Know when to shut up. Of all the communication skills one can develop, knowing when to “zip it” can come in pretty handy.

Sometimes, despite all the evidence to back up your viewpoint, and in spite of the obvious flaws in the other person’s way of thinking, it just makes no sense to press the issue. The other person may not be in a place to listen to, or comprehend the superior brilliance of your argument.

So save it.

Verbal and nonverbal clues alert you to the reality that the other person isn’t going to budge, or even engage in a civil debate. Verbal cues such as jumping in to refute your point before you’re finished or using a terse tone of voice.  Non-verbal cues such as shaking of their head while you’re talking, eye rolling, refusing to make eye contact, a smirk.

Pay attention to what the other person is doing and saying so you can know when to button it and save both of you from certain frustration, possible anger or possibly a day-ruining confrontation.

Being flexible is important. Though busy people benefit from planning on a micro (the day) or macro (an entire life) level – most people agree that the best laid plans often change midstream. So being comfortable with a certain amount of flexibility is a good thing.

But we have to make certain that we don’t get so flexible that we lose our grip on what’s really important to us. Little by little, day by day, we can let things slide in such a way that pretty soon the things that matter are no longer a part of our daily or life routine.

Here are some non-negotiables I’ve come across.

• Rick Steve’s, the travel expert, says “no” to any request for his time that falls outside of focus on his family or travel.
• An entrepreneur I know once said that he will not work on Sundays.  Ever.  He knew once he started doing so he might get used to the revenue he could generate or the jump start he could get on his Monday and it would be too hard to stop. For him, Sundays are for family and relaxing.
• A client who has a home office once said that if her young child asks for her time and she also has work to do, the child’s request always comes first. Sometimes it’s only 20 minutes before she can get back to the work at hand. It’s a delay she welcomes so that her child knows he is as important as her work.
• One colleague will only volunteer for one organization at a time.  That way he can control his schedule and give full focus to the one organization where he is dedicating his time.
• A client schedules sales call time on his calendar. It’s a vitally important piece of his workload and he doesn’t allow any other meeting requests or tasks usurp that block of time.
• A noted speaker gives one free speech per month.  12 free speeches a year is a significant and generous commitment. Sought after and heavily booked, this speaker doesn’t have to weigh opportunities and squeeze in additional freebies to be a nice guy while sacrificing revenue opportunities.

Do you have any non-negotiables?  If you don’t, should you?  If you do, it would be great if you’d share them here.  You might inspire someone else.

There’s a lot of buzz about creating better habits. For a long while my Twitter name was @BetterLifeHabits because I focus on helping people make changes in the way they do things to get better, more productive results. But I’ve change my stance on the whole “better habits” goal – particularly when we’re talking about actions that improve productivity.

By definition, calling something a habit means that we do that thing without really thinking about it. It’s just automatic.  putting on a seatbelt, or driving the regular route to and from work, or putting your napkin in your lap in a restaurant, or lighting a cigarette (not a good habit, but then not all habits are).

When we try to create habits out of tasks that aren’t so simple, we run into difficulty. By calling it a habit we expect that we will do this thing automatically, without having to consciously walk ourselves through the steps to completion. We talk about better habits with regard to diet and exercise, handling email and managing tasks and projects, to name just a few. In my personal experience as well as that with clients, those things are not simple.

Add to that the notion that’s been quoted for decades that if you do something every day for 21 days it will become a habit. Turns out there’s no research to back that up. It’s kind of a not-very-interesting (at least compared to the one about getting a kidney stolen) urban myth. So now we’re holding ourselves to a standard that doesn’t even exist.

Of course we can create or change habits, but not every action we want to create or change qualifies as something that could become a habit.

So what should we call those new and improved actions we want to be a part of our day?

Routines. We need to create routines.

If we want to eat more healthy foods then we create routines around meal planning, grocery shopping and preparing meals.  If we want to get in better shape we create routines around packing workout clothes and going through certain exercises at the gym, or planning and running certain routes.

Likewise, if we want to better manage email, we just need to create a routine that works for us. Same for managing projects and handling to do’s.

Creating routines means we don’t have to re-create the process every time, we just have to follow the process.

If we look at these new, more productive ways of doing things as routines rather than habits, we take the pressure off of ourselves that these new routines should be second nature and that we should be able to do them without thinking.

For some people, perhaps these new routines could indeed become habits and that’s just terrific. But if you’re in the percentage of people where that won’t happen, you’ve got a lot of company.

I would be interested to learn what routines you’ve created that work for you. Just post them as a comment.

Shameless plug:  If you need someone to help you create routines to simplify and streamline your day, I can do that. Just contact me and we’ll talk about how that could work.

Many times while working with a client I’ll see that he has one or more books on being more organized and productive or improving time management. On the one hand, that he has a book on the subject indicates an interest in kicking things up a notch in terms of his productivity or organization skills.  On the other hand, if he has the book, why does he need me?

And which book is the one that will provide real, actionable ideas for the change you want?

If you were to search on “workplace productivity” on Amazon, you’d find 2,593 book choices.  Search on “organized at work,” 22,550 book choices.  And if you search on “time management ,” 92,416 book choices. Criminy.  How in the world do you pick?  And why are so many needed?

For every book that’s out there, we can be fairly certain that the suggestions the author recommends worked for the author, and probably some number of other people the author has trained or coached or otherwise taught the methods.  Will those methods work for you?  Maybe.

For a good portion of the book buyers one of the reasons the methods don’t work is that the book was never read.  I’m not casting stones here – I’ve done it myself. (For research purposes I once bought The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Overcoming Procrastination.  My sister saw it in my office and asked me what I thought of it.  Had to admit I hadn’t read it. Yet.)

Books on organization and time management are often like the treadmill bought in January. Well intentioned but under- (or never) utilized.  Buying the book is way more fun than doing what’s in it. I get that.

But let’s say the book does get read and the suggestions implemented and still the desired outcome doesn’t happen? The ideas were sound. The concepts should have worked for you. 

Or should they?

There are thousands of ideas about how to approach organization, productivity, time management, etc.  There is no single correct way and one book will never provide all the answers.

I use the same test for a book that I do for workshops, webinars, etc.  If I get one really solid, original (to me), actionable idea, it’s time well-spent.  (Good idea to use the library as much as possible.  Books with one solid idea are helpful but maybe not ones you need to own.)

Don’t be discouraged if you buy a book, read it, implement the ideas and still don’t meet with the success you wanted. Tweak the suggestions to work with your habits, preferences and environment, or ditch the idea altogether and try something else. Trial and error is part of the process.

If you have a favorite book on this subject, leave a comment here.  I’d love to know what you’ve found helpful and you’ll be helping other readers, too.

• Add your phone number to your signature on ALL of your email correspondence. Too often it’s only on the first message in a thread and you can’t count on that message still being available to the reader. It’s easy to create a few signature options if you don’t want your full signature block added to every email.
• Email isn’t always the best option. Sometimes messages can bounce back and forth four or more times to accomplish what could have been handled in one phone call. That’s four or more interruptions in your day instead of one. It’s not very productive to rely on newer technologically when old fashioned ear-to-ear conversation makes more sense.
• I once received an email in all caps (which means the sender was yelling at me) stating that the sender was none too happy with me for deleting without reading the email she had sent. The problem? I had read it – but in preview pane and it was not an email that asked for a response. Takeaways from this experience?

1. It’s never smart to yell at someone via email. Yelling via any method is rarely productive, but nasty emails escalate in ways that face-to-face disagreements usually wouldn’t.
2. Setting email preferences to be notified when messages have been deleted unread isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Clearly it doesn’t work if the recipient is reading messages in preview pane. Know all the ins and outs of these email settings before using them.

I was recently discussing a challenge with a client who was in a bind at work.  A business situation was having a significant negative impact on his productivity. This situation could only be fixed by communicating with the other involved party – a conversation my client was not looking forward to having. While he knew it had to be addressed, he’d been putting it off longer than he liked.

I can’t imagine a person who hasn’t been in this very situation.  I know I have.

When we have to do something we perceive as unpleasant, the natural inclination for most of us is to put it off.  But my client had a very insightful revelation.  He realized that he was putting it off in the hope that he’d figure out a way to make it easier.  Aha! A brilliant observation – and also, he admitted, highly unlikely.

When we procrastinate, maybe our expectations aren’t so optimistic as to hope that the task will eventually be “easy.” Perhaps we just want it to be less hideous, or uncomfortable, or boring, or time-consuming.

In all likelihood, that thing will continue to be hideous, uncomfortable, boring or time-consuming. Knowing that, here are some ways to forge ahead anyway…

• Make sure you’re prepared – Particularly in the case of an uncomfortable conversation, thinking through what you want to say and how you want to say it, and practicing it, will help relieve some anxiety, and prevent awkward stammering, which can erode credibility.
• Hire out – In some cases it may be a better use of your time to hire someone else to do the task.  Taxes, data entry, housekeeping, website updates, blog posts (for non-writers) are some delegate-able tasks that come to mind.  While some folks may feel they don’t have the budget to do so, it could end up paying for itself if the time saved is used to contact potential clients. Probably even some mental health benefits if the time saved is used to sit by the pool.
• Delegate – In my experience, many businesspeople who have some amount of staff to help them, delegate hardly anything.  True, sometimes it can take longer to train someone the first time than it would to do it yourself, but it’s a real time saver in the long run. If you’re in the enviable position of having some support – learn to use their talents to help you.
• Collaborate – Find someone who does that thing well and ask for some tips.  Maybe they have methods that would in fact make it easier for you, too.
• Get an accountability partner – If you just have to do it and there is no way around it, get an accountability partner (if you don’t have a boss who just by the nature of their position can light a fire under you) and commit to them when you will have accomplished this dreaded task.  It can be motivating to know that someone else is expecting you to follow-through. Most of us don’t want to look like slackers, and that’s just what we feel like when we fail to keep the commitments we’ve shared with others.

If you have other ideas, post them here. Comments, too.

There’s no question that work life can be overbooked, overwhelming and stressful. The goal most of us have is to get the things done that are important to us and still maintain – at minimum — some kind of sanity. In almost every case, we have enormous control over just how much we get done and yet we don’t exercise that control nearly as much as we could.

Do these statements sound familiar?

• I want to work on this project today, but I really need a chunk of time to devote to it.
• I should follow up with this prospect, but I’ll knock out these other quick tasks and then I’ll make the call.
• I’ve been meaning to get this office organized, but I just don’t have the time.
• I need to make a plan for each day, but I really have to hit the ground running just to keep up.
• I know people say not to check e-mail first thing in the morning but I’m afraid if I don’t check it I’ll miss something really important.

Follow-through is pretty much a black and white thing. We either do or we don’t. Doing the thing we say we’ll do gets us results we’re probably happier about. Not doing the thing we say we will do and coming up with a “good” excuse for why we didn’t do it usually makes us feel behind, unaccomplished, frustrated, overwhelmed or insert the word describing your bad feeling here ____.

Here’s an equation to remember:
Good Results don’t equal No Results plus A Good Excuse

In the above instances “but” is really just an excuse cleverly disguised as a reason. So how do we overcome the but?

Using the same examples as above, the real reasons for the behaviors might be…

• Not knowing how or not taking the time to make a project plan so the project can be completed one small task at a time
• Not knowing what to say and feeling less than confident about handling questions and objections can bring on anxiousness that to procrastination
• Many people get their office looking great for a short period of time but it quickly reverts back to a sea of paper and clutter. Who wants to keep starting over every time? Who has the time? Creating a system of organization that will last, makes carving out the time to make it happen more motivating.
• People with unreasonable workloads need help. Administrative, accounting, IT, etc. Maybe it’s just being a better delegator. Getting help doesn’t have to mean hiring a full-time employee. There are creative ways to share the load in order to take the but out of the overworked businessperson.
• E-mail is a blessing and curse. More often than not what I see is that folks check e-mail looking for something more appealing to do than the things that are already high priorities, albeit less appealing. On this one we just have to be straight with ourselves. Can specific incidents be cited where vital, time-sensitive information was received via e-mail first thing in the morning? If you can’t stop first thing email cold turkey, there are ways to develop new and better habits with regard to email.

As always, I recommend slowing down some. If you find yourself using the but, take a moment to figure why this excuse seems necessary at this time.  What would it take to be able to eliminate that excuse?  Training? Support? Time to think and/or plan? Sheer willpower?

Here’s the replay of the free webinar, Smart Ideas to Stop Procrastinating.

To make the best use of your time when you watch/listen, you can skip ahead to the  3-minute mark which bypasses all of the introductory information about sound checks (couple of  minutes of silence there) and how to use the attendee control panel.

Enjoy!

There’s a trend out there that I find very disturbing.  And it’s this.

In too many cases if you give a person your business card, they automatically sign you up for their bulk sales and marketing email messages.

I understand that pretty much anyone who has something to sell, whether a product or service, is looking to increase their pool of prospects.  Fair enough.  But this is the wrong way to go about it because those unrequested emails are spam.  Yep.  Spam.

Sharing business cards should be the start of building a business relationship.  Not the start of the selling process.  People do business with people they know, like and trust.  Not people who barrage them endlessly with impersonal, unwanted emails.

Every client I work with struggles with the masses of email they have to wade through.  And nearly every one of them has said they resent being included in bulk email they did not request.  And that’s why I’m writing this post:  To help the many who are getting buried by sales pitches or unsolicited emails offering free stuff or even free (but unwanted) information.

So I have two messages:  One to the “victims” and one to the “perpetrators.”

To the victim:  If the emails are unwelcome, unsubscribe and don’t for a second feel bad about it, even if you’ve met the person.  You didn’t ask for it and the sender needs to learn about building relationships.  If the sender is using regular email for bulk messages rather than a contact management program, it’s ok to mark it as junk or spam to block further communication.  Again, no need to feel bad for one second for doing so.

To the perpetrator:  If you send bulk emails, use a contact management system and only send your marketing and sales information to people who have opted in.  Blanket the earth with your sales message via Twitter or other social media outlets if you must (though you may find your connections and followers dwindling, if all you do on those is sell).  Feel free to send personal, individual emails to people from whom you’ve collected a business card.  That’s one good way to start building a relationship.  And once you’ve let this new person get to know you and they’ve seen how respectful you are of their time and how much you’re interested in their specific needs, they will probably be happy to do business with you when they need what you offer.

Often I’m surprised at how hard people are on themselves. Talented, accomplished, smart, engaging, sometimes even award-winning people beat themselves up about the things they don’t get done.

Instead of counting the wins for the day, the focus is on what didn’t happen.  I suppose it’s to be expected due to the very qualities these people have. Striving is part of what got them where they are and so perhaps isn’t all bad.

But research also shows that beating ourselves up is counterproductive. (Pardon me if this sounds like one should beat him/herself up for beating up him/herself about getting things done.) The harder we are on ourselves, the more difficult it is to get into the mindset that we can accomplish whatever we set out to do.

I’m on a 30-day sugar fast and have broken it twice. In the past I might have figured that since I messed up the 30-day effort by eating a dessert the entire plan may as well be ditched.  But my habit has been to eat sugar every day.  Sometimes several times a day!  So if I’ve had sugar two days out of the last 15, that’s going to count as a win. And that research mentioned above seems to be backed up.  There’s a level of confidence that I can pass up the valentine candy sitting on the counter. Heck, 13 other days passed with no sugar. Why not today?

I’ve often said, ‘the brain only knows what we tell it,” and this is case in point.  You tell yourself you’re not productive or accomplished enough and lo and behold you won’t be.  Focus on your wins, even if you consider them minor, and you’ll have more of them.  As a lifelong “not enough-er” I’m working on this every day.

Be kind to yourself.  Count the positives. Pat yourself on the back for the thing you did get done. I’m out there cheering you on!

*It’s not really a trick.  It’s an idea.  Just like “secrets” aren’t usually secrets, they’re just ideas you may not have heard yet.