So what does it really take to be organised day-to-day? It’s not as much work as you may fear. Once you get your systems set up, it comes down to 3 simple maintenance routines.

You say you don’t have time for maintenance? Think of it like taking care of your teeth. Just a few minutes of brushing and flossing a couple of times a day will keep you on the right track. Occasionally you need to get to the dentist for a deeper cleaning and check-up.

If you don’t look after your teeth regularly, you’ll wind up with pain, decay, and even surgery. If you don’t look after your personal organisation, the results are stress, health problems, missed opportunities, and a breakdown in work/life balance.

To avoid all that, establish these 3 essential organising routines:

PROCESSING

What is it?

A sorting process similar to triage. Your goal is to process and prioritise everything, getting all collection points to empty.

Why do it?

To make sure your time and effort go to the true priorities – not whatever has come in most recently or is shouting the loudest.

What does it look like?

• You look at each email and make a decision about your next action, which you capture on your lists. Then you move the email out of the Inbox.
• You look through that notebook (or piece of paper, maybe?) where you have been scribbling notes all day. You capture ideas and follow-up actions on your lists.
• You look through your in-tray and capture ideas and actions on your lists. Then you discard or file the papers.
• You empty your brain of all the bits and bobs it has been trying to remember for you all day. You write this stuff down somewhere safe.

How often should I do it?

1-3 times a day

How long does it take?

15-30 minutes each time, assuming you have learned how to do it right.

DAILY PLANNING

What is it?

A housekeeping and prioritisation process. Your goal is to reorganise any outstanding tasks from today and build a clear plan for tomorrow.

Why do it?

To ensure your day will be spent in a focused and proactive way, instead of working randomly and reactively.

What does it look like?

• You look at your to-do list from today and decide what to do with any outstanding tasks. Usually you’ll re-schedule them for tomorrow or a later date if tomorrow looks too full.
• You have a look at your scheduled appointments for tomorrow and the amount of time you’ll have to yourself.
• You plan your to-do list for tomorrow – keeping it realistic!

How often should I do it?

Once a day – before the day begins. That means you do it the night before or very early in the morning before checking email for the first time.

How long does it take?

5-10 minutes, assuming you have good lists in place to support this process.

WEEKLY PLANNING

What is it?

A time management process. Your goal is to balance your week between appointments and work blocks to move your projects forward.

Why do it?

To get your priorities scheduled into your week before other people’s requests for your time take over.

What does it look like?

• You look at your to-do list from today and decide what to do with any outstanding tasks. Usually you’ll re-schedule them for a day next week or de-prioritise them if the week looks too full.
• You review your long-range project and idea lists and decide when you’ll take the next action for each.
• You confirm appointments for next week and schedule the necessary work blocks for yourself.
• You plan your to-do list for Monday – keeping it realistic!

How often should I do it?

Once a week – before the week begins. Monday morning is really too late. Most people prefer to do this at some point in the weekend when they’re more relaxed and removed from work pressures (hard to believe, I know – but try it before dismissing the idea). Some folks find Friday afternoon to be a good time for this process.

How long does it take?

20-30 minutes, assuming you have good systems for managing time and projects.

SETTING UP THE SYSTEMS

If you want to learn how to set up your systems for managing lists, email and paper, check out this course or this one.

Filed under: Routines, To Do Lists | 1 Comment »

There are a few things many of us do all day, every day. They include:

• Reading and Writing
• Meeting/Talking with Others
• Managing Email
• Shuffling/Searching for Information
• Planning and Executing Projects

If you were to get faster at doing any of these things, what would you be able to focus on with the extra time? What’s that worth to you?

Filed under: HR Buzz, Routines | No Comments »

If we all worked alone, it would be a cinch to focus, get our work done and get on with living. The tricky bit is that most of us work in teams, coordinate projects and activities for groups or depend on others for information and support. This means there’s a lot of communication happening all day, every day.

With each email, SMS, chat, voice message or note left on our desk there is an expectation that we will respond ASAP. The volume – coupled with the presumption that we will follow through immediately – is the primary source of stress for info-overloaded employees today.

In a landmark study published in 2007 by Intel, the authors state, “The problem isn’t the abundance of accessible information. It’s the queued streams of pushed information; that is, the accumulation of messages governed by the expectation that the worker process them all.”

We need to get smarter about how we handle this. Let’s look at some strategies for resetting our rhythms and managing the expectations that other people have of us.

Turnaround Time Conditioning

If you think it makes you look professional and responsive to reply to every communication immediately, think again. Your colleagues – and your boss – could take this as a sign that you are erratic and reactive or that you don’t have enough to do! Your ability to remain focused on high-value activities and deliver timely results is where you should concentrate your personal PR campaign.

For those people who really do need to hear from you frequently, work together to determine a reasonable turnaround threshold for your communications – email in particular.  Is it 20 minutes? 40 minutes? 90 minutes? The benefits for both of you in having longer stretches of time to concentrate on important work are significant.

If you’ve slipped into a negative habit of interrupting each other frequently, have a conversation about the challenges and take control together.

For true crises, use the phone or your feet to walk to each other’s offices.

Selective Response

This is just a fancy way to say: Ignore anything you can. You’ve got more important things to do.

Worst Case Questioning

If you thought that last one was a bit tough to swallow, try asking yourself, “What’s the worst thing that could happen if I don’t engage in this conversation?” Could you live with that scenario?

Remember – you’ve got more important things to do. What’s the worst thing that could happen if those tasks don’t get your attention?!

Stand-up Meetings

For conversations that are best had face-to-face, have a stand-up meeting. If nobody sits down, the meeting will be short and focused! This works for quick team meetings as well as 1:1 discussions.

Stop the Drop-By Meetings

Even if a discussion only requires 5 minutes, everybody deserves a heads-up on a conversation.When people drop by each other’s desks whenever it suits them to have a chat, the discussion is generally unfocused and takes longer than necessary.

The ‘dropper’ may get what he/she needs, but the ‘dropee’ has been interrupted and compelled to comment on an issue without a chance to switch gears mentally.

When someone drops in on you and asks if you’ve “got a second,” look at your watch and give one of these answers:

• “Now isn’t a great time, but I should be able to think about that in about 30 minutes. Can we schedule a chat at 10:00?”

• “Sure, but I’m pushing to finish something. How much time do we need?” Stand up when saying this so your visitor isn’t tempted to sit down and linger! If the conversation drags, suggest you schedule a longer session at a mutually convenient time. Open up your calendar and/or walk toward the door while doing this.

Get Better at Saying NO or Later

If much of your day is spent spinning your wheels, and your evenings are spent working late when the office is finally quiet, you may need to work on establishing some better personal and professional boundaries. See 7 Ways to Say NO for some tips.

Put an End to Pouncing

One of the greatest complaints we hear from senior managers is that their people ‘pounce’ on them all the time. The second they return to the office, are seen online, or set the phone back in the cradle, a line forms at their door of people needing to talk.

What do the associates and support staff complain about? The bosses never give them any time. Thus, they grab it whenever they can.

The answer to this problem lies in establishing a sacred rhythm of daily briefing and/or weekly meetings (ideally on Monday or Friday – looking forward) to review progress, clarify priorities and schedule time to discuss critical issues.

The key is that these meetings must never be cancelled. If absolutely necessary, they can be rescheduled within the same week, they can be held via phone and remote desktop sharing, or they can be shortened…but they must take place.

When people come to trust that there will be a regular opportunity to touch base, they will begin to collect issues for review at the regular meetings rather than playing ‘catch as catch can’ all week long.

Reduce the Volume and Get Back to Work

There is a lot you can do to regain control of your work environment by
cutting the amount of input you have to deal with. You also need
to understand the difference between processing and working. These
topics have been explored in depth elsewhere on this blog:

• Create a ‘Front Office’

• Put Your Inbox on a Diet

• Establishing Com-Free Zones

Filed under: Routines | No Comments »

People tend to think that organised folks are hard-wired for productivity or know some magical, mystical secrets of keeping it all together.

We don't. We just work at it systematically, that's all.

There's something I do every week that I thought you might like to see. Be warned, though – it's ugly!

These photos show the amount of clutter my life produces in a typical 7-day period: the contents of the 5 bags I carried this week, plus the In-Tray on my desk:

Let's not forget about the email! I had 504 incoming messages last week.

Like yours, my life is fast and full of personal and professional activities. It's hard for me to stay totally on top of everything each day, especially when a lot of the hours are spent in meetings, with clients and being mom.

Coping With the Info-Flood

On a daily basis I try to:

• Keep on top of the most pressing incoming stuff (calls, fires and immediate follow-up from meetings)
• Keep my email Inbox running at empty (45-60 minutes total processing time each day)
• Accomplish one or two high-value items on my to-do list
• Connect well with my family

…After that, I'm usually pretty sleepy! There is still a lot of lower priority information or longer-term work left to be managed, so here's how I tackle that:

Each week I try to:

• Take a bit of time each weekend to dump everything out of all the bags I've carried and organise what was in there: ideas, short and long-term follow-up actions, items to be filed or put away, etc.
• Go through everything in my paper In-Tray and move it forward to the right 'bucket' in my workflow management system.
• Review a couple of email folders where I keep lower priority items, to see if I want to activate any of the tasks or ideas in there.

I use some simple and reliable processing strategies to make this happen quickly and completely. (If you'd like to learn more about these strategies, please get in touch).

The Result

By the time everything is sorted, safely captured, put away or scheduled, I've got a very clear picture of my personal and professional plans for the upcoming week(s). Then I can rest easily knowing nothing has slipped through the cracks.

No Time For This?

The Weekly Dump + Sort takes me a couple of hours every weekend, including about 30 minutes with my husband to go over the family/kid stuff plus sending a few emails to our team at Organising Solutions to focus and coordinate everybody's efforts for the week.

The weekend works for me, but it might not work for you. So when could you do this on a regular basis? Friday afternoon is a good time for many of our clients. Monday morning is too late if you want this approach to support your weekly planning…because the week has already begun!

Why Bother?

Give it a shot and experience the benefits for yourself – the peace of mind and clarity of priorities you get out of 60-90 minutes of weekly organising is SO worth the trouble, believe me.

This is some of my most productive and creative time all week because I find myself innovating as I go, coming up with ways to pull all the bits and bobs into cohesive ideas and then making these ideas part of my strategic plans.

I hope the same will happen for you as you make The Weekly Dump + Sort a routine.

Filed under: Routines | No Comments »