by Helena Escalante | Collaboration, Goals, Leadership, Mindset, Opportunity, Planning, Productivity, Tools
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 19 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Communication Overhead
— From The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh Kaufman
Business guru, Josh Kaufman, recalls working at Procter & Gamble on a project that needed the input and approval of dozens of people. He spent three months trying to put together a workable proposal due to juggling different ideas, arguments over different approaches, and people wanting credit without doing much work. And in those three months nothing else got done! Almost all of his time was spent on communicating with other members of the group.
“Communication overhead is the proportion of time you spend communicating with members of your team instead of getting productive work done.”
Kaufman says, “There’s a reason high-performing surgical teams, military units, and sports teams tend to be small and focused: too much time spent in communication and coordination can kill a team’s effectiveness.”
The larger your team, the more you have to communicate with each of its members to coordinate action. “As the number of people you work with increases, Communication Overhead increases geometrically until the total percentage of time each individual must devote to group communication approaches 100%. After a certain threshold, each additional team member diminishes the capacity of the group to do anything other than communicate.”
What’s the solution?
Work with the smallest possible team: “Studies of effective teamwork usually recommend working in groups of three to eight people,” says Kaufman. “You’ll be leaving people out, but that’s the point—including them is causing more work than it’s creating in benefits. Removing unnecessary people from the team will save everyone’s time and produce better results.”
Finally, Kaufman shares Derek Sheane’s “8 Symptoms of Bureaucratic Breakdown” which appear in his book Beyond Bureaucracy. They are indicative of teams suffering from Communication Overhead:
1. The Invisible Decision. No one knows how or where decisions are made, and there is no transparency in the decision-making process.
2. Unfinished Business. Too many tasks are started but very few carried through to the end.
3. Co-ordination Paralysis-Nothing can be done without checking with a host of interconnected units.
4. Nothing New. There are no radical ideas, inventions or lateral thinking-a general lack of initiative.
5. Pseudo-Problems. Minor issues become magnified out of all proportion.
6. Embattled Center. The center battles for consistency and control against local/regional units.
7. Negative Deadlines. The deadlines for work become more important than the quality of the work being done.
8. Input Domination. Individuals react to inputs—i.e. whatever gets put in their in-tray—as opposed to using their own initiative.
ACTION
TODAY: Do you work with a team? How big is it? Take a moment to think how can you break it up into smaller units/teams to be more efficient.
FUTURE: As you embark on new projects that require teamwork, think of ways in which you can make the teams as lean as possible.
Be a good teammate and please share this post via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
by Helena Escalante | Creativity, Goals, Habits, Mindset, Parkinson's Law, Planning, Productivity, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 31 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Minimum and maximum limitations
— From The Art Of Less Doing: One Entrepreneur’s Formula for a Beautiful Life by Ari Meisel (read 2 chapters for free)
Productivity guru, Ari Meisel, is back! In a previous post I had shared his idea of The Hour of Power. Today I’ll share his concept of minimum and maximum limitations that comes from his awesome book The Art of Less Doing.
Let’s remember that Meisel found himself very sick and unable to work more than one hour a day for a while, so he became incredibly productive during the little time that he had to work. Nowadays, he’s made a point of continuing to set limits for his work: he gets everything done and still has plenty of time to devote to his family. “The fact of the matter,” Meisel says, “is that everyone functions better with constraints.”
We’re likely very familiar with setting time limits. We’ve talked about Parkinson’s Law before (here, here, and here). It’s the law that says: “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. And if you only have a certain amount of time to do something, very likely you will get it done within that timeframe. Thus the importance of setting time limits to avoid open-ended projects that never get done. Deadlines are important.
And setting limits can apply to physical spaces too. Meisel explains, “If you’re a pack rat and have rooms filled with clutter, tell yourself you’re permitted one box of clutter per room and that’s it!”
To further understand the process of setting limits, Meisel goes into detail about the concepts of minimum versus maximum limitations. “Minimum limits are actually more challenging than maximum limits. It’s easier to be restrictive than to be expansive. For example, it’s much easier to say ‘I have to turn the TV off by ten o’clock at night’ (maximum limitation) than it is to say, ‘I will read ten pages of nonfiction every night’ (minimum limitation).”
Minimum limitations are very effective when it comes to creating habits. “Once you create a habit and couple it with another, your rate of potential success skyrockets.”
Let’s think of exercising with this concept. Find something that you love to do (Activity 1) and set a small goal. Then find something else you love to do (Activity 2) and tell yourself you cannot do the second activity until you’ve finished the first one. For instance, you cannot watch Netflix (Activity 2) until you’ve taken your yoga class (Activity 1). Meisel says this is even more effective if you can combine both, thus setting yourself up to win: “Tell yourself that you can only listen to podcasts [Activity 2] while you’re on the treadmill [Activity 1]. In that scenario, you’ve set up a restriction to help you succeed.”
Time, as we saw earlier, is an easy limitation to set. Money is another one. But you can work with setting constraints in any area of your life that you want to improve on. “This process of setting limitations can almost become a game, and you need to figure out how to work within your restrictions. […] Find a balance between challenging [yourself] and being realistic in terms of [your] lifestyle.”
Save the date! Ari Meisel will be at the Business Library in New York City on July 17, from 6-7:30 PM. It’s a free event. Registration and details here. I look forward to seeing you there!
ACTION
TODAY: What is a limit that you can put on yourself today for the benefit of your work, time or leisure? How about working with Parkinson’s Law and setting a time limit to finish your work at a certain time? That way you can go home to enjoy your family or to enjoy non-work-related activities.
FUTURE: Think of a habit you’d like to establish. What kind of minimum limitation can you think of to create the habit? Remember to find your Activity 1 and set a goal. Then do not indulge in Activity 2 until you have finished activity 1. Linking those activities will help you stick to them and create the habit you want. Let me know how it goes!
Do you know someone who would benefit from setting limits? Please share this post with that person via email, Facebook or Twitter, thanks!
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Goals, Habits, Mindset, Planning, Productivity, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 24 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Touch it once
— From The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies by Chet Holmes
What would you do with a gift of 90+ hours/year to spend however you see fit?
To explain this, let me share this scenario, and you tell me if it sounds familiar:
“You come into your office, and there on your desk sit three folders and two letters that you must respond to. You look at the first letter and read a few sentences. Dealing with it is clearly going to take more time than you have right now. You put it aside. In one of your folders is another task. You handle that task and your phone rings. You answer the phone and get pulled in a new direction for 10 to 15 minutes. Then you go back to the folder, but, just as you do, an email comes in. You stop to read the email, which contains a task that must be dealt with but requires more time than you have right now.”
Can you identify with this? If you spend “just 15 minutes every day to revisit, readdress, or reread documents or emails, you will waste 91 hours per year where no action is taken.” (!)
Chet Holmes, business guru and author of The Ultimate Sales Machine, had a simple, yet practical and very effective way of handling paperwork and email: deal with each thing just once.
“If you touch it, take action. […] Don’t open that email or letter until you are ready to deal with it.”
And dealing with it may take many forms, but at the very least, it means adding the action to your to-do list and saving the email to a particular folder. Holmes says, “the more files you have for work in progress and the more organized you can be in that process, the more productive you will be. So, for example, suppose I open my email from my PR firm that requires me to approve a press release. I have a PR folder. On my to-do list I write, ‘Approve press release. See PR folder.’ That’s how organized you need to be today.”
Short and simple, yet profound in changing the way we work and handle the demands for our time. Plus, the amount of time we’ll save from not having to revisit is astonishing! (For other time saving tips, read this post from Time Traps.)
ACTION
TODAY: Try this touch-it-once approach today and see how much time you save and how much more organized you get.
FUTURE: Make this touch-it-once philosophy a part of your productivity habits. As with every new habit, it will take time and tweaking to adapt to your specific needs, yet I strongly suggest giving it a shot since it will save you much time!
Know someone who’s wasting much time on revisiting things? Please share this post with that person via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Creativity, Goals, Growth, Habits, Mindset, Miniseries, Opportunity, Planning, Productivity, Resources, Time, Tools
Links to other parts of the miniseries:
Be Awesomely Effective Part 1: Embodied cognition
Be Awesomely Effective Part 2: Decision points
Be Awesomely Effective Part 3: Mental Energy
Be Awesomely Effective Part 4: Stop fighting distractions
Be Awesomely Effective Part 5: Mind-body connection
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 32 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Be Awesomely Effective Part 6: Workspace
— From Two Awesome Hours: Science-Based Strategies to Harness Your Best Time and Get Your Most Important Work Done by Josh Davis, Ph.D.
Over the past few days, Josh Davis, Ph.D., has been guiding us to create at least Two Awesome Hours of peak productivity by recognizing our decision points, managing our mental energy, allowing our minds to wander, and leveraging our mind-body connection. Yet, there are still a few more things we can do regarding our immediate workspace surroundings that will help us set up the conditions to perform at our best.
Noise
“The research on the consequences of noise on productivity is fairly straightforward: for the bulk of the tasks performed in the knowledge economy, quiet is always better than noise.” With this in mind, here are a few suggestions from Davis to stay focused.
- Close the door. No office? “Reserve a conference room or set up camp somewhere that is largely free of noise and other potential distractions. A place with privacy that is away from noise distractions will be more favorable to productivity.”
- Cancel noise. If your space is shared and you have to stay there, wear noise-cancelling headphones. Alternatively, “those little squishy orange earplugs can sometimes do the trick too, and you can take them anywhere. You may look weird, but you’ll be more productive.”
- Turn it off. Don’t watch TV or listen to music or talk radio.
- Creativity. “If you’re taking on a task that requires lots of creativity, enjoy background noise. You may actually consider heading for the company’s busy cafeteria or a local coffee shop, or putting on a little music.”
- Carve quiet time. If you can, make some quiet time for you: get up early, stay up late or work in a quiet and uninterrupted environment.
Light
Light, just as noise, is another stimulus we can often control. “Both blue light and bright white light seem to enhance a number of the mental faculties that can help us be highly effective. […] That kind of light influences things like alertness and concentration, and it can help us recharge after mental fatigue.”
Further, our eyes were not just made for vision. There are cells in them that “connect to a part of the brain responsible for maintaining circadian rhythms… [thus guiding] sleep, wake, eating and energy cycles throughout the day.”
Davis recommends:
- More lights. “A brightly lit room is better for being at your mental best than a darker one, especially if it’s a cloudy day or the middle of the winter. If you have to, bring your own lamp to the office.”
- Natural light. “If you can, be somewhere with ambient natural light on a day with clear blue skies, and set yourself up to work there.”
- Lightbulbs. “Consider replacing the current lightbulbs in your workspace with white lights that include more of the blue spectrum, even if it’s just at your desk lamp.”
- Creativity. “Dim your lights a bit or find a spot that’s a little darker than usual when you want to work on a project that requires creativity.”
Immediate workspace
According to Davis’ research, our immediate workspace is the part of the work environment that we can influence in some important ways with some relatively minor tweaks.
- Clutter. “Perhaps clutter works for a very few people. But for the vast majority of us, clutter is a hindrance to our mental performance. […] Clear the clutter. […] If you don’t have the time to clear it, simply move it somewhere that is out of sight.”
- Expansive movement. “Place your phone, your glass of water, your pen and any other work tools at the far corners of your desk, where you will need to reach for them expansively. If you feel tense, sit back for a minute, expand your chest and spread your arms out.” Adopt some power poses to shift your mental state.
- Sitting. “Don’t sit at your desk for too long. We tend to become engrossed in working, so it will probably not be too much if you get up every time you think of doing so. If you can choose your workspace, choose one where getting up and moving around is easy to do.” Find a place where you can sit and work, and another where you can stand and work, and alternate between them.
- Personalization. Regardless of noise, light, no clutter and movement, you will eventually get fatigued. Add your personal touch to your workspace in some way with objects and visuals to recharge your mental energy. “Specifically, consider adding some plants or images of water. When you personalize your space, though, don’t do it by adding clutter to your desk.” If you have a beautiful view, don’t forget to look outside.
The strategies described here today and throughout this miniseries are effective because their implementation is simple and easy, and also because they work with your biology, not against it. Davis believes that the biggest challenge resulting from our work culture is being overwhelmed. He says, “By becoming students of how human beings can work most effectively, we all can increase our self-compassion, master our work, and gain control over our lives.” It is my sincere hope that this miniseries will help you accomplish all that and become your most effective and productive. Let me know how you liked the miniseries!
ACTION
TODAY & FUTURE: Take a look around at your workspace: how can you set it up to help you achieve maximum productivity?
Know someone who could benefit from reading this? Please share the miniseries with that person! You can do so via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Creativity, Goals, Growth, Habits, Mindset, Miniseries, Opportunity, Planning, Productivity, Resources, Time, Tools
Links to other parts of the miniseries:
Be Awesomely Effective Part 1: Embodied cognition
Be Awesomely Effective Part 2: Decision points
Be Awesomely Effective Part 3: Mental Energy
Be Awesomely Effective Part 4: Stop fighting distractions
Be Awesomely Effective Part 6: Workspace
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 27 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Be Awesomely Effective Part 5: Mind-body connection
— From Two Awesome Hours: Science-Based Strategies to Harness Your Best Time and Get Your Most Important Work Done by Josh Davis, Ph.D.
Yesterday we learned to be nice to ourselves and let our minds wander. That strategy, coupled with seizing our decision points and managing our mental energy and emotions can help us create incredibly productive chunks of time in our days. That is, of course, when we have full control over our schedules. But who does?
Life happens. Business happens. Stuff happens. We may find ourselves anxious or overwhelmed at times and still need to perform at our best. What do we do then?
Josh Davis, Ph.D., adds one more strategy to help us out. Now that we know that our physical states affect and influence our mental states, “By understanding how exercise and food affect your mental functioning, you can use them as tools to help you be more productive when work demands it.” The mind-body connection is strong and powerful.
It’s important to clarify that this strategy is not about the long-term health and wellness benefits of an exercise routine and a well-balanced diet. We’ve all heard about that many times, undoubtedly. What Davis shares here are the immediate benefits of mental functioning derived from eating in a particular way or felt after just one session of exercising. This is one more way in which we learn how to create the optimal conditions in our minds, bodies, and surroundings for peak productivity.
Exercise strategically
Exercising, for these purposes, refers to moderate physical activity (brisk walking or even light jogging) for 20-40 minutes. “Whether or not you currently have an exercise routine, you can use physical activity at specific times to boost your thinking abilities and your mental energy. […] A little exercise at the right time can help you think better, stay focused, sharpen your thoughts and reduce your anxiety—key elements of sustained productivity—in the hours that follow the physical activity.”
Davis suggests the following ways to leverage exercise:
- Mental sluggishness and inability to focus. “Get out of your office and move right away. Walk very briskly for thirty to forty minutes. Or go up and down the back stairs for ten or twenty minutes.”
- Schedule changes. “Whenever possible, schedule challenging or anxiety-provoking meetings when you can block out time beforehand for moderate exercise.”
- Draining or challenging tasks. “When you have particularly challenging or draining tasks on your calendar, either exercise in the morning before it… or exercise soon after it to restore your drained mental energy and improve your mood in time to tackle whatever comes next.
- Workouts. “In general, plan to work out for about twenty to forty minutes within a couple of hours before you next need to be awesomely productive.”
Eat and drink strategically
What happens on the day that your schedule doesn’t allow for exercise when you most need it? Davis points out that, “There are other ways to work in concert with your body to achieve peak productivity… [with] something you already do every day, even at work: eating and drinking.”
What we eat and drink, and the timing of when we do so, can affect our energy levels, moods and our brain’s ability to plan, organize and complete tasks. If you don’t believe this, just remember the sluggishness, lack of energy and overwhelming desire to sleep after a very large meal (Thanksgiving, a holiday, a celebration, etc.).
Davis says, “When you want to be firing on all cylinders, being intentional about what you eat and drink—and how you want to feel an hour later—can make all the difference.” And he gives us the following tips to increase productivity after the two- or three-hour period after our meal or snack.
- Portions. “Eat only half your breakfast or lunch and enjoy the second half a couple of hours later.”
- Quick boost. “A high-carb snack may help you focus and feel good for about fifteen minutes. If you need to be in top mental shape for longer than that, avoid carb-rich meals and snacks altogether.”
- Food mix. “Eat meals or snacks that have a nice mix of proteins, low glycemic index carbs, and good fats—vegetables and fruits are generally good carbs; nuts make great snacks for when you are on the run.”
- Water. “Drink water if you haven’t had any for the last hour or two if you’ve done any physical activity.”
- Caffeine. “If you are tired or sleep deprived, drink a caffeinated drink, but keep it small. Don’t drink more than you normally would. Give it thirty minutes to kick in. And go ahead and put cream in that coffee—the fat may help keep your blood sugar more stable.”
Whether you exercise regularly or not, or whether you are a nutrition enthusiast or a fast-food lover, hopefully this mind-body strategy will add more tools to your productivity kit.
Cheers!
ACTION
TODAY & FUTURE: Take a moment to evaluate how you feel before an important work event (meeting, presentation, etc.). Are there any of the exercise or food/drink tips here that can help you? How can you proactively schedule time for physical activity before an event so that you can be at your best? Schedule also time to recharge after particularly taxing activities/meetings. Your mind and body will thank you and you’ll be performing in a much more productive way!
Know someone who could benefit from reading this? Please share the miniseries with that person! You can do so via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Creativity, Goals, Growth, Habits, Mindset, Miniseries, Planning, Productivity, Time, Tools
Links to other parts of the miniseries:
Be Awesomely Effective Part 1: Embodied cognition
Be Awesomely Effective Part 2: Decision points
Be Awesomely Effective Part 3: Mental Energy
Be Awesomely Effective Part 5: Mind-body connection
Be Awesomely Effective Part 6: Workspace
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 39 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Be Awesomely Effective Part 4: Stop fighting distractions
— From Two Awesome Hours: Science-Based Strategies to Harness Your Best Time and Get Your Most Important Work Done by Josh Davis, Ph.D.
By now, in this miniseries, you can recognize the decision points in your day and choose your next task based on your mental energy and emotions. Woohoo! Today, Josh Davis, Ph.D., will share with us his uncommon—but very commonsensical—view on distractions and mind wandering.
As we shoot for creating Two Awesome Hours of productive work, we need to learn how to stay focused for prolonged periods of time.
Yet in today’s world, where our attention span is shorter than that of a goldfish, we tend to reproach ourselves every time we get distracted. “Focus!” “Pay Attention!” “Stay on task!” we tell ourselves, and we feel as if we’re being lazy for letting our minds wander off.
“Although our ability to sustain attention on a task is critical for our success, finding focus… without distraction is a remarkably difficult thing to do.” Our brains are wired to respond to distractions, scan our surroundings constantly, and be on the lookout for dangers—it’s a survival mechanism. But we also have the ability to come back to what we were doing previously whenever our focus shifts, “parts of our brain are devoted to switching attention—to disengaging and reorienting to a changing environment.”
This is indeed good news: “It is wholly unnatural to focus without wavering. If you have failed at maintaining continual focus throughout your work sessions, rejoice. If you had, you’d be remarkably dysfunctional.” Proof of this is that if we try to suppress it, it backfires with our consequent frustration.
Scientific evidence points out that the more we try to avoid or suppress distractions the more we get stuck on them. “When people are asked not to think about something, it increases the likelihood that they will think about these things. Don’t think about a polar bear right now, and see how that goes.”
I bet the polar bear took you to other images of polar bears, your visits to the zoo as a child, a documentary you saw, etc. Our neurons work in networks, which means they’re associated with many others. Thus, your neuron for polar bear fired up other neurons associated with this thought, taking you down a rabbit trail (polar bear trail?) of images and memories.
To somewhat control this, Davis says we must master two skills: removing distractions and letting our minds wander.
Let’s get the first one out of the way: distractions are like booby-traps. No one in their right mind would set a bucket of water over a door frame, spread thumbtacks on the carpet or put a whoopee cushion on a chair at a workplace. Davis says, “That’s more or less what you are doing to yourself when you set up your devices and workspace so that distractions are coming to you all the time. You have created a work setting booby-trapped not with buckets of water and thumbtacks, but with phones, screens, websites, open doors, etc.” And all the buzzing, notifications, and people stopping by are distracting you from your two hours of maximum productivity.
“There’s no need to be a hermit of drop off the grid. Just find a way that your devices can’t divert you for perhaps twenty minutes at a time.” Turn off notifications, close your open door, wear noise cancelling headphones, put your devices away, etc.
While we can remove distractors as much as possible within our circumstances, we can’t remove distractions entirely. We can’t stop the blasting siren of an ambulance out on the street, for example. And we can’t do away with another, unavoidable distraction: our wandering mind.
“Research suggests that mind wandering may not be a flaw after all. It may have important benefits when it comes to […] creative problem solving and long-term planning.” Davis shares the results of studies: “mind wandering didn’t make participants more creative in general, it helped them creatively solve the problems they had been working on before they started mind wandering.” Also, it is good for long-term planning because “it enables us to think in the right ways about the future.”
Yet it’s important to make the distinction between mind wandering in a productive way and getting completely sidetracked. To avoid the latter, Davis suggests mindful attention: as we find ourselves losing focus, “noting without judgment that our thoughts have drifted, gently bring our attention back to what we are experiencing in the present moment.”
Be nice to yourself, says Davis, “when it comes to staying focused for a prolonged period of time, our secret weapon is not discipline or willpower but self-compassion.”
ACTION
TODAY & FUTURE: Given that your mind will wander, Davis suggests enabling it when you want to solve a problem by choosing a super easy task ahead of time that requires very little thinking. Pick a task that will take a brief moment (minutes) and from which you will recover naturally, not one that will make you fall into autopilot for hours on end. Here’s what he means by very easy: appreciating a picture on the wall, a plant, the view, straightening up your desk, listening to music and noticing all instruments, etc.
These are the tasks you need to avoid engaging in when your mind wanders. They’ll quickly absorb and sidetrack you, as they require lots of thinking and are loaded with decisions and emotions: filing paperwork, reading the news, checking email, rehearsing presentations, prepping for meetings, working or a crossword puzzle.
Know someone who could benefit from reading this? Please share the miniseries with that person! You can do so via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
