Strategic North Marketing Consultancy

Are you busy or are you effective?

We all know the culture, the one where you need to be seen to be there at 8am (or earlier) and make sure that you are not seen to leave until 7pm. The culture where you check your Blackberry late at night to get the last reply in and there is a mental leader board of who replies the latest. This is the same culture where people compare how many emails they get in a day.

I am sure you are busy, really busy.  We are all really busy, right?

But here is my question.

How effective are you? You have a strategy of where you are taking the business, your team, your brand (or at least I hope you do, if not you just got yourself a great big “step 1”) so after a full 12 months when you look back how far along are you? Does it represent the 40-70 hour weeks that you have invested? Can you clearly see the return on all that time?

I am willing to bet that you are not answering with an unequivocal “Yes, I can see it and we are storming ahead”.

Let’s start with some scientific facts. It takes someone 25 minutes to focus on a task to the point that they are being truly effective. If you are interrupted and distracted that resets the clock and it takes you 25 minutes to get back to the point you were at mentally before the distraction. I know, I know, you are the exception that proves the rule. If the scientists had examined you they would have found that you were different they just didn’t find someone like you in all the people they did test and I am happy for you to maintain that delusion.

So here are some simple steps to start doing more with the time you have got. Remember time is the most precious commodity you have and no matter what you do it is depreciating everyday.

Here are some rules:

1. Email is not work. Work is what you do when you are not answering emails
2. Meetings are not work. If you spend all day in meetings when do you work? When do things actually get done?
3. Anything that does not have a clear objective which aligns with the big stuff you have to get done in a year is not work. It is just getting in the way and eating time
4. Do not barcode your day. If something is significant enough to require your time it requires a decent proportion of it. In half an hour you will only just be truly focused

Now some good practices:

• Invest a couple of hours in writing down the big stuff you have to get done for your year to have been a success. Once you have written it review it once a month. Here is the miraculous thing if you do this even when you are not consciously moving in the direction of the things that need done your subconscious will steer you there anyway. This is time well invested. Try this format.
  • What is it? Describe the task
  • Why is it so important?
  • How does it make a difference to where you are trying to get to?
  • What are the things that make up that task?
  • Who are the people that are key to getting that task done?
• Meetings should have an objective and an outline of how you plan to get to that objective in the time available for the meeting. So when somebody sends you a meeting request politely ask for an objective and agenda. This doesn’t need to be chapter and verse it can be one sentence and 5 bullets but at least then someone has thought about how to give the meeting direction and people can arrive mentally prepared
• Section off time each day to do email. A chunk of time, say an hour in the morning. An emergency check at lunch if you need it and an hour towards the end of the day. Every other time turn it off (by that I mean shut Outlook, Lotus notes, Gmail or whatever else you use).
• Learn to say “No” politely, with a smile and a courteous alternative solution or option. Qualify your “No” so “No, because I need to achieve this and what you are asking for is not central to that. I can do it but it means that this other thing won’t get done and it is important because…”
• Take lunch. Even if you only take 20 minutes. Get out of the room you are in have a walk and a stretch and mentally reset.

Finally for those of you who travel. Travelling can be some of the most productive time known to man. I have written entire magazine articles on flights to the USA and some of my best thinking is done on planes. I often wish that someone once a week would come and lock me in a room with no phone and no Internet access for 5 hours. Now why is that? Well when you fly:

1. You have permission to be uncontactable and out of reach. You give yourself mental permission to be OK with that
2. You don’t have the day to day distractions that you do in the normal work environment
3. You have made an active choice to work. You could spend your time reading a trashy novel, listening to music or watching a movie (and by all means do those things sometimes) but you have chosen to work
4. It is a different environment to the one you are normally in and that is mentally stimulating

So here is my finally thought on being effective every now and then book a virtual flight. Go somewhere else to work (a library, a coffee shop etc.), turn your phone off; don’t hook up to the wifi and no email.  You can even put it in your calendar as a flight and tell people “Sorry I am on a plane at that time” if you need to.

Then sit down and get something done