Monday, February 13th, 2012
John is bored. His firm just hasn’t been busy this month and instead of the usual big transaction work all he has are small bits and pieces of corporate matters. Even though none of it is complicated he just can’t get down to doing any of it and is wasting time surfing the net instead.
Terry is deadline driven. Every day is about putting out fires and meeting last minute deadlines. He knows he should plan ahead and get to his projects done before the last minute but he has gotten use to the adrenaline rush and just can’t get motivated to do anything without the pressure of a short deadline.
What do John and Terry have in common? They are both procrastinators. This month in my slaw column I tackle procrastination, how to identify which of three kinds you have, and what to do about it. Please post a comment here about any additional procrastination-beating tips you can recommend.
For further reading on the subject try Dr. Piers Steel’s book “The Procrastination Equation.” Dr. Steel’s book offers an unflinching look at why people procrastinate, types of procrastinators and easily actionable tips for reducing procrastination in your professional and personal life.
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Monday, September 19th, 2011
Remember that old Maxell tape ad? The commercial with a guy sitting in the armchair with his hair blowing back from the intensity of the sound waves? Well that’s pretty much what I look like these days as I move through my weekly schedule. Abundance is great and abundance can be a challenge. For those of you who are in a similar state, here’s a simple practice that will help keep your priorities on track. I call it the weekly meeting with yourself.
Schedule a meeting with yourself.
Go somewhere where you can be undisturbed. If you stay in your office turn of your email and blackberry. Work on your project-list, to-do list, and calendar, and spend time reviewing what you finished in the past week. Treat this meeting with the respect you would give to a client meeting. Put it in your calendar and don’t book over it. This ritual is very effective for being mindful of how you are spending your time.
Here’s a Harvard Business Review blog post with great additional information:
How to Stay Focused on What’s Important by Gina Trapani
Best wishes for a productive September!
Posted in Balance, Goals, Strategy | Permalink | 2 Comments »Wednesday, July 13th, 2011
Practice number 3 we talked about the concept of Good Enough as a tool to battle perfectionism and practice 4 addressed using the time management skill of Beat the Clock to support Good Enough. Our next practice is about Waves. The world around us ebbs and flows. You would be very hard pressed to find anything that remains constant and static, and we are no different.
Our brains and bodies work in rhythms. We are physically designed to work best by cycling between periods of energy spending and renewing.
Fact: “Research in the 1970s showed that 90 to 120 minute ultradian rhythms (ulta dies – many times a day) account for the ebb and flow of our energy throughout the day. Physiological measures such as heart rate, hormonal levels, muscle tension and brain-wave activity all increase during the first part of the cycle. After an hour or so, these measures start to decline and the body begins to crave a period of rest and recovery. Signals include a desire to yawn and stretch, hunger pangs, increased tension, an inclination to procrastinate.” – The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
Fact: Your brain can only operate at peak capacity for periods of up to 90 minutes.
“Ninety minutes appears to be the maximum amount of time that we can bring the highest level of focus to any given activity. The evidence is equally strong that great performers practice no more than 4 ½ hours a day.” – TheEnergyProject.com, Tony Schwartz
Work intensively for up to 90 minutes at a time with brief ten minute periods of recuperation to walk around the office, stretch, or fill a glass of water. Notice the impact of this practice on the quality and effectiveness of your output.
Posted in Balance, Goals, Organization, Planning | Permalink | No Comments »Friday, June 17th, 2011
Sandra works three times as long as she needs to on her files, checking and re-checking and going through countless drafts. She is driven by her fear of making an error. Sandra works long hours in the office but rarely meets her billable target because she consistently edits down her time.
Mary is unhappy. While she enjoys commercial litigation files she is stressed all the time. The partners provide her with positive feedback as do her clients but every time she makes any kind of error she takes it as a sign of failure.
Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?
Some might say the answer is simple. Sandra just needs to take a different approach. Sandra needs to do fewer revisions, record all her time and let the partners decide what needs to be written off.
As for Mary, shouldn’t she just pay attention to the positive feedback from the partners and her peers and realise that she is good at her work?
If only it were so simple.
Sandra and Mary are each in the grip of their inner critic and it is obscuring their judgment.
To learn more about dealing with your inner critic please visit my article on the Canadian legal weblog Slaw.ca.
Posted in Balance, Business Development, Goals, Planning | Permalink | No Comments »Monday, June 6th, 2011
Hopefully you have had an opportunity to work on and implement the Morning Ritual and One Thing at a Time practices and they are already having a positive impact on your day and how you approach it. If you haven’t had an opportunity don’t be discouraged just recommit to working on it and you will get there.
The next things we will look at is knowing and understanding when perfection is not required, or sometimes attainable, and how time management is important to stay on track.
Practice Three: Good Enough
Not every piece of work requires the same painstaking care and attention. Mastering the ability to recognize when the job is good enough is a vital way to gain back portions of your work day.
Sandra was a perfectionist who was doing multiple drafts of simple letters and memos. The time she was investing in these was taking away from the time she had to spend on more complex work. As a result she was not recording chunks of time and was always fighting deadlines. Since she began integrating a Good Enough strategy into her practice she has caught up on her backlog of files. Now she will do a quick first draft of her letters and her veteran legal secretary polishes the draft and sends it to her for her signature. Her clients appreciate the shorter memos that get straight to the point. And she has more time for the complex legal work she excels at.
The principle of Good Enough is especially valuable for you perfectionists out there – save your painstaking eye for detail for the projects that most deserve it.
Practice Four: Beat The Clock
Related to the principle of Good Enough, rationing time is a strategy for maximizing the ability to plough through a to-do-list in less time. For the smaller and simpler tasks such as reporting letters and memos, assess how much time each project is worth then work to complete the task within the allotted time.
I have been using this strategy to manage the amount of time I spend preparing for presentations. I used to endlessly revise my presentation slides and speaking notes. The time that went into each presentation was excessive. Now I manage my time carefully and give myself a time budget for investing in the preparation of each presentation. The result is that my work is focused and I often finish ahead of schedule. The overall quality of my presentations has improved.
Posted in Balance, Organization, Planning | Permalink | No Comments »Thursday, May 19th, 2011
Sandra‘s office was piled high with files, her work-life was spent putting out fires and her dog was feeling so neglected it had taken to chewing the couch.
Jeremy felt like it had been a long time since he had a life. Days and weekends were spent at the office, he’d gained 20 pounds in a year, and his wife had gone on vacation to Mexico with her best friend Gary the hairdresser – again.
Sandra and Jeremy are not alone. These days it seems like the standard answer to “Hi, how are you?“ has become “Busy, and you?” Having a successful professional life and keeping the plants alive and your partner speaking to you requires a whole new set of disciplines.
The higher we climb in our careers the more projects we juggle. Our work becomes increasingly complex. The deadlines are just as short as ever. To survive and thrive under these conditions it is critical to develop new skills and strategies for mastering the demands. In my work as a professional coach I have come across ten simple practices that have made a significant difference for me and for my clients.
They are called practices – because they are simply routines and approaches for you to try out in your work day. Implement them one at a time and observe the effect each one has on your performance. I shared these last week with the attendees at the CBA Women Lawyer’s Forum Annual Conference in Vancouver and was delighted to discover this approach to work is catching on and some of the senior women lawyers were applying practices like these successfully in their work.
Over the next month I will be posting the series. Let me know how they work for you.
Practice One: Morning Ritual
Open the day with a planning session. Review priorities and upcoming deadlines. Plan the work schedule for the day. Take a short break followed by focused work on the top priority for the day. Try not to spend any time on your email until later in the morning. If necessary have an assistant review the morning email for any urgent messages requiring attention.
Practice Two: One Thing at a Time
I remember back in the 90’s when I had “skilled multi-tasker” proudly highlighted in my resume. Now I would have to say that I am a multi-tasker in recovery. I guarantee this post was written without stopping to check email.
Multi-tasking is over-rated. Once paraded as a virtue, it is now getting known for what it truly is – a time-waster and productivity killer. The human brain can’t multi-task attention. In Brain Rules neurologist John Medina clearly indicates why multi-tasking doesn’t work: “Studies show that a person who is interrupted takes 50% longer to accomplish a task. Not only that, he or she makes up to 50% more mistakes.”
Create zones for intense and focused work during the day. Turn off the email. Close the door. Focus on just one project for up to ninety minutes. Observe how this time for uninterrupted concentration impacts the quality of your work.
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