Time Management

When Work is Home and Home is Work

December 11, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

As much as you love lounging around all day in athleisure wear or plush robes, it’s easy to mix home- and work-life when working from home during the current pandemic.

Work is always available to you, and self-scheduling has caused work to spill over into non-work hours.

Have a designated workspace away from your personal life and personal tasks. That’ll create not only a physical barrier but a mental and social one as well.

When you practically live in your office, it’s hard for your brain to recognize when it’s okay to entirely shut down. Create some boundaries. Maintain regular office hours, switch off your computer and put it away, and disconnect completely.

Idea for Impact: Mindfully uphold boundaries from morning until evening. Follow a routine similar to the one you had before COVID-19 to accomplish your goals without losing your mind.

Do it Now // Summary of ‘The 5 Second Rule’ by Mel Robbins

November 23, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Mel Robbins’s The 5 Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage (2017) argues that much of what holds you back in life has roots in those few precious moments between when you have an idea and when your brain gets in the way of acting on that idea.

The 5-second rule is simple. If you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill it. …. Hesitation is the kiss of death. You might hesitate for a just nanosecond, but that’s all it takes. That one small hesitation triggers a mental system that’s designed to stop you. And it happens in less than—you guessed it—five seconds.

Robbins asserts that you have five seconds to act on your ideas before you run the risk of subconsciously convincing yourself not to. Stay alert for those decisive moments. Each time, consider the benefits and liabilities of doing versus deferring.

When you internalize a do-it-now mindset, you’ll be dragging your feet less: “There’s one thing that is guaranteed to increase your feelings of control over your life: a bias toward action.”

There’s some wisdom here: don’t wait for motivation, high energy, or a sense of focus before taking action. Create motivation by taking action. Once initiated, action tends to gather momentum—tasks become increasingly easy to sustain.

Recommendation: Skip Mel Robbins’s The 5 Second Rule. You don’t need 240 pages of testimonials and cheery page-fillers on not thinking your way out of problems. Watch her TED talk instead.

Idea for Impact: When you catch yourself thinking you’ll do something later, take it as a nudge to do it now. Take action before procrastination sets in. Action motivates.

Micro-Meetings Can Be Very Effective

November 16, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Discussions expand to fill the time allotted (per Parkinson’s Law,) especially when people haven’t prepared for them well.

If your meetings tend to run long and aren’t producing tangible results, consider micro-meetings.

Focus on discussing and deciding on a single problem within, say, 15 minutes. Ask people to do their homework and come thoroughly prepared.

Let the critical decision-makers pre-wire one another before the meeting—they can discuss one-on-one the main points and settle any differences of opinion.

Clarify the meeting’s purpose before starting the session. Even if you think everyone knows it, it helps restate the meeting’s objective and sharpen the group’s focus.
Allow people brief statements about their positions and clarifying questions. Take full-fledged discussions offline.
Not every exchange of ideas needs to happen in a meeting. Use shared documents that can be revised and tracked by several people in real-time.
Keep everyone standing. The discomfort of standing for long, especially before lunchtime or at the end of the day, can keep the meetings short and to-the-point.
End well. Conclude the meeting with an action plan and an exact timeframe. State the decisions the group has made and who owns what.

Yes, micro-meetings will seem brusque and hasty. But setting a focused agenda and staying on-topic will keep people paying attention and steer meetings to conclusive decisions.

Many teams use micro-meetings for daily huddles, check-ins, or “scrum meetings.” There’s no good reason why this type of meeting should be availed exclusively for such occurrences.

Make a Habit of Stepping Back from Work

November 10, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

“Busyness” often initiates as a lack of focus. Our culture has been seduced into thinking that we can achieve anything if we try harder and work longer.

Besides, good jobs are overwhelming. Many company cultures count on employees to compartmentalize their lives and prioritize work over all else. Managers expect that employees become what sociologists have identified as “ideal workers”: folks who are entirely dedicated to their jobs and are always on call, sometimes at great expense to their personal life. Such dedication is detrimental not just to employee wellbeing but also to the bottom line.

Being productive requires acknowledging that you can’t work for extended periods and maintain a high-performance level.

Make a habit of stepping back. Taking your mind off work can help you overcome mental blocks. Being productive requires creative thinking more than perseverance.

You’re more likely to find breakthrough ideas when you temporarily remove yourself from the grind. The best solutions uncover themselves when you step into the shower, go for a run, have lunch away from your desk, or set off on holiday.

Up the Good Stuff. To feel less burned-out, do a little more of the things you love and a smidgen less drudge work.
Seek Breathing Room. That’s a metaphor for space to catch up with yourself, regroup, think over whatever’s happening, and know how you feel and what to do next.
Thwart Decision Fatigue. You have a limited capacity for concentrating over extended periods. You can restore your executive function and overcome mental fatigue through interventions—short rest, engaging in creative purists, and increasing the body’s glucose levels.

Idea for Impact: If you want to get more done, start taking breaks. Busyness is very different from effectiveness.

Eat That Frog! // Summary of Brian Tracy’s Time Management Bestseller

October 19, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Self-help megastar Brian Tracy’s Eat That Frog! (2001) focuses on how to put you—not the incessant flow of attention-demands that inundate you—in the driver’s seat. The most effective time management is staying aware of what genuinely deserves your attention.

Tracy’s central premise is that to be more time-effective, you must discover the one momentous task—the most dreaded task or the “frog”—that you need to do. Take steps to do this task right away with the utmost urgency and attention, even if you don’t feel like doing it. “If you have to eat a live frog at all, it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for very long.”

Suppose you start your day by “eating a live frog” (a memorable Mark Twain metaphor, but has an even more extended history.) In that case, you know that the most unpleasant part of the day is behind you.

“Set the table.” People fail because they aren’t clear about their goals. Decide exactly what it is that you must achieve. Write down goals and objectives. Plan every day in advance. Every minute spent in planning can save 5-10 minutes in execution.
Embrace the Pareto Principle. 20% of activities account for 80% of the results. Always concentrate efforts on those top 20%. Pick the hardest, but most important and meaningful tasks first. “Successful people are those who are willing to delay gratification and make sacrifices in the short term so that they can enjoy far greater rewards in the long-term.”
Adopt the ABCDE method. Prioritize tasks from A (most significant) to E (least significant) and work on the As. Focus on key result areas. Delegate the D tasks and get rid of the E tasks.
Obey the “Law of Forced Efficiency.” Lack of clarity can be a killer because it impairs action, and action is the secret to success. “There is never enough time for everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important things. What are they?”
Identify your key constraints. Your most significant limitation is an anchor that keeps you from sailing on with your strengths. “Determine the bottlenecks or choke points, internally or externally, that set the speed at which you achieve your most important goals and focus on alleviating them.”
Let deadlines motivate you. “Imagine that you have to leave town for a month and work as if you had to get all your major tasks completed before you left.” Develop a sense of urgency: Make a habit of moving fast on your critical tasks.
Manage for personal energy and attention. “Identify the periods of highest mental and physical energy and structure the most important and demanding tasks around those times.” Also, “Organize your days around large blocks of time where you can concentrate for extended periods on your most important tasks.”
Motivate yourself into action. Focus on the solution rather than the problem. Always be optimistic and constructive. “Most of your emotions, positive or negative, are determined by how you talk to yourself on a minute-to-minute basis. It is not what happens to you but the way you interpret the things that are happening to you that determines how you feel. Your version of events largely determines whether these events motivate or de-motivate you, whether they were energized or de-energize you.”
Single-handle every task. “The ability to concentrate single-mindedly on your most important task, to do it well and to finish it completely, is the key to great success.”
Success requires self-discipline, self-mastery, and self-control. These are the building blocks of character and high performance.

Recommendation: Speed-read Brian Tracy’s Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time. This bestselling tome offers practical steps for overcoming procrastination with focused determination. Yes, much of the book is trite, and Tracy is excessively repetitive. However, Eat That Frog! is a useful synthesis of such simple disciplines as determining priorities, delegating and eliminating some tasks, knowing what’s okay to procrastinate about, and getting it all done.

Learn to Cope When You’re Stressed

September 14, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Stress is a normal part of life. On the whole, there’re two major forms of negative stress (“distress”): the stress concerned with loss (divorce, death of a loved one, failure) and the stress involved with threats to your sense of self, status, wellbeing, or security.

The actual physical symptoms—including faster heartbeat, elevated blood pressure, quickened breathing, upset stomach, muscle tension, chest pain, and increased perspiration—may be identical, regardless of the external stress factor. However, stress does manifest itself differently with everyone. If untreated, stress also brings on or worsens more than a few other symptoms or diseases.

Stress doesn’t just get better on its own. Here’re four things to do to gain control of your life’s stress before it can start controlling you.

Proactively reduce stress-causing events. Reduce exposure to people, situations, and triggers that initiate unjustifiable stress. Create rituals that can help you cope. Learn to confront those situations in manageable amounts—schedule your day, simplify your schedule, get more organized, and learn to say no to added commitments. Cut back on your obligations.
Improve your resiliency. Maintain good health and stamina. Eat a healthy diet, get adequate sleep, and exercise regularly. Take regular breaks and schedule vacations where you can totally disconnect. Sometimes, just being idle—even wasting time—can help you not only feel good but also recharge your mind and body.
Manage your reaction to stressful events. Learn how to relax, such as deep-breathing techniques, progressive muscle relaxation, meditation, and massage. Schedule time for calming exercises such as yoga, tai chi, and music or art therapy. Engage in a relaxing hobby or offer to volunteer in your community.
Reach out. Stress feeds on feelings and fears that we keep to ourselves. Stress causes you to lose objectivity about your situation. Often just talking to a trusted friend or relative—even a counselor—could help you look at things from a distance and work out coping mechanisms.

Idea for Impact: Integrate daily stress prevention.

You may not control all your stressors, but you can control how you react to those stressors. If your current stress management efforts aren’t effective enough, try something new.

How to Help an Employee Who Has Too Many Loops Open at Once

September 3, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The notion of ‘open loops’ is analogous to an internet browser with too many tabs open all together. Forcing a computer to do too much at the same time will overburden the computer’s CPU and memory. That causes lower processing speeds, even causing the browser to crash.

The same thing can happen to your employees in the workplace. Open loops add up to ongoing and unfinished mental processes—from a report that’s past due to a creative idea that has lingered on without being put into practice.

Having too many open loops restrains the time and attention employees give to specific responsibilities, stagnates performance, and breaks the team’s momentum.

Here are three ways you can help your employees handle their workload.

Encourage your employees to work through these open loops and close them one by one. Evoke the two-minute rule: a task shouldn’t be added to a to-do list if it can be done within two minutes.
Sit down with your employees, encourage them to make a list of their open loops, and prioritize the more significant open loops over the less important ones. Suggest the so-called Eisenhower Decision Matrix, named after President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who famously said, “The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”
Buy them a copy of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (2001.) This best-selling time-management guidebook can show your employees how to examine all their open loops and “stuff” in the office—information, ideas, emails, projects, expectations, and even people—into a sensible, meaningful system. Once organized, your employees can relentlessly “process” and sort out all open loops to conclusion. The resulting streamlined information flow can keep employees free from persistent worrying.

Easy Ways to Boost Your Focus & Stop Multitasking

July 18, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If you’re struggling to focus on getting work done, perhaps the following tips may help.

1. Simplify Your Environment. We, humans, are biologically programmed to pay attention to new stimuli. Disable notifications on your phone, close the unnecessary windows on your screen, and clear up unnecessary papers. Switch off to switch on. Find a quiet space in the office or retreat to the local library or a tearoom.

2. Make Your Mind Up to Focus. Set aside a block of time—even if it’s just ten minutes—to handle a mentally challenging task without interruptions. Quite often, seemingly difficult tasks get easier once you get working on them, even if you force yourself to go through the motions. Extend the time further—schedule ten, twenty, or thirty more minutes of work.

3. Embrace Your Struggles. Any task that takes mental effort, or involves critical thinking and creativity, is going to be a little daunting initially. When you hit a wall, don’t quit and breakout to something easier. Labor through and push onwards.

4. Take Adequate Breaks. Humans work in cycles; we can focus for a period but then need time to rest. Try the popular ‘Pomodoro Technique’: work for a concentrated 25 minutes, take a 5-minute time out, then dive back in for another Pomodoro. After four Pomodoros, take a long break. During each break, leave your desk or take a break from your screen. Go for a quick walk around the block, step away from your desk for a few minutes, or make a cup of tea. Realizing that you only have a set amount of time to complete a task before a break, the Pomodoro Technique tends to keep you on the task rather than drifting from one diversion to another.

By ditching multitasking and regaining focus, you can reduce distraction, lower stress levels, and put more of your energy into what’s important instead—one single task at a time.

Don’t Let the Latecomers Ruin Your Meeting

June 29, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Latecomers not only demoralize and disrespect those who turn up on time and have to wait around but also hurt the meeting’s productivity—especially if you have a tight and structured schedule.

Always start and end your meeting at the appointed time. Are your attendees tardy because they know that you don’t start the meeting promptly? Do you tend to wander off-topic?
Confirm that there’re enough chairs in the meeting room. A latecomer can disrupt a discussion by dragging chairs over from other meeting rooms.
Don’t reprimand or embarrass a latecomer during the meeting. Speak to her later. Does she understand that she has a clearly defined role in this meeting? (People are often late to events because they’re not entirely convinced about whether they really want—or need—to be there.)
Don’t go over an agenda item to help a latecomer catch up. Recapitulate the key points only if the latecomer’s inputs are necessary to what’s left on the agenda.
If you have a chronic latecomer, check if he has a schedule-conflict. Confirm that his participation is still relevant. If he doesn’t want to—or need not—attend the entire meeting, pull him to the top of the agenda. Let him contribute and leave.
Try to corral the chronic latecomers by stopping by their desks en route to the meeting.
Could you make the meeting more beneficial for all your attendees? Invite suggestions for mutual gain so that everyone feels more productive.

Also, be alert to power trippers who get a small thrill in keeping others waiting, and then requiring you to start over or recapitulate when they arrive.

How to Clear Your Mental Horizon

June 8, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

This anecdote about a reclusive Nobel laureate is scarcely practical advice, but an excellent reminder of the importance of eliminating internal and external distractions.

Peter Higgs is not a fan of modern technology. The British theoretical physicist, 84, is so consumed with work that he has never sent an email, looked at the internet, or used a cellphone. He’s so cut off from modes of modern communication that he didn’t know he’d won this year’s Nobel Prize in physics—for his 1964 paper predicting the Higgs boson, which imbues other particles with mass—until a neighbor congratulated him on the street. “I resent being disturbed in this way,” says Higgs. “Why should people be able to interrupt me like that?” Because they want to keep in touch? “But I don’t want to be in touch,” he laughs. “It’s an intrusion into my way of life, and certainly on principle I don’t feel obliged to accept it.” He doesn’t own a TV, but not because he lacks interest in the outside world. “I don’t regard television as the outside world,” he offers dryly. “I regard it as an artifact.”

And, the Guardian notes that Higgs isn’t interested in being accessible:

Higgs struck upon his [Higgs boson] theory while walking in the Cairngorms one weekend in 1964. An unworldly and donnish academic, he was so immersed in particle physics research that when his first son was born he was miles away in a university library, and so remote from contemporary reality that to this day he owns neither a TV nor mobile phone, and only acquired his first computer on his 80th birthday.

Make Conditions as Favorable as Possible

Good jobs are overwhelming, and accomplishing important things is really, really hard. As the following anecdotes will illuminate, many of the greatest achievements in life are often accomplished by people who (1) have a particular desire that becomes the foundational building block for everything they do, (2) focus on what they want to achieve, and (3) divest themselves of internal and external distractions.

The physicist and 1965 Nobel laureate Richard Feynman famously invented the falsehood that he’s irresponsible so that he could avoid mundane tasks. He wrote, “I tell everybody. “I don’t do anything.” If anybody asks me to be on a committee to take care of admissions … “No! I’m irresponsible. … I don’t give a damn about the students!” Of course I give a damn about the students, but I know that somebody else’ll do it! … because I like to do physics, and I want to see if I can still do it. I am selfish, okay? I want to do my physics.”
The American crime writer James Ellroy said, “I’m interested in doing very few things. I don’t have a cell phone. Don’t have a computer. Don’t have a TV set. Don’t go to movies. Don’t read. I ignore the world so I might live obsessively.”
Asked about his vacations, the German filmmaker Werner Herzog once revealed that he has never taken vacation, “I work steadily and methodically, with great focus. There is never anything frantic about how I do my job; I’m no workaholic. A holiday is a necessity for someone whose work is an unchanged daily routine, but for me, everything is constantly fresh and always new. I love what I do, and my life feels like one long vacation.”

Idea for Impact: Find the Focus That’ll Take to Do Your Best

Success is a product of unremitting attention to purpose. Avoid, disconnect, eliminate, automate, delegate, reduce, or minimize mundane concerns and routine affairs that could dissuade you from focusing on what you want to achieve.

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