Productivity – Parkinson & Pareto weigh in with some tips !
Here are 5 quick and easy tips to help you with your time management / efficiency and productivity. Enjoy … and implement ! …
1. Low Information Diet
2. Law of Perceived Importance
3. Saying No
4. 10 minutes of Power
5. Pareto’s Rule – 80/20 Rule
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1. Low Information Diet
We live in a world full of information and the temptation exists to digest as much information as possible. Information is time consuming and most the information you consumer is either negative or irrelevant to your goals. (Think newspaper, TV, Magazines, Social Blogs.) Additionally, we’re finding it easy to get engaged with activities that feel like work, but aren’t. (Facebook or social networking is a good example vs actually doing productive work). One reason for this confusion is that we’re often using precisely the same device to do our work as we are to distract ourselves from our work.
Action => Time management is really about making better use of your time. Living on a low-information diet is one way to do this. For the next week try this:
- No reading emails before 10:00am. You may quickly scan for urgent emails if required by your role. Use this time instead to achieve one of your most important goals for the day. Focus on the main to-do action first and then get to your emails before getting bogged down by them.
- Try a two-device approach. Only use your computer for work. Real work. The work of making something. Have a second device, perhaps an iPad, and use it for games, web commenting, online shopping, networking… anything that doesn’t directly create valued output … draw a line, any line, and separate the two of them. (If you don’t like the results from that line, draw a new line). Now, when you pick up the iPad, you can say to yourself, “break time.” And if you find yourself taking a lot of that break time, you’ve just learned something important.
- Limit your web surfing and avoid newspapers, magazines , blogs that suck your time
- Limit your television viewing to one hour of relaxation viewing only
- Before you digest any information, ask yourself – Will this information help me achieve one of my immediate and important goals?
2. Parkinson’s Law of Perceived Importance => Forced deadlines
If I gave you 24hrs to produce a report on the the impact of sleep on the ability to hop on one leg, the time constraints would force you to focus and take action. If I gave you a week, you would spend five days considering options and two days preparing the report. If I gave you a month it would sit on the ‘back-burner’ for two weeks, then you would call a meeting to discuss, send a series of back and forth emails and create the final report in the last two days, am I right? Parkinson’s Law states that “a tasks perceived importance and complexity will increase in relation to the time allotted for its completion.” In other words, the longer you allow for a task to be completed, the more complex and important that task is perceived.
Action => Shorten time frames to reduce the perception of complexity of tasks. Set yourself forced deadlines to get things done.
3. The Power of Saying No
Even more powerful than setting short time frames, is just saying no. It works like this:
Do you think you could put together a report on the impact of room temperature on staff productivity?”
Reply: “No.”
If you’re a bit of a ‘softy’, you could replace the ‘no’ with, ‘I would be happy to help you, but I need you to show me how this will help us achieve our goal of (Insert important agreed upon business goal for which this task is not).
Action => be really ruthless on keeping the main thing the main thing. Do this by saying no more or by ruthless expectations management around talks.
4. 10 minutes of Power
Abraham Lincoln famously said “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” To be efficient and prooductive you need to prepare and plan. Decide what actions you will achieve tomorrow to move you closer to your 90 day goals.
Action => spend 10 minutes before you go to bed or 10 minutes first thing in the morning setting your goals and actions and continue to refer to them during the day.
5. Pareto’s Rule – 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 rule states that 80% of outputs are the result of 20% of inputs. For example, 80% of profit is the result of 20% of customers. This also means that the remaining 20% of outputs are the result of your other 80% of inputs. (i.e. the other 20% of profits is made up by 80% of customers). Or alternatively 20% of customers cause you 80% of your work and hassle. To take back your time you must identify the 20% of inputs that create the 80% of outputs. For example, cold calling 20 clients per day for two hours per day produces one new client per week, whereas one phone call to a local business partner asking to meet and discuss a joint venture takes two hours in total and leads to 10 new clients.
Action => Use pareto’s rule to critique your time management and efficiency. 80% of the results you have achieved this year are the result of 20% of your actions. Identify what’s creating the most output and scrap the rest.
Don’t worry – this is a challenge for me to. Good luck. I’ll be interested to hear your feedback.
