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 4
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, 0 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 3
— From Learning to Lead: Bringing Out the Best in People by Fred Smith (1915-2007)
So far, In Parts 1 and 2 of this miniseries, we’ve looked at some important basics, such as letting people know that they’ll be seeing less of you for a certain time, cleaning your desk, eliminating the news, being selective on our reading materials and waking up a bit earlier. Today we are going to continue looking at the next installment in Fred Smith’s 20-point checklist as it appears in his book Learning to Lead.
6. Work on the majors only. “Some people have the unfortunate habit—and it is a habit—of listing everything that they have to do as if it were equal with all the others. […] Not everything in life is of equal importance… make a hierarchy of priorities to keep [you] from allowing emergencies to top the list. […] Write down the two, three or four major things [you] simply cannot slight, and be sure only to work on them. These are [your] current majors, the items of greatest importance today. Everything else has to be pushed aside to work on the majors.”
As it relates to this point, on this post, Greg McKeown (author of Essentialism) emphasizes two things:
(a) The idea that we can do all or have it all is a damaging myth because “it results in stressed people trying to cram yet more activities into their already overscheduled lives.”
(b) Prioritizing (or focusing on the majors only) doesn’t mean just saying no. It entails “purposefully, deliberately and strategically eliminating the non-essentials, and not just getting rid of the obvious time wasters, but cutting out some really good opportunities as well.”
Be careful as you work on the majors, as some decisions will be very hard to make and require lots of careful thinking, especially when the opportunity in front of you is very attractive. Try to postpone those opportunities for later, when you are done with your emergency period.
7. Make no radical changes. “The object of the battle plan is to pick up time, not to change.” Since radical shifts require much time to implement, Smith advises against them: “I wouldn’t try to review my habits for spending time. These are my reflexes, and it takes too much effort to change them. I wouldn’t attempt to rework the organization or correct others’ mistakes or get people mad at me and have to go back and apologize. I call these kinds of things ‘rework.’ I save the rework for the general war and concentrate on winning the present battle.”
8. Avoid the wood-hay-and-stubble activities. “Things that flatter [your] ego, satisfy [your] human ambition, make [you] liked—social affairs—are wood, hay, and stubble. If [you] have time for them, they’re perfectly all right… [but] they can drain a lot of time.” Smith suggests making a list of the meetings from which you can stay away comfortably. Lunch with [an organization] every time it meets is not mandatory as you can catch another of those lunches in the future. Under emergency mode, Smith points out he might go into a meeting and say, “Folks, I’m pressed for time. I’m going to have to ask your indulgence. Give me 15 minutes to cover my subjects. You talk them out after I’m gone and then write a memo on what our plan should be.” But he reminds us to do this only during an emergency crunch. “They might let me do it for as long as six weeks, but I would be neglecting my responsibilities if I tried every time.” So just determine what is wood, hay, and stubble for now and avoid it during this period.
Come back tomorrow to read the next installment in Smith’s list on finding 5 extra hours. You’ll learn why dealing only with the “driving wheels” is important during this period. Are you enjoying this miniseries? Please let me know in the comments here.
ACTION
TODAY: Make your hierarchy of priorities and focus on working on your majors.
FUTURE: As great opportunities present themselves during this period, you’ll be tempted to say yes. Think whether they are essential and contribute to your goal during this time crunch or take you away from it. If they take you away from it, politely decline (you’ll learn a great way to do this tomorrow!) or, if possible, postpone doing them until the time you are out of monk mode. Write these opportunities down in a piece of paper and put them in the same box with your unnecessary reading. Once you are done with your emergency period and come back up for air, you can examine them and decide what to do about them.
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 3
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 4
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, 13 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 2
— From Learning to Lead: Bringing Out the Best in People by Fred Smith (1915-2007)
In yesterday’s Part 1 of this miniseries, we learned what the basis must be to declare a time emergency, and roughly how long we can make it last without affecting our work or relationships. We also learned how to announce going into monk mode to the people that surround us in order to get their help and support. So far so good.
Today, we will start unpacking Fred Smith’s 20-point checklist in Learning to Lead. The goal is to help you find five extra hours per week, despite being completely swamped. There’s no time to lose, so let’s get started!
1. Clean off the desk. “To start the battle, sweep away everything you won’t be using in the next six weeks. When I diet I don’t leave food lying around the house to tantalize me. Unfinished work tempts me, makes me want to look at it, pick it up, finish it. I feel guilty about it. So the first step is to clean off my desk.” If cleaning your desk becomes a tremendous chore in and of itself, then grab a box and put all the stuff in there that you won’t need for the next few weeks. Once your emergency plan is over and you are back to normal, you can take the contents of the box, examine them and clean them up. For now, they’ll be fine in a box: out of sight, out of mind.
2. Stop reading the newspaper. “I can pick up three and one-half hours a week right there, and if I only need five hours, that’s a pretty good start,” says the author. If you’re hesitant to do this out of fear someone will ask something and you might appear uninformed, it’s easier to reply, “No, I didn’t see that. What did it say?” The person can tell you in a few minutes. Smith asks himself, What am I getting out of the newspaper that’s worth making my life frantic? In this post, I talk about lifestyle design guru, Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, who decided not to read or watch any news based on four factors. The same goes for TV: “Break the habit of turning on the set without first checking the listings. Make TV watching a planned occurrence,” says Fred Smith. His book was written when there was no easy way to record a TV show, yet nowadays you can record or stream your shows at will, so there’s no excuse for binge-watching when you can do this at a later time.
3. Get up 15 minutes earlier. Smith says, “Our wills may support getting up 15 minutes earlier, but they won’t support getting up an hour earlier. We say, ‘But I should be able to.’ That’s fantasy. We’ve got to be objective about what kind of resolution we have. Fifteen minutes each morning gives me an added hour and three quarters a week. Add that to the previous three and one-half hours and the goal of five extra hours is already reached.”
4. Delay unnecessary reading. Smith recommends, “I would postpone all reading that does not directly contribute to what I am doing during this emergency period.”
5. Read only parts of books. The author says, “I’m surprised at how many people feel they have to read a book cover to cover. If I’m in a hurry, I skim the table of contents, find the subjects I need to know immediately, and read those chapters.” Smith points out that we can still get plenty of ideas that way. Further, nowadays, you can subscribe to online summaries that do a good job of providing the core information in a book. Or I know of a daily blog called EntreGurus that I highly recommend… 😉
Come back tomorrow to check out the next few steps in Smith’s emergency time plan. You’ll learn why it’s important to avoid what he calls the wood-hay-and-stubble activities during a time crunch.
ACTION
TODAY: Get started today. Clean your desk and work area so that you can focus on catching up and working on what you need to get done over the next few weeks. Put your newspaper subscription(s) on hold, as if you were going on vacation. Set your alarm clock for tomorrow 15 minutes earlier than normal.
FUTURE: Keep a box by your desk where you will put the unnecessary reading during this period of time. Once your emergency period is over, you can come back to this pile of reading and determine whether you really want to do it or if it was necessary at all. Sometimes we read materials out of the habit and eagerness to keep up with as much as possible, and also due to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), but nothing happens if we let this batch of accumulated reading material go and, going forward, we just pick up from here.
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 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
How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 6
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 44 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: How to find 5 extra hours per week – Part 1
— From Learning to Lead: Bringing Out the Best in People by Fred Smith (1915-2007)
How do you spend time? “Most people spend time like they do money,” says leadership guru Fred Smith in his book Learning to Lead. “They spend until suddenly they run short; then they seek a way to compensate.”
Most books and philosophies teach a disciplined approach to time and money as the best path to prevent either one from slipping away. Yet sometimes life happens and we find ourselves in a crunch trying to find time desperately to complete whatever project we’ve (over)committed to… In Smith’s experience, when he asks his worn-out coachees how much time it would take for them to catch up they say, “If I only had five more hours a week!”
What to do?!
Smith put together a checklist to conduct an emergency plan “as a way to pick up five [or more] hours from any week you choose. It provides immediate and effective relief for those who are swamped.” However, he warns, “This is for emergency use only. As in dieting or spending money, the long-range answer is a better lifestyle that doesn’t require temporary bailouts.” He goes on to say that “this is a battle plan, not a war plan. You shouldn’t continue this emergency plan for longer than, say, four to six weeks.”
Smith suggests announcing our emergency plan to the people around us with a statement of this sort: “Folks, you are not going to see as much of me for the next six weeks as you have. I’ve gotten behind in some very important things I should be doing, because I’ve been doing other things that were needful. I’m going to need your understanding for the next month while I catch up.”
You can also announce it to the world via email with an autoresponder, just as Greg McKeown did when he went into monk mode to write his wonderful book Essentialism: “Dear Friends, I am currently working on a new book which has put enormous burdens on my time. Unfortunately, I am unable to respond in the manner I would like. For this, I apologize.”
People are generally understanding and cooperative. Just make sure that you are indeed working on what you need to accomplish, as opposed to playing golf for hours on end. Smith says, “When you declare an emergency, it’s got to be legitimate.”
“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” – William Penn
Come back tomorrow, as we’ll get started with Smith’s 20-point checklist for finding a minimum of 5 extra hours per week.
ACTION
TODAY: Are you in a time crunch and could use a period of four to six weeks to catch up? If so, block off the time in your calendar so that, as of tomorrow, you will start implementing the techniques that Fred Smith shares in his checklist to put in place an emergency plan.
FUTURE: As you go through the next six weeks implementing the points we are going to see in this miniseries, jot down the lessons learned as you come across them. You will find many ways to improve your time management and effectiveness so that you don’t fall into emergency mode again.
Know someone who could use an additional 5 hours per week to catch up? Please share this post. Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Goals, Growth, Habits, Leadership, Mindset, Planning, Productivity, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 30 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: The habit should serve the mission
— From Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
In their book Switch, brothers Chip and Dan Heath talk about change and what it takes to make it happen for the better of people, teams and processes. One of the tools to shape the path of change is forming habits.
“Habits are behavioral autopilot, and that’s why they’re such a critical tool for leaders. Leaders who can instill habits that reinforce their teams’ goals are essentially making progress for free. They’ve changed behavior in a way that doesn’t draw down the [habit doer’s] reserves of self-control.”
The authors focus on the fact that habits will form inevitably, whether intentionally or not. And they point to all of us creating lots of team habits, albeit unwittingly: “If your staff meetings always start out with genial small talk, then you’ve created a habit. You’ve designed your meeting autopilot to yield a few minutes of warm-up small talk.”
The key, and the main question for the leaders, “is not how to form habits but which habits to encourage.” And thus the authors cite the example of General William “Gus” Pagonis, who led the logistics operation for the Gulf War (Desert Storm) under President George H. W. Bush.
“Every morning, General Pagonis held a meeting that started at 8 a.m. and ended at 8:30 a.m. No great innovation there, but Pagonis made two changes to the routine. First, he allowed anyone to attend (and he required that at least one representative from each functional group be present). That way he could ensure a free and open exchange of information across the organization. Second, he required everyone to stand up during the whole meeting.”
Holding the meeting standing up ensured that everyone involved got to the point fast and in a concise manner, and then yielded the floor to the next person. The authors say, “It would have been just as easy for [Pagonis] to enshrine a two-hour, seated blabfest. What’s exciting here is not the existence of the habit, but rather the insight that the habit should serve the mission. … A stand-up meeting won’t guarantee any of that, but it will help and it’s “free”—it’s not any harder to create than the blabfest would have been.”
When looking at creating a habit that supports the change that you’re trying to make, the authors say that there are only two things to think about:
1. The habit needs to advance the mission, as did Pagonis stand-up meetings.
2. The habit needs to be relatively easy to embrace. If it’s too hard, then it creates its own independent change problem.
On this second point, let’s imagine that you’re trying to exercise more and make a habit of “going to the gym.” The Heath brothers point out that you’re only renaming the core problem. It will be more productive and faster to build a simpler habit, such as laying out your workout clothes the evening before or having a workout buddy pick you up on his way to the gym.
In sum, any behavior you select will become habitual if you stick to it. Just remember that the habit should serve the mission as you select which habit to build for optimum purposes.
ACTION
TODAY: Take one habit that you/your team members have built and analyze its effectiveness. How well is it serving your mission? Should you keep it or should you ditch it in favor of another one that better serves you?
FUTURE: When creating a new habit, you may run into opposition (whether your own—as you keep hitting the snooze button—or your team’s reluctance to change). The best way to figure out whether it serves your mission is to try it out for a period of time, say three or six months, or more, depending on your case. Make sure you can measure the results vs. the old way of doing things, so that you can have a baseline for comparison. If it doesn’t work, you’ll know it. Yet if it does work, you may have a full group of enthusiastic supporters (your team) when you see the results.
Please create the habit of sharing these daily ideas with someone who will enjoy reading them! Email, Facebook, Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Goals, Growth, Habits, Mindset, Planning, Productivity, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 44 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: 3 Considerations for deep work ritualizing
— From Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
Cal Newport is a renowned focus guru and the author of the wonderful book Deep Work. He coined the term Deep Work and defines it as: “Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”
Newport says that creating a ritual is important to be able to work for long, uninterrupted—focused and very productive—stretches of time. He uses the examples of Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Robert Caro and naturalist Charles Darwin, both of whom “didn’t deploy rituals to be weird; they did so because success in their work depended on their ability to go deep, again and again—there’s no way to win a Pulitzer Prize or conceive a grand theory without pushing your brain to its limit.”
Newport continues by pointing out that, “there’s no one correct deep work ritual—the right fit depends on both the person and the type of project pursued.” And he offers the following three points to consider as you build the ritual that best works for you:
1. Where you’ll work and for how long. “Your ritual needs to specify a location for your deep work efforts.” This particular location can be as common as your office with the door shut or—even better and more effective—a specific place where you only go when you want to achieve depth, for example, a quiet library, or a conference room if you are running away from noisy colleagues on an open floor office. “Regardless of where you work, be sure to also give yourself a specific time frame to keep the session a discrete challenge and not an open-ended slog.”
2. How you’ll work once you start to work. “Your ritual needs rules and processes to keep your efforts structured.” For instance, you can set up a goal of the number of words produced per interval of time, and/or you can turn off distractions completely such as disconnecting from the Internet or putting your phone on do not disturb mode. This is important because, “without this structure, you’ll have to mentally litigate again and again what you should and should not be doing during these sessions and keep trying to assess whether you’re working sufficiently hard. These are unnecessary drains on your willpower reserves.”
3. How you’ll support your work. “Your ritual needs to ensure your brain gets the support it needs to keep operating at a high level of depth. For example, the ritual might specify that you start with a cup of good coffee, or make sure you have access to enough food of the right type to maintain energy, or integrate light exercise such as walking to help keep the mind clear.” Make sure you have all you need at your disposal, much as the chefs do with their mise-en-place way of working and overall philosophy. (If you have 7 minutes, read or listen to this NPR story about what we can learn from the way chefs organize.)
“To maximize your success, you need to support your efforts to go deep. At the same time, this support needs to be systematized so that you don’t waste mental energy figuring out what you need in the moment.” – Cal Newport
These three points to consider as you build your ritual are mere starting points. Newport says that crafting that ritual that will best serve you will take experimentation, so be willing to tweak and iterate until you find what works best for you. It’ll be worth it!
ACTION
TODAY: Carve out a slice of your day to do some deep work and, in the beginning, do some thinking and preparing, according to what you know you will need to succeed in your session. Make a list so that you can replicate it next time you need to go deep.
FUTURE: Tweak, tweak, and tweak again until you figure out a ritual that feels right for you. Keep on doing your ritual every time you intend to do deep work. In the words of Newport: “To work deeply is a big deal and should not be an activity undertaken lightly. Surrounding such efforts with a [ritual] accepts this reality—providing your mind with the structure and commitment it needs to slip into the state of focus where you can begin to create things that matter.”
Please share this post with someone who’s looking at doing deep work! Email, Facebook, Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Creativity, Goals, Habits, Mindset, Parkinson's Law, Planning, Productivity, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 41 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Most important tasks
— From The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh Kaufman
We all have a very long list of things to do on a daily basis, but not all of our tasks are the same: some of them are very important and some are not important at all. “Everything on your plate is not critically important, so don’t treat everything on your task list equally,” says Josh Kaufman, author of The Personal MBA.
“A Most Important Task (MIT) is a critical task that will create the most important results you’re looking to achieve. […] If you want to make the most of your limited time and energy, it pays to focus on completing the tasks that will make the biggest difference first…”
As simple as this is, by taking a few minutes every morning (or preferably the night before) to identify the most important tasks, you’ll be able to focus on accomplishing them first. Kaufman recommends creating a list of two or three MITs and focusing on getting them done as quickly as possible. Further, he suggests keeping your MITs separate from your general to-do list, by using such things as a 3 X 5 index card or Dave Seah’s awesome Emergent Task Planner (free).
The key to figuring out what your MITs are, according to Kaufman, is to ask yourself the following questions: “What are the two or three most important things that I need to do today? What are the things that—if I got them done today—would make a huge difference?” Those are the only things that should go on your MIT list.
And to be über productive, Kaufman recommends combining your MIT’s with Parkinson’s Law. Remember, this is the law that states that, work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. (Wikipedia).
How do you do this?
Easy: set an artificial time limit. “If you set a goal to have all your MITs done by 10:00 am you’ll be amazed at how quickly you can complete the day’s most important tasks.”
And by doing this, you will create a state of focus and effectiveness (flow) that will give you permission to decline interruptions that aren’t important. “If you’re working on your MITs and someone calls you, it’s easier to ignore the call or tell the caller, ‘I’m working under deadline—I’ll get back to you later.’ By definition, everything that’s not an MIT is not as important, so it’s easier to say no to noncritical interruptions.
Combine this with the Be Awesomely Effective miniseries and you’ll be ultra-productive. And you’ll have the rest of your day to deal with anything else that comes up, or to dedicate to crossing off items on your non-MIT task list.
ACTION
TODAY: Take 5 minutes to figure out your MITs for today. Also, take a look at Dave Seah’s Emergent Task Planner. If you like it, download it, print it, and use it today (it’s a great, free resource). If not, think of the best method for you to have a separate list with your MITs.
FUTURE: As you continue to use the MIT + Parkinson’s Law concept, go back and read the Be Awesomely Effective miniseries. This will help you create the best environment where you will hopefully achieve a state of flow.
Know someone who could use some advice on creating MITs? Please share this post via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
