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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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thrive Tag

30 Aug

Posted at 14:11h in Envision Possibilities, Productivity, Productivity for How You're Wired, Time Management

In my last blog post I introduced you to the concept of Structure Preference – how much structure you personally need to do your best work.

In this week’s post we’ll use that information to guide you in finding the way you work best.  Knowing what’s unique about how you work can guide you as you craft productivity systems that fit how you’re wired.

David Keirsey, Professor of Psychology, and co-author of the seminal book Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types, streamlined the Myers-Briggs® by identifying personality types based on two specific personality characteristics. He theorized that the way one processes information influences behavior. He believed SENSORS are most affected by the way they function in society, while INTUITORS are most influenced by their decision-making processes.

Applying Keirsey’s concepts to productivity inspired my productivity styles: Catalyst, Coordinator, Diplomat, and Innovator. Use your structure preference to narrow your options. If you are Task Priority Focused chances are your either a Coordinator or Innovator.  If you are Relationship Priority Focused you’re most likely a Catalyst or Diplomat.   Review the chart below.

Can you recognize your Productivity Style?

Once you understand your more about yourself, you’ll understand more about how to set yourself up for success.

For example, let’s look at how people with different productivity styles approach doing a to-do list.

  • CATALYSTs thrive with simple systems. They keep it high level by using their list to capture ideas and identify most urgent tasks.
  • DIPLOMATs benefit from taking time to plan their work. Since their tendency is to verbally process rather than write, committing to the system is key. They make it fun by color coding and using creative labels.
  • COORDINATORs love seeing everything in one place. They plan their work and work their plan.
  • INNOVATORs like to plan but can get lost in trying to improve the system. They do best when they use their list to capture ideas and prioritize, and then quickly move into action.

Are you staring to think differently about how who you are affects your best way to do things? If you’ve ever felt like a square peg in a round hole, understanding how who you are impacts how you do things will shift your perspective so you can consider alternative approaches.

Book News:  The book WILL be out next week.  Available for purchase on Amazon next Wednesday, September 7th.  I’ll send a link to you next week when the book is available.

Save the Date: Virtual Book Launch Party – Wednesday September 28, 2022 from 4 p.m to 7 p.m.  Eastern Time.  This will be an open house so please drop in for a few minutes or longer, whatever is good for you. I’ve ordered these amazing custom bookplates so that I’ll be able to “sign your book.”  And we’ll have give-aways, readings, Q&A, and just celebrate.  Zoom link coming soon.

Welcome to The Better Work Better Life Blog – Here I share big ideas to help you think differently about your productivity, your work, and your life. My goal in this series of posts is to summarize the concepts I share in my new book (out next week) Productivity for How You’re Wired. My promise to you, as it’s been for the last 15 years that I’ve been blogging, is to write something short enough that you can read it in the moment.

04 Aug

Posted at 09:50h in Productivity, Productivity for How You're Wired, Time Management

Structure Preference to Boost Productivity

Understanding your structure preference will help you leverage your strengths and give you context to create systems that work for you.

The concept of Structure Preference grew out of my observations of successful clients over the past 20+ years.  Rooted in situational leadership theory, the same principles apply to organization and productivity. Connecting how you’re wired with how you work (and live) helps identify how much structure you need to be your most productive self. This is the crux of my new book, Productivity for How You’re Wired.

Why does structure preference matter?

  • It builds self-awareness and helps put in perspective why you are the way you are.
  • It shows you how to adjust a situation to make it fit you, rather than changing how you’re wired to fit a situation. (Think round peg/square hole or square peg/round hole!)

There are two elements to consider when determining Structure Preference:

  1. Priority Focus — how your brain prioritizes work.
  2. Situational Structure — the degree of structure in your work and life.

Individuals do their best work when their priority focus complements their situational structure.

  • Those with a propensity towards task focus excel in low and high structure settings.
  • Those with a propensity towards relationship focus thrive in moderate structure settings.

Your priority focus is inherent to who you are. While small tweaks to your priority focus may help a little, the power is in adjusting your situation to match who you are. Knowing you can adapt your structure to how you are wired is empowering. Understanding how to adapt your situational structure to your highest performing self is the game changer.

In Real Life:

The Covid pandemic did a number on many of my clients’ situational structures.

For those with a Relationship Priority Focus, losing a consistent work schedule, not having to physically be in meetings at specific times, and not traveling to and from the office moved them from moderate to low structure, which isn’t their best fit. By defining work starting and stopping times, creating a work–only zone, and implementing regular planning sessions, they were able to build in enough structure to move themselves back to their moderate structure sweet spot.

For those with Task Priority Focus, the change to routines, shifts in how work was done, and the inability to know what was coming next moved them from high to moderate structure. By identifying top priorities, scheduling team check–ins, and creating personal accountability systems, they were able to move themselves back to their high structure sweet spot.

Can you see how understanding your structure preference can help you be more productive?

Book News: This is an excerpt from Chapter 2 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.

15 Feb

Posted at 14:16h in Planning Tools, Productivity, Stress Management, Time Management, Tips for Easier Living

The 5 Pillars of Productivity

A Note from Ellen: I’ve been working on a book. In the coming weeks I’ll be previewing snippets from the book on my blog. It’s important information I want to share. Today’s post is a summary of Chapter 1.  If you would like to learn more, I’ll post book updates here on the blog. It is exciting. Stay tuned! 

These 5 pillars of productivity are core to your productivity success. Whatever you learn, whatever you do, keep these in mind and build from here.

Productivity is a Quality of Life Issue

Productivity is a quality of life issue. When we don’t know what is important, we end up doing unimportant things. We spend our weekends thinking we’ll get work done, yet we’re exhausted and don’t. We end up more stressed and less effective come Monday morning, worried about the work we didn’t do. Finding a way to work better brings greater ease, peace, and happiness to both career and life.

One Size Does Not Fit All

Each of us is wired differently, and what works for one person absolutely may not work for someone else. Being willing to experiment and discover productivity solutions that fit YOU is essential. I discuss this pillar in depth in this post: Productivity That Fits How You’re Wired.

If It Isn’t EASY, It’s Too Hard

One of the biggest mistakes that people make when trying to improve their productivity is making their systems too complex. Too many steps and the systems are destined to fail. Too much time to learn the systems and more time is spent on the tool, with little time spent on the task itself.

Not All Work is Equally Important

Pareto’s principle, the 80/20 Rule, supports the concept that you can achieve 80% of the results in 20% of the time. Learning how and when to apply the 80/20 rule helps free up time for important things, in and out of work. Be deliberate in how you invest your time.

  • 20% of your work/clients contributes to 80% of your profits
  • 20% of your apps are used 80% of the time
  • 20% of your meeting time achieves 80% of decisions
  • 20% of your time yields 80% of the result

 Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan

Taking the time to plan is the secret sauce to productivity. If you think you don’t have time to plan, you don’t have time NOT to plan. Investing a little time for planning drives the shift from overwhelmed to productive.

The greatest benefit of planning may be the process of thinking things through. Winston Churchill may have been right when he said “Plans are worthless, planning is priceless.” Yes, sometimes plans go awry. However, things go much more awry without them.

  • Planning helps you stop worrying about missing a deadline or an opportunity.
  • Planning helps you to anticipate so surprises are minimized.
  • Planning helps you prioritize tasks moving you towards focused success.
  • Planning helps you use your time well. When you say yes to something off–plan, you are saying no to working on–plan.

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.

09 Mar

Posted at 10:23h in Productivity, Productivity for Leaders, Space, Time Management

COVID-19 (Coronavirus) has more people working from home.  Follow these tips to maximize your productivity.

  1. Identify Your Most Important Work Each Day
    1. Organize your tasks by priority – know what has to be done this week, what you want to get done this week, and what MUST be done by the end of the work day. Focus there!
    2. Make a physical list of today’s tasks and keep it in front of you. If it is not in front of you, it won’t be top of mind. (Hint: on your phone or computer isn’t as effective as a written note in front of you.)
    3. Some clients find it helpful to estimate duration and identify task start times of the physical today’s tasks list. That helps fight the “time expanding to the time available” challenge.
  2. Create a Workspace That Supports Your Success – Most of what is written about working from home is how to use your time and how to prepare for work.  I know plenty of effective people who work in their pajamas or exercise clothing all day. For many, what they are wearing doesn’t drive productivity.  The biggest obstacle I’ve observed is not being physically set up for success. Having a work space that supports productivity is crucial:
    1. Have Supplies in Reach:   Have pens, pencils, markers, post-its, letter pads, files, action priority lists in reach.  While your “office” may be your kitchen island, your dining room table, your back porch, or a comfy chair in your family room, you still need to designate a space (a close by drawer or cabinet perhaps) for the things you need to get your work done.
    2. Set Up Your Technology: Do you have a printer handy?  Is it connected to your Wi-Fi and computer?  Do you have a second monitor for detailed projects (this can increase productivity exponentially.)  Do you have a handy place to charge your ear pods, and mouse and other technology?  Is your Bluetooth hooked up?  Many people say “I’ll do that later” and never get to it.  Taking the time (or hiring someone to help you) get your tech set up makes a huge difference.
    3. Find a Quiet Space: Are you able to have a conversation without interruption?  Yes, we know that it’s great to have your kids close by, but sometimes you need to be able to close the door and focus.  If you are working in a “public” space, I recommend having a backup location designated for times you need quiet.
  3. Get Clear to Beat Procrastination – There have been some good articles written lately that procrastination is more of an emotional issue than a discipline or work-habits issue.  I agree and have typically found procrastination to be driven by one of two things:
    1. Lack of Clarity About What’s Most Important – when you’re not clear you end up doing fun or easy stuff instead…
      1. If you work for yourself it’s helpful to create annual goals/objectives/priorities to help you know what to say no to and what to say yes to.  If you aren’t clear about what your priorities are, then it’s going to be really hard to achieve them. (I address this in this blog series)
      2. If you work for a company, I recommend a sit-down with your manager to discuss priorities and what is actually important.  You’d be amazed at how often it’s just assumed that everyone is on the same page…and they aren’t.
    2. Not Knowing How to Do Something or Where to Start – so you just don’t start.
      1. When I dig down into it with my clients, they procrastinate because they aren’t clear about how to do what they want to do. Often, we will come up with a step by step plan, identifying actions, order, and steps for completion.  Once they have that plan, they can move into action.
      2. Sometimes you just need more information.  Once that’s identified then my clients can figure out how to gather that data, and once they have the information, they can proceed.
      3. Sometimes things just need to percolate before moving into action.  Listen to Adam Grant’s Ted Talk on Pre-crastination!
  4. Set Boundaries to Minimize Interruptions
    1. Set boundaries (rules) for those who are home with you about when and how you are to be interrupted. Schedule breaks and share those time with your family/friends/roommates so they don’t feel the need to interrupt as often.
    2. Set work hours and be sure that people in your sphere know you are WORKING from home. Many people think it’s ok to call and chit chat or that you can take an hour walk or lunch break.  If you want to avoid working 24/7 then setting specific work hours is crucial.
  5.  Leverage the Benefits of Working from Home
    1. Quiet, Uninterrupted Time: A lot of my clients really struggle working in open spaces. There are constant interruptions and sometimes headphones don’t screen out the noise.  In some offices it’s not politically correct to wear headphones, or to wear them all the time.  Even a day a week at home, to do project work, can make all the difference.  The brain is not set up to handle multiple inputs.  Practically all people have trouble focusing and getting into flow when they can’t hear themselves think.
    2. Time Efficiency: You can get your work done more quickly working from home and/or accomplish more during your work day. Of course, there is the obvious too – not taking 15-minute breaks at the coffee machine to chit-chat, not going out for an hour lunch (yes, take a lunch break, but you don’t need a hour!), and not being asked to answer the phones or pick up the slack because there is slack to be picked up and you are there to pick it up.

31 Jul

Posted at 14:37h in Envision Possibilities, Focus and Prioritize, Productivity for Leaders, Space

Be a More Productive Leader

Thrilled to be quoted in the same article as Bill Gates!

As the boss of Microsoft, Bill Gates would take one week, two times a year, and escape by himself to a secret clapboard cabin somewhere in a cedar forest in the Pacific Northwest.

It was what he called his “Think Week.”

Gates would arrive by helicopter or sea plane, and spend the week reading papers written by Microsoft employees pitching new innovations or potential investments. He read as many papers as possible, sometimes doing so 18 hours a day, staying up until the wee hours of the morning, according to The Wall Street Journal.

”…I would literally take boxes out to a beach place and sit there for a week reading them day and night and scribbling on them to putting it entirely online,” Gates said in 2008 video of of Microsoft’s CEO Summit.

Work done during one Think Week eventually led to Microsoft to launching Internet Explorer in 1995. And in 2005, Gates was reading a paper called “Virtual Earth” that described building a virtual map with information on traffic and live images of final destinations.

Gates’ Think Weeks started in the 1980s; the first ones were quiet visits to his grandmother’s house. As they evolved, no visitors were allowed to the cabin during Gates’ Think Week (other than someone who dropped off two meals a day at the cabin, and on year a Wall Street Journal reporter) and Gates’ cabin was stocked with Diet Orange Crush and Diet Coke.

“When I talk about the early days, it’s hard to explain to people how much fun it was. Even with the absurd hours and arguments, we were having the time of our lives.” – Paul Allen

View image on Twitter

Gates’ “week in the woods” idea is smart, says Laura Stack, president and CEO of consulting firm The Productivity Pro. “I would recommend this approach,” Stack tells CNBC Make It. “People should have a ‘third place’ that isn’t work or home, where they can find focused time to think and create and clarify your strategic thinking,” Stack says. “We must create an environment that gives us the ability to focus our minds without interruption from coworkers, spouses, children, pets and technology, or we’ll never be able to concentrate on higher-order activities.”

 

Leadership coach Ellen Faye agrees: “While exercise, yoga, and meditation are great solutions to managing the stress of every day, there’s nothing like disconnecting for a longer period of time to create the space for important decisions and objective creative thought,” she tells CNBC Make It.

“I think of it as a one week long shower. Because we know that in the shower we have these really great thought processes, but those are flashes and moments, and when you go away for a period of time alone you’re able to get more significant results,” she says.

Stack and Faye both employ the technique in their own careers.

“I check myself into my third space — a local hotel up the road — every quarter to write for 48 hours. I’ve published eight books in 14 years using this approach,” Stack says.

Faye says she spends at least four or five days alone at a yoga retreat every year “for deeper creative thought.”

But your “third place” doesn’t have to be far away or fancy. it could be “Starbucks, the library, or the gazebo in your garden. I recommend at least eight hours, but it’s best to take several days to ‘clear the decks,’” Stack says.

As for Gates, his Think Week eventually expanded from just him reading about ideas and providing feedback, to later Microsoft’s top 50 engineering “thinkers” throughout the company doing so.

In the 2008 summit video, Gates said, “We have institutionalized it as kind of a grassroots process and this is a way that somebody who is even just a year or two into the company and has ideas that may or may not relate to the group they are in can write something up.”