A holistic approach to increasing your get-up and go, from the productivity expert whose previous books showed people how to Find More Time and Leave the Office Earlier. If you want to be productive but are just too tired all the time, you need to read this book! Laura Stack combines invaluable insights and practical advice in this guide to becoming more energetic and more productive in every area of life. Stack describes the factors that contribute to low energy (the "energy bandits") and explains how to reduce their effects and build up or renew sources of positive force (with "energy boosters").

Available now from Amazon.com and at better bookstores everywhere.

Leave the Office Earlier, Laura shows you how you CAN get more done than you ever thought possible and still get home to your real life sooner.Available now from Amazon.com.

More of The Productivity Pro's Resources

If you're interested in bringing Laura to your organization to present a training seminar for your employees on the day prior or the day after one of these engagements below, please contact John Stack for special "piggyback" pricing.

February 2010

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1-2::Seattle, WA

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Recent posts:

Time Management: The Productivity Minute Video #23 Do NOT Make New Year's Resolutions

Workplace Productivity: SUPERCOMPETENT KEY # 1: ACTIVITY

Time Management: The Productivity Minute #24 - Procrastination

U.S. job satisfaction hits 22-year low

New Years - A Great Time for Business Review

Turning Up the Heat
 

Japan's New Finance Minister Wants His Staff To Have More Sex To Improve Performance

SUPERCOMPETENT KEY #2: AVAILABILITY

Availability is driven by Activity.

Just as setting valid priorities and goals is important, so is accepting your responsibility in carrying them out. You have to structure your schedule very carefully to ensure that things get done--because if you don't, other people will be perfectly happy to structure your schedule for you.

Think about it: how many times have you attended a meeting and asked yourself, "Why am I here?" Often, it's because someone decided you should be--without bothering to consider if that was best for you and your productivity goals.

You have to be willing to protect your time from everyone who wants a piece of it. Among other things, you must learn to say no when appropriate, to delegate, to cancel unnecessary meetings, to let some tasks go, and to eliminate bottlenecks--whatever's necessary to take back your time and use it the way you need to.

More importantly, you must learn how to leverage technological productivity tools that can lighten your scheduling load. Webinars, teleconferencing, and services like Jott or GoToMeeting can accelerate productivity and streamline your schedule. So can the effective use of organizers and other paper-based methods. The trick is finding which one works best for you, and that takes some experimentation.

Try these tips to hone your Availability toward SuperCompetence:

1. Refuse requests when appropriate. Learn how to say no graciously. Because you're good at what you do, you'll always be fielding requests for help and input. It's human nature to want to please others, but you can't do it all. There's no need to be rude, but there are polite ways to avoid being overworked.

2. Set appropriate boundaries. Learn how to protect your time from others. You're always going to face what I call the six D's of Interruptions: Deadlines, Disruptions, Dependencies, Discrepancies, Distractions, and Drop-Ins. You can't let others use any of these to slow down your productivity.

3. Push a task down to the lowest level of responsibility. Trust others to do their jobs; "delegation" is a popular business buzzword for a reason. Don't waste your time and productivity on tasks other people can do more cheaply. Hand them off to someone else, and let them do their jobs without micromanagement.

4. Schedule your day realistically according to your key activities. While it's normal to make an effort to accommodate other people's needs, your own should come first. Learn to manage your time properly, and take control of your own schedule. Don't let other people do it for you.

5. Weigh the results of attending any meeting against the results you could produce instead. Meetings can take up your entire day if you let them. Instead of dropping everything to attend a meeting, see if you can send a proxy, attend by phone, or just cancel it altogether.

Availability is a loaded word, at least in business terms. It means so much more than just being there--any decent worker can and should be there for their employers, subordinates, and co-workers when they're needed. SuperCompetent people need to be keenly aware of time management. After all, time isn't like money, office supplies, or Brussels sprouts: we've each got a very limited amount of it, and we're not going to get any more.

If you say yes to everything someone asks you to do, you're going to be so overburdened that you won't be available to people when they need you, except on those rare occasions when you manage to clear a task off your schedule. You require some flexibility, which means that you not only have to learn how to say no to some requests (or creatively negotiate them somewhat), but you also need to learn how to effectively deal with distractions and diversions--from people demanding your time to "helpful" technology that seems to command all your time.

And stop trying to be such a perfectionist! You don't have to do everything; the idea is to be SuperCompetent, not SuperHuman. Superman's a fantasy--and even if he wasn't, you have to remember that he's supposed to be an alien from another planet, not a human being. Knowing how to delegate and/or outsource tasks whenever you can, and having the wisdom to do so, is a must.

You'll also need to learn effective scheduling techniques to make life easier for both you and everyone else, and hone them to maximum effectiveness so things don't get out of hand. The same is true when it comes to meetings. As I've said elsewhere, a task will expand to fill the amount of time available; that's something called Parkinson's Law (after naval historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson, if you were wondering). Meetings are a prime example of the tendency for that to happen.

You don't have to let time-stealers eat into your productivity! Stand up, step up, and take back your time!

Make it a productive day! ^(TM)

(C) Copyright 2009 Laura Stack. All rights reserved.

Ms. Stack,

Thank you for all of the information you provided in yesterday's webinar. I can't wait to put some of it into place this weekend. I'd already gathered my master to-do list and had started keeping a log of my time. The information and tools you provided yesterday will take me the rest of the way. Hallelujah!

I now see light at end of the tunnel and today feel encouraged rather than overwhelmed. It's a great feeling. Now I just have to start scheduling the time to get things done.

Thank you for your free offerings and the Tip of the Day, but know that I also ordered two of your books so not a complete freeloader. Looking forward to reading about more tips to help ease my burden.

Thanks again!

Terri

Terri H.
University of Notre Dame

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10 Minute Exercise Can Save Your Hours a Day

The #1 limiting belief that can destroy your happiness and life is the belief that having a full calendar is the same as having a full life (it's not). The solution? Replace those dead activities with activities that inspire you and that get you closer to your goals. But how do you do this?

PERK! Make a list of all of the activities you do and meetings you attend (at work and at home) and then place a P, E, R, or K next to each one:

Postpone - This is when you can shift the activity into the future. For example, to create free time to complete a project, gain a new skill, take a class, etc., you might want to hit the "pause" button on another task.

Eliminate - If you can completely remove a task from your life, put an "E" next to it. Buh-bye.

Reduce - Maybe you just can't bring yourself to completely eliminate something, but can you reduce it? If so, put a "P" next to it.

Keep - For those tasks you need to keep, put a "K" next to them.

Within 10 minutes you should be able to free up a lot more time that you can invest in things that truly create a richer and more fulfilling life.

Robert Pagliarini is the author of The Other 8 Hours: Maximize Your Free Time to Create New Wealth & Purpose. If you want to download a free worksheet that will help you PERK your time as well as several other valuable tools and resources, go to www.other8hours.com.

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Laura Stack, MBA, CSP
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