Right Attitudes » Ideas for Impact
» by Nagesh Belludi

1. Divide and conquer. Break up large projects into smaller tasks. If you think a task will take less than five minutes, get it done right away. If you can reply to an email in less than two minutes, reply immediately and file or delete the incoming email.
2. Fight procrastination. One of the easiest ways to fight procrastination is to focus on starting your task. Commit to your task for just ten minutes. Avoid distractions and interruptions and continue to work for just ten minutes. By the end of the ten minutes, you probably get absorbed in the tasks, build momentum and can choose to continue working towards completion.
3. Put things in their place. Designate a place at your home and office for everything — your keys, wallet, watch, clothes, electronic gadgets and all personal effects. Always put each item in its proper place. Being orderly prevents you from anxiously searching for these belongings the next time you want to use them.
4. Create checklists for all tasks. Consider preparing checklists for everything from cleaning the home to packing for travel. Checklists help you remember everything critical and thus reduce the persistent worry of forgetting something important.
5. Start planning your day on the prior day. Before you leave office or before you go to bed, plan the next day and prepare a ‘To Do’ list. Check your calendar for meetings, deadlines and commitments. In addition, put out everything you need the night before. Planning ahead not only helps you start the next day with purpose, but also gets things off your mind. You can thus enjoy your time away or sleep better.
6. Pick up after yourself and clean your home and workspace. From time to time, glance through all areas of your home and office for things that are out of place. Tidy up before the clutter gets out of hand. Use the wastebasket liberally. Realize that mess leads to stress.
7. Maintain a ‘On-The-Go’ folder. When you receive your copy of a subscription magazine, tear out all the articles that interest you and dispose of the rest of the magazine. Maintain an “on-the-go” folder and file such articles. Take this folder wherever you go and read these articles during transition times — when you wait for a doctor’s appointment or when your flight is delayed at an airport. Review this folder frequently and toss out everything that is older than six months.

Recommended Reading

• Self-assessment Quiz: how stressed are you?
• The “10-minute Dash” technique to overcoming procrastination
• You have a pile of reading material at your desk?
• Everyday reflections for effective time management
• Seven habits to beat Monday morning blues

***See other articles related to time management, personal organization, productivity, stress management, getting things done, work-life balance

Writing great email Subject lines is the single most important skill you can develop to improve your effectiveness with email communication. The Subject line is the first — and occasionally the only — element of an email that readers notice. By writing a persuasive subject line, you can help your readers identify the importance of your message and drive action.

Here are a few suggestions to write a great Subject line in every email:

• State the objective of your email in a meaningful Subject line. Give your readers a clue of what your email is about and the response you expect.
• The best Subject lines constitute the two key attributes of the email: [Context / Project] + [Action required / Message summary] E.g., “Need MATLAB help: how can I calculate 3D distance,” “Alternator repower: recommended solution,” and “Thank you for your insightful comments at the customer forum on Friday.”
• Avoid indistinct and elusive Subject lines like “Hi,” “One more thing…,” “FYI,” “Can you do this,” or, “Help, please???”
• Compose the Subject line after you compose the body of an email. The process of writing the body of the email will help clarify the key message you want to convey and the action you expect.
• Prefix the Subject with an ‘URGENT’ if the matter is urgent.
• Do not write the entire Subject line in ALL CAPS — this is the digital equivalent of shouting. Moreover, phrases in ALL CAPS are harder to read.
• For shorter quick messages, try composing brief, all-in-the-subject-line emails. E.g., “Friday’s lunch: rescheduled to 1:00 PM [eom]” or “Reminder: feedback reports due by noon. [eom].” Adopt a few standard conventions and abbreviations (e.g., EOM for end of message) in your team.
• When replying to emails, change the Subject line if the context of an email thread has changed during the course of the thread or if the Subject line in the original email was irrelevant or unclear.
• Avoid discussing multiple topics in a single email. Send multiple emails, each with its own, meaningful Subject line.

Recommended Reading

• ‘Inbox Zero’ for productivity with email
• Do not abuse exclamation marks
• 7-38-55 rule of personal communication
• What the deaf can teach you about listening

Keyword(s): email, email communication, effective communication

The High Cost of Interruptions

Studies suggest that,

• on average, workers are interrupted once every ten and a half minutes,
• once interrupted, it takes a worker 23 minutes on average to get back to the task he/she was working on, and,
• workers can lose up to 28% of their workday handling unnecessary interruptions.

Interruptions derail your train of thought. Thereafter, getting back to what you were doing can be difficult. If you are sitting at your desk at work or home, the odds of being able to focus on a task and work uninterrupted are zero. Too, interruptions abound when working from (or at) home around kids, pets, or others.

Seek Remote / Undisturbed Locations for Work

Richard Nixon, former President of the United States, used the following technique to isolate himself when he wanted to focus on important work.

Richard Nixon was extremely efficient as a time manager. One of his techniques involved the use of a small private office in the Executive Office Building across the street from the White House. Armed with several yellow legal pads, Nixon would walk over to the office to work alone. His aides were under orders not to interrupt him except in the case of an emergency.

To minimize the impact of interruptions on your work, seek a hideout. Find a place where people are not likely to bother you: a vacant conference room, a desk in another office location, or, the study area at your local library. Consider coming in to work before others or work on a weekend morning. Disconnect yourself by turning off cell phones and the internet. Focus to get more things done.

Recommended Reading

• Scheduling quiet time to think
• Save time by meeting in others’ offices
• Budgeting your time by values and priorities

***See other articles related to time management, handling interruptions, distractions, productivity, effectiveness

Henry Ford Saved Time by Meeting Others in Their Offices

Here is a productivity technique practiced by Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company and automobile engineering pioneer.

One of his executives noticed that Ford almost always conferred with his managers in their offices instead of his own. Since, as the owner of the company, Ford could easily command them to come to him, the executive was curious about the reason for this practice. “I go to them to save time,” explained Ford. “I’ve found,” he said “that I can leave the other fellow’s office a lot quicker than I can get him to leave mine.”

Takeaway: If you tend to struggle to control the amount of time you spend in attending meetings and handling unwanted interruptions, offer to meet others in their offices. This technique discourages drop-ins and gives you a better handle on your participation: you could leave easily when you are contributing to the meeting.

Related Articles

• Preparing to attend meetings
• Analyzing how you currently use your time
• Overcoming procrastination

***See other articles related to time management, handling interruptions, productivity, effectiveness

I am a lucky man. I have had a dream and it has come true,
and that is not a thing that happens often to men.
* Edmund Hillary

Hope is the thing with feathers,
that perches in the soul and sings
the tune without words, and never stops at all.
* Emily Dickinson

A coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave just one.
* Muriel Strode

Wanting to reform the wicked with nectar-sweet advice, is like
trying to control an elephant with the pith of a lotus-stem, or
cutting a diamond with delicate petals of the Shireesh flower, or
sweetening the salty ocean with a drop of honey
* Subhashita

I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets.
* Napoleon Bonaparte

If you would only recognize that life is hard, things would be so
much easier for you.
* Louis D. Brandeis

What we get is what we expect.
* Unknown

The simple act of paying positive attention to people
has a great deal to do with productivity.
* Tom Peters

What creates trust, in the end,
is the leader’s manifest respect for the followers.
* Jim O’Toole

To change one’s life:
Start immediately.
Do it flamboyantly.
No exceptions.
* William James

Visit www.Inspiration.RightAttitudes.com for my compilation of inspirational quotations by author and topic. You may also subscribe to the weekly newsletter of inspirational quotations by sending a blank email to iqml-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

*Keyword(s): Inspiration, Quotations

Classic Clutter-Busting Strategies

This ‘Unclutterer’ blog article lists essential strategies to get and stay organized. Below is an abridgment; see full article here.

1. A place for everything, and everything in its place. If an object doesn’t have an official home, then it will always be out of place. Once you’re finished using an object, immediately put it back in its place.
2. Establish routines. Set up a regular schedule for tasks that have to be completed daily and weekly: laundry, cleaning, cooking, organizing, filing, home and auto maintenance, etc. The more methodical you are, the simpler it is to maintain your home and office.
3. If you don’t use it, need it, love it, or feel inspired by it, get rid of it. Just because you might have space to store something, doesn’t mean you have to keep it. Your home and office should be filled with useful and inspiring things, not objects that cause you stress and anger. Plus, the less you own, the less you have to worry about, clean, organize, finance, and maintain.

Call for Action

One of the primary drivers of the feeling of not being on “top of things” is disorder and clutter. Given our busy lives, we tend to let things get out of hand. This can frequently lead to a chronic preoccupation over the lack of orderliness in our lives.

Set aside some time, perhaps just 30 minutes, and

• Eliminate. Toss out things you have not used in the last two years. If you are not using something on a regular basis, you probably do not need it. Consider donating to charity or let somebody else have things you do not need.
• Organize. After eliminating unneeded and unwanted things, store articles close to where you use them. Consider investing in filing cabinets, cupboards or storage boxes.
• Simplify. One of the biggest hindrances to “getting things done” is complexity and redundancy. In today’s consumer driven societies, we tend to buy things we don’t need or, worse, things we already have and cannot remember. Use common sense to prioritize what you will own and what you will do and fight complexity.

Control your ’stuff’ — do not let them control you.

Recommended Reading

• Prepare tomorrow’s to-do list as you wrap-up today

***See other articles related to reducing clutter, getting organized, productivity, simplicity

During the weekdays, we engage in routine life and long for two blissful days during the weekends. Habitually, we tend to over-plan for the weekends and underachieve. By Sunday evenings, we tend to feel that our weekends just fizzle out.

We feel that our weekends are short-lived — that they are inadequate to accomplish everything that we want to. We wish we had relaxed more, completed more errands and spent more time with family and friends.

This article presents five habits that you could consider to make the most out of each weekend and feel more refreshed for a new week ahead.

Habit 1: Wake-up Early, Seize your Mornings

Try to avoid sleeping-in. When you wake-up late on Saturday and Sunday mornings, you tend to feel that almost half of these days are over. Moreover, sleeping-in during the weekends puts your sleep out of the weekday-rhythm and makes it difficult to wake-up promptly on Monday mornings.

Maintain your weekday wake-up times on Saturday and Sunday mornings as well. If you desire to “catch-up with sleep,” consider getting to bed earlier on Friday and Saturday nights or taking small naps on Saturday and Sunday mid-mornings. Try not to indulge yourself in a Sunday afternoon siesta — you will be able to go to bed early on Sunday night and prevent drowsiness on Monday afternoon.

Wake up early and seize the mornings. Spend some quiet time alone or with your family. Laze around, go for a brisk walk, visit the Farmers’ Market, sit in your porch with coffee and newspaper, and enjoy the serenity of the morning.

Habit 2: Shift Chores and Errands to Weekdays

Instead of spending your precious weekend on home projects — laundry, sorting, redecorating, cleaning — and errands, consider redistributing chores and errands among the weekdays. Say, for instance, you tend to spend two hours every weekend on chores, consider spending half an hour each weekday completing these tasks. Set your weekend aside for pleasure.

If you must work on particular home projects and run errands during the weekend, complete them on Saturday. This will enable you to unwind on Sunday. Instead, if you relax on Saturday, you will realize on Sunday morning that you will need to complete various household tasks by Sunday night — you will then hurry through Sunday and exhaust yourself by Sunday night.

Focus on a stress-free, relaxed, fun-filled Sunday with family and friends.

Habit 3: Plan and Prepare; Do Not Over-plan

Consult your family and friends and prepare an outline for your weekend in advance. Do not wait until the weekend to organize the weekend. On or before Thursday, go out shopping and collect all the resources necessary. By preparing in advance, you will be able to execute your plan as soon as your weekend starts instead of spending time wondering what to do.

Avoid any activity, e.g., catching up with work email, that is part of the weekday routine. Do consider, however, spending time working on important matters e.g., planning your investments, that you have been postponing. Vary your activities each week and avoid establishing a routine for your weekends — routines are for weekdays.

Habit 4: Improvise and Engage in Life’s Little Pleasures

“The happiness of too many days is often destroyed by trying to accomplish too much in one day. We would do well to follow a common rule for our daily lives – Do Less and Do It Better.”
– Dale E. Turner

As you plan your activities for the weekend, be realistic in what you can achieve. Do not over-plan. Try to prioritize your activities. Rushing around can easily exhaust you.

Allow for spontaneity and improvise your weekends. Engage in life’s little pleasures: spend time outdoors, go for a walk, hike, take a bicycle ride, or tend to your garden. Talk to friends and family you have not been in touch for a while, read magazines and books, or look at old pictures. Or, pursue a hobby, go to the beach, visit a museum, attend a concert, or do anything else that is fun for you and your loved ones.

Habit 5: Reflect and Appreciate

On Sunday evenings, reflect on everything you did during the weekend and appreciate having a good time with family and friends.

Do not fret if you did not complete everything you had planned. There is always another weekend coming-up.

Concluding Thoughts

The key to making your weekend feel longer and having a relaxing time is to reorganize your plans and freeing-up time for your favourite, pleasurable activities during the weekend. By prioritizing, improvising and staying on top of things you can arrive at the end of your weekend contented and full of energy for the fresh week ahead.

Recommended Reading

• Beat Monday morning blues
• Recharge mid-week by taking time-off on Wednesday afternoon

***See other articles related to Recharging, re-energizing, energy management, time-off, relaxation, productivity, work-life, stress management, friends and family

Google’s Marissa Mayer on Perfection

In an interview with the Fast Company magazine, Marissa Mayer, Vice President of search products and user experience at Google, compares two product launch strategies:

Some [programmers] like to code for months or even years, and hope they will have built the perfect product. That’s castle building. Companies work this way, too. Apple is great at it. If you get it right and you’ve built just the perfect thing, you get this worldwide ‘Wow!’ The problem is, if you get it wrong, you get a thud, a thud in which you’ve spent, like, five years and 100 people on something the market doesn’t want.

Others prefer to have something working at the end of the day, something to refine and improve the next day. That’s what we do: our ‘launch early and often’ strategy. The hardest part about indoctrinating people into our culture is when engineers show me a prototype and I’m like, “Great, let’s go!” They’ll say, “Oh, no, it’s not ready.” … They want to castle-build and do all these other features and make it all perfect. I tell them … to launch it early on Google Labs and then iterate, learning what the market wants–and make it great. The beauty of experimenting in this way is that you never get too far from what the market wants.

By releasing new products and features before they are completely refined, as ‘beta’ releases, Google and other technology companies can gain significant advantages over the competition. The products can be marketed earlier and initial users can identify problems with unfinished products and suggest new product features. A case in point: Google’s popular ‘Gmail’ or ‘Google Mail’ application has remained ‘beta’ since April 2004.

The approach of releasing ‘half-baked’ products is limited to certain industries and products. And, for sure, these ‘beta’-products are expected to include all the critical functional features expected of the product. Airlines will not fly a new aircraft that has not yet passed comprehensive tests and regulatory certification.

‘Perfect’ Is Often THE Enemy of ‘Done’

When you aim for perfection, you discover it’s a moving target.
– George Fisher

On our personal and professional initiatives, we tend to wait for the perfect time, the perfect team, or the perfect conditions. The end-result is that we never get started on the initiative. If we do start and then aspire for a perfect design, we may never get done.

Some of us, yours truly included, are chronic perfectionists. We tend to be excessively self-critical and demanding of ourselves. Our struggle for perfection habitually turns into an endless quest for making ‘better’ a ‘little better.’ Any state of perfection ceases to exist when we question the perfection–when we ask how perfect the perfection is.

Make ‘Perfect Enough’ the New Perfect

We need to accept the prospect of compromises to our goals and aspirations. We need to acknowledge that our expectations are often excessive and uncalled for. When we develop a ‘good enough’ or ‘perfect enough’ mindset, we realize that imperfection is, after all, a negotiable outcome. There will always be a chance to improve.

Recommended Reading

• Overcoming procrastination using the “10-Minute Dash” technique
• Jack Welch on acting quickly

Credits: Marissa Mayer’s photo courtesy of Google

***See other articles related to perfection, perfect enough, excellence, productivity, procrastination, execution, getting things done

Surveys (see example) predict that 60% of individuals are ‘morning people’ — they are at their best during the mornings. Yet, many of them begin their day unorganized. Frequently, they do not have a sense of how they should begin their day–what tasks they should work first thing in the morning. They idle away the most-productive stretch of their days by checking email, talking with colleagues about their weekends or reading news on the internet.

A Solution to Wastefulness

To manage your day wisely, develop the good habit of planning the next day before you end each day.

Each day, before you leave your desk at office or go to bed at home, spend a few minutes to prepare a to-do list for the following day.

• Review your calendar and make a list of things you can reasonably accomplish during the next day.
• Try to break more-involved tasks into smaller component tasks.
• Start each phrase with a verb; for example, “Book tickets for family vacation,” “Call client,” “Send draft of research report to boss.”
• Collect reference/support material or files for each task and leave them at your desk.

The next day morning, your to-do list serves as a road map for your work. The list helps you orient yourself by making it easier to start your day knowing which tasks you will need to complete during the day. Additionally, your to-do list lets you free yourself from the anxiety of maintaining a list of tasks in your head–your mind is now free to concentrate on other thoughts and deliberations.

***Related articles: Everyday reflections for effective time management

***See other articles related to Reducing clutter, getting organized, productivity

Concept of ‘Inbox Zero’

In a seminar at Google (see video on YouTube or slides at Slideshare,) productivity guru Merlin Mann discusses the prevalent practice of misuse of email systems.

A number of us check email too frequently, retain too many unread emails in our inboxes or set aside emails without processing them completely, and, habitually organize our work around our email inboxes.

Merlin emphasizes that one of the most important soft-skills a knowledge worker could possess is the ability to productively process a high volume of email. He advocates effectively handling email by implementing and maintaining a system whereby, regardless of the sender or the content, you could process all incoming email by choosing one of the actions described below.

‘Process to Zero’

The core idea behind Merlin’s system of productivity with emails is the practice of maintaining a blank inbox by processing all emails each time you check email. “You never check your email without processing to zero.”

Merlin advocates checking two or three times a day and processing every email through one of these actions: deleting or archiving, delegating, responding, deferring or just ‘doing.’

Here is a system that I personalized and have practiced for the last two years or so.

1. Delete: Many emails that you receive are intended to update or inform you of some development. Or, they could be about commercial promotions, reminders or automatic notifications of certain events in our organization. Immediately delete these and all other emails of questionable value.
2. Archive: If you need to store an incoming email for future reference, move it to an appropriate folder. Develop an organization scheme that works best for you. For instance, you may create a system of folders based on projects you are responsible for; each folder could then store emails related to its project.
   Note to Gmail users: Gmail does not support the concept of folders. Instead try the system of labels. See this FAQ.
3. Respond Immediately: If you can act on an incoming email in a minute or two, act on the email immediately. If you need to respond, compose and send a response immediately.
4. Defer: If you cannot act on an email in a minute or two, hit the ‘Reply’ button to start responding to the email and then save a draft of the reply for future action. Then, delete the original (incoming) email or move it to an appropriate folder. Add the task to your to-do list. When you have completed the task and have all the information necessary to respond, resume composing the draft email and send the email. Your ‘Draft’ folder thus supplements to your to-do list. If appropriate, reserve an hour or two each afternoon to collect information, complete all such tasks and clear your ‘Draft’ folder.
5. Delegate: If another person could best act on an incoming email, forward the message. If you would like to track the delegatee’s response, record an action item in your to-do list or calendar. Then, delete the incoming email or move it to an appropriate folder.

Supporting Actions

• Turn off the ‘notify me when new mail arrives‘ feature on your email software to avoid interruptions and help you focus on your work outside of email.
• Do not open email until later in the morning. A majority of us tend to be more productive earlier in the day. Hence, use your mornings to focus on your more-important responsibilities and priority tasks.
• Check email twice or thrice a day only, or more frequently depending on nature of your job. Process to zero and close your email software when done checking email.
• By the end of each day, target to clear all your incoming mails and try to maintain a zero inbox.

Concluding Thoughts

Evaluate the ‘Zero Inbox‘ and ‘Process to Zero‘ practices and customize these ideas to suit your particular circumstances. Implementing and maintaining a system of productive email practice can help you feel better organize your responsibilities and tasks.

***See other articles related to email productivity, electronic organization, personal organization, time management