first initial and date of appointment” is the same title I would use to name a file on my laptop, in my paper files and in Evernote.
  • Make your work, planner and information portable and consistent.  I do this by synchronizing all my devices all the time, at least a couple of times a day.

Increase focus by cutting mental clutter. This also heads off the tendency to procrastinate!

  • Choose your three top tasks for the day, and keep them in mind throughout your work sessions.
  • When  you start your work, you can either prime the motivation pump with a few easy and quick tasks, or tackle that big icky one first.
  • Know your self and your prime work hours.  I respond to email at 5:30 am, and get a lot of my writing done before 7 am.  I was a night owl until I had kids, now I love to work in the quiet early morning.
  • Avoid interruptions.  Turn off the phone, or be selective about what you answer. Not everyone understands the idea of “working from home”.  Set boundaries.  I don’t respond to work emails on weekends, unless pre-arranged.

Where do you do your work?  And how can we make it work better?  To quote a productivity article I recently read, “More than ever, work isn’t where you go, it’s what you do.” (Rob Keenan, head of UK portfolio management and deployment readiness management at Siemens Enterprise Communications)  So, Go Do It!

Productivity Series: Give Yourself the Gift of Routines

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I pondered this article while I started laundry this morning.  After grabbing coffee and jotting down notes, I jumped in the shower and puzzled over the closing paragraph for an article I am writing for my church’s newsletter.  I quizzed a son on spelling words while I started dinner in the crock pot and cleaned up the breakfast dishes.  After I dropped off the kids and ran my Monday errands, I sat down, booked clients and confirmed presentations via email before heading out to a client appointment.

This article is not about how organized I am.  It’s about establishing Routines and getting things done.

Let’s define a Routine, so you can start to identify and improve on yours.  A Routine is a set list of 5 or 10 habits, tasks, etc. that you complete every day to maintain your life.  Tasks for personal hygiene, household maintenance and nutrition may be included.  Your morning and bedtime routines may contain tasks like “take a shower, brush your teeth or wash your face”.  Perhaps you (or your kids) make the bed in the morning, and put laundry clothes in the hamper.  Basic maintenance – Done.  In addition, perhaps you like to meditate in the morning, or call your sister or exercise before dinner.  Every person’s routine will look different.

Call your daily maintenance tasks a “Routine”, “Daily Habits”, whatever you want.  Class participants and clients have resisted the word “Routine” because it sounds too rigid or too boring, and they may be right. But Routines are a great way to lead busy, productive and less stressed lives.

Establishing Routines moves mundane tasks out of our active thinking brain, leaving more room for more interesting things.  This morning, maintenance tasks were completed through my daily routine, and I was able to work on other things.

Because a Routine is a list, we can manipulate it, choose the order or time for the tasks, and tweak the list to make it work well.  Please note, a Routine is not your to-do list.  Routines are for the things that have to happen every day, and should quickly become automatic habits.  Unless “go to the post office” or “update your website” are things you do every day, they should not be considered part of your Routine.

Decision-making is the single biggest time waster when it comes to getting organized.  I have a client who agonizes over when to shower.  Every day.  “Getting up” and “getting moving” are not synonymous in her book.   We’re working on this, though, because puzzling over this simple and obvious task very morning is a terrible waste of her time.

This week, Create or Improve your Routines.

  • Think carefully about what you do, what you want to do and how to make things better.  Make your decisions about what to do and when, and then stick with what you decide.
  • List what has to happen every day.  Perhaps it is just looking back at your morning, or evening, or the hour after you get home from work, and listing the tasks you complete in that time.   In no particular order, you might have
    • Shower
    • Floss
    • Open mail
    • Make bed
    • Put away laundry
    • Take out trash
    • make dinner
    • Take vitamins
    • Feed the dog
  • Now look at the list, and make some improvements if you would like:
    • Group common tasks, save yourself some steps and cut out duplication
      • Using my random list above, you can group the dinner / trash / vitamins / feed dog tasks all together in the evening, if you’d like, to save yourself steps and help you focus
      • Perhaps make bed and put away laundry go together, too, as you tidy up in the morning
    • Determine if these tasks are happening too often, or not enough.  Maybe put away laundry is a few times a week, as is take out trash, instead of every day.
    • Add things that are not yet happening.
      • I never miss my morning cup of coffee, so I try to take my vitamins as I brew my first cup in the morning.  I’m not always thinking straight at that time of the morning, though, which is why I am still inconsistent about that.
      • I have taken to committing to take them before I leave the house in the morning, though, and have gotten better about that.
      • So far, I am still remiss on taking my vitamins every day and exercising on a daily basis.  And until both of those items happen automatically, I still have them on my daily to-do list.

To sum up, Make good decisions once, and save time forever. Look at the maintenance tasks you complete every day, put them in a good and logical order, make them habits (give habits 3 weeks to take root), and move on to something more exciting!

8 Tools in your Focus Toolbox

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Congratulations!  It’s a new year!  You cleaned your desk and set up your workflow.  Awesome!  Now it’s time to get to work.  And your brain betrays you.  Ugh.  Instead of focusing, it wants to be anywhere but sitting at your desk getting things done.  Oh, wait, maybe that’s just my brain.

Focus, both noun and verb, is defined as “to bring to the center of interest, to concentrate”.  When working from home, I want to make the most of my time and get my work done, so I can finish up and go do something else.  And when I am working with a client, it’s my responsibility to keep our projects on task and focused, to make the most of our time together.  Focus is very important, for me and for you.

As I’ve thought about improving focus, I’ve discovered tools to use for different people, situations, assignments or types of tasks, even different times of day.  And I guess that’s my point today.  Next time you need to really buckle down, give one of these Focus ideas a try, and find out what works for you. 

Getting Started:

  1. Start with your easiest task. Sometimes we can get our brain to focus on business if we start with a couple of easy tasks first, to quickly cross them off the to-do list.  Or….
  2. Start with your hardest task.  Spending time on your toughest task ensures some progress today.  The tough tasks are also typically the longest, so we need to make time early on to get them done.
  3. Set a deadline for your self can help you stay focused and on-task.  Instead of wondering IF you can get a task done in an hour, a day, a week, resolve you WILL get it done, and get to work.  I don’t do well with open-ended assignments, so this works great for me. 
  4. Keep a pad of paper or pile of index cards next to you, to collect distracting ideas and address them later.  Keep the idea, but don’t let it derail your focus.

While You Work:

  1. If you find your focus drifting, stop trying so hard.  It might be time to take a break.
    1. Focus on or do something else for a short time, since letting your mind wander for a few minutes can actually improve focus.
    2. Take a break and walk away.  Walk around the block, take some deep breaths.  Don’t just surf the net for a few minutes, let your eyes see something new for a bit. 
    3. Be comfortable.  I can focus a little too well sometimes.  So well that hours can pass, and then I am stiff, cold, hungry and really tired.  Take breaks to keep your self comfortable as you do your work.
    4. Count to 10.  Or 20.  Or 100.  Or backwards from 20.
  2. Music:  Sometimes music helps me, sometimes it is distracting.  Know your self.  If low background music helps you focus, use it!
  3. If repeated interruptions are sabotaging your focus, take control:
    1. Turn off the tech, and respect your own time.  No email notifications, no phone calls, no Facebook or Angry Birds.
    2. Close the door, or put interruptions in your calendar.  If someone interrupts you, pause the question for 10 seconds and finish what you are doing, promise to get back to the person at an appointed time, make a quick note of the time, and then get back to work!
  4. If you are writing and you can’t seem to focus:
    1. Start with a review of what you wrote most recently.
    2. Write anything for 3 minutes, even if it is gibberish.  Just writing words can help our brain focus. 
    3. Use structure.  Remember the 5 paragraph essay you learned in elementary school?  Make a statement; offer 3 points to prove or illustrate the statement; flesh out those points; restate your statement.  My writing often starts with these ideas, or ends up in outline form with bulleted items.  If such structures help you flesh out ideas, use them!

So, next time you find your brain wandering away from the task at hand, pull one of these ideas out of your toolbox and give it a try!  Here’s to a productive, focused brain!