Envision Success
Productivity Coaching, Time Management Consulting and Leadership Coaching for business and nonprofits - get your most important work done. Collaborating with leaders and their teams to become more strategic, focused and productive. Leadership and Board Coaching, Strategic Planning Facilitation, Productivity Coaching and Time Management Consulting, Professional Speaker.
Productivity Coach, Productivity Consultant, Leadership Coach, Time Management Coach, Business Consulting, personal productivity, time management, nonprofit, board coach, collaboration, strategic planning, facilitation, change management, leading productive teams, project planning, board development, volunteer engagement, association management, workplace productivity, executive director.
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Envision Success

15 May

Posted at 17:59h in Envision Success, Focus and Prioritize, Planning Tools, Productivity for How You're Wired, Time Management, Tips for Easier Living

Today’s post summarizes Section 2 of my new book Productivity for How You’re Wired. I will provide more detail in future posts but we’ll start here –  with  the 30,000 foot view.  

The Productivity Flow Framework provides you with tools and context to help you achieve your goals and intentions and become your most productive, successful, fulfilled self. 

  • It is strategic. You are creating your process to work more effectively. 
  • It is a framework. It provides you context to work within. 
  • It flows from tool to tool. Everything impacts everything else, and helps you find flow in work and life.
  • It is customizable to your structure preference and productivity style. It reflects you.

Think of it as a picture frame. It holds the picture. The picture is you.

Goals and Intention Setting

We identify goals and intentions to clarify what is truly important. If you aren’t clear, or if too many things matter, you end up spreading yourself so thin that you are on that proverbial treadmill and it is only with luck the right work gets done.

By taking the time to clarify and create your own strategic plan, you are laying the foundation for doing the work that improves your quality of work and your quality of life. 

Time Mapping  

A time map helps you create a vision of how you want to spend your time. Think of this like a vision board where you are creating a picture of something you aspire to, or a budget for how you want to use your time. 

  • It helps paint a vision of what you want your life to look like. 
  • It helps you take the time to think through, and plug in, the various priorities you’ve identified in your goal and intention setting exercise.
  • It helps you see if your expectations are realistic.

Essential Structures

Boundaries come to life as Essential Structures; what you need to say YES to and what you need to say NO to to be your best self. The Time Map gives us clues and from it we are able to create a concrete list of

  • Winning Conditions – the nonnegotiable choices you make that you want to become habits
  • Guardrails – the things you must say no to in order to do the kind of work you want to do and be the person you want to be.

Task Prioritization

This tool is more tactical and directly impacts your day-to-day work. The central concept to take away from this section is the importance of sequentially prioritizing your work based on your goals, intentions, and essential structures. Most to-do list tools organize tasks by day or date. This is different. Organizing tasks by priority ensures you are doing the right things at the right time.

Weekly and Daily Planning 

Weekly and Daily planning makes being productive much easier. You can function without planning; however, without a plan, you can’t maximize your time or be focused and strategic, and you won’t ever be sure you are successful. 

  • Planning helps you use your time for the things that have the greatest payoff — your high-value work.
  • Planning ensures you are set up to use your time to act on the things you’ve deemed most important.
  • Planning gives you benchmarks to reach so when you aren’t working you can actually relax. 

The Productivity Flow Framework helps you build a solid foundation. And with this foundation you can delve into the tactics that will help bring your current situation into alignment with your vision for work success and a better life. 

Think of the framework as you would a border of a puzzle, the frame that links everything together. Just like a puzzle, with perseverance, you’ll get the full picture. Taking responsibility for your productivity is something only you can do.

This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of my new book Productivity for How You’re Wired available on Amazon. Worksheets and online templates are included via the time tools link discussed in the book.

06 Sep

Posted at 20:01h in Envision Success, Productivity, Productivity for How You're Wired, Time Management

Productivity for How You're Wired

I am so happy to share with you that my new book Productivity for How You’re Wired is out!

It truly has been a labor of love.  My most sincere hope is that it will help people work and live better.

Many have asked how they can buy the book. It is available on Amazon.  If you like it, I hope you’ll leave a review.

As a loyal subscriber, you’re invited  to my Virtual Book Launch Party and Book Signing.  It will be on Wednesday September 28th between 4pm and 7pm Eastern Time.  Please put it on your calendar and plan to drop in for as much or as little time as you like.  I have some fun activities planned.  We might even play a game…with prizes!  For those of you who want your books signed, I’ve figured that out too.  I think you’ll love it.  (Zoom link to follow).

26 Apr

Posted at 10:33h in Envision Success, Productivity

Have you ever wondered why that book on time management didn’t help?

What about that article espousing the top 5 things you must do each morning to have a productive day?

And how about that author who focuses on the one great thing you must do to be successful?

Have you thought “what’s wrong with me – that will never work?”

I have good news for you.  Productivity is not one size fits all.  These “experts” are talking about what works for them. They are sharing the secret to their success. They are not sharing the secrets to your success.  They are not considering your unique needs; your brain wiring based on your life experiences, your learning style, your body-clock, or your temperament.

How can they even imagine what will work for you?

The one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty, after spending the last 20 years helping clients get more organized and be more productive, is that what works for one person won’t necessarily work for another.  There are many right approaches.

The secret is in actually figuring out what the best “right approach” is for you.

We look for clues:

  • What has worked for you in the past?
  • What doesn’t work for you?
  • When have you felt most in control?

And then we create a strategy based on those clues. And we don’t stop there. We test the strategy.  I tell my clients to think of themselves as a science experiment.  We test and we tweak until we end up with a “best solution” that really fits.

Meet my client Margie (not her real name!) Margie has ADD and understands the value of exercise in keeping her brain functioning optimally.  She came to me wanting to create a structure so that she could get up each morning at 5 am and exercise before her work day began.  She had read that this was the one best thing she could do to manage her ADD; her doctor agreed.

However, Margie didn’t fit the norm. She worked from home, she liked to work at night, and often got her most important work done in the wee hours of the morning.  Margie hated mornings and hated exercise more.

I had this suspicion that exercising at 5 am wasn’t Margie’s best solution.

  • We discussed when she’d been successful exercising in the past (when her daughter was young and she’d drop her at preschool and exercised right after.)
  • We learned that having a time-driven deadline prior to exercising was helpful.
  • And we talked about how badly she felt about herself when she pressed the snooze button at 4:45 am and didn’t get out of bed, though she couldn’t really go back to sleep.

Alas, Margie wanted to try.  So, we did. However, I asked her to try 5 different times to exercise and to track her success.  This is what we learned:

Exercise Success   Time of Day  to Exercise # of workouts in one-week period  
Week 1  5 am  zero
Week 2  9 am 1
Week 3  Noon 1
Week 4  4 pm 3
Week 5  7 pm zero

Turns out 4 pm was Margie’s optimal workout time. She wanted to have dinner with her family at 6:30 pm.  Working out at 4 gave her time afterwards to shower and get dinner on the table. That time-driven deadline of a 6:30 pm dinner helped motivate Margie to get started exercising at 4 pm. She found the late-afternoon break refreshing and that she actually enjoyed her workout. And the extra couple of hours sleep in the morning was really helpful all around. When the system fit it was easy to implement and easy to stick with.

One-size did not fit Margie?  Does one-size fit you? Is there something you should rethink that might fit you better?  Try the following 5-step process to create your best solution:

  1. Look to the past for clues
  2. Create an experiment with different variables
  3. Test the variables
  4. Assess the results
  5. Pick your “best solution”

I’d love to hear what you learned.

22 Oct

Posted at 12:47h in Envision Possibilities, Envision Success, Productivity, Stress Management, Time Management

 

What’s the difference between a Productivity Coach and a Time Management Coach?This question is a thing.  And I don’t want it to keep you from getting the support you need, so I will share with you my thoughts about what I think the difference is.

Really nothing, and perhaps everything.  Time is fixed and finite.  We all get 168 hours each week and no matter what we do we can’t change that.  It is how we spend that time that that we can control.  Both a Time Management Coach and a Productivity Coach can help you build supports and systems to help you maximize the time you have.

It doesn’t quite matter what a coach calls themselves. A good coach is going to work with you to come up with solutions to the issues you bring. And while you may think the goal is to improve your work productivity – that’s not all. While clients call with the goal to improve things at work, what they really want is to have time, energy, and focus for things other than work. As a coach I work with my clients to routinize the less unique aspects of their work and life so they both do their best work AND enjoy their time not working.

Some of the things I focus on as a productivity coach is helping clients do their work effectively and efficiently.  Common outcomes include:

  • Putting systems in place to control what’s controllable. This results in less stress about work and more focus to do the work
  • Making time off count. The only thing worse than working all weekend is not working, yet not relaxing because of the worry of what’s not done
  • Identifying and doing the work that matters, to the right degree of excellence (not beyond)

Yes, these outcomes are all about how you spend your time.  And while our focus is on productivity, it’s productivity around your time.  If your struggling with stress around your tasks and the pressures of your life, you may want to seek out support from a Productivity Coach or Time Management Coach.  As “they” say, I don’t care what you call me…just call me!

 

20 Jun

Posted at 00:03h in Envision Success, Focus and Prioritize, Stress Management, Tips for Easier Living

 

Helpful in the process of getting clear on what’s important is identifying and understanding your core values.

  • A value is your assessment of what is important to you in your life.
  • Your core values are those values that define you as concisely as possible.

Try the following Core Values exercise and see what you learn. Keep in mind that there is no right way or wrong way to do this exercise.

View or Print the Core Values Worksheet here.

Step 1) Circle 16-24 words from the list that best reflect your values.  Feel free to write in any values that are important to you that are not on the list.

Step 2) Narrow your selection by grouping related values together in the boxes provided.

Step 3) Select the one value per box that you feel best identifies a core value. Write that one core value in the corresponding box below.  You may use all 6 boxes, but if you only identify 3 or 4 values that is equally excellent. Example: Courtesy, empathy, friendliness and kindness are somewhat related. By grouping them together it may be easier to determine which of those terms would be your core value.

Do your intentions, focus areas, and characteristics align with your core values?

Do you need to make any adjustments to your intentions, focus areas or characteristics to match your core values?

Do your values support your living the life you want to live?

Take a few minutes and journal about what you’ve learned.

Creating Your Very Own Success Formula Blog Course Details – This is the 3rd in a multi-series of posts.  Check this post for the big picture. Future posts can be delivered to your inbox by signing up for my blog. And please share this opportunity with your friends and colleagues.

12 Jun

Posted at 08:42h in Change, Envision Success, Focus and Prioritize, Planning Tools, Stress Management, Tips for Easier Living

When setting intentions and goals it’s helpful to categorize, or as professional organizers like to say; group like things together.  When we see things in categories it’s easier to make choices.

My favorite example of this is black dress shoes. If you put all your black dress shoes together you will likely have about 10 pairs.  When you see them all in one place, it is easier to decide which pairs matter most. Only then you can give away the shoes that don’t fit, hurt your feet, or are too worn to wear.  Grouping like things together brings clarity to what is most important.

We can apply this concept of grouping to the activities, obligations, and priorities in your life as well.  When we “see” them all together it helps us focus on what is most important.

Look back at your definitions of success from last week.  Now consider how you are spending your time.

Are you doing the things that support your definition of success?

How can you group your life areas together in a way that respects the uniqueness of what really matters to you? Here are some examples to spark your creative juices. Feel free to use your own words as well.  I recommend picking the 4 or 5 “buckets” that reflect the things that support your definition of success:

Self-Care Family Spirituality
Friends Volunteerism Service
Activism Business Growth Career
Work Professional Development Health
Personal Growth Fun & Leisure Home Environment
Creativity Relationships Exercise

 

Your UNIQUE Focus Areas:

  1. ___________________________
  2. ___________________________
  3. ___________________________
  4. ___________________________
  5. ___________________________

 

CHARACTERISTICS of your Focus Areas

The next step is to identify CHARACTERISTICS of your focus areas, and in turn the actions that support what is important to you. This will help you get clear about your focus and priorities.

Remember, only when you are clear about what you want to FOCUS on can you FOCUS on it. 

Here are some examples that can be applied to your non-business self:

  • Self-care:
    1. Go to the gym twice a week
    2. Make time to talk to four friends at least once a week
    3. Meditate 20 minutes 4 times a week
  • Family:
    1. Spend at least one hour a week reading, playing games, or actively engaging with my children/grandchildren/nieces/ nephews/etc.
    2. Have lunch with mom once a week
    3. Have a date night with my partner two times a month
  • Service:
    1. Volunteer at least 5 hours a week
    2. Identify one cause to stand behind
    3. Don’t spread myself too thin

And for work:

  • Professional Development:
    1. Read at least one business book monthly
    2. Listen to a podcast once a week
    3. Prepare for certification exam by October
  • Business Self-Care
    1. Leave work by 6pm most days
    2. Work from home 1 day per week
    3. Have lunch with one new colleague each week/month
  • Business Growth
    1. Complete XYZ project
    2. Develop program to improve customer feedback X%
    3. Improve department profitability X%

 

What are the characteristics of your unique focus areas?

  1. ___________________________________
    1. _______________________________
    2. _______________________________
    3. _______________________________
  2. ___________________________________
    1. _______________________________
    2. _______________________________
    3. _______________________________
  3. ___________________________________
    1. _______________________________
    2. _______________________________
    3. _______________________________
  4. ___________________________________
    1. _______________________________
    2. _______________________________
    3. _______________________________
  5. ___________________________________
    1. _______________________________
    2. _______________________________
    3. _______________________________

 

Creating Your Very Own Success Formula Blog Course Details – This is the 2nd in a multi-series of posts.  Check this post for the big picture. Future posts can be delivered to your inbox by signing up for my blog. And please share this opportunity with your friends and colleagues.