2 Decisions That Will Revolutionize Your Productivity

“Clutter is symptomatic of delayed decision making”
--Cynthia Kyriazis

Do you keep papers, desktop files, and emails from time immemorial because you are afraid you’ll need them “someday”?

You won’t.

Do you claim the 1000+ emails lurking in your inbox are easier to retrieve that way?

They aren’t.

Stop making excuses for why you don’t have a more efficient and effective way to handle paperwork and information flow. You can make two decisions that will revolutionize your personal productivity.

Decision #1: Decide What’s Important

To determine what’s important, look at your current company and department goals as well as routine tasks and activities required of your role. These the main “buckets” or categories for the stuff flowing through your office. Use these categories to create physical folders for hard copies, computer folders for electronic documents, and possibly email folders for incoming messages.

For example, you may need physical and electronic folders for current projects (“Project XYZ”), meetings (“Weekly Operations Meeting” or “Quarterly Off-Site”), committees (“Safety Committee”), and individual folders for each of your direct reports to store routine or important papers, e-documents, and email messages.

Decision #2: Decide It's Fate

Next, you must decide how you will appropriately dispense with each item coming across your desk. This requires the discipline of allowing information to collect in your inboxes without getting distracted by them being dropped in a physical inbox or by an electronic alert that appears on your screen each time a new email arrives. It also requires the discipline of taking time up to two times a day to go through your inboxes  -- top to bottom -- to handle what's there.

After you assess each item in your inboxes, the dispensation of it might require you to: do something with it (e.g., make a quick phone call, put it on a meeting agenda, sign it and forward it on, etc.), appropriately re-route it to someone else, schedule it for a later time or date, or discard/delete it as unimportant or not relevant.

Other tips for deciding:

• Let email rules decide for you. Set up email rules for automatic handling of incoming email. (In a corporate setting, I really liked having a “CC” rule that automatically routed email I was merely CC’d on to a special folder.)

• Limit the time you spend looking at the stuff coming your way by checking your inboxes no more than twice per day. (Better yet, train an administrative assistant - if you have one - to screen your inflow, so you see only what is truly important.)

• Don't worry about discarding or deleting most things -- if it's that important to someone else, they will follow up with you about it, and can usually send you another copy if needed.

Once you decide what’s important and decide how to dispense with each item as part of a regular routine, you will feel more on top of things and will have revolutionized your own productivity.

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Beth Strathman works with executives who are willing and courageous enough to challenge business as usual. Learn more about her company Firebrand Consulting LLC at: bethstrathman.com.

How to Protect and Maximize Your Time

What is your most precious asset as an executive?

Some say money and investments. Others believe their professional relationships and networks top the list. Still others put personal health, vitality, and energy as number one.

However, there is one asset that is not renewable and that makes it more precious than any other:  Your time. Every second you use up is a second you cannot get back.

While money, relationships, and health are valuable and even precious, they are all renewable to some extent. For instance, you can earn back lost money and can find new opportunities and investments to replace others that went south. You can renew relationships by repairing strained ones and by meeting new people to bolster your network. Additionally, you can make healthy choices regarding diet and exercise and can manage stress to enhance or maintain your health, vitality, and energy.

You know time is precious. Yet, at work, you act as though you have all the time in the world. You insert yourself in situations that are more suitable for or best left to others. You waste time doing things that are not essential to further your career or to achieve your company’s strategic priorities. You spend time handling tasks that are not the most important things for your particular leadership role.

The results? You feel overwhelmed. You lose focus. You fail to move the important or high-impact items forward. Consequently, your other assets suffer as well. The stress of too much to do causes a corresponding loss of energy and vitality. You do not relate as well with others because you are distracted and cannot give your full attention. Ultimately, you are apt to make poor decisions that cost money.

Time is indeed your most precious asset. To protect it, treat it as respectfully as you would your money, relationships, and health by doing the following:

1. Measure how you use it. You routinely use data when analyzing the performance of your company, your employees, and yourself.  In the same way, gather data to measure how strategically you spend your time. Two or three weeks’ worth of data is usually enough to get an idea of the types of activities you pay attention to. Go longer to get a fuller picture. You may be surprised at what you think you spend time on versus what you do in practice.
2. Analyze your decisions regarding how you use it. Based on your company’s strategic priorities, are you spending time on role-related tasks that move those priorities forward? Chances are you could create better alignment.
3. Make more strategic choices going forward. Adjust the use of your time to reflect the things that are most important for your life, your role, your career, your company at present. This might mean you decide to delegate tasks to an administrative assistant or other direct report. It might mean you intentionally schedule appointments with yourself in your calendar to define and protect the time necessary to attend to priorities that are important for you.
4. Do what it takes to set boundaries to execute those choices. Some of the biggest time wasters are interruptions, “emergencies” (usually not yours), poorly run or otherwise unproductive meetings, poor work processes, and hours spent perfecting your work product, such as memos or other reports that don’t need to be perfect.  Also set boundaries by signaling your unavailability when you need time to concentrate by shutting your door or by using your administrative assistant as a gatekeeper.

In the case of time, sunk costs are truly sunk forever. For more impact, maximize the time you spend at work. You will be surprised at how your personal productivity increases.


WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR NEWSLETTER, BLOG OR WEBSITE? You can, as long as you include this information with it: Beth Strathman is an executive coach for senior leaders who want to get clear and focused and see better results in productivity and profitability in their organizations. Learn more about her company Firebrand Consulting LLC at: bethstrathman.com.