It's now time to examine the philosophical underpinnings of personal productivity. In this chapter, you get a chance to review the major qualities that most people, both amateur and professional, believe are essential to achieving peak personal productivity.
Before getting into the specific beliefs outlined in this chapter, you may want to take a moment to see how you do with the following true or false statements. Responding to these statements can give you a rough idea of your current viewpoint on what it takes to be productive. So, true or false,
I must be an organized person if you want to become a productive one.
Clutter in my physical environment always makes it harder for me to be productive.
The ability to effectively prioritize my obligations is one of the most important ingredients of organization.
Only workers who know how to manage their time effectively are productive.
Effective planning is a vital component of personal productivity.
The ability to multitask (deal with more than one task at a time) is essential to reaching peak personal productivity.
Maintaining flexibility and remaining resilient are key qualities of a highly productive worker.
Creating and adhering to a workflow diagram is a major factor in reaching peak personal productivity.
Taking the time to set weekly/monthly objectives and goals for yourself is a major factor in maintaining peak personal productivity.
Doing a regular (weekly/monthly) review to ascertain how close you've come to realizing the objectives and goals you've set is a vital part of maintaining peak personal productivity.
So how did you do? How many of these ten statements do you currently think are true and how many do you think are false? If you really, truly believe all ten to be true, then you may have a lot of work ahead in order to reach your peak personal productivity if you don't already possess the qualities being described. Of course, if you're already a highly organized, clutter-free person to whom planning and multitasking come naturally, you may only need a few pointers with using Outlook.
Tip
Come back and retake the quiz after you've had a chance to peruse the various sections in the rest of the chapter. Then, compare your original answers with the answers you give after exploring the debate — and there really is a debate! — on the relative importance of organization, time management, lack of clutter, solid planning, stated objectives and goals, and ongoing review in becoming and remaining highly productive. Regardless of whether you change any of your answers, taking the time to keep track of your views will be very valuable when you move on to translating these philosophical beliefs into practices involving Outlook.
Organization is one of the most used terms in the discussion on personal productivity. Because of that, it's very important to be very clear on its meaning. For the purposes of this book, organization usually refers to the following qualities:
Orderliness: The precise arrangement used in presenting collections of information or objects. This arrangement very often entails grouping the information or objects into some sort of hierarchical categories.
Tidiness: The relative neatness exhibited by the arrangement applied to like objects.
Method: The practice that determines the order in which the information or objects are arranged. (Note that the method applied to create the relative neatness may not be readily apparent.)
Regulations: The rules that determine the order by which the information or objects are arranged.
Note that although organization in the context of productivity entails a logical and precise grouping and ordering of the information or objects you work with, the method followed in creating this order does not necessarily ensure greater ease of use.
For example, compare the system of organizing books in your local library with that followed by your neighborhood bookstore. The library organizes its book collections using a version of the famous Dewey Decimal System that categorizes them into a series of classes, divisions, and sections that determine a book's decimal number. And although no one would deny this system is highly logical and precise, outside of people trained in Library Science, the system makes it very difficult for the average person to find what he or she is looking for.
Contrast this to the much more laid-back organizational system used by your local bookstore. In place of the highly complex (scientific?) system of classes, divisions, and sections, most bookstores simply set up broad book categories (fiction, nonfiction, history, sci-fi/fantasy, children's, and so on) and then alphabetize by author the books that fall within a given category. For many people, finding a particular title in a bookstore is much simpler than at the library, provided they can correctly determine the category in which the sought-for title falls and know the name of its primary author.
If, however, you can't figure out the category into which the bookstore help has placed the title you're looking for or don't remember who wrote it, the bookstore's organizational system is no more helpful and transparent than the library's convoluted Dewey Decimal System. As a result, you'll be relying on the bookstore's information desk or kiosk to locate the book just as much as you'd rely upon your library's electronic card catalog.
Note
All this library/bookstore catalog talk brings up an important fact about organization, namely:
One person's organization can be another person's chaos.
This means that although most everybody agrees that being organized is a key ingredient in being highly productive, few necessarily agree on what actually constitutes "being organized."
For example, the top-down, strictly hierarchical method that Microsoft Windows uses to organize your computer's electronic files may not represent a type of organizational system that you readily understand and are therefore comfortable with. In place of such a rigid, top-down structure, you may naturally favor a more horizontal system that doesn't rely so heavily upon nested sublevels and therefore displays more file information at one time.
Tip
Judging from the way that so many Windows users tend to rely on their My Documents folder almost exclusively, stuffing it full of all different types of work files that would be much better off stored in specialized subfolders, lots of people don't find the Windows file hierarchy to be the most natural file organizational method. If you're one of these computer users, I urge you to become more comfortable with the system by finding out how to make appropriate use of it. For a solid introduction to this topic, check out Andy Rathbone's Windows XP For Dummies, 2nd Edition or Windows Vista For Dummies (both from Wiley Publishing, Inc.).
Clutter is often portrayed as the companion of disorder. The idea that clutter is the equivalent of chaos is so widespread that people who are "messy" naturally think of themselves as disorganized.
And, of course, you probably know situations where this is definitely the case. No one can deny the disorganization that comes about when someone's a pack rat who collects and collects without ever throwing anything away until he no longer has any idea of what he really has in his collections of stuff and/or he can no longer make use of any particular item without great difficulty.
This extreme is, however, a far cry from the person whose desk contains more than one very strategically placed stack of papers and folders. In such a case, as Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman point out in their book, A Perfect Mess The Hidden Benefits of Disorder — How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place, (published by Little, Brown and Company) "Mess isn't necessarily an absence of order." Rather, it may simply represent an order that isn't readily apparent to people who played no part in its creation.
In the case of a stack of papers on a desk, immediate usage is what most often determines the underlying order. In practice, this means that the really important papers that you need over and over again remain on top (where you can get to them easily) and the less important (and therefore less used) papers naturally go to the bottom.
It often takes the person who regularly uses the seemingly random pile of papers no time at all to locate a highly desired item in the stack. Therefore, what you and I would otherwise perceive as "clutter" really doesn't have the negative impact usually associated with a mess — at least not for that person. The important thing to keep in mind is that, because the order of the stack remains implicit and not readily apparent to anyone else, its "organization" is of very limited value.
Note
The relative merit of a particular method of organization is a function not only of how well it arranges the items in a collection but also of how well understood and accepted the underlying regulations that produce its orderliness are. For a system of organization to aid in producing peak personal productivity, therefore, it must not only be one that you understand and can keep up with but one that works for your co-workers and, in some cases, clients as well.
The question remains whether or not messy automatically inhibits peak productivity. The answer to this question is more subtle that you might first guess.
You need to consider a couple of countermanding factors when attempting to answer this question:
Messiness curbs productivity when your disorder continually forces you to waste time trying to find the things you need to get your work done.
Organization curbs productivity when tidying and maintaining order occupies so much of your time that you can't make effective use of the resulting orderliness to get your work done.
Tip
This ongoing struggle between taking the time to organize your environment and letting it go for a while is fairly easily resolved. Simply take note of which activity is hogging more of your valuable time. If you find yourself continually wasting time searching for items that should be easily located, it's well worth the time it takes to put them in order so that they're at your fingertips next time you need them. If, however, you find yourself fussing over the losing battle of maintaining precise order over your papers, files, and whatnot to the extent that much of your workday is being eaten up playing file clerk, it's clearly time to back off and let some clutter build up (at least, until the disorder once again starts robbing you of more of your time).
The promise of getting more time in the day to get all your work done is an intriguing one. Time efficiency experts continually promise you "more time" through the attainment of greater efficiency using, of course, their tried-and-true system of time management.
At first glance, this sounds just great. However, have you ever wondered what would happen should you successfully use one of the time-management systems to get everything done and thereby save time in your workday? Wouldn't you then just end up filling all that newly freed time with more work?
This begs the question, "What's the real purpose of time management?" If it's just to make you more efficient so that you can effectively take on and do more work, then it seems like it can't do much to help reduce stress and promote greater work/life balance. Therefore, be very careful not to approach personal productivity merely as increased work efficiency. Simply being more efficient can end up making only the boss happy if you're still as stressed out as before and can't use this efficiency to strike a better balance between your professional and personal lives.
To me, time management isn't a question of attaining greater efficiency in the sense of getting more done in less time. Rather, it's primarily a question of finding good ways to avoid the "time traps" you tend to fall into and which render you less effective, injecting additional stress into your workday.
Note
By avoiding the time traps you're prone to, you become a freer and more capable worker in the sense of being able to make smarter choices regarding what to do with the time you do have. This reduces your stress while at the same time boosting your self-confidence and enhancing your overall happiness and sense of well-being (a key component for achieving work/life balance).
Simply put, a time trap is any situation that takes you away from the primary task that you've identified at the time as your top priority. Most, but not all, time traps are unplanned, and their durations are therefore not easily controlled. Many time traps reoccur, even when they're spontaneous and you can't predict the exact timing of their occurrence. For example, you may have a co-worker who likes to drop in on you to discuss work assignments and office politics with some frequency, although you never know for certain when to expect his visit.
Time management experts are almost universal in their condemnation of time traps as a waste of precious work time. And I have to agree that eliminating the bulk of your time traps is essential to reclaiming the time you need in order to be truly productive. Perhaps, the worst feature of time traps is that even when they're of limited duration, you still have to recover from their interruptions by finding your previous place and reengaging fully with the activity that was interrupted.
Note
It's also worth noting that many time management experts consider disorganization to be a colossal time trap (and there, I also have to agree). As a result, they see cleaning up your messes and getting your work environment in top order as an important first step in effectively managing your work time.
Typical time traps include
Answering unscheduled telephone calls
Reading and/or responding to non-priority e-mail message as soon as your computer notifies you of their arrival
Taking part in unplanned visits from co-workers (other than your boss, in which case you really have no choice)
Researching extraneous information on the Web
Attending to personal appointments and other personal business
Wasting time searching for the information you need to complete assigned tasks on time because you did not maintain sufficient order in your work environment
Tip
The best way to deal with a time trap is to avoid falling into it altogether. If you find you've fallen into a particular time trap, the next best thing is to pull yourself out of the trap before it ends up wasting significant amounts of your work time and jeopardizing your established schedule.
Of course, you can call a halt to a phone call, end a co-worker's drop-in visit, or suspend work on an e-mail response fairly readily. However, it's not quite so easy to reverse the effects of continued procrastination on a project, make up for a significant lack of planning, or fill in missing and much needed background information (not to mention organize your entire work area).
Despite this fact, provided that you become aware that you've gotten yourself into another time trap, you can always do something to mitigate it before you dig yourself in too deep. And the sooner you become aware, the sooner you can get to work reversing its effects and the less time you'll end up wasting and getting further behind the eight ball.
In addition to avoiding time traps, good time management is also the product of effective ad hoc or off-the-cuff prioritizing of your work agenda (what I like to call moment-by-moment management). Mastering this skill requires you to identify the paramount needs of the moment as well as to understand the effects that responding to those needs have on the rest of your obligations.
Note that moment-by-moment management, although characterized by the ability to remain flexible so you can continue to respond resourcefully to the demands at hand, rests securely on a foundation of extensive organization, good communication, and effective planning. Without this solid underpinning, instead of formulating effective responses to the exigencies of the moment, you too often end up simply winging it while flying blind (a potentially fatal combination).
Note
Being able to adapt effectively to changing conditions is especially important in being successful in today's fast-paced business world. However, the most significant benefit of moment-to-moment management is the capacity to remain relaxed and unstressed in the face of constant change. This relative composure comes out of a greater sense of control and enhanced self-confidence that results from effectively dealing with shifting priorities. (See "Flowing Like Clouds and Water" later in this chapter, for more on the themes of adaptability and self-assurance.)
Multitasking is currently all the rage, especially with younger workers who grew up having to deal with a million different distractions — TV, Internet, and cell phones, to name a few — competing for their attention. As a result, some people now actually believe that they can get more work done by dividing their attention among more than one task. (Typing an e-mail response or surfing the Web while talking to a co-worker or client on the phone is a classic example.)
Of course, as anyone who's had a fender bender while talking on his or her cell phone will tell you, how well you can divide your attention between tasks at hand is open to considerable question. The fact is the efficacy of multitasking continues to be found seriously wanting (so much so, in the case of cell phone operation and driving, that some states have banned even hands-free versions of it).
The biggest pitfall with multitasking is that, although you think you're concentrating equally on all the tasks you're undertaking at the same time, you're not. In fact, your brain is actually cheating by going back and forth, giving one and then the other the attention it requires. Like a magician who tricks you with sleight of hand, your brain tricks you with a sleight of attention. This means that you may be paying attention to only one thing at hand at the expense of the others you're undertaking.
Tip
Rather than trying to multitask your way to peak productivity, you're much better off doing it by giving your full and undivided attention to just the task at hand. That way you're much more likely to do it right the first time. Not only are you able to do a more thorough job, but you also don't run the risk of losing valuable time redoing some task that you didn't complete or get right the first time.
Setting realistic goals and achievable objectives is another important element in being able to attain and maintain peak personal productivity. To understand their importance in creating and sustaining peak productivity, you to need be clear about the difference between goals and objectives, as well as how they buffer each other.
In short, a goal describes the target, end point, or overarching purpose that you have in mind in undertaking a new activity. And objectives describe the steps, levels, or stages that you need to reach as a natural part of achieving your goal. Objectives then are subsets of a particular goal. Moreover, objectives are normally set up so they're measurable in some manner that you can use to know when you have achieved them. (This is not usually the case with goals.)
For example, say your goal is to speak Spanish at a basic conversational level. To achieve this goal, you take up some sort of fundamental Spanish course. And this course of study is in all probability divided into groups of related lessons (referred to as units), each of which has its own objective (such as knowing how to identify and correctly use Spanish nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs, as well as how to use appropriate verb forms).
The lesson quizzes and unit tests that you take as you go through and complete the course measure how well you've met your individual objectives. After completing the entire course, you can then evaluate how close you've come to your initial goal — being able to speak Spanish at a basic conversational level — when you get the opportunity to speak with native Spanish speakers.
When it comes to the goal of achieving a better balance between your professional and personal lives, your objective may be to reach your peak personal productivity. (This is something that's clearly measurable by comparing the amount of work you were able to get done before and after taking the steps specifically designed to increase productivity).
Note
Because attaining peak personal productivity is such a substantial objective, it's probably best to break it up into smaller, more manageable objectives. These would include objectives such as getting your work environment organized, efficiently managing your workday, mastering effective project planning, and setting realistic work goals and objectives that you review and fine-tune as needed. Never one to ignore my own good advice, I'll be breaking larger objectives into more manageable pieces throughout this book.
Many personal productivity systems consider setting work goals to be an integral part of personal productivity. As the delightful and insightful book, Does this Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?: An Easy Plan for Losing Weight and Living More by Peter Walsh (published by The Free Press), states so well:
"If your goals aren't clear and your thinking isn't focused, you can't break the habits that stand in your way."
Work goals are so important because, in taking the time to set them, you're in essence evaluating your current performance and saying that it's time to make some sort of change to it. Goals, then, often act as great motivators. Because they help you clarify what's not working or what needs to work better, they offer incentives that help you overcome the inertia of firmly established work habits that, in the vernacular of Dr. Phil, "may not be working so well for you."
Note
Keep in mind that work goals can be both short- and long-term. Short-term goals are normally those that you expect to realize within the current business quarter or sooner. Long-term goals are normally those that you expect to realize somewhere within the current six months or year.
As part of setting your short- and long-term works goals, you naturally have to consider the steps you need to take to bring about their realization. This means laying down the objectives that you need to meet.
When considering the objectives that you feel need to be met, you have to take into account their quantity as well as their relationship to one another. So ask yourself, are the objectives sequential in the sense that you must meet one objective in the sequence before you can work on another? The easiest way to make sure of this is to approach objectives as the building blocks you deem essential to reach your goal. That way, you can ascertain not only how many are required, but also how they should be sequenced.
The final thing to consider when developing your objectives is how you will go about determining when the objectives are met. By having definite ways to measure when you've attained a particular objective, you have an inkling that the objective is both an achievable one as well as some idea of how to go about achieving it.
Tip
When determining the ways you'll be able to measure the achievement of a particular objective, simply fill in the phrase, "As a result of meeting this objective, I'll be able to ..." The things you fill in may consist of simple statements such as "find all needed client files" or "leave the office at the close of business," as well as quantifiable statements such as "complete my weekly reports by the close of business each Thursday" or "keep my e-mail Inbox empty on a daily basis."
Many personal productivity systems call for regular review of how well you've met the objectives you've established for yourself. Taking the time for such progress reviews lets you know how close or far you are from meeting your present goals.
Note
Keep in mind that reviews should also help keep you on target and motivated to reach your goals. Therefore, whenever you do a review, keep it positive. Concentrate first on the progress you've made toward meeting particular objectives before considering what steps you still need to take to complete them.
When doing such reviews, you may want to consider doing a weekly review of the objectives you're working on as part of your short-term goals and a monthly review of the objectives you're working on as part of a long-term goal.
Tip
Keep these reviews short and to the point. Simply jot down your overall estimation of your progress, such as 50 percent complete. (Outlook Notes is a perfect way to do this — see Chapter 13 for details.) Then, jot down the tasks that you still need to complete in order to fully meet the objective. (Outlook Tasks is the place to do this — see Chapter 12 for details.)
In Japanese Zen Buddhism, novice monks are called unsui, which means "clouds and water." The idea here is that clouds and water share the same essence. Clouds form from evaporated water and, in turn, produce rain water when the right weather conditions prevail. In this way, young monks learn to how to remain fluid and assume the proper form of conduct in the Zen monastery according to the prevailing conditions.
Applied to personal productivity, the notion of remaining fluid at all times so that you can adapt quickly and successfully to changing business conditions is becoming ever more important. In the increasingly fast-paced modern workplace, it's often not sufficient to be merely well organized and a real authority on time management to maintain peak personal productivity. You also have to be able to think on your feet so that you can recognize when shifting conditions mandate a change in direction so that you can make the necessary corrections in your planning and scheduling in a timely manner.
Note
Keep in mind that the ability to recognize early on in the game when course corrections are called for is a mark of truly productive worker. This capacity enables you to modify the means by which you reach your goal and thereby saves loads of time that would otherwise be spent pursuing limited or dead-end objectives.
In addition to remaining receptive to changes in prevailing business conditions, increased personal productivity also depends heavily upon giving yourself completely over to the tasks at hand.
In Taoist philosophy, you find a similar concept in the Chinese phrase, wei wuwei. Although wei wuwei literally means "accomplishing without doing," it actually describes a policy of conducting your affairs without a sense of accomplishment. In other words, you give yourself over so totally to what you're doing that your focus remains at all times on the task at hand without any concern for or concentration on the desired end result. By losing yourself in the task, you avoid wasting time and energy judging your progress or fixating on your ultimate success or failure.
Note
The idea here is that you do a much more thorough and efficient job when your attention resides completely on what you're doing. It does not mean, however, that you don't ever do any planning or assessing. You plan before you undertake a task and assess after you've completed it. Nonetheless, once you undertake a task, you don't undermine it by second-guessing your initial planning or evaluating your progress.
The primary goal of all the productivity methods I've outlined in this chapter (all the way from organization to doing your tasks wholeheartedly) is really the same. Simply put, their purpose is just to enable you to become the most fulfilled person you can be.
Although this book talks a lot about peak performance, efficiency, effectiveness, and so on, you mustn't lose sight of the true prize, which isn't being employee of the month for the next 20 years. The real prize is being the happiest, most selfassured person you can be whether you're hard at work or relaxing at home.
In this view, personal productivity is a secondary issue, a by-product, if you will, of becoming a truly satisfied person. And in order to be truly satisfied, you need to feel as though you're leading a genuinely balanced life, one that honors all your roles in life, both as a worker and as a person with wider interests.
The great thing that adopting productivity methods such as the ones outlined in this chapter can bring you is greater self-assurance and fulfillment in your role as a worker. And if they also can help get you home on time and reduce any lingering angst about the office, then they're also enhancing the balance between your professional and personal lives. This is what I call a win-win situation, indeed.