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#Leadership : 6 Easy Tricks That Will Make You Way More Productive…“Time is What we Want Most, but What we Use Worst.” –William Penn

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When it comes to productivity, we all face the same challenge—there are only 24 hours in a day. Since even the best ideas are worthless until they’re executed, how efficiently you use your time is as important as anything else in business.

Free- Time Mans Watch

I’ve become fascinated by productivity secrets because some people seem to have twice the time, and there’s no better way to reach your goals than by finding ways to do more with the precious time you’ve been given.

It feels incredible when you leave the office after an ultra-productive day. It’s a workplace high that’s hard to beat. In my experience you don’t need to work longer or push yourself harder—you just need to work smarter.

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” –William Penn

I’ve learned to rely on productivity hacks that make me far more efficient. I try to squeeze every drop out of every hour without expending any extra effort.

And my favorite hack also happens to be the easiest one to implement. It’s so easy and useful you can begin using it now.

1. Never Touch Things Twice

That’s it. Never put anything in a holding pattern, because touching things twice is a huge time-waster. Don’t save an email or a phone call to deal with later. As soon as something gets your attention you should act on it, delegate it, or delete it.

2. Eat Frogs

To pull this off you’re going to have to eat some frogs. “Eating a frog” is doing the least appetizing, most dreaded item on your to-do list. If you let your frogs sit, you waste your day dreading them. If you eat them right away, then you’re freed up to tackle the stuff that excites and inspires you.

 

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3. Fight the Tyranny of the Urgent

You’ll also need to master the tyranny of the urgent. The tyranny of the urgent refers to the tendency of little things that have to be done right now to get in the way of what really matters. This creates a huge problem as urgent actions often have little impact. The key here is to delete or delegate. Otherwise, you can find yourself going days, or even weeks, without touching the important stuff. You’ll need to get good at spotting when putting out fires is getting in the way of your performance, and you’ll need to delete or delegate the things that hinder real forward momentum.

4. Say No

No is a powerful word that you’re going to have to wield. When it’s time to say no, avoid phrases such as I don’t think I can or I’m not certain. Saying no to a new commitment honors your existing commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully and efficiently fulfill them. Research conducted at the University of California in San Francisco shows that the more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression. Learn to use no, and it will lift your mood, as well as your productivity.

5. Check E-mail On A Schedule

If you aren’t going to touch things twice, you can’t allow e-mail to be a constant interruption. You should check e-mail on a schedule, taking advantage of features that prioritize messages by sender. Set alerts for your most important vendors and best customers, and save the rest until the scheduled time. You could even set up an autoresponder that lets senders know when you’ll be checking your e-mail again.

 

6. Avoid Multitasking

To make my system work, you’re also going to have to avoid multitasking. It’s a real productivity killer. Research conducted at Stanford University confirms that multitasking is less productive than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time.

Multitasking reduces your efficiency and performance because your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. When you try to do two things at once, your brain lacks the capacity to perform both tasks successfully. Never touching things twice means only touching one thing at a time.

Bringing It All Together

We’re all searching for ways to be more efficient and productive. I hope my productivity hack helps you to find that extra edge.

What productivity hacks do you rely on? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

 

Forbes.com | March 15, 2016 | Travis Bradberry

#Leadership : #ProductivePeople -5 Ways #SuccessfulPeople Tackle Monday Morning…Great REad!

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One of the most popular posts I’ve written on this blog is How Successful People Start Their Day. It seems like every Manager/Entrepreneur is interested in learning how to get ahead early. But starting every day isn’t the same as starting a Monday. Mondays are proven to be harder to face.

Free- Man reaching to Sun Rise

Many studies have shown that on Sunday afternoons, most people start to feel depressed. Maybe you’ve felt it. Work is coming. The weekend is over and it wasn’t all you imagined it would be. The pressure of another week of performance begins to hit early. There are hundreds of reasons why, but Sunday afternoon and evening is generally a downer.

No wonder Monday seems to be so, well… Monday.

Over the years, I’ve studied how people can ramp up for the work week. I’ve come to believe that there are not naturally “Monday” people, but that there are disciplines people follow that help them beat the Sunday blues and ramp up for the work week ahead.

  1. Sleep, but don’t snooze.

Managers/Entrepreneurs are notorious for burning the candle at both ends, but the National Sleep Foundation says that you cannot catch up on lost sleep. There may be no more important night to get rest than Sunday night, and no better remedy for Sunday blues than a solid night’s sleep. The Dalai Lama is quoted as saying, “Sleep is the best form of meditation.”

On the flip side, do NOT hit the snooze button. Dr. Rafael Pelayo of the Stanford Sleep Center says that by hitting the snooze button, you are telling your body “false alarm!” That results in a more groggy and slow wake up than if you just went ahead and got up when the alarm goes off. Monday is enough of a drag on its own. Hitting snooze only digs a deeper hole for you to climb out of.

 

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  1.  Get Physical.

Getting the body in its proper state often precedes the mind and emotions coming its way. If there’s any day this is most true, it is Monday.

An article by Ron Friedman of Harvard Business Review sites countless studies that show exercise not only motivates and improves work performance, but also pulls us out of a slump. One study found that when a group of people suffering from mild to moderate depression exercised (i.e. strength training, running or walking) for at least 20 to 60 minutes 3 times a week, they were significantly less depressed 5 weeks later. The benefits were immediate and were maintained for these participants as long as they consistently exercised.

I’ve taken this message to heart and have made it a practice to never take both Sunday and Monday off from working out. If I do skip Sunday, Monday morning workouts are a must.

Want to beat the Sunday blues? This Monday, get out the door and walk or run.

It doesn’t have to be a P90X workout. Cosmopolitan Editor-In-Chief Joanna Coles makes a Monday walk with her dog a must and says it helps her start her week. Many of my best ideas have come on Monday morning walks with Moses, Vanderbloemen Search Group’s Chief Canine Officer.

Mondays can leave you low on energy and more unwilling to workout than normal. Here’s an old trick I’ve used on myself for years:

I lie to myself.

I’ll head out the door saying “I’m only running 10 minutes, then I’m quitting.” Turns out, I have never wanted to quit once I was out the door and moving for 10 minutes. And I almost always felt better afterward. By releasing some stress, and some endorphins, you will likely kick your body out of the funk Monday can bring.

  1. Keep email in check until you get to the office.

Dave Karp, CEO and Founder of Tumblr, says that he will not respond to email until he gets to the office. I’ve found this to be especially effective for Mondays. The beginning of the week is the time when you set your mental state for the week. Stay focused on the big projects ahead and devote brain power there. The distractive power of email can take your brain away from big planning and into minutia that can wait. Honestly, when is the last time you had a Monday email that had to be dealt with right away?

  1. Never quit (or make big decisions) on a Monday.

There’s an old saying, “Don’t make permanent decisions based on temporary emotions.” That couldn’t be more true than on Mondays.

In our work helping churches find their key staff, Monday is the number one day for resumes to come to us unsolicited. People get bummed out on Sunday afternoon or evening, come into work Monday, and decide that they have had enough. After working with tens of thousands of candidates, we have come to believe that Monday is the number one day people quit their job.

But quitting on a day you’re down is a really bad idea. In fact, making any major decisions when depressed is almost always counterproductive and later regretted.

Making major decisions on the day when you’re down can have serious consequences. Most big decisions can wait until Tuesday, particularly if you start to shape your schedule around the idea.

When I was younger (read, when I knew everything) and leading churches, I thought it was a great idea to start Monday with marathon meetings filled with big agendas and decisions. I even scheduled our board and committee meetings for Monday nights. I was dead wrong.  Turns out, not every day was designed for intense decisions.

  1. Schedule work that has tangible results on Mondays.

Just like working out will help you out of the low points, so will working on projects where you can see immediate results.

Behavioral Psychologist Kelly Lambert has done a lot of research that shows handiwork can pull us out of depressed moments. When we knit a scarf, for instance, Lambert says, the brain’s executive-thinking centers get busy planning.

Spend your Mondays with a punch list of attainable goals.

Do tasks and projects that can be completed and have a box to check. Maybe it’s organizing your desk, planning a month of your calendar, writing notes of encouragement to staff, or knocking out some of those menial tasks you never seem to “have time for.” I have learned to keep a running “Monday punchlist” throughout the week so that I have some projects ready to go before I ever get to the office. If you’re anything like me, you will find that finishing a to-do list will do wonders for your soul.

I’m sure there are other tips out there for getting out of a low spot, and maybe some of you don’t suffer from post-Sunday Blues. But if you do, know that you’re not alone, and that they will pass.

I know when I was preaching, as much as I loved it, I often thought, “Sunday seems to come around every seven days!”

The good news is, Tuesday does, too.

 

Forbes.com | March 13, 2016 | William Vanderbloemen

#Leadership : Why We Seem To Be Talking More And Working Less — The Nature Of Work Has Changed….The Real Reason That we Communicate More is Because, Today, we Need to Collaborate More to Be Effective.

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Are communication technologies like Slack, Yammer and Skype actually helping us, or just getting in the way? Certainly, they have made it easier to communicate, share information and collaborate with colleagues, but what if all that extra communication is actually preventing us from getting important work done?

Free- Iphone with Gadgets

In a recent article in Harvard Business Review, Bain & Co. partner Michael Mankins estimates that while a typical executive in the 1970’s might have received 1,000 messages a year, that number has skyrocketed to more than 30,000 today and argues that we may “have reached the point of diminishing returns.”

I think just about everyone can see his point. Today, the amount of meetings, emails and IM’s we receive can seem overwhelming and it’s increasingly hard to find uninterrupted quiet time to focus and concentrate. However, the nature of work has changed. The real reason that we communicate more is because, today, we need to collaborate more to be effective.

 

Today, Machines Do A Lot Of The Work For Us

First, consider how different work was 20 years ago, when Microsoft had just released Windows 95 and few executives regularly used programs like Word, Excel and PowerPoint. We largely communicated by phone and memos typed up by secretaries. Data analysis was something you did with a pencil, paper and a desk calculator.

Now consider how Mankins performed the study he described in the article. He writes, “My colleagues at Bain and I have studied these effects using people analytics and data mining tools.” It’s safe to assume that all that data was collected and analyzed electronically and shared instantly with the press of a button.

It’s also safe to assume that he and his colleagues spent quite a bit of time discussing what the results of all that analysis meant. 20 years ago, they would have had to set up a meeting or a phone call when they were all free, but today, they can toss around ideas between meetings, in airport lounges or even while waiting for an elevator.

As Mankins himself wrote in an earlier article, “Today, an algorithm can assemble many more facts about the accounts than any human being could easily process.” The truth is that we’re increasingly collaborating with machines to get cognitive work done and so it shouldn’t be surprising that we’re taking more time to discuss that work with each other.

 

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Problems Are Becoming Much More Complex

Another thing to take into account is that the work we do today is far more complex. Would Mankins have even undertaken his study without the “people analytics and data mining tools” made available to him today? Possibly, but it would have been significantly more onerous.

It’s also important to note that the trend toward greater communication is not just visible in industry, but in academia as well, where we can assume that researchers have more options to work quietly and without interruption. Yet they are increasingly choosing to work in teams and those teams outperform solo performers.

The journal Nature recently noted that the average scientific paper today has four times as many authors as one did in 1950 and the work they are doing is far more interdisciplinary and done at greater distances than in the past. It’s hard to see how any of that could happen without the improved communication technologies we enjoy today.

Clearly, technology is enabling us to tackle problems we wouldn’t have dreamed of addressing a generation ago. To work on these challenges, we are increasingly collaborating in teams and our work has become more social and less cognitive.

The Value Of Sharing Information

In the past, communication was often just chit chat. Valuable information was locked away in file cabinets and, if we could find it, we would have to make a hard copy in order to share it with anyone else. Yet today, even teenager with a smartphone has more access to information than a highly trained specialist a generation ago.

For a typical executive, the effect has been even greater. The new technologies that make up the Internet of Things collect information automatically from a vast array of sensors embedded in just about anything you can think of. This data, in turn, is analyzed through the use of other technologies, like Hadoop and Spark, to help us make sense of it.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that we’re discussing all of the information we now have access to. We can glean new insights, share them with others and they can reply with insights of their own. The result of this collaboration is often even more collaboration, as we pull people in with a greater diversity of experience and expertise to get their take.

That doesn’t seem like wasted time to me. The truth is that nature of work is changing. The office is no longer a place where we access information—today, we can do that anytime, anyplace—but rather a place where we access people. It’s where we can meet face to face, communicate non-verbally as well as verbally, build stronger working relationships and collaborate more effectively.

Collaboration Is The New Competitive Advantage

To be fair to Mr. Mankins, his greater point—and the subject of much of his other writing—is that we should put more thought into how we adopt and use our newfound communication assets. Surely, we all spend time attending meetings, getting pulled into conference calls, reading and responding to messages that could be used more productively. And that’s frustrating.

However—and this is a crucial point—we don’t know those interactions will be fruitless until we actually have them. Further, while it’s easy to remember the frustration of having our time wasted, it is not much harder to recall times when we have come across a random thread of information that we were able to capitalize on by sharing with colleagues.

It is also those chance encounters that often lead to bigger things, precisely because we are able to share them, get diverse viewpoints and mobilize the efforts of others. Increasingly, we live in a social economy with collaboration at its center. It is no longer just efficiency, but agility and interoperability that makes firms successful.

So, while I take Mankins’ point about the potential for new communication technologies to unproductively monopolize our time, we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, the cacophony of the constant barrage of communication can seem distracting at times, but it can also open up new worlds of opportunity. That is, if we are paying attention.

Greg Satell is a US based business consultant and popular speaker. You can find his blog at Digital Tonto and follow him on twitter @DigitalTonto.

Forbes.com | March 6, 2016 | Greg Satell

 

#Leadership : How to Rewire Your Brain for Serious #Productivity …If your Meetings are Sputtering, Rewiring the Gray Matter May Help Get Employees Reconnected.

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The co-founders of Aditazz, which uses software to design and construct hospitals and other specialized buildings, were beyond frustrated. Zigmund Rubel, an architect, wanted to design buildings in one direction, either from the outside in or from the inside out, depending on the project. Deepak Aatresh, the CEO and an electrical and computer science engineer, was interested in simultaneous outside-in, inside-out design aided by computation.Free- Big Photo Lense

It was one of many seemingly irresolvable conflicts. “We knew we were well-intentioned, very smart, accomplished people, but it was hard to make forward progress,” Aatresh says.

This type of clash is familiar to neuroscience expert Ajit Singh, a partner at VC Artiman Ventures and member of the Aditazz board of directors; it has its roots in the brain. Innovation comes from com­bining disciplines, but people in different disciplines don’t think the same way. The idea that the right brain hemisphere controls creativity and the left logic has been debunked. But research shows that the left brain is more responsible for language, whereas the right takes care of spatial processing and attention. “People don’t select professions,” Singh explains. “Professions select people.”

These differences were interfering with decision making. Aatresh would schedule one-hour meetings for the startup team to make major decisions, but the conversation would go off-track. An hour would pass and little was accomplished. When he asked Singh how long decision making should take, the answer was: “I don’t know. Let’s let it go.” The solution was to create a lounge area with comfortable seating where people could sit as a group. Meetings began at 6 p.m., included wine and snacks, and had no planned end time. Some went as late as 1 a.m. But Aditazz’s best innovations came out of these sessions.

You may not want all-nighters, but Aditazz’s approach is broadly applicable. It works by creating a setting in which employees feel safe and open to collaboration. Making your people feel safe is key, because without that, “we go into protect behavior,” says Judith E. Glaser, author of Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results. “The amygdala takes over. The prefrontal cortex gets shut down.” The amygdala is linked to fear responses and pleasure. The prefrontal cortex enables empathy, intuition, higher-level social skills, and three-dimensional thinking, Glaser says. “It allows a level of innovation that’s off the charts in a way people have trouble explaining.”

“The idea that the right brain controls creativity and the left logic has been debunked.”

Glaser begins meetings by asking those present to describe what success looks like. When someone hears that others share his or her goals, it stimulates the rostromedial prefrontal cortex, which governs social decisions. “It says, ‘Let’s be friends. I’m more like you than you think,'” she explains. Singh made Rubel and Aatresh start meetings by telling each other that they understand their thought processes are different. “It sounds like kindergarten,” Singh says. “But over time, I saw there was a lot moreempathy.”

 

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That empathy led Aatresh to change his behavior. “Engineers love to go to the whiteboard,” he says. “I realized that’s intimidating to the intuitive people, because they know you’re going to force their thinking into those boxes.”

Now he sometimes ditches the whiteboard and wanders the room. Invariably, the architects are doodling while the engineers take notes. “For years, I believed people who doodled in meetings were time wasters,” he says. “Now I see there’s a connection between drawing on a sheet of paper and drawing one’s thoughts out.”

Neuro Lessons

Here are three places to reprogram for better performance.

1. Beware the Nonconscious

“People communicate powerful cues by body language. We process these cues nonconsciously, in a fifth of a second,” says Dr. Evian Gordon, CEO ofMyBrainSolutions.com. When we feel threatened, our nonconscious mode can assert itself. If someone says, “But I’m concerned” and crosses her arms, she can nonconsciously give a cue meaning she is switching off.

2. Mind Over Matter

Prime yourself for success by elevating your mood before a speech or meeting–for instance, with 20 minutes of moderate exercise, suggests Josh Davis, director of research at the NeuroLeadership Institute in New York City, and author of Two Awesome Hours: Science-Based Strategies to Harness Your Best Time and Get Your Most Important Work Done. When stressed, try picturing something calming, such as a flower or landscape.

3. Make People Comfortable

New Jersey-based Pirch, a retailer of luxury appliances, uses neuroscience to create spaces where people feel safe and can enjoy themselves, says co-founder Jim Stuart: “We rationalize our choice of one store or another, but what really happens is that the nonconscious limbic brain hijacks your cerebral cortex. For the nonconscious brain, the priority is avoiding risk and seeking rewards.”

Inside the Mind of the Entrepreneur

Born entrepreneur? New research shows that some people are wired that way.

Greater Mental Flexibility

According to Heidi Hanna, author of The Sharp Solution: A Brain-Based Approach for Optimal Performance, entrepreneurs excel at switching tasks quickly: “It may be from taking on too much at once or that multitasking is more important for their success.”

Higher Perceived Stress

“Most successful entrepreneurs say they have high levels of stress but thrive on it,” Hanna says. In their next phase of research, her team will look at biological markers to see whether stress is harming entrepreneurs or not.

Positively Above Average

A positivity bias is the nonconscious presumption that you are safe, whereas someone with a negativity bias sees threats everywhere. On a negative-to-positive scale of 1 to 10, the average person scores a 5.5, but entrepreneurs hit an average of 6.5.

Accurate and Agile

Entrepreneurs have above-average motor coordination. At first Hanna thought this was insignificant, but then she realized it might be linked to a key trait. “As I talked to entrepreneurs about what makes them different, they said they make quick decisions. If one turns out wrong, they’re confident they’ll be able to make it right.”

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The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
FROM THE MARCH 2016 ISSUE OF INC. MAGAZINE

Your #Career : Here’s Why #Facebook is Bad for You & Your Career…You might Think you’ve Earned a Few Minutes on Facebook after Completing a Task or Getting Through a Meeting, but Taking Frequent Social Media Breaks Can Derail your Productivity.

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It probably happens before you even realize it. One minute you’re in the middle of a work project and the next, you’re mindlessly scrolling through your Facebook timeline, Twitter news feed, or even your LinkedIn connections to see if there’s a colleague you haven’t yet connected with. In some cases, you don’t even remember opening a new tab and navigating to the social media site, and there’s not even a new notification waiting for you because this is the second time in an hour you’ve done this. Not only should this habit be slightly concerning on a personal level, but it also has the potential to be a huge detriment to your professional goals. You might think you’ve earned a few minutes on Facebook after completing a task or getting through a meeting, but taking frequent social media breaks can derail your productivity.

Free- Business Desk

We’ve written before about the dangers of using social media too much, especially Facebook. Social media can distort your perceptions of your friends, affect your mood in ways you don’t even realize, and is even linked to an uptick in depressive tendencies. An article from Psych Central summarizes a number of studies that have expounded on this idea. Using social media too much can often have a negative effect on a person’s self-esteem, especially since people tend to only post the best aspects of their lives on social media. The excessive use of Facebook and other social media sites is also linked to an increase in anxiety and trouble sleeping. In other words, you tend to get uptight and on edge after staring at your news feed for too long, so it’s no wonder that it’s a bad idea to spend your work breaks on the sites.

 

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Social media’s ‘distracted norm’

Avoiding social media during the workday has made several lists about how to be more productive in the workplace, and it’s not just because they occasionally have negative effects. For some people, checking Facebook regularly won’t lead to negative feelings. But even if you’re immune to social media, checking social media throughout the day is still bound to be a professional pitfall.

There’s a new ‘distracted norm’ in almost every sphere of life now, including the workplace, writes Forbes contributor Frances Booth. The author has written extensively about digital distractions, particularly in the workplace, and has found that phones buzzing in pockets, the easy accessibility of email, and even the habit of surfing the Internet lead to decreased productivity at work, even if you’re doing your best to ignore those digital distractions while on the clock. In one article, Booth asks how long it typically takes for you to switch from a focused work task to a distraction — with email or Facebook the common culprits. Is it an hour? Thirty minutes? Or is it (more likely) quick bursts of 10 minutes or less?

The larger issue here, Booth argues, is that easy work tasks get accomplished within a few minutes. You can easily reply to one quick email, post on social media for work purposes, or something else that’s relatively simple. But more complex work issues either get pushed to the side, or take way longer than they should. “If a task is too difficult or too boring, instead of working through this and sticking with it, the easy answer is to turn to a distraction,” she writes.
Number of Active Social Media Users by Network | FindTheCompany//

The fear, in terms of work productivity, is that innovation and creativity requires deep thinking. This means you can’t be turning to a distraction every five minutes. You need to sit with a problem, think about it for yourself before turning to Google to answer it for you, and be willing to work through an issue for multiple hours at a time. A Facebook dependency won’t help you accomplish that. “Giving in to distraction produces half-formed thoughts, unoriginal thinking, and the same old arguments again and again,” Booth argues.

Facebook has more than 1.4 billion users worldwide, so it’s easy to make that site the bad guy in all of this. But it’s not the only platform that leads to distraction, and it makes up just a part of what behavior science expert James Clear refers to as “digital procrastination.” Clear, in an interview with Entrepreneur, says that digital procrastination is a productivity killer, but it also can negatively affect other decision-making long after the work day is finished.

Fighting social media = less willpower

The reason is because you likely know you shouldn’t be checking Facebook every half hour during the day, so you try to resist the pull of social media while at work. But you’re using up a lot of your willpower to do that, which means you’re vulnerable later in the day to try to resist other bad habits you’re trying to break, like smoking or eating that second piece of cake. “Willpower is like a muscle,” Clear explains. “Every time you use a little bit of it — to resist going to Facebook or BuzzFeed or whatever it is — you’re flexing that muscle. By the end of the day…your willpower fades.”

Entrepreneur suggests trying an app like Freedom, which blocks social media sites and other select websites during the work day (or whatever timeframe you set up for yourself) so that you have no choice but to stay on task. Freedom charges a fee to use its services, but others like Cold Turkey have free options. “It takes the decision making out of your hands,” Clear said.

While we’re on the topic of work breaks, though, keep in mind that research does show that more frequent breaks for smaller amounts of time does help productivity throughout your work day. One study found that productive people often work for 52 consecutive minutes, and then take a break for about 17. Those might be arbitrary numbers, but give it a try to see if a similar breakdown works for you. Just opt for a quick walk or a chat with a coworker instead of logging into Facebook to see whose birthday it is.

 

CheatSheet.com | March 3, 2016 |