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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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21 May

Posted at 08:56h in Planning Tools, Productivity, Productivity for How You're Wired, Tips for Easier Living

With summer upon us many of us will be changing where we’re working from.  The following are things to consider regardless of where you’re working from.

Working Remotely

Working from home is not new. Many entrepreneurs have been doing it for years. Remote work has been knocking at the door of corporate America for some time. However, COVID brought it mainstream. The global pandemic and the high proportion of workers working out of the office have forced us to rethink how and where we work. 

Moving into the future, one thing we can be sure about is working away from the office, at least part of the time, will be routine. Knowing how to work effectively, regardless of location, is central to the success of today’s workers.

The biggest challenge about working remotely is lack of structure. When we no longer have to wake up at a specific time, commute, attend in–person meetings, network in person, and “go to work,” our time foundation shifts. Personal time and work time blend together. Many people are in work-mode all the time. 

When we leave home and “go to work,” natural guardrails form. By simple proximity, we are not doing home related duties or having personal conversations when we are at “work.”  Yes, we may take a call from a family member or spend a few minutes on a personal task, but we aren’t walking the dog, doing laundry, or letting the repair person in. 

When working from home we spend more time on “home” tasks than anticipated and that means it takes longer to get our work done. To avoid that work/life confusion, consider how to structure your time so there is separation between work and personal tasks.

Working Hybrid – Remote, From Home, and At Work

Productivity in the hybrid work environment focuses on mobility and flexibility. The goal is to work effectively regardless of location. Your office is often in your work bag.  

You already face the challenges of structuring your work time when you’re in the office. Hybrid work brings more complexities because now you also have to consider where you work and when. Building systems to support your productivity is helpful.

Going to work is helpful too. Humans are social animals and we are much healthier with human interaction. While not everyone looks to their work to fill their need for belonging, many do, at least to some degree. 

If we can structure our work and our time effectively, the hybrid model, working remotely or from home for Focus Work time AND going to the office to collaborate and connect, is the best of both worlds. But how do we manage our productivity on the move?

Remote and At Home

You now have much more control over your time. While your meetings are scheduled, everything else is fluid. No one sees your true start times or end times. There is no peer pressure about lunch breaks or coffee breaks. And no one is watching when you are actually producing.

  • You’ve gained time by not commuting. Does this allow you to exercise before you start working or sleep later if that’s what your body needs?
  • You have flexibility when you do your Focus Work. Quiet without interruption is ideal. Is it best to wake early and get a couple of hours in before family activities or regular work interruptions start or better to work in the evening when meetings and emails subside?
  • Can you walk the dog (or just take a walk) at midday for some fresh air and to reenergize?
  • Do you need to tag team with your partner, one working early and the other working late, to be sure there is coverage for the kids?
  • Do you need to plan start times and end times so you have enough structure to get results and know when to stop?

Hybrid

A hybrid situation, where you spend part of your time in the office and part of your time at home, has advantages as well. All the above holds true for your time working out of the office. When we add in a day, or two, or three in the office each week, good things can happen.

  • Time in the office can be energizing. Take advantage of the lift you get when you’re with others, understanding that effectiveness improves with a change of environment and social interaction (even for most introverts). 
  • Child care and family obligations shift. Going to work can provide a much-needed break. The flexibility enables you to be better in each situation.
  • Self-care continues to be important. Taking time for a walking meeting helps with your steps goal. Leaders are on the lookout for ideas to support the new normal. Tell them what you need.
  • Planning start and stop times in the office is helpful to creating routine. These time anchors provide benchmarks to keep you on task and effective.

With proper planning and consideration your summer work can be successfully executed regardless of where you’re working from. 

This is an excerpt from Chapter 13 of my new book Productivity for How You’re Wired available on Amazon. Many templates are included via the time tools link discussed in the book.

29 Apr

Posted at 09:45h in Productivity, Productivity for How You're Wired, Stress Management, Tech & Digital Clutter, Time Management, Tips for Easier Living

does email suck the life out of you?

Does email suck the life from you? Do you worry about missing important emails? Do you wish email supported you better? Here are some new ideas that can help! 

Consider Your Email Style?

Different people seem to be fine with different amounts of emails in their inboxes. While there is a correlation between structure preference and email style, it probably has little bearing on what you’re doing now. Do you see yourself in any of these cases?

  • Inbox 10,000+ – If I need something, I will search for it. If I miss something it’s ok. If it’s really important it will come up again.
  • Inbox 500 to 1500 – It’s unmanageable. I don’t kid myself. I know I miss important things and it does cause stress.
  • Inbox 25/100/250 – I can get it under control. Identifying a number I don’t want to get above cues me to spend an hour cleaning up my inbox. Still, there has to be an easier way.
  • Inbox one page – As long as I can see everything in my inbox, I’m good. Once it goes to a second page, it’s time to pause and clean it up.
  • Inbox Zero – All emails are moved into folders for future action. Nothing stays in the inbox. (Use with caution. For most, since there is no automatic cue once an email is moved from the inbox, it is never thought of again.)

Manage Your Inbox Contents

What belongs in your inbox? Some clients prefer to keep everything in their inbox. However, there is a high risk of losing important emails. Some clients are fine with the philosophy “if it’s important, I’ll get it again,” though most prefer a more proactive solution.

Keeping everything in your inbox is like keeping all your trash on your desk. Unlike paper, however, the problem isn’t finding it when you go to look for it — the robust search function helps with that. The problem is that you won’t know to look for something you don’t know you have.

To have confidence in your email system, the only items that should be kept in your inbox are the to-do actionable items. Those emails you MUST do something with. 

If you have read your inbox shouldn’t be a to-do list, I disagree. It’s inefficient to use it any other way. However, this only works if you move everything except actionable emails out of your inbox.

To have control over your inbox, you need to judiciously decide the fate of each email. There are three options: File, Delete, and Action:

  • FILE emails to keep for possible future reference 
  • DELETE emails you don’t need 
  • ACTION emails remain in your inbox

Clear Out Your Inbox

  1. Create a folder/label called Reference Emails or Past Emails or something that resonates with you that will indicate to you where your older emails will reside. 
    1. You will move all emails over two months old into this file.
    2. You’ll want to move over a few hundred at a time. If you move too many at once, you may overload your computer’s resources and lock them up. 
    3. In order to keep this information current, I’m not going to give you specific keystrokes to identify and move a range of emails. Instead, do an internet search on “batch move emails” and include your computer (PC/Mac) and email platform (Outlook/Gmail).
    4. Some clients are more comfortable moving the old emails into files labeled by year. This gives them more of a direction as to where to look when trying to locate something. On the other hand, it gives more places to search. 
  2. You now have two months of email remaining in your inbox. The next step is to process these and remove additional non-actionable email. 
    1. Do a sort by subject —  This will allow you to batch delete or batch file large groups of emails that are not actionable. Look for: 
      1. Projects that have been completed.
      2. Events that have passed. 
    2. Do a search by sender — This will allow you to continue the batch deleting or batch moving process. Look for:
      1. Newsletters you’ll never read.
      2. Ads that are no longer relevant.
      3. Multiple emails of a string and you only need to keep the last one or the ones with attachments.
    3. Set up rules/filters — As you are going through these remaining emails, look for opportunities for similar grouping of emails to bypass your inbox. 
      1. You can tell your email program to route specific emails to specific files without stopping in your inbox. This is helpful for items you don’t need to look at regularly. 
      2. Some use rules or filters for newsletters, forum posts, or the like. Others use them for confirmation emails that don’t need to be looked at yet need to be kept for possible future reference.
      3. To keep things simple, create a file called RULES and direct all emails that you have created a rule for there. It makes searching, scanning, and purging simple. There is no need to overcomplicate this — remember, if it’s not easy, it’s too hard. 
      4. To learn how to use the rules function with your email system, search “how to use rules in Outlook/Gmail.”
  3. You will be left with far fewer emails than you started with. These emails can then be processed into FILE, DELETE, or left in the inbox as an ACTION item.

It is important you do this process in a short period of time. This is a great task to do in one or two chunks this week. To get your inbox under control, you need to reduce the number of emails so when future emails come in, you can process those and maintain the integrity of YOUR system.

This is an excerpt from Chapter 12 of my new book Productivity for How You’re Wired available on Amazon. Many templates are included via the time tools link discussed in the book.

03 Sep

Posted at 07:51h in Leadership, Productivity, Productivity for Leaders

What is the connection between productivity and leadership?

Perhaps the question is how can these two concepts be pulled apart?

  • A great leader creates the environment for their team to be successful; thus productive.
  • A productive leader gets things done – and that’s not going to happen without strong leadership.

Leaders who produce:

  1. Know what’s important and ensures their team focuses on that work
  2. Have systems in place so team-members know what’s expected
  3. Create space for growth, creativity, and innovation
  4. Develop cultures in which team-member contributions matter
  5. Build connections so that team-members feel they belong

 

Want to learn more? This week I share my appearance on Smead’s Keeping You Organized podcast:

 

The Connection Between Productivity and Leadership

 

 

 

05 Jan

Posted at 08:48h in Change, Envision Possibilities, Envision Success, Focus and Prioritize, Tips for Easier Living

Happy New Year loyal weekly tip readers:

I know I’ve been gone a while. I’ll be honest and tell you I didn’t write much last year because I didn’t feel I had much new to say.  I’m tired of all the content clutter out there…the same stuff over and over again.  I will not waste your time with that.  I will write this year when I have new thoughts that I think you would find valuable.  I hope that will be often.

Many of you signed up to receive my weekly tip years ago when I wrote exclusively about organizing. I have evolved and so has what I’ll share. I will be writing this year about organizing, productivity, and leadership as they relate to quality of life and making life easier.

This week I want to share with you my alternative to New Year’s resolutions and goals.  This year I want to ask you to consider writing down your intentions.  For many years people wrote about SMART Goals with the SMART meaning Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.  I’m asking you to throw that out the window and write your SMART Intentions.  Here’s a graphic I made to help you:

Consider what you want for this coming year.  Set your intentions today and I am sure you will indeed have a happy NEW year.

24 Sep

Posted at 11:18h in Organize to Thrive, Tips for Easier Living

mystery box

A friend shared a blog posted with some quick easy organizing tips this morning and that got me thinking about productivity and organizing.  I try to keep a productivity voice to my blog – it’s what I do and who I am.  But, sometimes good old fashion SPACE CLEARING is the one thing you need to do to be most productive.  Everything I talk about is a cross between getting organized and being more productive – they are not separate, getting organized is what you do to make yourself more productive.  So in honor of Jodi’s post, here are a few tips to help you clear some space.

A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING: The greatest benefit of having a place for everything is NOT that you know where to find something when you need it (though that is lovely), it’s so you have a place to put things so they are not sitting around cluttering up your physical or emotional space.  I always think more clearly when my space is clear and it only takes a moment to put things in their place.  Having THE place is the secret.  Here’s an example:

  • Unattached or Unidentified Cords and Wires – everyone has them.  My solution is to create a MYSTERY CORDS and WIRES BOX.  When I’m looking for a cord or wire I know exactly where to go look.  But the best part is that cords don’t clutter my surfaces, if I have one I toss it in the box.

(more…)

01 Apr

Posted at 09:28h in Envision Possibilities, Organize to Thrive

The only reason to get organized is to get something you want but don’t have.  I’m sure you’re familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but have you ever thought about this from an organizational perspective.  Getting organized and being more productive is a direct way to satisfy a basic human need.

But how do you motivate yourself to GET ORGANIZED?

Focus on what you want, not what you don’t want:

  • Don’t say: I can never find anything
  • Do say: I want to be able to find what I need it when I need it

Understand the benefits of getting organized:

  • Your most important work gets done
  • You waste less time looking for things you know you have but can’t find
  • You spend less money buying things you know you already have
  • You have peace of mind and are able to enjoy life more

Define “organized” on your own terms:

  • Organized doesn’t mean pristine or perfect
  • Organized means you can find what you need when you need it
  • Let go of perfection and go for “organized enough”

My motivation to be organized is Peace of Mind What’s yours?