by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Goals, Growth, Leadership, Mindset, Time
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 48 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Top 5 Barriers to Teamwork
— From Equipping 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know by John C. Maxwell
Our culture loves the myth of the self-made man or woman. We applaud and admire the story of the lone entrepreneur who builds an empire.
But the truth is that nobody reaches the top by themselves. Everyone gets help along the way.
John C. Maxwell, leadership guru and author of Equipping 101, challenges us to think of one act of genuine significance in the history of humankind that was performed by a lone human being. “No matter what you name, you will find that a team of people was involved.”
Teamwork is not necessarily seen—or even considered so—when it comes from an external source and not directly within the immediate circle, such as funding, government licenses and permits, outsourcing help, or any kind of metaphorical push along the way that gets the person unstuck and moving in the right direction.
Yet it’s important to recognize that no man is an island and that any worthwhile feat requires teamwork. As the author’s famous quote and title of another one of his books says, “Teamwork makes the dream work.” And he goes on to provide a list of the benefits of teamwork:
- Teams involve more people, thus affording more resources, ideas and energy than would an individual.
- Teams maximize a leader’s potential and minimize her weaknesses. Strengths and weaknesses are more exposed in individuals
- Teams provide multiple perspectives on how to meet a need or reach a goal, thus devising several alternatives for each situation.
- Teams share the credits for victories and the blame for losses. This fosters genuine humility and authentic community.
- Teams keep leaders accountable for the goal.
- Teams can simply do more than an individual.
But we already knew this… right? So, why are we so adamant and hardheaded about doing things by ourselves?
Maxwell thinks there are four main barriers to teamwork, and he shares them with us.
Barriers to teamwork
Barrier 1: Ego. “Few people are fond of admitting they can’t do everything, yet that is a reality of life. There are no supermen or superwomen. So the question is not whether you can do everything by yourself; it’s how soon you’re going to realize you can’t.”
Barrier 2: Insecurity. “Only secure leaders give power to others… insecure leaders usually fail to build teams because of one of two reasons: Either they want to maintain control over everything for which they are responsible, or they fear being replaced by someone more capable. In either case, leaders who fail to promote teamwork undermine their own potential and erode the best efforts of the people with whom they work.”
Barrier 3: Naiveté. “[Some people] naively underestimate the difficulty of achieving big things. As a result, they try to go it alone.”
Barrier 4: Temperament. “Some people aren’t very outgoing and simply don’t think in terms of team building and equipping. As they face challenges, it never occurs to them to enlist others to achieve something… But whether or not you’re naturally inclined to be part of a team is really irrelevant. If you do everything alone and never partner with other people, you create huge barriers to your own potential.”
And besides these four ones from Maxwell, I’d like to add a fifth barrier that I’ve come across:
Barrier 5: Time (perceived lack of). Some people (read: me… #notproud) are so pressed for time in general, that we think bringing someone on board—or even outsourcing—is going to take a lot of time due to the time and effort involved in training the new person. Eventually, we come to realize that the time and effort in training will be well worth it, as it will be a small investment up front, in comparison to the return in the form of help that we need, the freedom to take that off our plates, and the peace of mind that comes from knowing it’s being done (and done well!).
ACTION
TODAY: Are you trying to work on something where you’d be better off enlisting the help of others? I’ve learned that almost everything can be optimized, automated, or outsourced (thanks, Ari Meisel!) Which one of the barriers is holding you back? What steps do you need to take to overcome it?
FUTURE: What are your big, hairy and audacious goals? If you break them down into doable chunks, where could you use some help? Keep in mind that help is not just for the things you don’t know how to do or can’t do, but also (and especially!) for the ones that you do very well and should not be doing (not the best use of your time).
Know someone who is battling with these barriers to teamwork? Please share this post! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Creativity, Goals, Growth, Productivity, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time for blocking your time: 3 minutes, 23 seconds:
TODAY’S IDEA: Blocking your time
— From The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington
“If you are not in control of your time, you are not in control of your results,” say Brian Moran and Michael Lennington, productivity and execution gurus and authors of The 12 Week Year. Yet sometimes things come up throughout the day, mainly unplanned interruptions that “will eat up your valuable minutes” here and there.
What to do?
“Trying to reduce these interruptions usually doesn’t work well and it can be more difficult that just dealing with them… The key to successful time use—intentional time use—is not trying to eliminate those unplanned interruptions, but instead to block out regular time each week dedicated to your strategically important tasks.”
The authors call these blocks of time Performance Time, and they say, “It is the best approach to effectively allocating time that we have ever encountered.”
Performance Time uses a time-blocking system so that you can be in control of your time and maximize your effectiveness, thus, controlling your results.
The time blocking system is simple; there are three different kinds of blocks. Let’s look at each:
Strategic Blocks: A strategic block is a three-hour block of uninterrupted time that is scheduled into each week. During this block you accept no phone calls, no faxes, no emails, no visitors, no anything. Instead, you focus all your energy on preplanned tasks—your strategic and money-making activities.
Strategic blocks concentrate your intellect and creativity to produce breakthrough results. You will likely be astounded by the quantity and quality of the work you produce. For most people, one strategic block per week is sufficient.
Buffer Blocks: Buffer blocks are designed to deal with all the unplanned and low-value activities—like most email and voice mail—that arise through a typical day. Almost nothing is more unproductive and frustrating that dealing with constant interruptions, yet we’ve all had days when unplanned items dominated our time.
For some, one 30-minute buffer block a day is sufficient, while for others, two separate one-hour blocks may be necessary. The power of buffer blocks comes from grouping together activities that tend to be unproductive so that you can increase your efficiency in dealing with them and take greater control over the rest of your day.
Breakout Blocks: One of the key factors contributing to performance plateaus is the absence of free time. Very often entrepreneurs and professionals get caught up in working longer and harder, but this approach kills your energy and enthusiasm. To achieve greater results, what’s often necessary is not actually working more hours, but rather taking some time away from work.
[…] An effective breakout block is at least three-hours long and spent on things other than work. It is time scheduled away from your business during normal business hours that you will use to refresh and reinvigorate your mind, so that when you return to work, you can engage with more focus and energy.
For Performance Time to work better, the authors suggest going beyond merely scheduling these three blocks in your weekly calendar. “The more you can create a routine in your days and weeks, the more effective your execution will be.”
Moran and Lennington say it’s ideal—if you can—to schedule routine tasks at the same time on the same day each week. However, more important is to know when you are at your best (Morning? Afternoon? Evening?) and schedule your most important activities for that peak time when you’ll be super effective.
ACTION
TODAY: Take a look at your calendar and figure out when you can clear up some time to add Performance Time. If not today, schedule it between now and next week and stick to it.
FUTURE: Give Performance Time a shot and try it out for a week or two, or three… Tweak to where it works out best for you and stay with it for a while to start reaping its benefits.
Know someone who would benefit from reading this post? Please share this post via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Creativity, Goals, Growth, Habits, Mindset, Planning, Productivity, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 15 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Reprogram your brain to enjoy hard habits
— From Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
“You can make hard habits more attractive if you can learn to associate them with a positive experience,” says James Clear, author of Atomic Habits and habit, decision-making and continuous-improvement guru.
“Sometimes, all you need is a slight mind-set shift.”
For example, Clear points to the way we talk about everything we have to do in a given day: “You have to wake up early for work. You have to make another sales call for your business. You have to cook dinner for your family.”
Then he says, “Now imagine changing just one word: You don’t ‘have’ to. You ‘get’ to.”
“You get to wake up early for work. You get to make another sales call for your business. You get to cook dinner for your family. By simply changing one word, you shift the way you view each event. You transition from viewing these behaviors as burdens and turn them into opportunities.”
The author says, “The key point is that both versions of reality are true. You have to do those things, and you also get to do them. We can find evidence for whatever mind-set we choose.”
So, it’s up to us to intentionally choose the one view that we prefer. Personally, I like the one that is uplifting. This reminds me a lot of the book The Art of Possibility where the authors suggest exchanging an AND for a BUT to open up possibilities. So true!
It’s all about perspective. Clear shares a story of a man in a wheelchair who was asked if it was difficult being confined. His response? “I’m not confined to my wheelchair—I am liberated by it. If it wasn’t for my wheelchair, I would be bed-bound and never able to leave my house.”
“Reframing your habits to highlight their benefits rather than their drawbacks is a fast and lightweight way to reprogram your mind and make a habit seem more attractive.”
Clear points out to a few habits that are hard to keep and makes a few suggestions on how to see them from a new perspective:
- Exercise: “Many people associate exercise with being a challenging task that drains energy and wears you down. You can just as easily view it as a way to develop skills and build you up. Instead of telling yourself ‘I need to go run in the morning,’ say ‘It’s time to build endurance and get fast.’”
- Finance: “Saving money is often associated with sacrifice. However, you can associate with freedom rather than limitation if you realize one simple truth: living below your current means increases your future means.”
- Meditation: “Anyone who has tried meditation for more than three seconds knows how frustrating it can be when the next distraction inevitably pops into your mind. You can transform frustration into delight when you realize that each interruption gives you a chance to return to your breath. Distraction is a good thing because you need distractions to practice meditation.”
While these little mind-set shifts aren’t magic, Clear says that they can definitely work to help you change the feelings associated with a particular habit or situation.
Further, he says, if you create a motivation ritual, “You simply practice associating your habits with something you enjoy, then you can use that cue whenever you need a bit of motivation.” This could be as simple as playing the same song before you start working out to get in the mood for exercising, or doing a few jumping jacks or power poses before going to give a presentation to get your blood pumping and set your mind to “presenting mode,” etc. Do what works best for you: create your own motivation ritual and that will make it easier and better to stick to the habit you want to develop or strengthen.
“The key to finding and fixing the causes of your bad habits is to reframe the associations you have about them. It’s not easy, but if you can reprogram your predictions, you can transform a hard habit into an attractive one.”
Do you plan on starting a motivation ritual or you already have one? Let me know in the comments here, we can all learn from each other and get ideas that way!
ACTION
TODAY: When you find yourself feeling the burden of all you have to do, remember to exchange have for get. Try it, there’s nothing to lose and much to gain. The language you use will determine how you feel, use it to create the best mind-set for you.
FUTURE: Create a motivation ritual around those habits that are hard for you. Stick to it, one day at a time, for 90 days until the ritual is fully ingrained. Remember what Og Mandino said (I’m paraphrasing): if I am to become a slave to my habits, I might as well develop good habits.
Know someone who could use more GETs and less HAVEs? Or someone who could benefit from reframing? Please share this post via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Goals, Habits, Mindset, Productivity, Resources, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 37 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Break free from your inbox
— From Laura Vanderkam’s email series “Just a minute” sent November 1, 2018.
Laura Vanderkam is one of my favorite authors whose books have changed the way I organize my life and use my time (you can read more about that here, here, here and here).
Her approach to time management is very sensible and, since she is a journalist, she does her own research and really digs into things to find out what works and what doesn’t in terms of using our time wisely. I can’t say enough good things about her and her work! (BTW, I had the honor of interviewing her a couple years ago, you can watch it here.)
I subscribe to her Just a Minute email newsletter and, in the most recent one, she shared some g-r-e-a-t tips about email. Specifically, she shares tips on how to deal with our inbox more effectively and break free from the tyranny of feeling that we have to check email all day long and be always connected.
Since I’m always trying to get better, faster, and more effective at email—yet at times it still feels like I’m trying to stop the waves of the ocean—I thought I’d share with you what she wrote, in case you have the same ups and downs that I do about email. (If you want to read Laura’s full email online click here.)
Thank you, Laura! 😀
Laura Vanderkam has been tracking her time for 3 years now, and is a big proponent of doing so (I did it a while back for a month and it’s a great exercise—I highly recommend it too!). Recently, she was tracking her screen time and she was surprised to find out that the time she spent on email was less than she thought it was. She talked about this with other screen trackers, and the revelation was the same.
So, what to make out of this?
Vanderkam says, “I think what happens for many of us is that email consumes more mindshare than hours. Checking email 8 times an hour for an average of one minute at a time adds up to just 1 hour over an 8-hour workday, but you will feel like you are on email all day long.”
Hmmmmmmm, very good point.
She offers the following seven suggestions to break free from your inbox and handle it in a much more organized way:
1. Accept that you don’t have to respond to everything. “At some point, you can’t. Expectations are infinite. Time is finite. You are always choosing. Choose well. If you’re inevitably going to disappoint someone, you want to be sure you’re disappointing the right people.”
2. Get a real alarm clock. “Using a smartphone as an alarm clock makes it very easy to wade into your inbox before you’ve had your coffee. After all, the icon will show that messages have come in over night, creating a sense that you need to do something about them. But you probably don’t (see the first point).”
3. Commit to a power hour. “Rather than clearing the decks and getting current on email before starting more focused work, do the focused work first. Your inbox will still be there, and it will feel less oppressive when you know you’re making progress on other things.”
4. Deal with email when you can do something about it. “Rumination eats hours, often pointlessly. Put the phone in airplane mode between planned email breaks. This doesn’t work if you get a lot of unscheduled calls you need to take, but if you don’t, then make it more difficult to randomly dip in and out of your inbox.”
5. Stretch the time until you respond to things that aren’t urgent. “Schedule a time every few days to get your inbox to your definition of “current.” If you know there’s a time tomorrow to deal with email, you might stop thinking about most of it until then.”
6. Do more video calls. “I know one of the upsides of working from home is the ability to take phone calls when you haven’t shaved or brushed your hair. But in audio-only mode it’s very easy not to pay attention, and checking email is the easiest way to distract yourself.”
7. Forget about inbox zero. “I know some people disagree with me on this! But I think having a goal of zero unread messages encourages people to pop into their inboxes frequently just to delete stuff. Deleting emails feels very productive — look, I got down from 150 unread messages to 25! — but it isn’t productive in the grand scheme of things. ‘She deleted all her email’ is unlikely to land on anyone’s tombstone. Focus on what matters, and use email as a tool to achieve that. Remember that it is not an end unto itself.”
I keep reminding myself that email should work for me and not the other way around, and all these handy tips will work on reinforcing that. Hope they work for you too! Let me know how you apply them in the comments here.
ACTION
TODAY: From the list above, apply the suggestions that will help you be more effective at email. Be aware of what happens, and see if you can decrease the mindshare that email occupies in favor of other priorities.
FUTURE: Track your screen time: there are many apps for that purpose that work well on both computers and smartphones/tablets. Or you can go the low-tech way with pen and paper, which is very good too. What does it say about the amount of time you spend on email?
Know someone who could benefit from learning these tips? Please share this post with them via email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Goals, Growth, Mindset, Planning, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 4 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Setting goals with PICS
— From The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh Kaufman
As we near the end of the year, the mad rush to achieve our goals begins. We have to meet Q4 goals and quotas, we want to accomplish those things that we said we would do back in January but put off until now, etc.
What happened?
Very likely, what happened is that we set vague goals.
Josh Kaufman, business guru and author of The Personal MBA, says “Well-formed goals accomplish two things: they help you visualize what you want, and make you excited about achieving it.”
Fuzzy goals like: “I want to climb a mountain” aren’t very helpful, because they don’t give your brain anything to work with. Which mountain? Where? When? Why? Without answers to these questions, you probably won’t do anything at all.
Well-formed goals pass the “Everest Test.” Useful goals look like this: “I want to climb to the summit of Mt. Everest before my fortieth birthday, and take a panoramic picture to frame on my wall as a trophy.”
In this example, this goal would be easy for your brain to envision: Arranging travel to Nepal, improving your climbing skills, searching for a guide, purchasing gear and equipment, buying a panoramic camera, and so on.
Kaufman goes on to say, “Once you make a conscious choice to achieve the goal, your mind automatically starts finding ways to get it done.”
So, what do we need to set well-formed goals that we can achieve?
Kaufman suggests framing the goals in a Positive, Immediate, Concrete, Specific (PICS) format:
Positive: “Refers to Motivation: your goal should be something you move toward, not away from.” If you have a goal like “I don’t want to be fat anymore,” the author says, “You’re reinforcing the negative instead of [changing] your mind’s prediction to get excited about improving.”
Immediate: “Refers to time-scale: your goals should be things that you decide to make progress on now, not ‘someday’ or ‘eventually.’ If you don’t want to commit to working on a particular goal now, put it on your someday/maybe list and focus on something else.”
Concrete: “Means you’re able to see the results in the real world. Goals are achievements—you should know when you’ve accomplished what you set out to achieve. Setting goals like ‘I want to be happy’ don’t work because they’re not concrete—how would you know when you’re done? When you reach the top of Mt. Everest, you’ve achieved something concrete.”
Specific: “Means you’re able to define exactly what, when, and where you’re going to achieve your goal. Climbing Mt. Everest on a certain date in the near future is specific, which makes it easy for your mind to plan exactly how you’ll go about accomplishing it.”
While all of this is very important to set goals, the part that I find even more important is when the author explains, “For best effect, your goals should be under your control. Goals like ‘Losing twenty pounds’ are soul-crushing because they’re not directly under your control—losing weight is a result, not an effort. If your weight randomly moves up a few pounds on a given day, it’s easy to feel defeated, even though you had no choice in the matter… make your goals actions that are within your [control], like thirty minutes of exercise every day and controlling the number of calories you consume.”
Keep track of your goals using whatever system works for you, whether manually or electronically. There are myriad ways to do this: the simpler, the better.
Lastly, Kaufman also reminds us that “it’s perfectly okay to change your goals. Sometimes we think we want something, only to find out later that we don’t want it so much anymore. Don’t feel bad about that—it’s called learning. If you find yourself working toward a goal you no longer feel good about, work on something else.”
And now, I will let you go work on framing your goals for the rest of the year. What are you planning to do? Let me know in the comments here, I’d love to hear what you’re up to.
ACTION
TODAY: What are you looking to achieve during the last two months of this year? November is almost here. Take some time to reframe your goals using PICS to ensure you can achieve them. If your goals are too big, break them down into subgoals that you can indeed achieve in 60 days.
FUTURE: Kaufman asks, “If you haven’t, can you set an arbitrary end state for now, leaving yourself open to course-correction as you progress?” As we move along on our goals, we learn and we course-correct all the time. Be disciplined with your actions to make your goal happen; but be flexible as time goes by and you course-correct (based on your experience of working on your goal), that way you can reach your destination sooner, faster, better, etc.
Know someone who is going trying to achieve a goal in the last 2 months of the year? Please share this post with them! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Collaboration, Creativity, Goals, Mindset, Planning, Productivity, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 39 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Interruption is the enemy of productivity
— From REWORK: Change the way you work forever by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
I am back from vacation with renewed energy! However, upon my return, jet lag hit me and I’ve been waking up between 2 and 4 am (!). Instead of fighting it, I embraced it and decided to use that momentum to start catching up. It was wonderful: I was “in the zone” while there were no interruptions, and then I started to dread the rest of the day.
But why?
I love being on a productivity roll and, as the day progressed, I knew I would naturally get interrupted and wouldn’t be as productive… and I have so much catching up to do!
Since I don’t like to dread the day ahead but instead look forward to it, I did what I know best: look for ideas or an answer to this in a book. In case you’ve ever been familiar with this I-have-so-much-to-do-and-don’t-want-to-get-interrupted feeling, I’m happy to share what I found out in Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.
“Your day is under siege by interruptions. It’s on you to fight back.”
“Interruptions break your workday into a series of work moments,” the authors say. “Forty-five minutes and then you have a call. Fifteen minutes and then you have lunch. An hour later you have an afternoon meeting. Before you know it, it’s five o’clock, and you’ve only had a couple uninterrupted hours to get your work done. You can’t get meaningful things done when you’re constantly going start, stop, start, stop.”
Instead, what they suggest is to get into what they call the alone zone: “Long stretches of alone time when you’re most productive. When you don’t have to mind-shift between various tasks, you get a boatload done.”
However, getting in the alone zone “takes time and requires avoiding interruptions.” The authors equate the alone zone to REM sleep: “You don’t just go directly into REM sleep. You go to sleep first and then make your way to REM. Any interruptions force you to start over. And just as REM is when the real sleep magic happens, the alone zone is where the real productivity magic happens.”
The good news for those who are not jetlagged—or simply not a morning person—is that “the alone zone doesn’t have to be in the wee hours.” Fried and Hansson offer these suggestions to implement throughout the day:
You can set up a rule at work that half the day is set aside for alone time. Decree that from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. people can’t talk to each other (except during lunch). Or make the first or last half of the day your alone-time period. Or instead of casual Fridays, try no-talk Thursdays. Just make sure this period is unbroken in order to avoid productivity–zapping interruptions.
And go all the way with it. A successful alone-time period means letting go of communication addiction. During alone time, give up instant messages, phone calls, e-mail, and meetings. Just shut up and get to work. You’ll be surprised how much more you get done.
Also, when you do collaborate, try to use passive communication tools, like e-mail, that don’t require an instant reply, instead of interruptive ones, like phone calls and face-to-face meetings. That way people can respond when it’s convenient for them, instead of being forced to drop everything right away.
As you can see, creativity and imagination come into play here to create an alone zone, whether for you or for your whole team. Put on your thinking cap and figure out the best way to accomplish this, you’ll get a lot done!
ACTION
TODAY: Do you find yourself in the situation of trying to carve out uninterrupted time for you either early or late in the day to get things done? Think creatively as to how you can implement an alone zone with certain regularity during your working hours to work on your priorities.
FUTURE: Take a look at this post about scheduling time. It may shed some light on how to run your schedule better according to the roles you play (maker or manager). Once you have established an alone zone that is working well for you, make it a habit and don’t deviate from it! You will become tremendously productive if you stick to it with consistency.
Know someone who dreads interruptions? Help them create an alone zone by sharing the ideas on this post! Email, Facebook or Twitter, thanks!
