Tag Archive for: leadership development

Triple Your Personal Productivity

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Have you ever had the experience of looking back on your week with the sinking feeling that you didn’t get as much done as you’d hoped? When building a successful career or a business of your own, your time is perhaps your most valuable asset, and your income is a direct result of how you spend your time. You cannot buy any more time than you’re given, and the clock is always ticking. A few years ago, I discovered a simple system that allowed me to nearly triple  productivity. In this article I’ll share some very practical ideas you can apply right away to increase your effectiveness without working any harder than you do now.

Keep a detailed time log.

The first step to better managing your time is to find out how you’re currently spending your time. Keeping a time log is a very effective way to do this, and after trying it for just one day, you’ll immediately gain tremendous insight into where your time is actually going. The very act of measuring is often enough to raise your unconscious habits into your consciousness, where you then have a chance to scrutinize and change them.

Here’s how to keep a time log. Throughout your day, record the time whenever you start or stop any activity. Consider using a stopwatch to just record time intervals for each activity. You can do this during only your working time or throughout your entire day. At the end of the day, sort all the time chunks into general categories, and find out what percentage of your time is being spent on each type of activity.

If you want to be thorough, do this for a week, and calculate the percentage of your total time that you spent on each type of activity. Be as detailed as possible. Note how much time you spend on email, reading newsgroups, web surfing, phone calls, eating, and going to the bathroom. If you get up out of your chair, it probably means you need to make an entry in your time log. I typically end up with 50-100 log entries per day.

You may be surprised to discover you’re spending only a small fraction of your working time doing what you’d consider to be actual work. Studies have shown that the average office worker does only 1.5 hours of actual work per day. The rest of the time is spent socializing, taking coffee breaks, eating, engaging in non-business communication, shuffling papers, and doing lots of other non-work tasks. The average full-time office worker doesn’t even start doing real productive work until 11:00am and begins to wind down around 3:30pm.

Analyze your results.

The first time I kept a time log, I only finished 15 hours worth of real work in a week, whereas I actually spent about 60 hours in my office. Even though I was technically about twice as productive as the average office worker, I was still disturbed by the results. Where did those other 45 hours go? My time log laid it all out for me, showing me all the time drains I wasn’t consciously aware of: checking email too often, excessive perfectionism doing tasks that didn’t need to be done, over-reading the news, taking too much time for meals, or succumbing to preventable interruptions.

Calculate your personal efficiency ratio.

When I realized that I spent 60 hours at the office but only completed 15 hours of actual work within that time, I started asking myself some interesting questions. My income and my sense of accomplishment depended only on those 15 hours, not on the total amount of time I spent at the office. So I decided to begin recording my daily efficiency ratio as the amount of time I spent on actual work divided by the total amount of time I spent in my office. While it certainly bothered me that I was only working 25% of the time initially, I also realized it would be extremely foolish to simply work longer hours.

Efficiency Ratio = (Time Doing “Real Work”) / (Time Spent “At Work”)

Cut back on total hours to force an increase in efficiency.

If you’ve ever tried to discipline yourself to do something you weren’t really motivated to do, you most likely failed. That was naturally the result I experienced when I tried to discipline myself to work harder. In fact, trying harder actually de-motivated me and drove my efficiency ratio even lower. So I reluctantly decided to try the opposite approach. The next day I would only allow myself to put in five hours total at the office, and the rest of the day I wouldn’t allow myself to work at all.

Well, an interesting thing happened, as I’m sure you can imagine. My brain must have gotten the idea that working time was a scarce commodity because I worked almost the entire five hours straight and got an efficiency ratio of over 90%. I continued this experiment for the rest of the week and ended up getting about 25 hours of work done with only 30 hours total spent in my office, for an efficiency ratio of over 80%. So I was able to reduce my weekly working time by 30 hours while also getting 10 more hours of real work done.

If your time log shows your efficiency ratio to be on the low side, try severely limiting your total amount of working time for a day, and see what happens. Once your brain realizes that working time is scarce, you suddenly become a lot more efficient because you have to be. When you have tight time constraints, you will usually find a way to get your work done. But when you have all the time in the world, it’s too easy to be inefficient.

Gradually increase total hours while maintaining peak efficiency.

Over a period of a few weeks, I was able to keep my efficiency ratio above 80% while gradually increasing my total weekly office time. I’ve been able to maintain this for many years now, and I commonly get about 40 hours of real work done every week, while only spending about 45 total hours in my office. I’ve learned that this is ideal for me. And as with most personal habits, the amount of time required for adjustment can and will vary according to the individual.

If I try to put in more time at the office, then my productivity drops off rapidly. The interesting thing is that the system that allowed me to optimize my effectiveness at work also created a tremendous amount of balance in all other areas of my life. Even though I was able to use this approach to triple my business productivity, I still gained plenty of time to pursue personal interests.

Time logging is the intelligent choice to ensure optimal productivity without increasing your hours. But time logging need only be done periodically to provide these benefits. I do it for one week every 3-6 months, and over the years it has made a huge difference for me, always providing me with new distinctions. If I go too many months without time logging, my productivity gradually drops as I fall back into unconscious time-wasting habits.

You’ll probably find as I do that your gut feelings about your productivity are closely related to how much real work you actually get done. When you feel your productivity is lower than you’d like, raise your awareness via time logging, measure your efficiency ratio, and then optimize your efficiency to boost your productivity back up where it belongs. Time logging is a high leverage activity that takes very little time and effort to implement, but the long-term payoff is tremendous.

The continual balance is between Efficiency vs Effectiveness. We can be efficient but are we also effective because it is the combination and balance of theses two elements that will determine your worth.

Give the Gift of “Attending”

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It’s always nice to receive an unexpected gift, especially this time of year. This week I was genuinely surprised by one of those presents. The staff of the Southeast Regional College in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, sat with me for a day and gave me their presence as I led them through a workshop on building an accountable organization. They are a delightful organization whose byline reads:
“Where minds and possibilities meet.” Gracious, open, receptive, supportive, caring… just a few of the words I would use to describe this remarkable group of people.

I was particularly appreciative of their generous attentiveness under the circumstances as when I arrived, I was suffering from a head cold and throat infection that substantially diminished the quality and volume of my voice. My energy was so low that at times it was difficult to remain standing.

But they patiently hung in there with me the entire day. They willingly engaged in the learning experience. And they gave freely of themselves and to each other in the process. I was uplifted by their presence and by the end of the workshop I had more energy than when I began.

Since I’ve come home and recovered from the head cold, I have been attentive to a rather odd little word, a word that I’ve been mulling over the past few days that came as an unwrapped gift, given so sincerely to me by this humble learning community in Southeast Saskatchewan. The word is ‘attend.’ Merriam Webster describes attend as: “to pay attention to, to look after, to be present with, to apply oneself, to be listened to, to be valued…”

To be attended to is uplifting, heartening, and inspiring. It is a gift in the truest sense as it responds to a fundamental human need: the need to make an impact.

Here are five simple ways to offer the gift of ‘attending’ to others, especially at this time of year:

  1. Pay attention to people’s names. Cashiers, waitresses, and customer service representatives – they have a name-tag for a reason. Everyone is uplifted, even if ever so slightly, when they hear the sound of their own name. On the farm, my mother was adamant, “don’t name the chickens.” She understood that naming transforms your relationship. Naming someone changes them from an object or a number to a human being – with emotions, needs, and values. Naming someone turns a ‘transaction,’ into a ‘transformation.’
  2. Replace waiting with something more constructive. By simply attending to what’s going on inside and around you, you’ll soon discover that waiting is not a very healthy state of mind. It’s focused on the future. It breeds impatience. Waiting comes with expectations, which are premeditated resentments. Waiting leaves you empty and frustrated because it’s self-serving. Whether you are waiting for the red light to change or for a teller at the bank, practice choosing an alternative state of mind. Take a moment for some deep breaths and have some rest. Cheer up the person in front of you. Or let the person behind you, who is even  more impatient than you, in the line front of you.
  3. Practice small acts of generosity. Attending means taking the time to be present for both yourself and others. When you attend, even briefly, to your inner sense of well-being, you know that it takes the same effort to be generous as it does to be selfish, and the result is completely different. Just for one day this week, practice giving to others whatever you expect from others. When it comes to generosity, the small things are so often the big things. A smile. A message of encouragement. A pat on the back. A little patience. Doesn’t cost a thing and can make such a difference.
  4. Be present. It has been said that the best present you can ever give someone is to be fully present in the present. There aren’t many ways better to attend to someone than to be present with them; to tune in, to feel with, to listen without judging or a need to fix. The giving of advice can never take the place of giving of yourself. It is interesting how our fast-paced, crazy, demanding world has created a syndrome called ‘attention deficit disorder.’ Maybe our biology is simply asking our souls to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n and attend to ourselves and each other more simply and more deeply. There is more to life than increasing its speed.
  5. Practice gratitude. It appears to be human nature that the more we get the more we want. It is easy to become spoiled in the self-demanding, post-modern society we live in. Try living in a third world country for a few months and see how it changes your view. Entitlement, along with its accompanying self-centered expectation for self-gratification, is not taking us any closer to a more peaceful, contented world. What you attend to grows. What you appreciate appreciates.

I hope that you will make a little room over the upcoming holidays to practice attending. It will go along way. And, when you make more room for attending it will improve the quality of your life and all the relationships in it.

I view the world as a big pot. We all contribute and remove what we need from the ‘community pot.’ Every time you need something, you dip in and take it out of the pot. When you don’t need anything from the pot, you put a little something back in: a little attention, support, comfort, kindness, love, and so on. If we all throw a little in every day, then when we need it, the pot will have just what we need.

Great Cultures Start With Conscious Action

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Culture is ultimately about energy – the energy that emerges from the experience of participating in the culture. We are drawn to places – as a customer, employee, patient, or member – that have a high frequency of energy, places where people are engaged, vibrant, and alive. Conversely, we are repelled by places that are bureaucratic, listless, and dead. While positional leaders affect the energy level in a culture, every person – either inside or outside the culture – who participates in the culture contributes to the energy of the culture.

Regardless of what you say or do what face you show to the world, your mental-emotional state cannot be hidden. Everybody emanates an energy field that corresponds to his or her inner state. Most people can sense it even though they may be unaware of it’s effect or unable to articulate it. It’s not what you do, but how you do what you do that determines whether you contribute or  drain energy. The way that you act each moment, regardless of your position or your role, represents a certain vibrational frequency. I’ve learned from Eckart Tolle that if you are not in a state of acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm in any task you do, then you will be creating suffering for yourself and others.

I used to hate housework, and yet I knew that doing housework was a way to contribute and feel a part of the family. Being at war with myself, I would find myself resenting doing any housework, causing stress and suffering to myself and my family. Frankly, I was a pain to live with whenever there was cleaning that needed to be done.

So, I made a decision to accept the simple act of vacuuming. I stopped complaining and resisting and made a decision to stop hating it. In the process, I have actually grown to enjoy housework, and have an improved marriage! Two for one! The enjoyment in the work came, not because the nature of the work changed, but because I changed. I became more present to the experience.

Take an audit of the work you are doing – at home, at your office, or in your community. Become conscious of the actions you are taking and the state of mind you bring to those actions. If you can neither enjoy nor bring acceptance to what you do, then stop doing it. If, on the other hand, you decide that it is important to do this work at this time, then decide to change your state of mind. Becoming conscious of the actions you take and the effect that your inner state has on yourself and those around you, begins to build a new culture, starting with you. Taking this kind of personal accountability – action with consciousness – is not only the core of a great culture. It’s the core of a great life.

Leadership: Do People Trust You?

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This morning, my eighteen-year old daughter drove our truck to school. At noon I met with a prospective client who is considering our firm to help with leadership development. In between, my sales team discussed their goals for the quarter and made agreements to each other. There is a common thread that runs through all these scenarios: trust – a belief in and reliance upon, one another.

Trust is the most important issue facing the world today and lies at the foundation of every relationship. Trust is the keystone of success in work and in life. It’s the new global currency. It crosses cultures and generations. Building, restoring, and sustaining trust is your number one leadership challenge. Without trust there is no leadership, no relationship, no life as we know it in this interconnected universe. If you stop and think about it, trust lies at the centre of everything we do.
So, if trust is so important, how do you know if you are trusted by others? How do you assess it? How do you measure it? While trust has an emotional component to it, trust is not an emotion. Trust is an action. Trust is demonstrated by the way you behave in response to another person or circumstance.

In your most trusted relationships, trust is generally not even talked about. Instead, it’s demonstrated. You can take an inventory of how you measure up to trust:

You know you have earned trust when:

  1. People seek your advice. You know that you have earned the trust of others when they come to you for your input, your opinion, your perspective. Do others ask you for guidance?
  2. People are honest with you. People will have the tough conversations with people they trust. You know you have earned trust when others share good news or bad, negative feedback as well as celebrations, and when they are vulnerable, direct, candid, and straightforward with you. You can be polite with anyone, but the seed of trust lies within genuineness. Are people giving you open and honest feedback, bad news as well as good?
  3. People challenge you. As a corollary to #2, you know you have established trust, especially when you are in a position of authority, when others respectfully challenge your point of view, your approach, and your decisions. Are you being challenged by the people who report to you?
  4. People are competent. While you can foster competence for a time in a non-trusting relationship, it won’t last. Trust breeds competence. Trust builds results. Trust fosters capability. Are you getting the results you need from your team?
  5. People are relaxed around you. I recently coached a manager whose boss exploded every couple of weeks. He constantly lived in tension, never knowing what would set the boss off. Being relaxed is not the same as being complacent. It means being calm in the midst of activity. You are more effective when you aren’t wound up and stressed. You are more productive and do better work when enjoying yourself. Tension, stress, anxiety – all indicators of a lack of trust – can destroy a workplace. Are you aware of the level of tension in the people around you?
  6. People stick around. It’s been said that people don’t leave organizations; they leave bosses. The number one reason people leave marriages is because they no longer feel good about themselves in the presence of their spouse. People leave bosses for the same reason: they no longer feel good about themselves in their presence. You don’t feel good about yourself when you are around people you don’t trust. How’s the retention rate of your direct reports?

So… if you want to build trust, where do you start? With a willingness to give what you seek:

  1. Seek the input and advice of others. Genuinely look for opportunities for others to help you, guide you, and support you. Extend trust. The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
  2. Be open and honest with people. Tell people what you know; tell them what you don’t know. Show your humanness. You don’t have to be perfect to build trust; you only have to be real and honest.
  3. Challenge yourself in the presence of people. Let people know your weaknesses and what you are doing to work on them. Invite them to challenge you and thank them when they do.
  4. Be competent. Be committed to excellence. Stretch beyond mediocrity to mastery. Be dedicated to your on-going development. Nobody trusts an incompetent person.
  5. Be relaxed. Tension is an indicator of mistrust. People lack trust in a stressed, unpredictable leader. You can be firm, clear, and tough, but be relaxed and caring in the process.
  6. Stick around. People don’t trust quitters. They trust people are who dependable, reliable, and persistent.
  7. Above all, be trustworthy. Being trustworthy means being accountable, which indicates you can be counted on. Being trustworthy is about being a person of character. Character isn’t how you act when life is going the way you want it to. That’s easy. Character is how you act when everything around you is falling apart. Character is how you act when you are scared and angry and tired and frustrated. That’s when people watch you and decide whether they will trust you.

Trust is not built in a day. It is built daily. It’s built with consistent action. It’s built with care and compassion. It’s built with honesty and stability and strong character. Trust is built through paying unwavering attention to the small things and knowing what’s important to people. Trust is built with integrity and a can-do attitude. It’s built with a disciplined, focused approach of investing in the lives of people who matter to you.

What Are You Dedicated To?

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It’s been said that you can be world class at everything if you spend 10,000 hours practicing. That’s  3 hours a day for ten years, give or take a few days. What that means is that every person could be world class at something ten years from now. For some, it could be an olympic athlete. For others, a world class musician or artist. Some will be dedicated to their health or their wisdom, in order to remain a vital, contributing person as they age. Some will dedicate their lives to writing, speaking, or learning to communicate to impact others in a positive way. Others will be dedicated to a spiritual practice, community service, or  a cause beyond their own self-interest. Some are dedicating their time to parenting. And others will become world class complainers. Have you ever met a world class complainer? It’s a person who has spent three hours a day for the past ten years complaining. If you spend three hours a day watching television, you will be a world class television watcher, and if you watch the same shows during that time, it’s likely that no one else in the world will know more about those shows than you.

Years ago I memorized a quote written by the nineteenth century poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose words continue to inspire me:

“The heights by great men [or women] reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.”

I don’t think he was talking about distracting yourself by surfing the net at 3:00 am. He was talking about being dedicated to something.

The question is: What are you dedicated to? Where are you investing your time? What difference are you making in the world through this dedicated effort? Is what you are dedicated to inspiring you? Engaging you? Making a contribution to others? Do you have a vision that awakens you, that gets you up early or keeps you up late? What if you set a worthwhile ten-year vision to dedicate your life to? It’s never too late to consciously dedicate your life to a vision that inspires you. You are going to be ten years older in ten years anyway. Why not dedicate yourself to a worthy cause in the process? You can be interested in something, but that is different than being dedicated.

How is the Clarity of Your Conviction?

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“Then I asked: Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so. He replied: All poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything.” William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

To achieve a goal, a leader need a clear purpose and firm conviction. In the Sanskrit language there is a word for a firm mind: vyavasayam., which means agriculture. To reap a harvest, a cultivator needs a firm mind with one conviction that “by doing such and such, you will harvest this much.” With such conviction one does everything towards fulfillment. You don’t haphazardly throw seeds on unprepared soil or sow the seeds and say, “I don’t have time to care for it.” A good cultivator doesn’t change when the going gets tough. He continuously uses his effort until his goal is reached. That is what is meant by a firm mind.

People with a fleeting type of mind don’t stick to one thing. They may choose something, but become scattered. When things get difficult or uncomfortable, those with an infirm mind will lose concentration and be distracted by the allure of an easier, softer, or cheaper way. They’ll keep switching to something else. It’s like digging many shallow wells. They never find water and are always thirsty.

The achievement of a worthy goal will require you to ride out the storms with dedicated, focused effort, knowing you won’t get the fruit over night. It won’t be easy. And it won’t happen without the clarity and conviction of a firm mind.

Imagine a fisherman who is determined to catch a fish. He is in a small boat in the middle of the lake. It’s raining, chilly, and windy and his boat is being blown about. He casts his line and keeps his eyes only on that. Nothing disturbs him. He could be sitting comfortably at home in an easy chair, but knows he won’t catch a fish that way. Even for the simplest thing one needs great concentration.

With the clarity and conviction of a firm mind you can stay focused on your goal. It won’t matter if you experience some physical or psychological suffering or if people tell you that you are wasting your time. You won’t be distracted by discomfort or temptation. Nothing will move you from your purpose.

When you hear, “Leave that, and come watch television,” and you say, “No, I’m catching a fish and I won’t budge an inch until I do.” Then you are a true fisherman, not just someone who fishes as a hobby.

How is the clarity of your conviction? What have you achieved lately that’s come through having a firm mind?