.
Being “in the zone” is wonderful. You know about the zone – not the diet, but the place and space where you do your best work. Where you’re in your groove. Where your work is exemplary. Where computer solitaire or FreeCell has little chance to derail you.
Regardless of what you call it, would it be useful for you to know how to get into the zone on a more consistent basis? You bet it would! Here’s a simple exercise you can undertake to help create that environment in which you can work at your best.
Recall a time when you were highly productive:
• Where were you?
• What time of day was it?
• Was anyone else around?
• What was the lighting?
• What was the temperature?
• What resources were available?
Think about what you did at that time:
• What were you wearing?
• What did you consume the night before?
• How long did you sleep the night before?
• With whom did you sleep the night before?
• How did you feel?
• What was your level of fitness?
• What did you eat that morning?
Consider the time of day and week
• What time of day was it?
• What day of the week was it?
• What had transpired earlier?
• What was forthcoming?
Think about the tools available:
• Were you using a computer or PDA?
• Were you using other equipment?
• Did you have a pen or pencil?
• Did you have a blank pad?
• Were you online?
• Were other resources available?
• Were periodicals, books or directories present?
Assess other factors that were present:
• Did you have a view? (a room with a view!)
• Were you in a comfortable chair?
• Were you at a desk or at a table?
• Were you in a moving vehicle, such as a plane or a train?
• Was there quiet, or soothing, background noise?
• What were the colors of the walls surrounding you?
• Were you in a room with rugs?
• Could you hear others?
• Was water nearby?
• Were you near the coffee machine?
• Was the coffee decent?
Circle each item in the previous list that was present or was a factor when you
were in the zone. Undoubtedly, insights will emerge. Next, recall another similar experience and read through each of the questions again. Which items now been circled twice?
If you can recall a third or fourth time in which you were highly productive, and run through the questions again, a strong pattern may emerge. You’ll know which factors were present at those times you seemed to be highly productive. When they’re stuck getting started on some task, self-starters emulate their zone scenarios to increase the probability of achieving great results.
Regards,
Timben
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Get Your Ducks in a Row
.
It is reasonable to schedule time to take care of life’s administrative tasks, such as handling correspondence, paying bills, straightening up, and keeping things in order. These activities can be as important as anything else in helping you attain your optimal performance level. They can prepare you to best tackle critical tasks and projects. Heck, the grounds crews take time to mow the grass and line the fields before every baseball game, so there has to be some sense in tidying up!
Some people find it advantageous to set aside a whole day solely for taking care of “administrivia.” Thereafter, they have uninterrupted days of highly productive activity. For a specific task, when you know that there are going to be bottlenecks, you have a tendency not to get started. If you marshal your resources and take care of contingencies, you have a far greater chance of starting and staying with the project from the outset. Often it makes sense to handle minor tasks before tackling something larger.
If you know you’re going to need support somewhere down the line, ensure at the outset that it will be forthcoming. This will help you to get started on projects that you otherwise may find yourself lingering over.
You intend to come into the office Saturday (yeah, right) to reorganize your now messy filing system. So, during the week, as you pass by retail stores, or the company supply closet, you accumulate file folders, hanging folders, identification tags, and a waste bin for documents you no longer need. This way, when Saturday arrives, you have no excuse!
By assembling these items in advance – lining up your ducks – you all but ensure that you’ll proceed at a productive pace on Saturday when you tackle the job you have been planning. If you buy too many garbage bags, bring too many folders, don’t worry. You will use them eventually. Garbage happens. And you’ll likely need even more in the near future. You are not likely to use all the glass cleaner either, but it will certainly come in handy for other windows at other times. As far as the bug spray, hopefully you won’t need that again.
To not line up your ducks before starting a big project would ensure inefficiency, excessive downtime, and (need I say it?) further procrastination!
Lining up your ducks doesn’t always equate to buying things. It may be as simple as assembling items that you already have at your disposal, such as that all – important duct tape. For work-related projects, lining up your ducks might entail identifying key resources in advance, such as phone numbers of contact people, URLs of vital Web sites, or a list of usernames and passwords.
Lining up your ducks complements plotting a course. Simply jotting down the items or resources that you might need in advance of tackling the project represents prudent time management, is comforting, and, in retrospect, almost always proves to be rewarding. Then, go have a life, at least for the rest of the day. It’s rumored that time off can be quite enjoyable.
If you’re in need of an effective scheduling system, these days there are software programs across the Web designed to help the organizationally challenged. The time management software for Windows, Achieve Planner, allows you to arrange tasks hierarchically and color-code your priorities. The distributors at www.effexis.com.achieve/planner.htm assert that this program will help increase your productivity. You can also identify others easily. The point is, find something that works for you and stick with it.
Regards,
Timben
It is reasonable to schedule time to take care of life’s administrative tasks, such as handling correspondence, paying bills, straightening up, and keeping things in order. These activities can be as important as anything else in helping you attain your optimal performance level. They can prepare you to best tackle critical tasks and projects. Heck, the grounds crews take time to mow the grass and line the fields before every baseball game, so there has to be some sense in tidying up!
Some people find it advantageous to set aside a whole day solely for taking care of “administrivia.” Thereafter, they have uninterrupted days of highly productive activity. For a specific task, when you know that there are going to be bottlenecks, you have a tendency not to get started. If you marshal your resources and take care of contingencies, you have a far greater chance of starting and staying with the project from the outset. Often it makes sense to handle minor tasks before tackling something larger.
If you know you’re going to need support somewhere down the line, ensure at the outset that it will be forthcoming. This will help you to get started on projects that you otherwise may find yourself lingering over.
You intend to come into the office Saturday (yeah, right) to reorganize your now messy filing system. So, during the week, as you pass by retail stores, or the company supply closet, you accumulate file folders, hanging folders, identification tags, and a waste bin for documents you no longer need. This way, when Saturday arrives, you have no excuse!
By assembling these items in advance – lining up your ducks – you all but ensure that you’ll proceed at a productive pace on Saturday when you tackle the job you have been planning. If you buy too many garbage bags, bring too many folders, don’t worry. You will use them eventually. Garbage happens. And you’ll likely need even more in the near future. You are not likely to use all the glass cleaner either, but it will certainly come in handy for other windows at other times. As far as the bug spray, hopefully you won’t need that again.
To not line up your ducks before starting a big project would ensure inefficiency, excessive downtime, and (need I say it?) further procrastination!
Lining up your ducks doesn’t always equate to buying things. It may be as simple as assembling items that you already have at your disposal, such as that all – important duct tape. For work-related projects, lining up your ducks might entail identifying key resources in advance, such as phone numbers of contact people, URLs of vital Web sites, or a list of usernames and passwords.
Lining up your ducks complements plotting a course. Simply jotting down the items or resources that you might need in advance of tackling the project represents prudent time management, is comforting, and, in retrospect, almost always proves to be rewarding. Then, go have a life, at least for the rest of the day. It’s rumored that time off can be quite enjoyable.
If you’re in need of an effective scheduling system, these days there are software programs across the Web designed to help the organizationally challenged. The time management software for Windows, Achieve Planner, allows you to arrange tasks hierarchically and color-code your priorities. The distributors at www.effexis.com.achieve/planner.htm assert that this program will help increase your productivity. You can also identify others easily. The point is, find something that works for you and stick with it.
Regards,
Timben
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Set Up Your Desk for Decision
.
Given that you’ve gotten you desk under control, now go a step further. Set up your office to enable you to focus on the task at hand, and ignore other less important matters. This might involve neatly arranging papers, file folders, reports and other items, while working at a clear desk, with only the issue hand in front of you.
Remember that simply having too much in your visual field can be an impediment to beginning a task.
When you have only a single project or task at hand, your odds of maintaining clarity and focus increase dramatically. This is even truer if you’re not in your own office or cubicle but at a conference table or at some other location at which you only have the project materials at hand.
Did you see the movie Top Gun, in which Tom Cruise plays a Navy fighter pilot? (“Your ego is writing checks that your body can’t cash.”) Among his many responsibilities in flying some of the nation’s most expensive aircraft is landing those jets safely on aircraft carrier decks.
Months after seeing the movie, I read an article in Smithsonian magazine about how aircraft carrier decks are to be completely clean and clear before a plane lands. “All hands on deck” on an aircraft carrier means that everyone, even senior officers, needs to pick up a push broom and sweep the deck clear. The goal is to leave nothing on the surface of the deck, not even a paper clip, in order to ensure a successful landing. If there is debris on the deck as a plane approaches, or an earlier plane has not left the landing strip, the approaching plane is likely to crash.
Your desk is like the deck of an aircraft carrier. If you take the next pile of stuff you receive and park it in the corner of your desk with the notion that an organizing fairy will leave a nice, neat file under your pillow in the morning, good luck! Nobody’s coming to help you manage your desk. Each new item you pile on will figuratively crash in the smoldering ruins if the accumulations in progress.
Get into the habit of managing your desktop as if it’s important in enhancing your productivity – because it is. Don’t let glut put you in a rut. Cut through the clutter like hot knife through butter. If you only have whatever you’re working on in front of you, and the rest of your desk is clear, you’re bound to have more energy, focus, and direction. You’re in a far better position to take action. The top executives of major corporations know this; that’s why their desks remain clear and uncluttered.
Regards,
Timben
Given that you’ve gotten you desk under control, now go a step further. Set up your office to enable you to focus on the task at hand, and ignore other less important matters. This might involve neatly arranging papers, file folders, reports and other items, while working at a clear desk, with only the issue hand in front of you.
Remember that simply having too much in your visual field can be an impediment to beginning a task.
When you have only a single project or task at hand, your odds of maintaining clarity and focus increase dramatically. This is even truer if you’re not in your own office or cubicle but at a conference table or at some other location at which you only have the project materials at hand.
Did you see the movie Top Gun, in which Tom Cruise plays a Navy fighter pilot? (“Your ego is writing checks that your body can’t cash.”) Among his many responsibilities in flying some of the nation’s most expensive aircraft is landing those jets safely on aircraft carrier decks.
Months after seeing the movie, I read an article in Smithsonian magazine about how aircraft carrier decks are to be completely clean and clear before a plane lands. “All hands on deck” on an aircraft carrier means that everyone, even senior officers, needs to pick up a push broom and sweep the deck clear. The goal is to leave nothing on the surface of the deck, not even a paper clip, in order to ensure a successful landing. If there is debris on the deck as a plane approaches, or an earlier plane has not left the landing strip, the approaching plane is likely to crash.
Your desk is like the deck of an aircraft carrier. If you take the next pile of stuff you receive and park it in the corner of your desk with the notion that an organizing fairy will leave a nice, neat file under your pillow in the morning, good luck! Nobody’s coming to help you manage your desk. Each new item you pile on will figuratively crash in the smoldering ruins if the accumulations in progress.
Get into the habit of managing your desktop as if it’s important in enhancing your productivity – because it is. Don’t let glut put you in a rut. Cut through the clutter like hot knife through butter. If you only have whatever you’re working on in front of you, and the rest of your desk is clear, you’re bound to have more energy, focus, and direction. You’re in a far better position to take action. The top executives of major corporations know this; that’s why their desks remain clear and uncluttered.
Regards,
Timben
Monday, September 21, 2009
Manage Your Desk for Performance
.
The quality and ambience of your work space is at its best when it demonstrates the quality and ambience of your life, or how you would like your life to be: rearrange your desk, change your life. Find your personal “zone.” The zone is the place and space where you do your best work, where you are in the groove and where your work is exemplary. Procrastination has little chance here, even with you.
Joe Sugarman, in his book Success Forces, explains that by clearing your desk every evening, you automatically have to choose what to work on the next day. Though such reasoning is contrary to the advice of time management “experts,” I wholeheartedly endorse it. It is a discipline that yields a marvelous ability to get started in the morning while others find themselves only slowly getting out of the gate.
To create my own “mini-desk workout,” I keep some items on the far end of my desk so that I have to reach to use them. I fight procrastination, and I stretch my muscles!
What about inside your desk? Include frequently needed supplies, but remember: a desk is not a supply cabinet. Maintain a drawer of personal items – your desk is there to support you. Tissues or cough drops are okay. Sorry, your Game Boy is not. Include any needed forms of heavily used items, but leave a 20 percent vacancy. Constantly review what you’re holding and decide to retain or toss it. Near, but not on your desk, go the familiar items such as pictures, plants, and motivators. Also, install any supporting accoutrements, from full-spectrum lighting to ocean wave music, if they support your productivity, efficiency, and creativity (and if your coworkers don’t mind).
To ensure that your desk and work environment support your productivity, invest in yourself. If you need them and can obtain approval from the powers that be, room dividers and sound barriers are available in a wide variety of shapes and sizes and can improve upon any existing sound barriers. The gentle, rhythmic “white noise” of a small fan’s motor serves as a sound buffer to many of the sounds that may distract you.
Every evening after you’ve cleared your desk, congratulate yourself for what you accomplished that day. Don’t do a number on yourself and beat yourself up for what you didn’t do. Nothing would be accomplished, and you’d be in pain. It’s likely that you’re doing the best you can. If you can do better, you will – maybe not immediately, but soon enough, certainly by the next millennium.
So as previously recommended, do your filing and come up smiling. Use the end of the day, slow periods, or periods of low personal energy to revamp your files, keep your desk orderly, and better prepare yourself for high-octane output when you’re ready to get started again.
After you’ve cleared your desk, apply the same principle to your computer’s desktop, your inbox, the top of your file cabinet, closet shelves, and other areas of your life – your dining-room table, your car’s glove compartment, the trunk of your car, and your health club locker (if not for better organization than at least for your personal hygiene). The fewer things you have in these places, the greater sense of control you have over your environment. Once these flat surfaces are under control, self-starters gain a heightened sense of control over their time.
Regards,
Timben
The quality and ambience of your work space is at its best when it demonstrates the quality and ambience of your life, or how you would like your life to be: rearrange your desk, change your life. Find your personal “zone.” The zone is the place and space where you do your best work, where you are in the groove and where your work is exemplary. Procrastination has little chance here, even with you.
Joe Sugarman, in his book Success Forces, explains that by clearing your desk every evening, you automatically have to choose what to work on the next day. Though such reasoning is contrary to the advice of time management “experts,” I wholeheartedly endorse it. It is a discipline that yields a marvelous ability to get started in the morning while others find themselves only slowly getting out of the gate.
To create my own “mini-desk workout,” I keep some items on the far end of my desk so that I have to reach to use them. I fight procrastination, and I stretch my muscles!
What about inside your desk? Include frequently needed supplies, but remember: a desk is not a supply cabinet. Maintain a drawer of personal items – your desk is there to support you. Tissues or cough drops are okay. Sorry, your Game Boy is not. Include any needed forms of heavily used items, but leave a 20 percent vacancy. Constantly review what you’re holding and decide to retain or toss it. Near, but not on your desk, go the familiar items such as pictures, plants, and motivators. Also, install any supporting accoutrements, from full-spectrum lighting to ocean wave music, if they support your productivity, efficiency, and creativity (and if your coworkers don’t mind).
To ensure that your desk and work environment support your productivity, invest in yourself. If you need them and can obtain approval from the powers that be, room dividers and sound barriers are available in a wide variety of shapes and sizes and can improve upon any existing sound barriers. The gentle, rhythmic “white noise” of a small fan’s motor serves as a sound buffer to many of the sounds that may distract you.
Every evening after you’ve cleared your desk, congratulate yourself for what you accomplished that day. Don’t do a number on yourself and beat yourself up for what you didn’t do. Nothing would be accomplished, and you’d be in pain. It’s likely that you’re doing the best you can. If you can do better, you will – maybe not immediately, but soon enough, certainly by the next millennium.
So as previously recommended, do your filing and come up smiling. Use the end of the day, slow periods, or periods of low personal energy to revamp your files, keep your desk orderly, and better prepare yourself for high-octane output when you’re ready to get started again.
After you’ve cleared your desk, apply the same principle to your computer’s desktop, your inbox, the top of your file cabinet, closet shelves, and other areas of your life – your dining-room table, your car’s glove compartment, the trunk of your car, and your health club locker (if not for better organization than at least for your personal hygiene). The fewer things you have in these places, the greater sense of control you have over your environment. Once these flat surfaces are under control, self-starters gain a heightened sense of control over their time.
Regards,
Timben
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Aspire to Be Organized
Do you think of becoming and staying organized as sheer and utter drudgery? If so, you’re not alone! You don’t see people shooting movies, writing Broadway plays, or producing hard rock albums on the topic (though I might be on to something here…). Yet it’s an unheralded key to being productive. From pack rat to Jack Sprat to Jack Black, when you’re in control of your surroundings, you have a better chance of staying focused, efficient and effective.
Everything you’ve ever filed presumably has future value if only enabling you to cover your ample derriere. People often avoid filing because they don’t see the connection between filing and its future impact on their careers and lives. Simply organizing materials, hard copy or on disk, putting them into smaller file folders, stapling them, or rearranging the order of things often represents a good, pre-emptive move in the battle against procrastination.
File, smile and work in style. For each item that crosses your desk or hard drive, ask these fundamental questions:
What’s the issue behind the document?
What does it represent?
Why did I receive it? (This one is biggie)
Why keep this? (Is it important? If it will be replaced soon, I don’t need it.)
Should I have received this?
How else can this be handled?
Can I delegate it?
Can I file it under “Review in six month?”
Can I shred it with glee?
What will happen if I don’t handle this?
Next, create a folder on your computer “desktop” and establish a physical drawer
(make it a big drawer) where you can temporarily house what you want out of sight. Many people have inbox folder, which they label with months and weeks. It’s a place to park things when you can’t figure out what else to do with them.
You may ask, “Aren’t I postponing my ability to deal with an over accumulation of information? Aren’t I throwing this in with the files I’m going to have to deal with in another three weeks?” No way, Jose and here’s why: When those three weeks roll around and you find the information you filed, the answer may take care of itself. You know it can be sent to the recycle bin or that it is more important than you first thought. Often, you get a definitive answer in a short period of time. You’re reviewing it at a better time. Out of sight, but not out of mind.
Eliminate clutter without shudder. Then when you’re in control of your information and files, you’re able to retrieve items easily and use them, as opposed to having them buried and inaccessible for all eternity. In the meantime, you are not visually bogged down by such things, and you are also more prone to initiate action on the task at hand. Let’s face it, we all know people with dozens – no, make that hundreds – of electronic file folders, housing thousands of e-mail messages. Likewise, we all know people with desks and file cabinets that are packed to the gills with over-stuffed file folders. Is this any way to manage your career? I think not!
One of the familiar laments among those who put off getting organized is, “I have never been food at organizing.” All is forgiven. Start now, and you can do as good of a job as the next person. The only difference between people who are “good at organizing” and people who think they are “not good at organizing” is that people who are organized recognize that it takes some effort to maintain the organization. The people who are “not good at organizing” think they missed out at birth (or is that at conception?) on the “organizing gene”.
Those who are “not good at organizing” further believe that somehow things mysteriously get out of order or become lost. Many people even think that there are forces in the universe operating in opposition to them and conspiring to keep them disorganized. Get it off – you can maintain control of what crosses your desk and how it is handled. And I have news for you – your dog did not eat your homework, and that important document did not just sprout legs and walk away.
Regards,
Timben
Everything you’ve ever filed presumably has future value if only enabling you to cover your ample derriere. People often avoid filing because they don’t see the connection between filing and its future impact on their careers and lives. Simply organizing materials, hard copy or on disk, putting them into smaller file folders, stapling them, or rearranging the order of things often represents a good, pre-emptive move in the battle against procrastination.
File, smile and work in style. For each item that crosses your desk or hard drive, ask these fundamental questions:
What’s the issue behind the document?
What does it represent?
Why did I receive it? (This one is biggie)
Why keep this? (Is it important? If it will be replaced soon, I don’t need it.)
Should I have received this?
How else can this be handled?
Can I delegate it?
Can I file it under “Review in six month?”
Can I shred it with glee?
What will happen if I don’t handle this?
Next, create a folder on your computer “desktop” and establish a physical drawer
(make it a big drawer) where you can temporarily house what you want out of sight. Many people have inbox folder, which they label with months and weeks. It’s a place to park things when you can’t figure out what else to do with them.
You may ask, “Aren’t I postponing my ability to deal with an over accumulation of information? Aren’t I throwing this in with the files I’m going to have to deal with in another three weeks?” No way, Jose and here’s why: When those three weeks roll around and you find the information you filed, the answer may take care of itself. You know it can be sent to the recycle bin or that it is more important than you first thought. Often, you get a definitive answer in a short period of time. You’re reviewing it at a better time. Out of sight, but not out of mind.
Eliminate clutter without shudder. Then when you’re in control of your information and files, you’re able to retrieve items easily and use them, as opposed to having them buried and inaccessible for all eternity. In the meantime, you are not visually bogged down by such things, and you are also more prone to initiate action on the task at hand. Let’s face it, we all know people with dozens – no, make that hundreds – of electronic file folders, housing thousands of e-mail messages. Likewise, we all know people with desks and file cabinets that are packed to the gills with over-stuffed file folders. Is this any way to manage your career? I think not!
One of the familiar laments among those who put off getting organized is, “I have never been food at organizing.” All is forgiven. Start now, and you can do as good of a job as the next person. The only difference between people who are “good at organizing” and people who think they are “not good at organizing” is that people who are organized recognize that it takes some effort to maintain the organization. The people who are “not good at organizing” think they missed out at birth (or is that at conception?) on the “organizing gene”.
Those who are “not good at organizing” further believe that somehow things mysteriously get out of order or become lost. Many people even think that there are forces in the universe operating in opposition to them and conspiring to keep them disorganized. Get it off – you can maintain control of what crosses your desk and how it is handled. And I have news for you – your dog did not eat your homework, and that important document did not just sprout legs and walk away.
Regards,
Timben
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
