There’s this guy I know. I’ve known him for about 8 years. He can be a bit immature sometimes. But most of the time he’s really impressive.

He finds time management, or personal productivity, really easy. For him it is not a discipline, or a chore, or any such hard work.

He just flows. He is effortlessly focused on doing his high-payoff activities – the key activities that will deliver his goals. He relishes them. He can spend hour upon hour on them and he never gets tired because he’s in the zone…that place where what you do is not hard work, it’s living…like playing the guitar, or driving a racing car, or whatever it is you can do that requires a lot of skill but for you is easy, almost effortless.

He suffers no distraction.

He does not eat when in the zone. It’s not that he chooses not to. It just doesn’t cross his mind. There are one or two HPAs he is not comfortable doing, so he delegates them without hesitation and does so effectively. He makes it clear what he wants and when he wants it done (usually now) and he does not tell those to whom he delegates how to do whatever it is – he is only interested in the result.

All the small stuff sent to drag him off track is as nothing to this guy. He simply doesn’t see it. I was talking to someone the other day and they told me that sometimes when they speak to him he seems not to hear them. He doesn’t react. Or rather, he doesn’t react to them. This person told me, in all seriousness, that he thought the guy might be hard-of-hearing.

He’s not hard-of-hearing.

He doesn’t get distracted by email. The first email I ever sent him – it took him eight weeks to respond to me. Eight weeks. With a six word answer. Doesn’t he know who I am?

How does he do this?

How is it that for him, time management is not a chore, it’s the default? For him, dealing with all the nonsense in life is the chore. He is focused on the goal, knows what needs to be done, works like a demon, delegates like a machine, doesn’t sweat the small stuff and gets exactly what he wants, on time and in full.

For him it’s easy – he has a purpose statement. He blurted it out to me the other day. Well, in pieces, over the course of the day. It wasn’t well formed in his mind but because his purpose is so meaningful to him, wasting time on anything else isn’t an option. His purpose drives him, satisfies him completely. So why would he willingly spend any time on anything that didn’t serve the purpose?

I cannot tell you his purpose…

…but the form of it goes like this –

“The purpose of my life is to be……(put adjectives and nouns here),

and to..….(put verbs and nouns here),

so that..….(put the outcome you want here).

Here’s a (boring I’m sure, I’m just about to make it up) example –

“The purpose of my life is to be a diligent, attentive and effective teacher, and to practice and perfect my teaching skills, so that I am most able to help others to develop themselves and have a more fulfilling life.”

In fact it’s not so boring when I look at it.

Now if the idea of a life purpose freaks you…

…make it for the next 30 days. Or a year.

Today, this guy I’ve been talking about has such a purpose. I expect his will change and be different next year. But today, he has it, pure and true, and that’s why, for him, being effective is a walk in the park.

He’s only 8 years old, as you’ve guessed, but he’s non-trivial. And I’m not saying that just because I’m his Dad. Yes, I’m a biased observer, but it’s part of my purpose to help him stay on his purpose, whatever he defines it to be, because then he’ll find things a damn site easier, and a lot more fun.

It’s amazing when you first become self-employed. There’s lots of time. The days are long. This is not because you have nothing to do. It is because you have no trivia to do. The trivia has not had a chance to build up. All the emails, voicemails, post-it notes and things on lists.

I got a sneak peek into this some years ago. I had been out of the office for a month. Yes, a month. I had something to do. I did not look at email. I made no phone calls. No one was to contact me unless there was an off-the-scale emergency that ONLY I could deal with (difficult to imagine what that might be).

No one called.

Having done what I had to do, I was travelling home by boat. I was looking out of the porthole in my cabin as the vessel pulled out of the dock and I realised my mind was blank. Not blank = stupid. But blank = blank sheet of paper. There was no noise. No lists. No squawking. No “can you just…?” No “have you got a minute?” The trivia had melted away. I had been working for 15-odd years and I had never experienced this before.

I was in a block of pure, clear time. I had no worries or concerns of any kind. No pressures. I was amazed at how slowly time moved when there is no noise.

There are two massive benefits to being in a block of uninterrupted time.

The first benefit is obvious. A big block of time allows us to focus all our energy on the significant issues that face us. And how well we deal with these significant issues will pretty much define what we get out of life. Think of this as the chance to score a goal.

The second benefit is maybe not so obvious. The distracted mind is much less able than the clear mind to convert chances into goals. And the piles of trivia that build up, even if we push them to the side during the blocks of time we schedule for the important stuff, steal some of our brain’s bandwidth, because you cannot truly put them out of your mind.

You know what it’s like when your PC slows down because you’ve got too many applications open. The majority of the applications are not actually being worked on but their very existence requires you to commit some resources to them and as a consequence there is much less capacity for the important stuff. And when a chance arises, you kick the ball over the bar. Because you were thinking about something else.

So what we need to do to score more goals is to:

a) create lots of chances and

b) turn them into goals more often.

We can create more chances by scheduling as much of our time in big blocks (at least 3 hours) as possible to work on the big stuff.

Second, we can convert more of our chances into goals by minimising distraction. The best way to do this is to throw all this rubbish into a bucket, or write it all down on a piece of paper and only give it attention once a day, for as short a time as possible. I’d say 1 hour per day.  In this time, deal with all your email, all your phone calls, all your post – everything. In an hour. You may need more, depending on the nature of your job, but don’t give this task more time than it truly merits. Give it what it merits, not what it wants.

And accept that after the hour or so is up, there may be some of it left undone. That’s OK.

There is no point in being ready to score if you never get a chance – so schedule the blocks of time to create the chances. There is no point in creating loads of chances if your neck-top PC is so pre-occupied with trivia that you cannot score.

I may never again attain the fabulous blankness I had on that shiny day in that boat, but there are lots I can do to get pretty close, and stick that ball in the back of the net.

Here’s a short and, I hope sweet, Pearl.

When you’re going about your job, and you are wondering what to do next, there’s only really one question to ask yourself:

What’s the most important thing I can do NOW to move closer to my goals?

Now if you’ve been in my presence for more than 2 minutes you will have a list of high-payoff activities – the critical activities which will deliver your goals and if you ignore even one of them, or fail to spend enough time on all of them, you WILL NOT achieve your goals.

So go to the list and scan it and choose the most important one and do it next. Repeat to fade.

Some people don’t like filling their diary with high-payoff activities. They like a bit more “freedom”. I hesitate to say it but that’s actually all right, provided the lack of diary-planning isn’t a productivity  avoidance technique, but only you will know the answer to that.

I have one client who hardly ever uses her diary at all – but she has a list of high-payoff activities and when she’s spent a couple of hours on one she moves onto another. She’s very productive without actually scheduling anything. She’s disciplined. She doesn’t let the lack of a schedule turn into a lack of productivity.

If you don’t have a list of high-payoff activities go here now, before it’s too late.

One of the great things about this question – What’s the most important thing I can do NOW to move closer to my goals?, is that you cannot seriously answer “clear my email”, “do yet another edit on that PowerPoint”, or any of the other myriad issues that push and jostle their way into our field of view.

Here’s an idea – write the question out on a Post-It note and stick it on your screen, close Outlook, switch off your phone and spend the next 2 hours taking a giant stride toward your goals. Bliss.

Time management remains a perennial issue for us all. There’s too much to do and too much shiny stuff around that screams at us “look at me.” There are a million characteristics of poor time management, but here are eight of the most egregious:

Having No Purpose

Yes indeed…the old purpose thing. What am I here for? Difficult to really get a hold of purpose but a good place to start is with values – what are my core beliefs? (beyond the stuff no one would argue with, e.g. fair, compassionate, respectful etc, etc). What turns you on? What do you love doing? From purpose comes goals and from goals comes focus and from focus comes productivity – easy.

No real understanding of what’s important

People make this mistake all the time. They have no real understanding of what will deliver success and what will merely facilitate it. Which is OK actually because it’s not always clear, but it does need to be understood so if it’s not clear, it’s experiment time. Do stuff and if it works, keep doing it. If not, do something else. There are usually only a handful of critical activities that will deliver success. The rest are secondary and will not make the difference.

No self-improvement

What holds us back is usually inside us. We need to drag it out screaming into the light and drive a stake through its heart. It’s a fight to the death and we must win. This is a time management issue because until we slay what holds us back we cannot be productive because you cannot be productive doing half the things you need to do – doesn’t make sense.

No Assertiveness

You must have loads of this. With yourself and with all those around you. I trundled off with Jennifer and the boys to see a car today at a dealer who shall remain anonymous. The boys have a fixed idea of what they want – a blue convertible.  It must be “blue, with a “wibbly-wobbly roof”. The dealer explained politely that this was a “90 minute process” – I assume he meant the sales process and not whatever it was he was doing with his hands in his pockets.  That was his agenda. We had a different agenda – quick test drive of a specific car and then home for a chat (without the car salesman). There can only be one agenda – yours or someone else’s. Best to make it yours.

No understanding of own rhythms

Not all hours are equal. Some of us are best in the morning, some are better in the afternoon. Different times of day are better for different activities. We can try to manage our diaries accordingly and do what’s important when we are at our best.

Thinking Multi-tasking works

Fragmenting our time into ever smaller slivers – ten minutes on this, twenty minutes on that. Total disaster. It is massively inefficient and is getting dangerously close to the fantasy that is multi-tasking. Our brains are much better with uninterrupted chunks of time on specific, single tasks.

Being Reactive

There’s always a time to be reactive, but with some people it becomes the default. Almost all activity is in response to an external event – email, phone call, colleague’s request – it goes on. Unless these people are offering to pay your mortgage this month, be very careful – they are trying to steal your time!

Having a To Do List

Oh no! Usually the number one symptom of many of the issues above…quickly throw it away, get out a big sheet of beautiful white paper and write on it the most important thing you can do now. Then go and do it. Once that’s done….get out another sheet of beautiful white paper and write on it the most important thing you can do now. Then go and do it. Once that’s done…….

I aim to be 50% productive and usually manage it, (15% being the norm). What I mean by that is I aim to spend 50% of my time on high-payoff activities – the activities which, if neglected, will lead to goal failure. Most people are around 15% productive. Strange but true.

I spent all of last Friday doing one particular high-payoff activity. A single task. I scheduled a full day for it in my diary. It involved me teaching myself something I needed to learn. I had no distractions – no email, no phone calls…nothing. I completed the task – I learned what I had to learn. I switched the phone and email back on at 430pm, dealt with what could not wait and then switched everything off again, all before 530pm.

I felt wonderful. In control, purposeful, satisfied. It was a good day in the office.

It reminded me of the critical importance of focus to productivity. Focusing on one task for an extended period of time. At least half a day. It feels like a luxury, but it isn’t. A whole day is even better. With the phone and the email turned off. Check them every two hours if you must. But don’t get sucked in – just check them and only deal with what is truly urgent. And that means urgent to you, not the other person.

In any working week, it is much better to give each of ten high-payoff activities a half day than to spend each of the five days doing all ten high-payoff activities for 45 minutes each. That’s the road to madness.

This is because our brains work at their best when we allow ourselves to focus. Multi-tasking only works at a trivial level – I can drink beer, eat pizza and watch the football at the same time but these are not high-payoff activities. You cannot do two high-payoff activities at the same time. I’ve said this before but it’s critically important that we reserve substantial chunks of time for the important stuff. Our world has a huge and increasing ability to fragment our attention to the point where we are so distracted we cannot function properly.

So when you catch yourself doing a dozen different things in a day and rushing around like a mad thing, it’s time to ask if you’re really focused on the important stuff, or have you slipped into “I must get through my to-do list” mode. You cannot get through a to-do list. It’s against the laws of physics.

As I keep saying to my clients, chief execs don’t stand up at the annual general meeting and say “we had 98% to-do list completion last year”. No. They talk about metrics that represent goal achievement…sales, profit etc.

Here’s another wee prompt – when you hear yourself say “I’m busy” remember that “busy” is usually a euphemism for “I don’t really feel in control”. And you cannot achieve when you’re not in control.

You can achieve when you identify your high-payoff activities and give them the time and space they deserve. And you will become calmer, clearer-headed and you will get what you want.

Strange as it may seem, you can get more done by doing less.

I was looking for a picture to describe management – all of it. A bit of a tall order I know. But I Googled around a bit and here’s something that caught my eye.

I really like this management skills pyramid. (Thanks to F John Reh over at http://management.about.com/)

It starts at Level 1 – basically getting through the day…

…by planning, organising, directing and controlling. Taking care of business. The ultimate definition of management – doing things right.

Moving onto Level 2 – developing your staff…

…motivation, training and coaching, fostering staff involvement. I prefer inspire over motivate. You cannot motivate anyone, but you can inspire them. However it’s all good stuff. Helping staff to grow so that they can allow you to step up to the next stage…

Then Level 3 – improving yourself…

…time management and self-management. Two favourites of mine. Because they are the facilitators of greatness. And so it seems in this model, because they facilitate…

Level 4 – Leadership…

…you are no longer a caterpillar…you are a butterfly. Doing the right things.

Here’s a pdf of the Pyramid

I’m always banging on about personal productivity largely because I see so little of it and I know it will make the difference to your work life (and more). Further, most people I meet are not satisfied with their own personal productivity, and those I have helped love it and keep at it.

So, why this huge gap between the massive desire to be more productive (= successful) and the failure to actually achieve it?

Well there’s lot of reasons.

For a start we are not taught how to be efficient and effective. At least not in school, when we are at our most habit forming.

Second, a lot of time management material is just garbage. It adopts a year-zero approach – by that I mean the authors pretend that everything that has gone before no longer works because of a) t’internet or b) the recession or c) the author’s desire to have you all to themselves.

It’s all rubbish of course. And there are many other, external, reasons.

Yes…external reasons. But I think the biggest barriers are in our heads. Internal reasons. And here they are –

“But Mark, time management will kill my spontaneity.”

This is a myth. Being productive will not kill your spontaneity or flexibility or creativity. People who are disorganised tend to be busy fools and are not spontaneous. They are often anxious and unfocused. And often chaotic. This is not a good basis for spontaneity or creativity.

The more organised and focused you are, the more relaxed you will be. Then you can be spontaneous.

“But Mark, I’m just a messy person (and I like it).”

This is conditioning. There is no gene for messiness (although I sometimes wonder…). These people have probably been told they are messy, are always late, and never finish what they started. And they grow accustomed to this. They end up liking it. Or they at least arrive at an accommodation with it.

Conditioning works both ways. Personal productivity is learned – like riding a bike. Taking repeated productive action fosters new habits and behaviours. But the system needs to be easy to learn – no 360-page year-zero time management PhD thesis.

“But Mark, I just cannot be productive, I’ve tried.”

This is a self-limiting belief. The thing about beliefs is that people really think of them as truths. They say belief but they mean truth. But it is not a truth. We are not destined to be poor at time management. We are also not destined to be good at it either. Like messiness, there’s no time management or personal productivity gene either. It’s a learned behaviour. A discipline.

It just depends how much you want it. Which part of the bell-curve you want to be at – really rubbish, rubbish, below average, average, above average, good, great.

It’s a choice. In fact, it’s a choice we’ve all already made. But we can re-make the choice. You get another go.

I’m doing a two hour talk on how you, like my private clients, can triple your productivity overnight. It’s for charity (mine clearance in war-torn parts of the world), costs about £35 + vat I think, is at Manchester Business School on Thursday 30^th Sept from 530pm to 830pm. I’ll be on about 6pm. There will be food. And there will be booze. And there will be my easy to implement personal productivity system that will triple your productivity overnight.

Or you could stay in the office spontaneously catching up with your email…

http://magnetproductivityx3.eventbrite.com/

Book Review

How To Be Smart With Your Time – Duncan Bannatyne

This is the fourth book by Dragon’s Den star Duncan Bannatyne, a man who didn’t get serious about business until he was 30, but has since spent three decades building his care home and health club empire.

This book gives us Bannatyne’s spin on how to make the most of our time, a commodity that is allocated equally to us all, he points out, unlike money or good looks.

In the first part of the book he gives a simple but effective processes for identifying our goals in all areas of life: home, work, family, love, friends, money and passion (he takes it for granted that we all want good health). I’ve seen this process before and it really is effective. To establish a goal for each area of life is an essential starting point.

Then comes the killer bit. You take all the goals, bar one, and throw them in the bin. We can only do so much, he argues. One major goal at a time is enough.

Bannatyne runs through a lot of good stuff on how to fulfil this goal. Lots of advice that can be summarised in pithy aphorisms: innovation is expensive, so copy what works; perfectionism is the enemy of the good – second best is close to ideal; play to your strengths. The list goes on…

And that’s the end of Part 1 – you have selected a great goal and got some good advice.

Bannatyne then moves into Part 2, where he focuses on action and the efficient use of time. This is all about time management, or personal productivity. Do the important stuff first, he says like so many other time management experts, and eliminate the trivial. Be efficient and focused.

He quotes research by the Institute of Psychiatry that shows multi-tasking lowers your IQ by 10 points! I just love that, it is a great lesson to learn. In my experience multi-tasking only works at a trivial level. And, of course, you shouldn’t be spending your time on trivia in the first place.

No doubt this is a good book, but there is nothing new in it. I supposed this does not really matter because we don’t need a new system; we simply need to implement what is already available. My experience over 20 years has shown that people spend 15% of their time doing what they need to do to get what they want to get. But really successful people don’t do this. They spend 70 to 80% of their time on these high-payoff activities.

But there is more to being smart with your time that Bannatyne does not even touch on in the book. I cannot agree more that doing the important stuff is critical, as is getting rid of trivia and delegating like crazy. But we can easily go wrong because we do not identify all the high-payoff activities that we must do to achieve our goals.

Or if we do actually spot everything we have to do, too often we then only do the tasks with which we are comfortable.

We can spend 80% of our time selling, for example, but if we do not spend some time prospecting and marketing (or have someone who does it for us), we will suffer feast and famine.

So, I would like to add to Bannatyne’s premise that we must spend our time on the important stuff. We must make sure we do all the important stuff.

With this small gripe aside, I enjoyed the book and its two central messages: define your goals; be efficient and effective. Simple, yet elusive, and undoubtedly the secret of success.

This week’s Pearl of Leadership Wisdom is on…

Time Management for Dummies
Write lists…

You must have lists. With everything on them – everything. Work through your lists constantly and try to score out more than you add on.

You must…

…become obsessed with your tasks. Get through the small stuff first, to clear the decks for the big stuff. Please those around you first: do what your boss/partner/child asks you to do. We need to get along with people. Answer the phone when it rings. If you’re serious, get a nice leather binder with all the pages you need – diary, a page for phone numbers, London underground map, metric to imperial conversion charts, international dialling codes….

Well done! You’ve mastered time management for dummies.

Now…

Time management for smarties is different.

This is what to do…

Understand your goals. If you don’t have goals, move quietly away from the computer and call me…NOW.

Once you have goals, then define your High Payoff Activities (HPAs) – they are the critical actions that deliver your goals. Add two more – planning and physical exercise. You should have less than ten in total.

Half full…

When you plan your next week or fortnight, fill 50% of your time with HPAs (including meetings with yourself to do any HPAs that require no one else). Use your diary, or better, an electronic calendar like Office or Google (type calendar into Google).

For everything else, (emails, phone calls, actions collected throughout the day, actions collected in meetings, post etc) process them all as follows:

Decide whether you will  -

* Bin it,
* File it,
* Delegate it,
* Might do it one day, or
* Action it.

For the things that you may do one day, add them to a list entitled “Might Do It Today” Put this page in tomorrow’s slot in a bring-forward file (a concertina folder with 31 slots marked 1 to 31 for each day of the present month and a second concertina folder with 12 slots marked January through December for the months we’re not in at the moment).
If you must…

For those that you must action, and only those, do the following –

* If it will take less than 2 minutes, do it now.
* If it will take 2 – 15 minutes, put “the action” (hardcopy email, handwritten note etc) in your bring-forward file to do it on a specific day (just before it must be done, no sooner). File all associated stuff (email, notes etc) or bin them. Don’t leave anything in piles, in your inbox etc.
* If it will take more than 15+ minutes to do it, schedule time for it in your diary and put “the action” (hardcopy email, handwritten note etc) in your bring-forward file to do it on a specific day (just before it must be done – again, no sooner). File all associated stuff (email, notes etc) or bin them. Again, don’t leave anything in piles, in your inbox etc.

The moment I wake up…

At the start of every day, look at your diary (week to a view) and your bring-forward file. Your diary is your plan. Remember, if you don’t have a plan, you are part of someone else’s plan. And do you know what they have planned for you? Nothing much.

Your bring-forward file for the present day will contain the trivia that you MUST do, and your “Might Do It Today” page of things you may do one day, or may never do, but don’t want to forget about. Each day, you will look at this list and you may decide to elevate one or more of the items to actions which you will then process as above. Once you have done this, put the “Might Do It Today” list back in the bring-forward file under tomorrow’s date.

Do you have piles…?

The great thing about this approach is it gives you clarity and focus. The HPAs get done. They are your number one priority. There are no piles on your desk, piles in your inbox, piles in your head and bits of paper everywhere that cause a general sense of malaise.

In this system, everything has been processed and if it merits your time it will be in your diary or your bring-forward file.

This system is not just for work, it’s for life.

Twinkle, twinkle…

Do this for a month. Then increase the time spent on HPAs to 60%. Do this for a month. Then 70%. That’s probably as far as you can go, but by then you will be spending almost 5 times as much time as most people on your HPAs. You will feel in control, on your front foot, more confident and you will achieve more and more. It’s a virtuous cycle. You have become a star player!

Merry Christmas.

Mark