Posts filed under 'Tools'
How often to you batch your tasks for greater productivity? Do you cluster tasks that require similar energy and do them all at once to get better performance? You should think about your day and your tasks with a batch-oriented mentality to achieve more in less time.
My employer uses a sophisticated software package to run its business. This software operates on the principal of batch processing. A lot of our users initially try to fight this principal of operation their productivity suffers and they complain they can’t use the system to get their work finished. They’re not used to thinking in batches.
When they finally embrace a batch-process work-flow a change happens. They can get more done, in less time than they thought was possible. Suddenly it’s not a problem to process 2500 invoices. Suddenly it’s not such a burden to print 800 checks. They get to a point where a minimum input on their end produces a maximum output by the system.
Applying this type of thinking to all aspects of your life can transform your productivity too.
Anywhere you can compile like tasks, and save your effort to finish those tasks until you can do them all at once, you can save time. If you pack a lunch to eat at work are you packing a lunch each night?
How long does it take to get the bread, get some lunch meat, make a sandwich, get some fruit, pack a bag of chips and put it all in a bag for the next day? What part of the process is setup and what part of the process is production? Now multiply the setup time by five days. If the setup time runs even 3 minutes per lunch that’s fifteen minutes per week spent just getting ready to make lunch!
How much more efficient could you be if you spent your three minutes setting up for lunch on Sunday night and then made five sandwiches, packed five pieces of fruit and five bags of chips? All you would have to do is grab a bag from the fridge each morning on your way out the door. If nothing else, you saved twelve minutes per week just on setup time.
Twelve minutes per week saved adds up to ten hours per year. That’s time you used to spend just preparing to make a lunch. Think about what your time is worth and then figure out what your “cost” savings is; it will surprise you.
This is a very simple example to be sure, but the idea scales to other areas of life too. You can also batch your tasks for times when you feel at your peak.
For example, I am not a writer by nature. I enjoy writing, but it doesn’t come naturally to me - I have to work at it. There are times however when I feel like I can’t stop writing. Those are my peak writing times.
When I experience a peak writing moment I take advantage of it. I keep a notebook with ideas for articles and essays and when I’m in a writing mood, I write! I cross out the ideas as I’ve executed them, and if they’re articles for my web site I schedule them in advance to appear automatically at a future date.
For this web site I will typically have three to five articles in the queue, ready for publication and usually at least one article “in process” that I keep working on until I’m happy with it.
I’m able to take advantage of my peak times, and by batching my tasks I end up getting a lot more done in less time than if I sat down every other day and forced myself to write an article. I wouldn’t necessarily be in a peak state, and I wouldn’t be using my time efficiently.
It can be tricky to get used to thinking like this if you’ve never thought in a batch-oriented mentality before. We are so used to real-time processing that it’s our default habit.
To get used to the switch, we have to think about efficiency and optimization. When faced with a task - especially a repetitive task - you have to constantly ask yourself, “How could I handle this in a more efficient manner?” Your goal should be to turn yourself into a factory - streamlining operations and steps as much as possible to achieve greater output.
* Try to setup your environment so when you tackle tasks you can do multiple steps at once and use the results at a later time (minimize input, maximize output).
* Work to recognize and mentally flag those times you notice you’re in a peak state for any given activity.
* When you feel that peak state “click” in the future, try to maximize the energy and results you can get out of it (you’ll get more done and it will likely be better quality than “normal”).
* Think in terms of long-term time savings (months or a year) and challenge yourself to find ways to save time in the long run - you’ll find something else much more enjoyable to fill that time.
* Realize that effort and output don’t have to be directly linked. It’s easy to feel some guilt when you realize that you’re getting tremendous output with less input than you’re used to. It may take a little time for you to adjust and be comfortable when your productivity goes up. We get stuck in a feeling of “I should be doing more right now” mentality and we rush to fill it with “something” - even if that “something” isn’t a great use of our time!
Once you get used to batching your tasks you’ll wonder why you didn’t start doing it sooner. When you can work on tasks in a peak mental state you’ll be amazed at how much you can get accomplished with seemingly no effort (or minimal effort) on your part.
When you learn to think and work in a batch-process mentality, the time will fly by, your production will be up, and your quality will be great. That sounds like a pretty good reason to think in a batch-oriented mindset to me!
January 11th, 2006
Anthony Robbins - former king of the infomercial - has some free tools available on his web site to help you get started setting your goals for the new year. You can visit his web site for more details.
He is offering a free workbook in PDF format, “7 Steps to a Fulfilling 2006″
The seven steps he outlines are:
- Get Clear.
- Get Certain.
- Get Excited.
- Get Focused.
- Get Committed.
- Get Momentum.
- Get Smart.
Also available is an audio program (MP3) called “The Power of Clarity” with a PDF workbook that accompanies the audio program.
If you’re new to Tony’s approach his material is based on the principal of neuro linguistic programming (NLP for short). NLP is the study of how people interact with the world (visually, aurally through sound and hearing, or through touch and feel). Tony’s approach to improvement employs NLP to tie all three together to get you to not only visualize your desired outcome, but also hear and feel it as well.
If you pick up any of Tony’s books or have a chance to listen to his audio program you’ll see more how NLP works.
For today go grab the materials on his web site and start getting your goals together for 2006!
Have a prosperous 2006!
January 3rd, 2006
Want a secret that will make you more productive in an extremely short period of time? Keep a time log on yourself for a week.
Now I didn’t say it was a secret that would shake you to your foundations, but it is something that most people have never done. It’s also extremely powerful to see your entire day, laid before you, in black and white. When you have a concrete log of how you spent your time (the only limited resource there really is) you’ll start to see how those extra trips to the coffee machine and those interruptions from co-workers really eat away at your day.
And how do you keep a time log? Great question, here’s how:
Get a piece of paper and write the time you start and stop doing any activity. It’s really that simple! If you’re like me though, you want to keep better track of your time to really get a good idea of where you’re spending it.
I found a form in the book “The Time Trap” by R. Alec MacKenzie that works perfectly for me, and I’ve created a PDF in the spirit of that form, which you can download for yourself:
Here is what a time log looks like when filled out.
Using the time log is extremely easy, but here are some helpful tips to get you off and running more quickly.
1. Write down the time anytime you change what you’re working on. This is the whole key to making a time log work for you. Be brutally honest with yourself, you’re the only person who will see this, so no fibbing.
Why write down the times as you change tasks or are interrupted? If you go back and try to summarize at the end of the day you will forget a substantial amount of what you did and the times will become fuzzy. Trust me on this from my own personal experience. I have at least two time logs I never finished because I stopped tracking the time and I could not remember enough detail to make it worthwhile.
2. Use abbreviations where possible. Alec recommends, and I use, the following: An arrow pointing in is incoming (you receive), an arrow pointing out is outgoing (you initiate). A capital “I” is interruption, “C” is call, “E” is email.
Using this system an incoming call looks like this: “->C Joe Smith, RE: New client” An outgoing call looks like this: “C-> Bob RE: Meeting plans”.
If a person walks up and starts talking to me I would write down “I, Sally RE: Her weekend”
3. Rate the use of your time. I like the 1-4 scale where 1=critical, 2=important 3=routine, and 4=waste of time. Most tasks are 2 or 3; the major item I want to accomplish in a day would rate a 1 and I try to weed out all of the 4s as much as possible.
4. Keep your time log for a minimum of a week. Plan on keeping a time log for a week at least twice a year. This will give you a good snapshot of your time over more than one day. This helps smooth out those really low or really high productivity days and gives you a more accurate picture.
Coming back to your time log twice a year (or even better, quarterly) helps keep you on your toes so you don’t fall back into your old, less productive habits.
How will keeping a time log send your productivity through the roof? Once I had kept a really honest time log on myself for about two weeks I noticed a few things; first, I spent way more time checking and replying to email than I thought I did - upwards of two hours a day! Second, I allowed myself to get interrupted by calls and visitors far more than I thought. Something like 60% of my interruptions were from people wanting to discuss non-business topics and about 80% of my phone calls were sales solicitations from companies offering services I had no intention of using.
I immediately changed my email habits. I now check my email when I get to work, after lunch and before I leave. I might check it one or two more times depending on how many meetings I’ve been in during the day. I also started paying a lot more attention to how much time I was spending in personal conversations. I didn’t want to cut them out and isolate myself from others, but now I make sure I have an exit planned so I can gracefully step out of a conversation after a few minutes.
I also stopped answering my phone unless expecting a call (thank goodness for caller ID!). Since I don’t have a secretary to handle my calls (and in our modern business society many people don’t), I let my voice mail screen my calls. Now instead of reaching for the phone every time it rings I let it go. I check my messages before I leave work and make notes of people I need to call back in the morning.
Just making these three minor changes in how I spend my day made a very noticeable change in my level of productivity.
I’m also a lot more careful about how I spend my time. I try to keep in mind that it’s the only resource that’s really limited and I pay careful attention to what I’m working on and to whom I’m giving time for interruptions and projects.
In the weeks since keeping a daily time log these longer-term changes have really boosted my productivity. One of the biggest gains is that I usually and ready to leave - with major tasks completed - at 5:30pm every day, it’s very seldom I need to stay late; this has the added benefit of making my wife much happier too!
December 12th, 2005
I’ve been intrigued by Merlin Mann’s Hipster PDA for some time. I tried building and carrying one myself, but I found I wasn’t really using it in a way that suited my own note taking and “next action” capturing style.
I don’t work well with discreet items all on their own note card and when I tried to capture more than one “action” per note card I found that didn’t work well for me either! I liked the idea of a low-tech solution to capturing my random thoughts and urgent action items, but the HPDA didn’t seem to be the best fit for me.
So I started thinking about what was a good fit, and I realized that keeping a list on paper was how I worked best, and making something that was easily carried was most important to me. Around the time I formalized my wants, I happened across a web site for the “Cheapster PDA” - a single 8.5″ x 11″ piece of paper folded into a little booklet. I immediately whipped out a sheet of paper, folded it up and thought, “The form is good, but how can I improve on this?”
I decided that I wanted some structure to my booklet. A place to keep my list of actions, a place for free-form notes and maybe even a place for a schedule would be all items I would want to incorporate. After some tinkering around with page layout software I came up with a design that suited my desires and put it to the test. It was a single 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper run through my laser printer and then folded up. It worked great.
I dubbed it the micro life organizer; “MiLO” for short. I printed a handful out and gave them to my wife and some select friends for testing. The feedback was positive, they all liked the form and the usefulness of the MiLO! After some feedback, and tweaking to suit my own needs, I decided to roll out the MiLO to the Internet for all to use.
When the MiLO is all folded up it’s 2.75″ wide and 4.25″ tall, only a little bigger than a credit card. It takes about 40 seconds to fold the MiLO into booklet form and all you need to make one is a laser or ink-jet printer that can print to within a quarter inch of the edge of the page.
There are five lined pages, complete with check boxes, two pages are blank for free-form notes and the back page is a week-in-a-view calendar (Sunday - Saturday).
I find that I can easily get a normal week’s usage out of one MiLO, and during really busy weeks I might need a second MiLO by the middle of the week. It’s also setup so if you’re a devotee of David Allen’s Getting Things Done system you can assign a context at the top of each “action” page (for example; @work, @calls, @home, @internet, @someday).
I’m hoping that other people will find the MiLO useful too which is why I’m posting it here. You can download a PDF that you can print out for yourself: Download MiLO2.0.pdf (version 2.0) here.
PLEASE NOTE: If you’re printing this PDF with Windows, make sure to select “Page Scaling = None” on the print options when you print out a MiLO or Acrobat Reader will shrink the MiLO down by a few percent and it will not fold properly. This is one of the biggest frustrations people using Windows will have printing out a MiLO for themselves.
The MiLO is available free of charge for anyone to use. I hope you find it as useful as I do, it’s an easy way to keep a lot of items handy without needing a lot of space to do it. If you find it useful, please leave a comment and let me know!
December 3rd, 2005
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TimeLog.pdf
