The key approach to managing yourself and your workload

If you want to succeed in the world of work, then nothing will be more important than your ability to manage both yourself and your workload. While there is plenty of advice that will help you in this short ebook, the truth is that doing so is largely a matter of character. You need to choose to follow this advice, and to do the hard work that staying on top of your workload takes. Your choices will largely determine where you end up in life. They will even influence what luck you find, and how you handle those opportunities. 2,500 years ago, Greek philosopher Heraclitus nailed it in three words: Character is destiny.

Volunteer

Get into the practice of volunteering for assignments. What you will notice is that some projects and initiatives attract everyone: they are exciting and seem to have the word promotion stamped all over them. Others look less interesting and some seem so hard that nobody wants them.

It would be nice if you could get all the best opportunities, but at the start of any new stage of your career you will find that hard. So instead, why not try a different tactic: put your hand up for the dull projects, and be the person who makes them interesting, and volunteer for the toughest assignments, and be the one who delivers them anyway. That is a reputation you want; and one that will leave your bosses keen to trust you with the biggest and best assignments in the future.

In the modern workplace, you will find yourself doing a series of projects. Your reputation will be built largely by the results of those projects. If you spend time waiting for the perfect opportunity, you will miss too many chances and look dilatory. There is no perfect opportunity. It is far better to volunteer for the opportunities that come and to transform them into brilliant projects that showcase your enthusiasm, intelligence, hard work, and creativity.

Ownership

The second aspect of responsibility is the attitude you take when a responsibility has been placed on you. Once you have accepted a challenge – whether you grasped it or were given it – there is no value in being anything other than one hundred per cent positive about it. No one likes a whiner. No amount of grumbling will make you less accountable or make your project more attractive.

What will help is taking full ownership and becoming enthusiastic. Not only will this attitude be more motivating for you, but it will be the only way to motivate those around you to do their best work. As a basis for negotiating the resources you need, to make your project succeed, being positive will beat the alternative hands down.

So adopt a simple mantra: ‘If it’s to be, it’s down to me.’

Understand your priorities

There is little value in taking responsibility for the wrong things; for things that don’t matter. So at all levels, you need to understand the priorities of your organisation, your bosses, and the role you play in your organisation.

This is important at two levels. First, it will help you to select the opportunities that might have the biggest impact. Often these initiatives don’t appear attractive, so you will get an edge by volunteering for what seems like less exciting work to your peers, yet turns out to be a great career opportunity in the longer term.

Second, once you have a new role, get to understand what matters most about it. Speak with senior people about what they hope and want, and what will make a difference to them.

To help you to understand priorities, there are three questions to ask people – and yourself: why, what, and how. Asking ‘why’ will help you understand the reasons and purpose behind what you are doing. This is crucially important in making the big decisions about what you are going to do, and how you will do it.

When you understand why, next ask ‘what?’ Find out the aim or the goal of the assignment you have taken on. In particular, if you know what success looks like, in the eyes of the people who will evaluate your work, then it will be far easier to deliver it for them.

The third question is ‘how?’ Before you get too focused on the detail of how, start with the big questions that will matter to your bosses: how much, how good, how long, how expensive. Usually the details of how your bosses will assess your work will be based on how much and what you deliver (the scope), how good it is (the quality), how long you take to deliver it (the schedule), and how much cash and resources you need to deploy (the budget).

Only once you have got these three elements clear can you start looking at the detailed how and what questions: the pragmatics rather than the priorities. These will be about putting together a specification for what you will do, and a plan for how you will do it.

Focus on what’s important

Clearly, taking responsibility is about focusing on what is important, but it is all too easy to be seduced instead by what is urgent. Urgency implies time pressure, while importance is all about consequences. The problem with constantly responding only to what is urgent is the feeling of busyness, without creating valuable results.

You will see around you plenty of people who fall into this busyness trap. They will feel as if they deserve recognition for their hard work and aggrieved when they don’t receive it. But in truth, by focusing too much on what is urgent, and therefore not enough on what is important, they are delivering relatively little of value to their organisation.

This is not about avoiding urgent matters. Sometimes, they are important. It is about recognising your tendency to respond with a knee-jerk reaction to the pressure of the urgent, without thinking through what effort to put in, or whether there is a suitable alternative. The most successful people in any organisation are those who spend most of their time working on important things, before they become urgent. The essential skill here is planning, which we shall return to in the section on productivity.

Before moving on though, we must take a look at three lapses of responsibility that can kill your productivity: distraction, displacement, and procrastination. Distraction can happen easily and can waste anything from seconds to hours of your time. The strongest approach is always to remove sources of distraction as much as possible. So, for example, when you are working on a report, close your email software and web browser.

Displacement is finding something else to do, which you convince yourself is valuable, as an alternative to doing what most needs to be done. Displacement activities typically take up more time than distraction, and are more satisfying, because you feel productive. But frequently, this is just lower-value busy-work.

Finally, procrastination is putting something off. Usually it is wholly purposeless: you put something off for no good reason, with no benefit. The sort of things we put off are usually important but difficult. We don’t want to do them, even though we know how important they are.

PEP: Passion, Energy and Poise

If the word ‘pep’ connotes vitality and high spirits, we can also think of it as an acronym: Passion, Energy, and Poise. If this is how you come across, it will have two big benefits for your career. First, people find this kind of personality highly attractive. It creates a positive personal impact that is perceived as charisma. So it draws people to you. This makes it easier for you to get things done – because people want to help – and to influence other people’s thinking – because we accept suggestions from people we like.

But perhaps more important still is the impact a positive attitude will have on your own productivity, and on how much you enjoy your work. We create our reality for ourselves, and whether you want to do something or not, approaching it with enthusiasm and pep will make it more fun and less arduous.

There is an old saying: ‘Fake it until you make it.’ This is often seen as a little deceitful, but you should not read it as a suggestion that you lie about who you are. Instead, adopt a variation on the formula: ‘Fake it until it becomes habit.’ What we know is that if you constantly repeat a set of actions at every opportunity, the pattern will eventually become a habit, and the habits will start to become a part of who you are.

If you make it a deliberate practice to bring passion, energy, and poise to everything you do – the dull, the worthy, and the distasteful just as much as the exciting, the fun, and the pleasurable – then that will start to become part of the person you are.

Manage your mental and emotional state

Of course, you won’t always be super-enthusiastic about what you need to do. There will be days when you are just out of sorts, or you will get assignments that scare or bore you. The most valuable skill is to be able to manage your mental and emotional response to these things.

Three techniques can get you out of an emotional hole, whether you are nervous about a meeting, reluctant to take on a job, or angry about a mistake that someone else has made. Let’s call them the ‘Triangle of Control’. They are each about changing the way your mind represents what is going on.

See the end game

One of the most motivating things is a sense of ‘knowing what something is for’ – its meaning. After all, the question ‘why?’ comes into our heads whenever we are asked to do something. If there is no satisfactory reason, we may do it out of duty, but we won’t feel motivated. So, whatever assignment you take on, always look for the ‘because’. Try to see how this assignment can benefit you in the long term, even if the short-term prospect is hard, unpleasant work, for little obvious reward.

To make this more effective, you need to have an end game, an ambition, a goal. There is a lot written about the power of goal setting and whether it can really help you achieve what you want. Whether it can or not (and the evidence does seem to support a degree of positive correlation), goals can certainly be motivating. Knowing what you want means you know why you are doing things and see adversity, setbacks and unpleasant assignments as a temporary bump on the road to success.

Look for the flow

Do you know what is the easiest way to motivate anyone to do anything? It’s simple. Just ask them to do something they will enjoy. One of the most valuable research findings builds on an experience everyone has had. When you get totally engrossed in something, you barely notice the time, the temperature, the discomforts. Your whole attention is focused and for that time, there is nothing else you want in the world. You are totally content.

This is called a ‘flow state’, and when you give yourself over to doing something with all your concentration, working at the limit of your capacity, then you easily slip into a flow state. You don’t have time to be bored or anxious: you are at your peak of performance. Here, you not only enjoy your work, but learn effectively and feel a sense of accomplishment at the end. So push yourself to focus, and find you ‘powerhouse peak’.

Be organised

Wherever you can, don’t rely on your memory or your inventiveness, if you can create simple systems instead. Systems are an investment that will free you up from the mundane aspects of your work, giving you more headspace to be creative about the complex and novel parts.

Create a workspace that is well-organised and tidy. Set aside or file anything that you will not need frequently, and put the things you use most often close to hand. Better still, create specific place for everything and use labelling to ensure you can quickly find things when you need them.

Plan ahead

The most productive people plan ahead, so they know how they are going to fit in the most important things, and so they can get started straight away, because they know the answer to ‘What’s next?’ What constitutes long-range planning for you? For some, it is quarterly, and they create an outline plan three months at a time. For others, one month is right. Whichever it is for you, use a blank calendar sheet to block out days when you will focus on specific assignments of achievements.

Also keep a running list of all the ideas you have for things you could do. Don’t think of this as a ‘to do’ list, because that suggests you must do everything – and that would hardly be prioritising. Think of it as a ‘could do’ list, so you don’t have to worry about remembering every request or idea.

At the end of each week, take your long-term plan and your ‘could do’ list, and decide what your priorities are for the next week. Set aside specific slots (from a couple of hours to a whole day) to make big progress on important things. Leave plenty of time between them to deal with the reactive things that will almost certainly crop up, but that you cannot predict with precision.

Each evening, take ten minutes to review your day, look at your weekly plan, and anything new on your ‘could do’ list; and make a plan for tomorrow. Start with how much time you are likely to have (allowing for typical interruptions, planned events, and dealing with the day-to-day stuff). Then decide what would be the most valuable achievements to make in the remaining time.

Split those achievements up into specific tasks and estimate how long each will take. Allow some extra time for slips, snags, and snafus. When you have done this, schedule each activity into tomorrow, with gaps for contingency, breaks, and reacting to the events of your day.

Perform

One thing that many of us like to pretend we can avoid, if we are smart, is hard work. You cannot: not if you want to get stuff done. But no one can sustain hard work continuously for long periods without a drop-off in their effectiveness and efficiency. So an important part of productivity is taking breaks. This is especially so if your work environment is less well-suited to productivity: air conditioning, fluorescent lights, a stationary, seated position, noise, and distraction.

Reset your effectiveness switch with short breaks in which you turn off, move around, get a drink of water, and ideally get some fresh air and daylight. Hourly breaks (or every 90 minutes at the most) will keep you working more effectively, and will create a net gain rather than loss in productivity.

Another important spur to productivity (and motivation) is setting yourself a series of achievement points – called milestones. One of the things that leaves people most satisfied with their work, and ready for more, is the sense of achievement when something is done. Think about how frustrating you find it when you seem to have got nothing done. So divide your work up into chunks and, before starting each one, get a clear idea of what it will achieve and how you will know it is finished. Recent research has shown that people with more mini-achievements in their day are motivated and happy in their work.

Preparation and postparation

How often have you turned up to a meeting at the last moment and flicked through the papers during the first section of the meeting? That’s no way to get the best from the meeting, nor to portray yourself as responsible, engaged, and insightful.

And have you ever given a presentation having prepared it at last minute and read it through once while waiting to be called in? How good would your performance be, as a percentage of what you are capable of? If it is worth your time to do it, then it is worth your time to prepare, so you can do it well, and harvest the benefit that the opportunity offers you. When you plan your month, week, or day, put preparation time into your plan.

And also put in ‘postparation’ time. This is the time you give to following up on something, reflecting on what you have learned, and completing the tasks you set. Every meeting, every presentation, every report or proposal you write, every negotiation you conduct needs postparation. Because postparation isn’t a word (yet), we don’t pay it enough attention, and we don’t do it enough. This is like cooking a great meal and letting it go cold: it is a waste of a good chunk of the time you invested in the performance phase.

Long-term resilience

Your granny knew the secret to long-term resilience: the mental, emotional and physical wellbeing that allows you to handle all the hardships that life throws at you. We can sum it up in six words: good rest, good fuel, good energy.

Immediate resilience

In your workplace, you can reduce the amount of stress you feel under, and therefore increase your resilience to exceptional stress with one approach: control. The more control you feel you have over your workload and the events that occur, the less you will feel stressed by them. This is why being organised, planning, and preparing are so important: they give you a sense of being in control.

Do whatever you can to appropriately exert control. Take control of your schedule, set up your workspace the way you like it, choose how you respond to requests for help or assignments of work.

Reactive resilience

When something catches you unawares, it is easy to slip into reactive mode and respond in a knee-jerk manner. This may be a snap decision, a loss of temper, or a stress response that will hobble your ability to think clearly. Your self-control will be gone and a valuable part of your reputation can quickly follow.

The solution is a simple five-step process for staying calm and rational in the face of an unexpected event, unwelcome comment, or difficult question. This is the ‘SCOPE Process’.

Remedial resilience

‘Okay’, you say, ‘but what if I’ve already got myself a little down and depressed, and I am not thinking straight?’ There are two easy ways to build back your resilience. Both are highly effective on their own, take little time, and work fabulously well together.

Respect

The essence of assertiveness is respect. Let’s compare assertive behaviour with the three alternatives, aggression, passivity, and passive-aggression.

Assertive behaviour

Assertiveness, however, strikes the balance. When you assert yourself properly, you show respect for the other person and maintain equal respect for yourself. You are confident in your own abilities, yet willing to ask for help if you need it. You are happy to celebrate others’ successes, and to take the credit graciously for your own contribution. You will say what you think and feel openly, offering sincere praise, and honest feedback, while being open to hearing the same from others.

Know your outcome … and defend it

If you want to follow your priorities, you will at times need to say no to other calls on your time an attention. Saying no is tricky: it feels negative and mean-spirited. And getting on certainly does not mean constantly turning down requests for help or assignments from your boss. But once you commit to an important assignment, you need to be aware of both how important it is and what your capacity is.

If someone asks you for a small favour … fine. But if that favour could compromise your ability to do something far more important, then no is not just okay: it is necessary. In this case it is not just ‘no’: it is a ‘NO’ a ‘Noble Objection’. A Noble Objection is when you say no for good reasons, and when you do it courteously and with respect.

The fundamental skillset

Calvin Coolidge said (in a slightly different form) that nobody ever listened themselves out of a job. The skill of talking is powerful, but has a double-edged blade. Listening is a far superior skill, and part of the triple-skillset. Cultivate your ability to:

1. Ask good questions. Answering questions is often easier than finding the right question to ask. When being assertive, it is a great way to test and challenge respectfully.
2. Listen carefully. Often we respond to what we thought someone was going to say, before they started speaking. Instead of listening to them, we plan our response and then … Pow! It’s the wrong response.
3. Get comfortable with silence. Frequently it is the person who is most comfortable with silence who can gain the upper hand in any argument. Silence is respectful. It is a time to think and hone your response. And it invites the other person to say more, and thereby give you more information. Silence is a gift to the person who is speaking and they will return it by giving you a superior understanding of how they think.

Handling tricky situations

From time to time, you’ll need to deal with tricky situations and remain assertive (as opposed to becoming aggressive or passive). Here are tips for three typical examples.

20 things to do differently (unless you are already doing them)

1. Volunteer for projects that other people don’t want, and make them a conspicuous success. Click here to review.
2. Take complete responsibility for whatever you are assigned to and consider it your job to make it happen. By all means get advice and help, but own your choices, own up to your mistakes, and take the credit with humility. Click here to review.
3. Before you start anything, understand the priorities – why is this assignment important, and what is important about how to get this assignment right? Click here to review.
4. Spend your time on the important things and don’t allow yourself to be side-tracked by the trivial and the things that are merely urgent. Click here to review.
5. Always carry yourself with PEP: Passion, Energy, and Poise. Click here to review.
6. Use the triangle of control to manage your mental and emotional state, by using your self-talk, visualising success, and adopting posture and gestures of confidence and PEP. Click here to review.
7. Know what your goals are and look for how each opportunity can take you closer to achieving them. Click here to review.
8. Throw yourself into every task with a determination to do it as well as you possibly can. Click here to review.
9. Get yourself organised by putting away things you rarely use, making regularly-used items super-handy and having a place for everything. Click here to review.
10. Plan ahead on a daily, weekly and longer-term scale, so you know what you are going to do and how you are going to achieve your priorities. Click here to review.
11. Set mini-milestones and take breaks to allow yourself to be motivated and energised as you work hard. Click here to review.
12. Create time to prepare and postpare for important set piece activity. Click here to review.
13. Take care of yourself and your long-term resilience with good rest, good fuel, and good energy through a sensible routine for your sleeping, healthy eating, and regular exercise. Click here to review.
14. Find ways that you can feel more in control in your workplace. Click here to review.
15. Use the SCOPE process to deal with the unexpected: Stop, Clarify, Options, Proceed, Evaluate. Click here to review.
16. When you are feeling down, adopt an optimistic mind set, and make time each day to reflect on the things that you have to be grateful for. Click here to review.
17. Respect is at the heart of assertiveness, so respect yourself and respect the people around you, and treat everyone with respect. Click here to review.
18. When the right thing to do is to say no, then say NO: make a Noble Objection, clearly and politely. Click here to review.
19. Hone your talent for asking good questions, listening to the answers, and offering the gift of silence. Use your silence to learn. Click here to review.
20. Prepare for tricky situations and keep the principles of respect, listening, curiosity and courtesy at the front of your mind. Click here to review.