If you know your time management skills aren’t quite up to scratch, try these simple steps to improve: #1: Use an Organizer
It doesn’t matter what kind of organizer you use – some people like a paper diary, others use Google Calendar, and others have a favorite software program. What’s important is that you have an organizer and that you use it.
Your organizer should let you keep track of your appointments. If you’ve ever forgotten a meeting, or double-booked yourself, you’ll know why this matters!
You’ll also want to keep a note of key reminders (“Buy anniversary card for spouse”). It’s also useful if there’s space for a daily to-do list or similar…
#2: Write a To-Do List Every Day
How do you begin your working day? Many people start off by checking their emails, and then begin tackling whatever happens to have come in. It’s easy to end up spending the whole day on minor tasks, rather than tackling the work that really needs to be done.
At the start of each day, take five or ten minutes to write down a list of what you want to accomplish. You’ll probably have a few mission-critical items (“Finish client’s report”) and a few things that are essentially just reminders of small tasks (“Phone Joe”).
Writing down the big items helps you focus on them right from the beginning of the day; writing down the small ones means you don’t have to use up valuable mental energy trying to remember them.
#3: Prioritize by Importance
How do you decide which tasks to tackle first? If you go for the ones that seem most urgent – with the closest deadline, or the pushiest client – then you might end up shoving aside more important things. Sometimes, prioritizing by urgency makes sense, but as a general rule, you should be tackling the important tasks first.
One way to do that is by dividing your day into two halves: work on important, longer-term tasks in the morning, and on urgent tasks in the afternoon.
If those urgent things truly need to get done by 5pm, you’ll probably manage them just fine — without spending the whole day caught up in them.
#4: Understand Your Peak Times of Day
Are you a morning lark or a night owl? Do you find it easier to focus at 8am or 8pm? We all have peaks and troughs of energy throughout the day – and it’s useful to get to know when your best (and worst) times are.
For me, mornings are the best time: I use them for my most creative and energy-demanding work, which is writing. Afternoons are when I deal with editing, admin, emails, and other smaller tasks.
I have a slump around 4pm – 5pm, when I’m grouchy and unable to focus. I can easily accomplish twice as much between 9am – 10am as between 4pm – 5pm. Your ups and downs may be very different from mine – but by figuring out when they are, you can plan your work and manage your time more effectively.
Read full article via dumblittleman.com
Remember how your mother always told you to stand up straight, lest you wind up a dateless wallflower? As it turns out, slouching will cost you more than just an invitation to prom. It may cost you your job.
At least, so say the ergonomic specialists at Fellowes, who note that slouching at work indicates that workers don’t care or aren’t interested. Projecting a lack of interest can mean being passed over for a promotion or even booted out the door. Slouching on the edge of your seat? You’re clearly ready to bolt the moment a better job comes along. Sprawled out in your chair? You don’t take your work seriously. Sitting with your chin in your hand? Too much partying, not enough punching the clock.
With the average office worker spending most of the day behind the desk, Fellowes warns, the physical toll of regular slouching is also high: chronic pain, repetitive stress injuries, etc. Those who don’t heed Mom’s call to “stand up straight!” are surely doomed to a life of chronic pain and lingering death. Or they’ll be fired. Whichever scares you more.
Slouching probably isn’t healthy, but as workplace offenses go, it seems a minor one. Still, it’s tempting to chalk being fired up to bad posture. It’s a bad habit, but it’s one you can control. It’s harder to face the idea that a firing was based on the company’s desire to get the same job done elsewhere for pennies – especially when the new employees are probably allowed to slouch while doing it.
Forbes interviewed 20 entrepreneurs about their work habits and found they worked an average of 60 to more than 100 hours per week. Most noted that weekdays were not much different from weekends, and that personal time off did not exist at all. One responded, “the concept of ‘work’ disappears–it is just what we do.”
As anyone who has crammed for an exam can tell you, usually the number of hours we work without interruption is inversely proportionate to how much we accomplish. So how do these entrepreneurs manage to work so many hours without suffering from brain fatigue?
Well, first of all, it is because they truly love being an entrepreneur and are passionate about their enterprise. But, I believe, part of the answer is that they wear so many hats. They never get stuck doing the same kind of work for too long.
Here are some more brain-based tips that can work wonders and could be what helps propel entrepreneurs forward:
1. Buy a good office chair, or get a standing desk.
Focal Upright Furniture has a brand-new chair-and-desk combination on the market. Invented by Martin Keen, of Keen shoes fame, it uses a position between sitting and standing, and allows lots of movement as you work. It also helps those who use it remain attentive.
2. Do not multitask.
John Medina, author of Brain Rules, tells us the brain cannot multitask, period. What it does do is switch back and forth between tasks very quickly. Someone whose attention is interrupted not only takes 50% longer to accomplish a task but also makes up to 50% more errors. A study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that people who talk on the cell phone while driving are four times more likely to have an accident, because it isn’t possible to devote your full attention to both driving and talking at the same time. Hands-free calling offered no advantage. What’s the lesson to take away? Focus on one task at a time, and you’ll accomplish each better and faster–without killing anybody.
3. Use all your senses.
Work is more entertaining for your brain–and therefore makes you more alert–when you engage as many of your senses as possible. Use colored paper and pens. Experiment with peppermint, lemon, or cinnamon aromatherapy. Try playing background music.
4. Don’t make too many decisions in one day.
It sounds farfetched, but if you go shopping in the morning, then negotiate yourself out of eating a cookie at lunch, and finally try to decide between two job offers that afternoon, you might choose the wrong job because you didn’t eat the cookie, according to Scientific American. Making choices depletes your reserves of executive function, or “the mental system involved in abstract thinking, planning, and focusing on one thing instead of another.” This can adversely affect decisions you make later.
5. Take a quick break every 20 minutes.
A study in the journal Cognition reveals that people can maintain their focus or “vigilance” much longer when their brains are given something else to think about every 20 minutes. That’s the time when thinking becomes less efficient. This trick is called momentary deactivation. If your mind isn’t as sharp after a long period of work, it may not be completely fatigued. It just needs to focus on something else to refresh the specific neural network you’ve been using.
Here are three strategies for avoiding burnout by staying connected to work, both as an employee and as a person.
1. Connect the dots between the Home You and the Office You.
One cliché that still holds very true: Finding what you love is central to being your best at work. Within your industry and organization, be sure that your talents and abilities in “real life” (the things that are important to you in your day-to-day life at home) are in line with your tasks at work. In the best scenario, the talents that make you who you are in your family life, your social life, your hobbies, etc. are also put to use in your job (think meticulous attention to detail, compassionate understanding in social situations, drive to creatively problem solve, etc.).
Not there yet? Even some small changes–like taking on pieces of projects that you feel connected to–can help give you a more personal relationship to your work and company.
Some of the best decisions I’ve made for Blu have involved helping employees find where they are best suited and where their passions within the business truly lie. Productivity goes up, of course, but so do morale, fresh ideas, and a host of other invaluable and highly contagious effects.
2. Keep the big picture easily within reach–literally.
Getting caught up in the minutiae is so easy, especially when your job is high stress, involves managing others, or demands intense attention to detail.
There’s much research to support the idea that visual reminders can be powerful motivators. So find one and keep it in plain sight. Hokey? Maybe.
But I remember one day when I stopped by my local pizza place for a slice, I was struck by, of all things, the box: The ambitious little pizza company had designed its box to incorporate the words that evoke its mission and message. It depicted visually the ideals at the core of the business. That stuck with me. I cut out the box top and still have it to this day at my desk.
Reconnecting to the reasons you were inspired in the first place is crucial to keeping your own work exciting–and, if you are the boss, provides the fuel for continuing to inspire others.
Read full article via Inc
Do…
· Be approachable. At your desk. In the lunchroom. In the bathroom. In the parking lot. You’ll get a reputation as a go-to guy who listens. A low-level supervisor remembers a colleague approached him at his desk the day after an office party and said, “My wife loved talking to you. She thought you were so interesting.” The supervisor remembered talking with her, and he remembered that he had barely said a word. He just listened to her.
· Build relationships before you need them. Crushing office politics means networking before you need to network. People who know each other can handle disagreements better than people who do not.
· Practice self-awareness. Are you the source of tension? Many people can recognize shortcomings in others, but fail to recognize their own faults. Be a positive influence for everyone else.
· Think win-win. We grow up thinking that if someone has to win, then someone else has to lose. It doesn’t have to be that way in the workplace. Be the one in your office or department who is always saying, “How can we all win here?” Promote mutually acceptable solutions. Win-win situations help to engage employees, promote unity, and drown out politics.
Happiness–in your business life and your personal life–is often a matter of subtraction, not addition.
Consider, for example, what happens when you stop doing the following 10 things:
1. Blaming.
People make mistakes. Employees don’t meet your expectations. Vendors don’t deliver on time.
So you blame them for your problems.
But you’re also to blame. Maybe you didn’t provide enough training. Maybe you didn’t build in enough of a buffer. Maybe you asked too much, too soon.
Taking responsibility when things go wrong instead of blaming others isn’t masochistic, it’s empowering–because then you focus on doing things better or smarter next time.
And when you get better or smarter, you also get happier.
2. Impressing.
No one likes you for your clothes, your car, your possessions, your title, or your accomplishments. Those are all “things.” People may like your things–but that doesn’t mean they like you.
Sure, superficially they might seem to, but superficial is also insubstantial, and a relationship that is not based on substance is not a real relationship.
Genuine relationships make you happier, and you’ll only form genuine relationships when you stop trying to impress and start trying to just be yourself.
3. Clinging.
When you’re afraid or insecure, you hold on tightly to what you know, even if what you know isn’t particularly good for you.
An absence of fear or insecurity isn’t happiness: It’s just an absence of fear or insecurity.
Holding on to what you think you need won’t make you happier; letting go so you can reach for and try to earn what you want will.
Even if you don’t succeed in earning what you want, the act of trying alone will make you feel better about yourself.
4. Interrupting.
Interrupting isn’t just rude. When you interrupt someone, what you’re really saying is, “I’m not listening to you so I can understand what you’re saying; I’m listening to you so I can decide what I want to say.”
Want people to like you? Listen to what they say. Focus on what they say. Ask questions to make sure you understand what they say.
They’ll love you for it–and you’ll love how that makes you feel.
5. Whining.
Your words have power, especially over you. Whining about your problems makes you feel worse, not better.
If something is wrong, don’t waste time complaining. Put that effort into making the situation better. Unless you want to whine about it forever, eventually you’ll have to do that. So why waste time? Fix it now.
Don’t talk about what’s wrong. Talk about how you’ll make things better, even if that conversation is only with yourself.
And do the same with your friends or colleagues. Don’t just be the shoulder they cry on.
Friends don’t let friends whine–friends help friends make their lives better.
Workplaces aren’t what they used to be — and that’s a good thing! Though professional attire is a must in virtually any workplace, what constitutes professional attire can vary wildly depending on profession, employer, and even location. Even in more conservative workplaces, like a law or business office, some degree of relaxed or casual attire is permitted on certain days or during certain times of year.
This is usually the case in the summer when the heat makes traditional professional attire unbearably warm. Despite the fact that you’re unlikely to wear heavy clothes on a casual Friday, such days still require a wardrobe mindful of what’s appropriate in the workplace. Here are some dos and don’ts that apply to most casual dress days:
DON’T wear sweats, pajamas, or lounge wear.
Just because you’re dressing casually doesn’t mean you should ignore what your clothes say about you and your work. One of the main reasons professional attire exists is to instill confidence in one’s appearance; professional attire is often designed to make you look your best. Wearing sweats, pajamas, or lounge clothes would only serve to make you look lazy in the eyes of others. These kinds of clothes, by design, do not fit especially well and are not typically meant to be worn to the office. A good rule of thumb is to never wear anything to work that you would wear in bed or lounging on the couch at home.
DO wear jeans.
Jeans are an excellent alternative to slacks or dress pants, which are typical in professional attire. Be mindful of the sort of jeans you wear though. Choosing a dark wash of jeans, as opposed to a lighter wash, looks more professional since the darker color mimics dress pants. Distressed jeans, jeans with holes in them or those covered in paint splatter are generally unacceptable as they look messy. Fit is important too. Very baggy or skinny jeans are not going to cut it; boot cut or straight-legged jeans are going to be the most professional option.
Want to have the best workday ever? Day after day? It’s not as difficult as you think.
These 10 tweaks to your everyday behavior will virtually guarantee you a day that’s not just enjoyable but allows you to get more done than you ever thought possible.
1. Start with 15 minutes of positive input.
It’s easier to achieve and maintain a positive attitude if you have a “library” of positive thoughts in your head, so you can draw upon them if the day doesn’t go exactly as you’d prefer. Start each day by reading (or listening to) an inspirational book to ensure that you have just such a resource at hand.
2. Tie your work to your life’s goals.
Always remember that there’s a deeper reason why you go to work and why you chose your current role. Maybe it’s to support your family, to change the world in some way, to help your customers, to make a difference: Whatever the deeper motivation, remind yourself that this workday–today–is the opportunity to accomplish part of that deeper and more important goal.
3. Use your commute wisely.
Most people waste their commute time listening to the news or (worse, especially if they’re driving) making calls, texting, or answering emails. In fact, your commute time is the perfect time to get yourself pumped up for the day, and there’s no better way to do this than to listen to music that truly inspires you and gets you in the right mood. Don’t depend on a DJ: Make your own mixes!
4. Stick a smile on your face.
It’s likely, if you followed the first three steps, that you’ll already be smiling. If not, stick a smile on your face anyway.
It doesn’t matter if it feels fake: Research has shown that even the most forced of smiles genuinely reduces stress and makes you happier. Does this mean you should be grinning like the Joker in the Batman comics? Well, yes, if that’s the best you can do. But something a bit more relaxed might be less alarming to co-workers.
5. Express a positive mood.
When most people are asked social greetings–questions such as “How are you?” or “What’s up?”–they typically say something neutral (“I’m OK”) or negative, like “Hangin’ in there.” That kind of talk programs your brain for failure.
Instead, if anyone inquires, say something positive and enthusiastic, like: “Fantastic!” or “I’m having a wonderful day!” It’s true that there are some people whom this annoys–but these are people you should be avoiding anyway.
Gordon MacKenzie was interviewed by John Gerstner for the August, 1991 issue of IABC Communication World. MacKenzie, now deceased, was then “Creative Paradox” of Hallmark Cards, Kansas City, Missouri. For more insight into the mind of Gordon MacKenzie, get his cult classic Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace published in 1998.
What other employee in the corporate US has a den instead of an office, a room that is a melange of art, antiques, sculpture, cartoons and bric-a-brac, including a roll-top desk, drawing table and a wonderfully painted chair with wings hanging from the ceiling? Who else could seriously describe their job as, “inviting fellow employees to come out on the thin ice with me.” Who else has the job title creative paradox?”
Gordon MacKenzie certainly is one. As the only official creative paradox at Hallmark Cards in Kansas City, Mo., he is also perhaps the only creativity consultant in the US who is working to subvert corporate stultification from the inside. His title may be an inside joke, but it is a serious one.
“Large organizations are like giant hairballs,” he says, with a characteristic twinkle. Every decision adds another hair. There is existence but no life in a hairball. You have to expend creative energy to avoid getting all tangled up.”
When MacKenzie isn’t stirring up corporate creativity at Hallmark, he’s out on the lecture circuit, using overything from mirth to meditation to put audiences as large as several hundred people into a kind of surreal, creative trance.
After which he asks the audience to write a poem based on a randomly chosen noun and adjective. The brave ones volunteer to read their creations aloud. Many of the Poems are amazingly heartfelt and moving.
“Everyone has a masterpiece within him from birth,” says MacKenzie afterward. “When we are young, society draws pale blue lines, as if your life were a paint-by-numbers kit. The message is: If you stay in the lines your life will be a masterpiece. That’s a lie. You have to constantly battle to be nobody but yourself. If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted.”
MacKenzie is a small man prone to big, hearty laughs, especially after similarly deep and insightful digressions. (“I’m really babbling now,” he chides himself.) He also has the somewhat disconcerting habit of occasionally blowing air as he speaks. “I do it to stay in touch and keep from shutting down,” he says.
Interviewed at Hallmark, in what he insists on calling “My Room,” MacKenzie dances around the subject of corporate creativity like a dervish … reading a poem from “The Awakened Eye” by Frederik Frank … talking freely about his recovery from alcoholism … confiding that it took him 20 years to find the courage to do a pirouette in the hallowed halls of Hallmark,
MacKenzie believes in letting go, having fun, enjoying the “ecstasy of living.” As if to prove the point, he happily and without hesitation agreed to pose for the camera while wading in the company reflecting pool.
“I wish I had your job,” a fellow employee teased as MacKenzie was testing the corporate waters. MacKenzie just flashed a huge grin.
JOHN GERSTNER: Why are most corporate environments so sterile, so corporate?
GORDON MACKENZIE: My guess is it’s control. Large organizations feel a deep need to control, and that extends to the physical environment.
JOHN GERSTNER: Do you think this desire to control is sinister?
GORDON MACKENZIE: No, I think it’s just a responsibility to the customer and to shareholders to try and deliver the best possible product. To do that entails a certain need for predictability, and to get that one is often drawn into a need for over, controlling the situation. I understand creativity to be a manifestation of the unconscious. We can’t know ahead of time what’s going to come up. It seems to me the way around this is to let creativity flow and pick through it to find the things that can be exploited for positive gain. We tend not to do that.
JOHN GERSTNER: Why?
GORDON MACKENZIE: Our society is threatened by people having too much access to that limitless creativity within our unconscious, because it might raise uncomfortable questions and there is stuff in there that looks insane. Therefore, society discourages creativity in an incredible variety of ways.
JOHN GERSTNER: This must be a very unusual corporation.
GORDON MACKENZIE: Remarkable.
JOHN GERSTNER: How do you mesh with the accountants at Hallmark?
GM: I don’t think we understand each other. I think a lot of us are reluctant to understand each other. So we mesh with a lack of mutual understanding to a certain degree.
JOHN GERSTNER: Healthy misunderstanding?
GORDON MACKENZIE: Tolerance. Knowing at some level that we need each other, but wishing that we didn’t. (Laugh.)
JOHN GERSTNER: Tell me about your job at Hallmark. Creative paradox?
GORDON MACKENZIE: I don’t have a job description. I’m doing it right now. My job is to put myself out in front of you or whoever and risk to grow. Really to risk and stretch and walk out on some thin ice and say, “I wonder if I can stand here.”
I try to do this with workshops and brainstorming sessions where I try to offer some non-ordinary ways for people to get at the limitless resources that they have inside of them. Creativity, more than anything else, is gaining access to what we already have.
JOHN GERSTNER: Do you think there is a penalty for exhibiting creativity as you do inside a corporation?
GORDON MACKENZIE: Could we say “price” instead of “penalty?” Yes, there’s a price, but there’s a price for everything. It comes down to what each of us as individuals will honor. How much courage will we find to honor the things that we cherish? If I cherish personal freedom, but I don’t have the courage to pay the price of having that freedom … because there will be a price for it … then I will live in a kind of frustration, a wimpy world that longs for the freedom but isn’t willing to suffer the pain to get it. We can end up wishing our life away. If we can find the courage to confront an issue that is causing chronic dull pain, we can get through and beyond it.
JOHN GERSTNER: So if out of fear, you wore the business suit to work instead of the T-shirt, you would suffer that dull chronic pain.
GORDON MACKENZIE: Yes, a sense of loss, a little death.
JOHN GERSTNER: That you weren’t being true to yourself?
GM: Yes, not being true to the creative, childlike spirit that is inside me and everyone. Unable, as Frederik Frank, an artist and author, puts it in one of his poems, “to discover one’s own little song and dare to sing it in all variations, unsuited as it may be for mass communication.” Every time we choose not to sing our own little song, it’s a little death.
JOHN GERSTNER: Do you think the people you meet in corporations are stifled, or unhappy, or do you have any sense of that?
GORDON MACKENZIE: One of the things I have learned from my therapist is not to make judgments about other people’s life situation. There’s no such thing as “immaculate perception,” he says. But I know many working people are shut down, frustrated, and locked in a desperate situation they don’t know how to get out of.
JOHN GERSTNER: In a box?
GORDON MACKENZIE: Building one and having it built. It is a communal effort in which the resident of the box is an active participant.
JOHN GERSTNER: How do you get in touch with the muse when you’re in a hectic business environment where creativity may be viewed as more of a luxury than a priority?
GORDON MACKENZIE: Creativity is an essential, not a luxury. As soon as it’s seen as a luxury, it goes to the bottom of the corporation’s list of priorities. Ecstasy of living is an essential. I was late for this interview this morning. The reason I was late was because I was with some people and it was working. We were having some authenticity. And there was an energy there that deserved not to be interrupted. I miss airplanes a lot for this reason. So I pay a price.
JOHN GERSTNER: Discipline … where does that fit in when tapping into your creativity? There’s such a rush today to do what you have to do.
GORDON MACKENZIE: Can I share with you something else I learned in therapy? When you use you talk, you’re telling me what I have to do. And we do that too much in our society. When we say you, you, you all the time, somebody else owns it. When are we going to look after ourselves and say I need to do such-and-such, instead of saying you need to do such-and-such? If I can say “I” more, then maybe I will take more responsibility for where I am, for my frustrations, and for the things that are limiting who I can be. But as long as I say you, it’s someone else’s problem, and I can continue to be a victim, which is not very demanding.
JOHN GERSTNER: What advice can you offer on helping people become more creative and true to themselves inside an organization?
GORDON MACKENZIE: Learn to let go. Search for every way possible to let go, and find the courage to be yourself. This may mean maintaining a support network … a group of people you work with with whom you can truly share your deepest fears. People you can be intimate with spiritually and emotionally. People you can trust.
JOHN GERSTNER: In other words, take off the mask, whether it’s physical or mental.
GORDON MACKENZIE: Yes, the change in physical appearance will simply happen on its own when it’s ready. I think the dress for success syndrome is superficial manipulation and plays to dishonesty. If I have a need to change the way I express who I am, that change will surface, and I won’t need any instruction or hints from any publication or workshop or person.
JOHN GERSTNER: But appearance is very important, isn’t it? If you look at the board of directors of any large company, every one will be wearing a white shirt and dark suit … even the females.
GORDON MACKENZIE: Sure, but now we’re talking about conforming, adapting, and being appropriate … we’re not talking about creativity. If the goal is to reach the board of directors, there will be manipulation, cleverness, skillful politics, right moves, but creativity will not be a primary ingredient. If I set my mind on a reward and focus on that reward, the path to it will not be an authentic path. If I focus on the path, there will be rewards that I would never have dreamed of.
JOHN GERSTNER: Does this mean one shouldn’t have goals?
GORDON MACKENZIE: I hope I haven’t said should or shouldn’t. I have goals. I’ve started to write a book on what we’re talking about. I want to travel to Morocco. I want to reduce my compulsion to control other people and situations. My goal is to be not attached to outcome.
JOHN GERSTNER: In other words, just be free form?
GORDON MACKENZIE: Yeah. This has been a delightful interview, thanks in part to your willingness to let go of your questions. I was just reading this book called “Free Play.” It’s about improvisation. The author talks about somebody going to make a speech. If that person goes to a podium and delivers a written speech, everyone will have the low-energy experience of being read to. But if the speaker will write the speech, go before the group and throw his notes away, everybody knows he is coming from a place that is risky and improvising, but is not unprepared-and the energy will be high. My sense is you’ve decided to conduct this interview in the latter style. You have come prepared but you have not been shackled by your preparation. I celebrate that.
JOHN GERSTNER: So if you want to be creative inside a bureaucratic organization, you should .. let go … you said?
GORDON MACKENZIE: Do I sense you are trying to distill this down to a recipe? I would caution against that. My sense is that this article will not have answers, but will have hints of places to look within oneself. Most of us look for steps one and two. The pitfall in this is that it leads us away from the essence of creativity which is not a how-to process. It’s a letting go, a hanging loose.
I will share with you that it took me 20 years before I dared to skip down the halls of Hallmark. “Anticipatory grief ” kept me from skipping. I am mindful that I kept myself from it, but I try not to be judgmental of myself.
There’s a real difference between mindfulness and judging. judging keeps you from letting go. Instead of judging, how about being mindful of where the employee is, what the employee’s magic is, and what the employee’s blocks are that are keeping that magic from manifesting itself?
JOHN GERSTNER: That sounds wonderful if it could happen.
GORDON MACKENZIE: It is happening. Can you imagine a conversation like this, and a writer seriously thinking about writing an article-if in fact you are still seriously thinking about it-10 years ago? Where would you get it published? Maybe the Whole Earth Catalog. But not for a mainstream “legitimate” publication.
No way.
JOHN GERSTNER: Is this a typical business day?
GORDON MACKENZIE: What is a normal business day? I have … I wonder what abnormal means .. I want to look it up. I love to look up words in the dictionary. Even though I think I know the language, I don’t. Abnormal: “Deviating from the normal, the standard or a type, markedly irregular or unusual.” All my days are abnormal.
Isn’t it funny that my connotation of abnormal is that it is not OK? So there could be people in this corporation who think I behave in an abnormal way, and they might have a negative connotation of that, as I do.
My job title is creative paradox. Here’s a definition of paradox: “A statement contrary to common belief. A statement that seems contradictory, unbelievable, or absurd, but that may actually be true in fact. A statement that is self-contradictory in fact and hence false. Something inconsistent with common experience or having contradictory qualities. A person who is inconsistent or contradictory in character or behavior. The synonyms are: contradiction, enigma, mystery, absurdity, ambiguity.”
All of these things are connected to creativity. And this is connected to abnormal, unusual. Wouldn’t it be wonderful … I think it would anyway … if paradox was recognized as normal?
Since stress is all about the future, the real cure for stress is to live in the present. Here are some suggestions for doing this:
1. Meditate or pray every day.
When done correctly, meditation and prayer place your thoughts in the present. When you’re focused on your breathing, the energy flowing through your body, or the presence of God in your life, there’s no opening for stress to get inside you. These activities not only create a respite from stress, they help train your mind to remain “mindful.”
2. Set aside a daily time to plan.
Achieving goals is impossible without planning–and planning, by its very nature, involves imagining the future, including possible setbacks and problems. Limit your “future thinking” to a set time every day–and then spend the rest of your time executing the steps in your daily plan.
3. Detach yourself from results.
Though it’s true the business world is all about getting good results, such results are usually achieved through the execution of a well-thought-out plan. Therefore, once you’ve made a plan, put your attention on the steps, not on the outcome. Until events prove otherwise, trust that you’ve created (and are now executing) the best plan possible.
4. Observe what’s working (and what’s not).
As you take action, note which actions seem to be leading toward your goals and which seem to be leading you further away. Rather than getting stressed about your “failures” while they’re happening, use these notes to adjust your plan during your next planning session.
Do these steps take some practice and discipline? Absolutely. But the benefit–a largely stress-free working life–are well worth the effort.
No, you won’t do better work by procrastinating. And you will not have more time next week. In fact, leaving things unfinished makes you stupid. Here’s what works:
- Make specific plans. Just setting a date and a time when you’re going to do something makes you more likely to follow through. Or write down the steps necessary to do the work.
- Use short, painless dashes of effort. Just have at it for five minutes and feel free to watch the clock. Chances are you’ll realize it’s not so bad.
- Rewarding yourself for doing things you don’t want to do can be a powerful motivator.
- Use “precommitment devices” to make sure you follow through. Stickk is a good one.
- Asking yourself whether you intend on doing something is a more powerful motivator than telling yourself you will do it.
- Understand the secrets to willpower, breaking bad habits, productivity, and achieving goals.
Here are nine daily tasks you probably can eliminate from your workday to help you stay focused and be more productive.
1. Stop overloading your to-do list. You might feel the need to write down everything you need to accomplish each day, but resist making an impossible list of daily tasks, says Peter Turla, a time-management consultant in Dallas. Compiling a lengthy list of things you need to accomplish might seem productive, but you could be doing more harm than good. “It results in too many items at the end of the day that are not completed,” says Turla. “That will make you feel stressed out, inadequate and unfocused.” Instead, create a manageable list of essential tasks that should be finished on a given day–and save the rest for later.
Related: 4 Ways to Weed Out Rotten Clients and Grow Your Business
2. Stop having open-ended meetings. Figure out your priorities before you call a meeting and make them clear to all the attendees, says Doug Sundheim, a New York consultant and executive coach. Too many small-business owners waste half the meeting just getting to what they really want to talk about. Sundheim suggests putting three priority topics at the top of your agenda to avoid getting sidetracked by other issues.
3. Stop answering repetitive questions. If you find yourself answering the same question from clients or employees frequently, you’re wasting time, says Peggy Duncan, a personal productivity trainer in Atlanta. Instead, put together an FAQ on your website or create instructional videos that people can access via links at the bottom of your emails. “Figure out better ways to answer [questions] without your having to be involved,” she says.
Related: How to Give Employees Independence Without Losing Control
4. Stop taking the same follow-up approach if people ignore you. If you’ve sent someone an email and the recipient hasn’t responded, don’t keep firing off more emails. Try communicating in another way–calling, sending a text or visiting in person if it’s appropriate, says Jan Yager, author of Work Less, Do More (Sterling, 2008). Too many business owners get bogged down communicating with people inefficiently, she says.
Our society places a premium on intelligence. While we’re in school, we have it drummed into our heads that book learning and a high IQ are the necessary tools for success. Honors and attention are bestowed on the academic achievers while the majority of the people are relegated to the ever inflating ‘average’ tag. When we finally get out into the real world, it doesn’t take long to notice that being an academic high flyer doesn’t necessarily guarantee a successful or happy life.
So fine, grades and diplomas don’t guarantee success and we all know other people who weren’t the best students in school but who have found great success in their chosen career and have a wide circle of valued friends and acquaintances. We’ve all met highly intelligent people who have limited social skills. Why is this? Is something else at play?
Researchers have studied this paradox and in the past decade have begun to question the correlation between IQ, success, and happiness. They’ve found another type of intelligence, one that has to do with emotions, may be a more important determiner of overall success in life.
IQ vs. EQ
The term “emotional intelligence” first received widespread attention in a 1995 best-selling book by psychologist Daniel Goldman titled Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to recognize, understand and manage your emotions and the emotions of others.
… if I were hiring a “Universal PR professional” to guide strategic communications in 2013 and beyond, here are some of my best practice tips to shape that PR person’s role:
- Be proactive and don’t wait to be asked. Today, we are looking for people who will raise their hands to get involved. For example, with the development of a social media policy, training initiatives and governance (new responsibilities that require PR to participate). You should never wait for someone to give you the assignment, especially if you identify an area in your department or company that needs support. Propose new ideas, do the research, and offer your assistance. The initiative you take will make you stand out among all the rest.
- Start with good communication on the inside. Take the time to discover how to be more efficient and productive with your teams. Make suggestions beyond simply using email communication on how to finish your projects on time and under budget. Use social collaboration tools on the inside of your company for better internal communications and then take the time to educate your peers on new ways to work together to increase overall productivity.
- Test technology … always. Don’t be behind the curve, instead stay ahead for advancement. Be ready to answer those leadership questions asking “why” and “how” your brand should participate in new social communities. Take the time to “Tech Test” in different areas including collaborative platforms, applications, monitoring software, influence tools, etc., which will make you a more valuable asset to your organization.
- Listen to be heard and to be relevant. Gathering customer intelligence is the best way to internalize information and then use it to communicate with meaning, through offline and new media channels. Since I started in PR, I was always told to listen first to solve problems. This is much more apparent today, as a result of social media. By truly “listening,” we can help people and build stronger relationships with our constituents.
- You are always on! Social media doesn’t sleep, so your organization’s readiness is key. Creating the social media crisis plan (integrated into an overall crisis plan) requires knowledge and skills. It’s imperative for you to build a system that catches negative sentiment early on before it escalates, and to put processes and people in place for different levels of escalation through new media
Read full article by Deirdre Breakenridge on PR 2.0 Strategies
In turbulent times, it’s hard enough to deal with external problems. But too often people and companies exacerbate their troubles by their own actions. Self-defeating behaviors can make any situation worse. Put these five on the what-not-to-do list.
Demanding a bigger share of a shrinking pie
Leaders defeat themselves when they seek gain when others suffer, for example, raising prices in a time of high unemployment when consumers have less to spend, to ensure profits when sales are down. McDonald’s raised prices three percent in early 2012 and by the third quarter, faced the first drop in same-store sales in nine years. The executive responsible for that strategy was replaced.
At bankrupt Hostess Brands, bakery workers refused to make concessions (though the Teamsters did), thereby forcing the company to liquidate, eliminating 18,000 jobs. By trying to grab too much, the bakery union could lose everything.
This happens to executives too. A manager in a retail company demanded a promotion during the recession, because he was “indispensable,” he said. The CEO, who had cut her own pay to save jobs, fired him instead. Greed makes a bad situation worse.
Getting angry
Anger and blame are unproductive emotions. Post-U.S. election, defeated Mitt Romney blamed his defeat on “gifts” that “bought” the votes of young people, women, African-Americans, and Latinos for President Obama. Losing the Presidency is a big defeat, but Romney further defeated future electoral prospects with public bitterness and insults. History might remember the bitterness, not his gracious concession speech.
Anger hurts companies too, especially if misplaced. Years after a tragic explosion on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 in which 11 people lost their lives, BP was back in the news with a record fine and criminal charges. Former CEO Tony Hayward defeated himself and damaged the company in the public mind by issuing bitter statements about how unfair this was.
Angry words leave a long trail. An employee in another company who threw a temper tantrum over a denied proposal was surprised that this episode was still recalled two years later, overwhelming his accomplishments. He was the first terminated in a reorganization. Bitterness turns everything sour.
Giving in to mission creep
Sometimes self-perpetuated decline occurs more slowly, through taking core strengths for granted while chasing the greener grass. I can’t say that this is happening to Google, a company I admire, but I do see potholes ahead — although driverless cars are an extension of mapping software close to Google’s core strength in search. But should Google expand its territory to be a device maker and communications network provider, building a fiber-optics and mobile network? This could be mission creep. Perhaps Google should focus on improving Googling.
Read full article via Harvard Business Review
With his team, Saku Tuominen, founder and creative director at the Idealist Group in Finland, interviewed and followed 1,500 workers at Finnish and global firms to study how people feel and respond to issues in the workplace. Tuominen’s findings are easy to understand — 40 percent of those surveyed said their inboxes are out of control, 60 percent noted that they attend too many meetings, and 70 percent don’t plan their weeks in advance. Overall, employees said they lacked a sense of meaning, control, and achievement in the workplace. Sound familiar?
Based on the study and the insights of Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, Tuominen recommends new approaches to changing our work processes that all tap into our unconscious:
- Think about one question/idea that needs insight and keep this thought in your subconscious mind.
- Clear your conscious mind by using this two-step system: move your thought(s) from your mind to a list and then clear your list when you have a short break (if your meeting is canceled, for instance, or your flight is delayed).
- Plan your week and month by listing three priorities you would like to accomplish.
- Make certain you have at least four consecutive, uninterrupted hours a day dedicated to the three priorities you identified.
This last point is key. Tuominen deduced that if you can schedule four hours with continuous flow and concentration, you could accomplish a lot and improve the quality of your thinking. As Tuominen aptly states, “you can’t manage people if you can’t manage yourself.”
In light of the current economic downturn, what new opportunities do you see for public relations professionals, either in agencies or working for corporations? Here are the answers from two of our Inner Circle leaders:
Answer by Jim Bowman, The PR Doc® “We now have an unprecedented opportunity to add quantifiable value to the businesses we serve.”
- A recent Advertising Age article [http://budurl.com/pvaf] assessed the human carnage in communications professions wrought by the current recession:
- 65,100 jobs lost in advertising and media in 2008, 18,700 of them in December alone
- Media companies (newspapers, magazines, broadcasters) eliminated 41,000 U.S. jobs, or 4.6% of staff, from the time the recession began in Dec. 2007
- Advertising agencies and marketing-services firms cut 24,100 jobs, or 3.1% of staff
- Across all professions nationwide, job loss stood at 2.6%
There were gains in related areas:
- Marketing consulting added 2,200 jobs
- Public relations added 1,200 jobs
- Internet media companies added 5,400 jobs
Given the fragility of the global economy, it is not safe to extrapolate those numbers through the remainder of this year. In fact, there is growing evidence of cuts coming in PR. But at this point in time the numbers seem to say marketing consulting and public relations are more than holding their value.
Mash up the data some and the clear message is that traditional media are declining, while new, Web-based media are on the rise. For discerning public relations professionals, it should be clear our profession is changing simultaneously.
Agency and corporate PR people who cling to the old ways – i.e., see the Internet as simply a new channel for reaching journalists – are likely to be among the first casualties. Conversely, those who skill up for the new marketing and PR reality will be in demand.
Work with journalists, certainly, but take advantage of the opportunities online PR affords to reach customers directly and interact with them. When I write news releases for my clients, I write first for their customers; journalists are a secondary target. My favorite way of pitching journalists is a brief, but highly focused and personalized email with a link to a multimedia release.
I agree in principle with nearly everything David Meerman Scott set forth in The New Rules of Marketing and PR. Anyone serious about a public relations or corporate communications career today should own the book and refer to it often.
The emerging profile of public relations professionals includes working as nimbly in the online world as among the bricks and mortar; writing search-engine-optimized copy as well as print and broadcast styles; learning to do key word research and writing for search engines as well as human readers (hint: there’s a lot more to it than peppering a release with anchor text links).
Traditional PR will not go away, but it is being irrevocably altered. Incredibly, many traditional PR people I talk with in agency and corporate jobs still don’t get it when dealing with the realities of online PR. Some dismiss it (big mistake) and some fear it (equally big mistake).
Embrace it. We now have an unprecedented opportunity to add quantifiable value to the businesses we serve. Instead of boxes of clippings we can generate traffic to Websites and measure the results in terms CEOs and CFOs understand – sales leads, new customers, and reputation indices, to name a few.
Answer by Barbara Puffer, Puffer Public Relations Strategies: Lifelong learning is essential. If you have kept up with the profession, the people who need you — who want to pay you for your services — will find you.
“Very unpredictable and changing times” has been the mantra during many periods in my long career. At those times, public relations professionals have been relied upon to manage critical information and to strategically use research and words to turn the tides of crises.
Today’s economic downturn and related turmoil is an exciting opportunity for communications professionals that have kept abreast of and adept at the latest trends of the profession. It’s a time when all of one’s networking relationships, education, and experience can be maximized for the most effective approaches.
I remember a now-retired colleague from Union Carbide telling me as a young professional that a prepared communicator doesn’t need to worry about “crisis communications” as a singly-defined area of expertise. He emphasized that all crisis communications is best tackled with a base of solid communications research, planning and practice that effective communicators should have been using all along.
To tap a familiar cliche, lifelong learning is essential. If you have kept up with the profession, the people who need you — who want to pay you for your services — will find you. Continue learning and using all technology available to you, read and stay informed, and know your colleagues in the profession. It’s a small world out there.
Watching my son graduate from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa was a proud moment indeed. It wasn’t the first time I had celebrated such an accomplishment or heralded a new era for one of my children but it was a different celebration. The discussion at graduation revolved around the lack of opportunities and the economic outlook for the future.
Today’s job market is difficult to navigate and prospects for the inexperienced limited – kind of a Catch-22 for graduates. They need experience to get a job and they need a job to gain experience (not to mention other factors like student loans and health insurance).
The field of Communications is in a state of evolution. The days of communicators as content creators whose writing skills are preeminent in their toolkit are gone. Communicators in the business world are being asked to interface between departments, advise leadership on employee communications to ensure bad news is delivered in a manner which mitigates fear and encourages productivity. Communicators struggle to manage content from many sources, position the message without controlling and to understand the impact of social media on the enterprise.
Intranet management should be a discipline taught within our universities but there are few professors schooled in social media, intranet governance and web content management. Review the curriculums of major universities and you will see a smattering of social media courses, courses on the implications of the 2008 Presidential campaign and references to digital media. Universities struggle to achieve effective on-line communications strategies within their own realms. Their intranets have not fared much better than those of the typical enterprise. Searching the web for examples of forward thinking Universities I was able to discover two that looked promising – Gonzaga and John Hopkins. Both seem to be transforming their curriculums to highlight the shift to digital communications.
The primary value of a new Communications graduate could be their fundamental acceptance of the digital world combined with the understanding of basic communication processes. Big C, little c may no longer be relevant but perhaps digital C is. What do you think? More importantly at the moment, does anyone have a job for Max?
Stop and LISTEN. To be a successful communications professional means you are an exceptional listener. The more you listen, the more you learn. The less you listen, the less you learn.
When you consider the role of a communications professional, we better be doing a lot of real listening. We need to be aware of and understand the needs and goals of our internal clients and each employee audience subgroup — different generations, different functions, management vs. non-management, c-level and more.
From one-on-one meetings to interviews, focus groups to department meetings or townhall to board meetings, listening is key. So how much listening are you doing? Media guru Roger Ailes, author of You Are The Message, says people should strive to listen 60 to 70 percent of the time and talk 30 to 40 percent.
Here’s Roger Ailes’ tips for becoming a better listener:
- Relax and clear your mind so that you’re receptive to what’s being said.
- Never assume that you’ve heard correctly just because the first few words have taken you in a certain direction.
- Don’t overreact emotionally to speakers’ words or ideas, especially those that are contrary to your views.
- Before forming a conclusion, let the speaker complete his or her thoughts.
- Listen for intent as well as content.
- Try to listen without overanalyzing.
- Remember that human communication goes through three phases: reception (listening), processing (analyzing), and transmission (speaking).
- Being a good communicator is a natural skill for only a few people. Most of us have to work at being good communicators and learn to observe not only how we speak and listen, but also what kinds of unspoken messages we send to our colleagues.
My tip. The next time you meet with someone, make a mental note of how many times you’re silent. Remember, silence is golden.
I recently had the opportunity to talk with a group of internal communication professionals representing organizations including GE Energy, Family Health International, McKinsey & Company, ServiceMaster, Sony Latin America, Verizon Wireless and a few government agencies.
The conversation turned to the creation of a list of things we do as professional communicators. This list included everything from ghostwriting executive memos and blogs to strategic communications planning and everything that might fall in between. For example, coordination of executive head shots, awards program submission, survey writing, video production, senior leadership meeting management, screen saver design, and implementation of new communication channels.
After a quick comparison of our jobs, the conversation turned to what really matters—how many activities on the list are truly connected to organization goals. It was amazing to see how much extra time could be created in one’s day by simply removing some of those activities that are not connected to organizational goals.
So, the next time you are searching for more resources, be it time, budget or staff, consider going through this simple exercise of determining what activities might no longer be necessary.
