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1. You have an e-book available titled “Where the !@#% Did My Day Go?” In your opinion, where DOES the day go for most people?
Our crazy-busy work and personal lives provide lots of ways to trip us up. This means it’s easy for our time to get sucked away without our being conscious of it until it’s gone. That’s what I was getting at with my title. We can look at time management problems as those caused by our external environment, verses those caused by our internal landscape. On the work environment side, some big roadblocks include overwhelming amounts of email, frequent interruptions, and ineffective meetings. On the personal side, procrastination, multitasking, distractions, and perfectionism are common obstacles. Many, many people I’ve worked with experience these, so don’t be surprised when you encounter them. They are a hazard of how our modern jobs are structured.
2. What kinds of things are at stake if a person does not take personal productivity seriously and work to improve their time management habits?
Great question. One thing I love about my field is as soon as you start thinking about how you manage yourself, it kicks off conversations about what’s important in life, and what you’re giving up because of the costs of poor productivity. An important step to improvement is to reflect for a few minutes on what more you could accomplish if you removed the unnecessary waste involved. That should be your motivation. Some specific things at stake include:
Fulfillment: Ideally we have work that lets us do what we’re great at, whether it’s treating a patient, writing a program, leading a team, helping customers, or designing the Next Great Thing. Not having a good productivity system means we might squander unnecessarily our time, instead of doing the things we really care about.
Morale: When we feel overwhelmed and out of control, we enjoy our jobs less. And people who are unhappy at work are less productive – just ask any good manager.
Health: Due to our ancient – but still active – fight or flight response to stressful events, our biological systems can be compromised at some level. While in the office we don’t usually fight tigers, our reaction to a crucial meeting or anxiety about a response to a consequential email can crank up our adrenaline just as strongly.
Self-improvement: On the personal side, not having good systems can hamper progress on things like overcoming health issues, or forming improved habits.
Work-life balance: A symptom that you have a problem is that experience of getting to the end of the day feeling tired and disappointed that you didn’t get nearly as much done as you’d hoped. When we feel this way it’s easy to feel pressure when you get home to “get caught up.” But that takes away from the relationships and love that are so important to being well-rounded creatures. Your question is especially relevant in this economy. Many of us are required to do more than ever with fewer resources, and it’s tough. I have clients who come to me because they’re now essentially doing two jobs instead of one. So anything you can do to make your work go smoother and with less effort is a no-brainer.
3. How can a person who is easily distracted best regain focus and concentrate on the tasks at hand?<>
Improving your personal systems is low-hanging fruit – what I consider the most straightforward change that can yield the biggest return. Learning a system takes time, but an example might include managing a single tasks list that contains small action steps from all projects. When done right, this means you can easily pick a task, dive into it, and get completion without feeling overwhelmed by something that’s too large, too complex, or that depends on something else. Another thing I’ve found tremendously helpful is having a daily planning routine. I wrote my e-book because I discovered that planning out tasks for the day is a kind of focus anchor. It helps laser in your attention on what you want to get done in spite of the whirlwind of activities swirling around you during the day. Because each person’s challenges are different, a good starting point is to collect some basic information about how you work during a typical week. It can give you insight into which obstacles are most getting in the way, and provide a direction for to begin fixing them. Sometimes the act of simply quantifying the problem can kick-start improvements. As a small example, if your external environment is distracting you, consider a change of venue, such as hiding out in the conference room for an hour. Another important idea is to turn off your email notification feature; having your attention fractured every minute is a major productivity killer. Even something as simple as using a timer can help. Get one, set it for 30 minutes, and commit to staying on-task for that period. There are many more ideas, of course, depending on the specific challenge.
4. What advice do you give to people who have 100 irons in the fire at any given time and think that every single one of those items is important?
On a practical level, a good start is to call each one of those irons a “project,” and pulling out a small, concrete task from each one into a single master list of action steps. During the day you work from that master list, picking off items one-by-one, focusing solely on each one, and completing it before moving on. This allows you to make simultaneous progress on multiple projects. However, people need to realize that they have limits. I’ve not had a single client who told me they have plenty of time to get everything done; it’s simply not possible for ambitious people to do. That means you have to get realistic and make conscious, hard choices – something has to give. If you’re completely swamped, have a strategy session with your boss or yourself where you clarify at what your job is, do a comprehensive review of everything you’ve said yes to, estimate how much total time they would take to complete, and then compare that to how many hours you want to work. Then start tossing. It’s hard to give something up (we naturally want it all), so instead of saying you’re never going to do a lower-priority project, trying moving it to a separate Not Doing list. You can always revisit it later if things change.
5. What time of day is most effective for pre-planning? Should one plan their day the night before, first thing that morning, or even sooner than that?
It comes down to personal preference. The advantage of planning the night before is that you have quiet breathing room to reflect on what’s important for tomorrow. It means that you can hit the ground running. All you have to do in the morning is look at your list, pick an item, and get to it! I tell people in my workshops that it’s as if someone who knows you really well has studied your work and planned a doable day for you. You can spend time executing, and not worrying over an large, paralyzing list. Planning first thing in the morning can factor in your energy for the day, and allows you to dynamically select tasks based on how the day is looking. You might check your calender and scan (not process!) your email.
6. What is the foremost rule a person looking to maximize productivity should live by?
I’d say there is no single, ultimate productivity tip. While it may sound like avoiding the question, the truth is we’re all different, both compared to one another and compared to ourselves at different times in our lives. So maybe the ultimate tip is to figure out what you currently need to boost your self management, adopt it, then repeat as needed. At times you may need a more sophisticated system, and at other times, a simpler one. The key is to be aware of your productivity as an on-going process. I think that’s a big part of being an enlightened worker. Thanks so much for asking my thoughts. Good luck!
About Matthew Cornell – MatthewCornell.org
Matt shares his expert level techniques teaching people the simple time management method to manage the overwhelming volume of “stuff” inundating their lives in order to release and focus their natural talents. The result is typically a relaxed sense of control and a significant freeing up of energy and creativity. Matt accomplishes this with clients via one-on-one workflow coaching that integrates ideas from modern “bottom-up” methodologies that acknowledge the importance of managing your focus, capturing all your commitments, and maintaining the ability to rapidly switch priorities in the face of modern work and life. Matt works out of Amherst, Massachusetts offering services including one-on-one workflow coaching,group presentations and seminars on personal productivity.
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