by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Collaboration, Goals, Habits, Mindset, Planning, Productivity, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 44 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Don’t be a hero
— From REWORK: Change the way you work forever by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
“A lot of times it’s better to be a quitter than to be a hero,” say Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.
Whaaaaat?!
The authors of Rework explain: “Let’s say you think a task can be done in two hours. But four hours into it you’re still only a quarter of the way done. The natural instinct is to think, ‘But I can’t give up now, I’ve already spent four hours on this!’ So you go into hero mode. You’re determined to make it work (and slightly embarrassed that it isn’t already working). You grab your cape and shut yourself off from the world.”
Sometimes that sheer determination and work overload can produce your desired results. “But,” the authors ask, “is it worth it?” Probably not is the answer. “The task was worth it when you thought it would cost two hours, not sixteen.”
Yet we feel terrible to leave behind, as incomplete, that investment of time and effort. While you will be the one to decide whether it’s worth it or not, you can help decrease the emotional overload by purposefully ignoring sunk costs, as you cannot get them back.
As world-traveler and side hustling guru, Chris Guillebeau, says in this post, regardless of how much time you’ve spent, “consider the next [period] of your life, not the previous investment that brought you this far.”
Look at it this way, “In those sixteen hours you could have gotten a bunch of other things done.” Plus, by going into hero mode, “you cut yourself off from feedback, which can lead you even further down the wrong path. Even heroes need a fresh pair of eyes sometimes—someone else to give them a reality check.”
The authors share how they’ve experienced and solved this problem firsthand: if anything takes them more than two weeks, they bring in someone else to take a look. That someone else might not do any work on the task, but they give their opinion. “Sometimes an obvious solution is staring you right in the face, but you can’t even see it.”
And while, most of the time, we tend to associate quitting with failure, “sometimes that’s exactly what you should do,” the authors point out. “If you already spent too much time on something that wasn’t worth it, walk away. You can’t get that time back. The worst thing you can do now is waste even more time.”
Remember, we can get or make almost everything back, except time. Don’t be a hero to defend a project that is dragging on for too long, instead, be the hero that defends your time and the best use of it.
And while you’ll find that sometimes you cannot “quit” the project altogether, because it’s out of your control, and it continues to drag on, look for ways to substitute yourself. Is there someone whose time and talent are better spent on this than yours? Can you ask for help? Can you outsource it? Think creatively and you’ll come up with the best solution.
To dispel the myth of quitting as a failure, here are some other posts about that: Selective quitting, Quit before you start, and Understanding when to quit and when to stick.
Let me know in the comments here if you’ve ever gone into hero mode and what you learned about it!
ACTION
TODAY: Take a look at your tasks at work and life. Is there a particular one that is taking longer than anticipated? Are you thinking about going into hero mode or already there? Reexamine the situation and consider how you can solve it (if it needs solving at all) so that you can be a good steward of your time.
FUTURE: Keep track of where your time goes for a week or a month, it’s a great exercise, as only that way we can truly see how much time we spend on hero mode without necessarily knowing about it. Sometimes we go into microhero mode and don’t even detect it: that extra long phone conversation, that meeting that went on for too long, etc., they all add up and we don’t even notice except when we look at the data in front of us. Time management guru, Laura Vanderkam, has a simple but effective time tracking sheet and a time makeover guide (it’s free).
Know someone who is about to go into hero mode? Save him or her some time! Please share this post with that person via email, Facebook or Twitter, thanks!
by Helena Escalante | Goals, Growth, Mindset, Productivity, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 25 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: The Law of Forced Efficiency
— From The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success by Brian Tracy.
The one equalizer for all of us is time: we all have 24 hours in a day, no matter what. And what we decide to do with that chunk of time on a daily basis is our decision. In The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success, business guru Brian Tracy says, “there is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important things.” Thus, the Law of Forced Efficiency:
“The more things you have to do in a limited period of time, the more you will be forced to work on your most important tasks.”
Tracy goes on to explain, “The more you take on, the more likely it is that you will be forced to act with maximum efficiency. You will have to think, analyze, and evaluate your tasks and activities more carefully. You will be forced to spend your limited mental and physical energy on just those tasks that are the most vital to your success.”
There are three corollaries to this law according to Tracy:
1. There will never be enough time to do everything that you have to do. “The busier and more successful you become, the more valid this corollary will be for you.” The popular saying “if you want something done, ask a busy person” is true: busy people only take on just those things that they know they can finish within the time they have.
2. Only by stretching yourself can you discover how much you are truly capable of. “You can discover how much you can do only by trying to do too much. You can find out how far you can go only by going too far. You learn your true capacity only by stretching yourself to your limits. For you to be truly happy, you must know that you are working at the outer edge of your potential. You need to feel fully challenged by your work. You need to do what you love, love what you do, and put your whole heart into your work.”
3. You perform at your highest potential only when you are focusing on the most valuable use of your time. “This is the key to personal and business success. It is the central issue in personal efficiency and time management. You must always be asking yourself, What is the most valuable use of my time right now?”
Tracy suggests creating the habit and discipline to work exclusively on the ONE task that is the answer to this question, at any given time. Keep yourself focused and determine what is the most valuable use of your time again, and again, and again throughout the day, every day.
For diving deeper into the very best use of your time and skills, ask these three questions.
ACTION
Note: both actions come directly from Tracy’s book.
TODAY: “Remember that you can only do one thing at a time. Stop and think before you begin. Be sure that the task you do is the highest value use of your time. Remind yourself that anything else you do while your most important task remains undone is a relative waste of time.”
FUTURE: “Be clear about the most valuable work that you do for your organization. Whatever it is, resolve to concentrate on doing that specific task before anything else.” Develop the habit of asking yourself over and over, What is the most valuable use of my time right now? If need be, you can set a periodic reminder on your calendar to pop up and remind you of asking that question several times throughout the day. Other questions you can ask, according to Tracy, are, “Why are you on the payroll? What specific, tangible, measurable results are expected of you? And of all the different results you are capable of achieving, which are the most important to your career at this moment?” Your answers will determine where to focus your energy.
Know someone who could benefit by asking the questions from The Law of Forced Efficiency? Please share this post via email, Facebook or Twitter, thanks!
by Helena Escalante | Creativity, Goals, Mindset, Planning, Productivity, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 21 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Your external brain
— From a mash-up of two books: Less Doing, More Living: Make Everything in Life Easier by Ari Meisel, and Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
“Using your memory to store everything is stressful and unreliable,” says Ari Meisel, productivity guru, in his book Less Doing, More Living. He points out, rightly, that trying to hold all thoughts in our head is inefficient. “The problem with trying to remember everything is that in doing so, you run out of space in your head to actually think about the task at hand. What’s worse, it doesn’t always work.”
How many times have we made an effort to remember something and we still forgot? I’m so guilty of this: I know I tied that string around my finger to remember something, and later I couldn’t remember what that something was… I rest my case.
Enter the external brain. “It stores everything reliably, offers instant access, and frees your mind for more interesting work,” says Meisel.
So, where do I line up to get one of these external brains??!
We all have it at our disposal and it’s more low-tech than you can imagine: “The heart [mind?] of the external brain is note-taking. If an idea is in your head, get it out… we have to create idea flow for good ideas to come out… When you let your ideas flow freely, you get more ideas, and that leads to more good ideas.”
You’ve heard me quote Seth Godin before as saying, “You can’t have good ideas unless you’re willing to generate a lot of bad ones.” This is exactly how we make that happen. Meisel says the same thing: “Not all ideas are good—out of ten ideas, you may have eight that are bad or irrelevant. But even bad ideas can lead to good ideas. You want to get them out of your head not only because they may be blocking a good idea from coming out, but also because they may come together with some of your other ideas to make a good idea.”
Meisel suggests finding a great tool or set of tools that enable you to capture the info and ideas outside of your head. His favorite app is Evernote. And if you are like most of us who get awesome ideas in the shower, he recommends AquaNotes (water-proof notepad).
On the other hand, in his bestselling book Getting Things Done, productivity guru David Allen, suggests—even for the most high-tech oriented among us—a stack of plain paper to capture each thought in its own sheet or card. Allen recommends:
Write out each thought, each idea, each project or thing that has your attention, on a separate sheet of paper. You could make one long list on a pad, or in some digital application, but… there is a discipline required to initially to stay focused on one item at a time as you process it. So giving each thought its own placeholder, as trivial as it might seem, makes it that much easier.
Go for quantity. It’s much better to overdo this process than to risk missing something. You can toss the junk later. Your first idea may be “Implement global climate change,” and then you’ll think, “I need cat food!” Grab them all. Don’t be surprised if you discover you’ve created quite a stack of paper during this procedure.
According to Allen, “It will probably take you between twenty minutes and an hour to clear your head onto separate notes.” And as you go through this exercise, “You’ll find that things will tend to occur to you in somewhat random fashion—little things, big things, personal things, professional things, in no particular order.” To help you clear your head, Allen has put together a wonderful Incompletion Triggers List that you can review to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything. Also, you can listen to this podcast where Allen guides you through what he calls a mind sweep session to put down, in paper, what is now occupying space in your head.
“Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” – David Allen
Create your external brain and get those ideas flowing!
ACTION
TODAY: Take some time to figure out the “external brain” system that will work best for you, and then go through David Allen’s list or mind sweeping exercise to get everything out of your mind.
FUTURE: Once you have created a stack of notes, start prioritizing and processing each one based on your goals. You’ll likely see that some are not all that important, and some others become great ideas that you definitely want to act upon. What is the next action that you need to take? Determine it and take said action (it may take a while to get through all, but keep pushing through). It’s important to take this step because if you don’t do anything, the items from the list “will creep back into your consciousness, since your mind would know you weren’t dealing with [them],” says Allen. If there is no next action to take, then he suggests, trash the item, incubate it, or file it as reference material. That will be your action and your mind will now be unstuck and free to produce more ideas.
Please share the external brain with someone else! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Goals, Leadership, Mindset, Miniseries, Opportunity, Planning, Productivity, Resolutions, Time, Tools, Willpower
Links to other parts of this miniseries:
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 1
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 2
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 3
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 4
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 5
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 46 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 6
— From Learning to Lead: Bringing Out the Best in People by Fred Smith (1915-2007)
We’ve come to the end of this miniseries on how to find a minimum of 5 extra hours per week based on the recommendations of the book Learning to Lead. I hope you have learned a lot of different ways that will help you make the most of your time emergency, that way you’ll be able to crush it when you decide to go into monk mode!
Let’s look at the last 3 concepts from Fred Smith’s 20-point checklist:
18. Put curiosity on hold. This is an important one. Smith emphasizes that we are strapped for time we must swallow curiosity and not ask questions. He says, “I make statements [instead]. Normally in good human relations we ask questions. But if we want to save time, we don’t. If we ask, ‘How’s your mother-in-law?’ it often takes some time to hear the whole sad story. It’s just as warm to say, ‘Hey, I’m glad to see you,’ and keep going… [Or if] I see a group in the hallway… and I enter the conversation, I’ll stay and talk—and there goes my time… Curiosity costs a lot of time.”
19. Stay out of sight. The author advises to lay low: “I try to curb my exposure during a time of emergency. If I stay out of people’s sight, I don’t have to offend them with my hurry.” Work out of home fully or partially if you can for this period of time, or stay out of sight in whatever way works best for you.
20. Leave meetings first. The author relays having fun with many an executive on this point. He says, “I tell them the most important person in the meeting leaves it first. Once I finish my speech, that remark empties the hall faster than anything I’ve used before.” And this is actually true: “The most productive people leave a meeting first. They don’t stand around shaking hands and swapping stories… People hang around a meeting to be liked, not to accomplish anything. The business is done; only the social frills are left. […] Busy people using a time battle plan can’t afford the leisure.’
And there you have it. Now you have the full 20-point checklist to create a battle plan if you ever decide to declare a time emergency. As good as it sounds, the author warns us again, “This plan is not at all about how to speed up. [You] are already going fast enough. What I’m getting at is how to gain some time… you ought to use part of it for loafing. If you’re already panicky, harried, frantic and worn out from the pressure, don’t spend your new time doing more work, or you’ll be right back in the same problem. […] If every time you get an hour you fill it up, you’ll have no concept of what a normal lifestyle is.”
As far as how to use our time, Smith shares some wise advice, “we need to move beyond fighting battles, losing them, fighting again, losing again, and fighting once more. We must move to a new way of life. Waging a battle is certainly better than not winning at all. But battles remain second-best to achieving a lifestyle where we stop worrying about time control… I’ve provided a battle plan. It will work in a pinch. How much better to win the war.”
“Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.” – Thomas J. Watson
I hope you enjoyed this miniseries and learned a lot. What was your biggest takeaway? Let me know in the comments here.
ACTION
TODAY: As you put in place these 20 points for going into monk mode, don’t forget the importance of loafing, as the author says. Resting, exercising and spending time with your loved ones are all important activities, make sure you include them in your newfound hours.
FUTURE: As you go through this time emergency mode over the next few weeks, keep a list of the lessons you learn. At the end of the period review it. Using the war analogy of the author, I’m sure this list will be helpful to point you in the direction of how you can win the war as opposed to focusing on fighting a battle again and again.
Know someone who could use an additional 5 hours per week during a time emergency? Please share this post or the entire miniseries with that person. Thank you! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Goals, Leadership, Mindset, Miniseries, Opportunity, Planning, Productivity, Resolutions, Time, Tools, Willpower
Links to other parts of this miniseries:
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 1
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 2
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 3
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 4
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 6
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 6 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 5
— From Learning to Lead: Bringing Out the Best in People by Fred Smith (1915-2007)
Good morning! How is your time crunch coming along? I hope you are indeed finding/making additional time. So far the points in this miniseries from Fred Smith’s list have focused mainly on external situations or dealing with others. But what about our internal selves and our outcomes? This is as important—if not more—than anything else we’ve seen so far.
Let’s look at how to deal with our energy, our work, and our mind when we are in a time emergency so that we can, optimally, find a minimum of 5 extra hours each week.
14. Protect personal energy. Becoming stressed and pressured for time cuts down energy and alertness, says Smith. “Since I work so much more efficiently when alert, I must protect my energy when time is scarce [so that effectiveness doesn’t suffer].” He emphasizes the importance of sleep, and also says, “I find it very important during such a time to eat less and exercise more.” In terms of the workload, Smith reminds himself, “not to try to accomplish more by overworking. What I can do in fifteen hours is not three times what I can accomplish in five.” Since a person can only have a certain number of productive hours during any given day, it’s important to make them count.
15. Schedule work according to productive hours. Each one of us knows when our most productive and effective hours are (check this miniseries to create the right environment to Be Awesomely Effective). Schedule your most creative and productive things for those hours. You’ll get the most important projects accomplished, and the work you get done will be much more than during the rest of the day.
Want to know when your peak time is? Ari Meisel, productivity guru and author of The Art of Less Doing, has a fantastic (and free!) app for smartphones. It’s called Less Doing Peak Time. Backed by science, Meisel designed it in a way that takes less than a minute every time you tap on it, and over the course of a week, you tap at different times and the app will let you know the window of time when you are at your most productive. Brilliant! (And so easy too!)
16. Compile a list of second-wind jobs. These are jobs that actually refresh you, pull you out of a lull and give you an energy boost or bring about a second wind, hence the name. Smith explains, “Second-wind jobs kill downtime and get me going. I like to do something exciting that I’ve really been waiting to work on… [These jobs] increase my utilization of time.”
17. Discipline self-talk. The author points out that all of us talk to ourselves. The important thing—especially during an emergency—is to discipline the details, and this includes our own self-talk, to focus on achieving the outcome we want. Smith relays an example: “Going to a meeting, I say to myself, What do I want to come out of the meeting with? It’s clear in my mind if I have talked it over with myself. I walk into the meeting with my agenda set and don’t waste time.”
Years ago, my friend Patti DeNucci, author of The Intentional Networker (we will see some ideas from that book in here soon), taught me the power of setting intentions before going into meetings, events, etc. Just as Smith asks above, as you are planning to go to an event/meeting, etc., ask yourself what your reason is for attending and set an intention. You will now have a purpose to be there and to work deliberately in making it happen. This is a great practice, not just for time crunches. Also, as you are approaching your entrance to the venue or meeting/conference room, remind yourself of your intention and you will be focused the whole time on accomplishing it before you leave. Try it out, it works wonders — thanks, Patti!
Come back tomorrow for the last part of this miniseries. We will learn, among other things, why it’s important to leave meetings first.
ACTION
TODAY: Attending a meeting? Going to an event? Having a conference call or just a plain business phone call? Set your intention. What do you want to get out of it? Then focus your time on making it happen. It always works (as long as it’s a good intention for all involved, of course!).
FUTURE: Make sure that you are taking appropriate care of your energy, stress and sleep over the next weeks while you are in monk mode. Go back to this miniseries on how to create 2 awesome hours of work every day. This will help you enormously to get through your time crunch and crush your goals effectively.
Know someone who could use an additional 5 hours per week during a time emergency? Please share this post with that person. Thank you! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Goals, Leadership, Mindset, Miniseries, Opportunity, Planning, Productivity, Resources, Time, Tools, Willpower
Links to other parts of this miniseries:
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 1
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 2
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 3
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 5
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 6
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 18 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 4
— From Learning to Lead: Bringing Out the Best in People by Fred Smith (1915-2007)
How is monk mode going? Are you making progress towards your 5 extra hours per week? I hope so!
I also hope that, as I share these ideas with you in this miniseries, you begin to see why it makes sense to apply them only when you are in a time crunch. Albeit, there are some points that I believe can be applied also at other times to make our work much more efficient, such as #11 below.
I’ll let you select your favorites from this installment of the 20-point checklist from Fred Smith’s book Learning to Lead. Happy monk mode!
9. Know your limitations. You do not have to meet with everybody that asks to see you. Smith tells a story of a person who wanted to go by and talk to him. Since he was busy, he asked, “What do you want to see me about?” And upon hearing the response, Smith realized he could not help him and did not see him. “I didn’t need to sit down and talk to him thirty minutes, and then disappoint him. I told him very quickly by phone, without being brutal.” Smith explains, “When I’m pressed for time I must pinpoint the counseling situations where I can uniquely help and then push the others to someone else. But a lot of times, we will see someone out of curiosity… just to find out the story.” Don’t give in to curiosity. Recognize you’re pressed for time and know your limitations.
10. Ask permission to say no. This is a brilliant approach if you’re concerned you’ll disappoint or seem rude by saying no. Smith explains, “When I need to decline something, I want to say no as simply and graciously as I can. When I ask for permission to decline, people generally give it to me. I don’t say ‘If you only knew how busy I am, you wouldn’t ask!’ I just say, ‘Let me ask a favor. May I say no?’ […] I handle it once, cleanly and clearly, and save a lot of time that way.”
11. Distinguish between information and relation. This book was written in 1986 when there was no email, chat, text messages, social media, etc., but the approach Smith mentions applies perfectly to today’s digital communications too. “Those who say to answer every letter when you receive it are missing a very important point. Mail and phone calls come in two kinds: information and relation. When I divide them up, I find most of my mail and calls are information. I can handle them once. But I don’t want my habit to cause me to handle relational things that way.” Smith says he takes care of providing the information that is required once, as it can be given at that point or later, and thus he avoids handling informational requests twice. However, if someone asks a personal question, he avoids saying the first thing that comes to mind: “I ask myself, How will this strike this person?” And given that this approach requires more time and energy to think about, he suggests postponing all relational questions until after your emergency period if you can.
12. Utilize [an assistant] for informational things. In today’s world of automation and optimization, you can use the help of an assistant. Be it an electronic device, an online program, a website, a Virtual Assistant that works remotely, or a person who works next to you, let them handle all requests for information.
13. Deal only with the “driving wheels.” Smith explains, “Every organization has some people whose thinking and action control everyone else’s thinking and action. In order to save time during a period of emergency, I only deal with these driving wheels. They may not be the title people. But if we know our organizations, we can identify the driving wheels and the people I call the ‘idling gears.’ […] If I’m in a hurry, I spend time only with the people who make things happen, who form the opinions. I put the other relationships on hold for a while.”
Come back tomorrow for another installment of this 20-point checklist where you will learn about creating a list that can help you make the most of your downtime during this crunch.
ACTION
TODAY: Think of a time in the past when you met with someone out of curiosity. Now think of the time when you met with someone for a specific purpose. Be aware of that part of you that gives in to curiosity so that, during this period, you are not tempted by it.
FUTURE: As you are moving through this period of time emergency, think about getting assistance for those things that you do that someone else could do, e.g., handle the requests for information. Give that some thought and implement the way it works best for you.
Know someone who could use an additional 5 hours per week during a time emergency? Please share this post with that person. Thank you! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
