Have You Done a Time Audit?

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Where did the time go?

Do you regularly feel like the day got away from you. That long to do list has very little marked off. Even more importantly, have you felt that all your time was spent on unimportant items, leaving the task you truly cared about undone? Perhaps there just isn’t enough time in the day to get things done. Or is there?

In a recent NPR article, psychotherapist Niro Feliciano revealed that people are largely unaware of how they spend their days. We blindly do things of low value while neglecting the more important items. It began for her with a personal epiphany about her own choices. As the article writers share:

“I remember sitting in my office. I had done eight sessions, several with adolescents. And I said, ‘When was the last time I spent 45 minutes listening to one of my kids?'” she says.

She realized that how she wanted to spend her time and how she was really spending it “were very much misaligned,” she says. “I did not see enough of a reflection of things that brought me joy and contentment.”

Photo by Alexander Popadin on Pexels.com

To help herself and her clients make better choices, Feliciano encourages conducting a time audit. The process is simple, but it requires attention to details.

Make a list of the people and the activities that are the most important to you. It might be loved ones like your partner, your kids or your bestie, and hobbies like reading, working out or video-chatting with your long-distance friends. 

Then do a time inventory. Where is your time really going each day? Are the lists matching up? You might find that a lot of your day is spent on obligations, chores and time-sucking activities.

Then look for ways to make your lists reflect each other. Where can you carve out more space for your family? Or set aside a moment for reading?

Once this is done, the next task is to find ways to add in the high value items to your day. Feliciano took her own advice, as she shared with the writers.

To make more time, you’ll need to set some boundaries, Feliciano says. “What are you doing that makes you feel resentful, depleted, exhausted?” And what can you do to limit yourself from those activities?

Feliciano found that she was spending a lot of unnecessary time scrolling on social media — but that wasn’t on her list of priorities, so she cut back.

To learn more about time audits and how to use them to get more value out of your day, please read the rest of the NPR article.

Librarianship Beyond the Textbook

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I am excited to share wonderful news.

I have written a chapter for a new book on librarianship that came out this week. The book is titled, Librarianship Beyond the Textbook: A Practical Guide for Real-World Challenges, available for purchase through Bloomsbury Publishing. The book blurb describes it as follows:

Library and Information Undergraduate and Graduate Programs do an incredible job examining important methodology of librarianship today. However, any library school graduate will at multiple points in their career declare, “Well they didn’t teach me this in library school!” Whether it was taught or not, libraries are a multifaceted, constantly changing landscape. Public, academic, school, and special libraries of all sizes each have their own unique needs, but there are certain skills, techniques, and mindsets that benefit all library staff.

Librarianship Beyond the Textbook is different from others on the market in that it addresses topics that aren’t automatically or often associated with librarianship – topics that are otherwise overlooked, but are nonetheless inevitable, capturing those “Finally, some help with this!” moments – moments of both recognition and assistance. The goal of the book is to not only allow the reader to feel heard, but to address evergreen and overlooked topics.

Edited by Nay Keppler from Baltimore County Library, I am one of fifteen contributors. The topics are broad and applicable to any level of library worker. My chapter is called, Running Effective Meetings, where I provide best practices to ensure meetings are run smoothly and efficiently. Below is the full table of contents.

Introduction
Chapter 1: Historical Context and Legacy of Libraries and Racial Equity Shauntee Burns-Simpson and Nichelle M. Hayes
Chapter 2: The Simple and Courageous Pursuit of Growth Brianna Campbell
Chapter 3: Library Safety and Security Melissa Munn
Chapter 4: Beyond the Bookshelves: The Facilities Management Impact Kim Fuller
Chapter 5: Project Management Basics Wendy Tressler
Chapter 6: Running Effective Meetings Douglas Crane
Chapter 7: Burnout and Psychological Safety: Intertwined Challenges in Library Management Bobbi Newman
Chapter 8: Advocacy Skills to Enhance Library Support Tif Sutherland
Chapter 9: Interpersonal Skills and Office Politics: Building and Maintaining Positive Relationships with Colleagues Loida Garcia-Febo
Chapter 10: Beyond the Balance Sheet: Budgeting and Development Insights for Emerging Library Leaders Lauren Sands and Derek Lloyd
Chapter 11: From Navigators to Futurists: Librarians as Technology Leaders Angela Kent
Chapter 12: Managing Community Partnerships Audrey Barbakoff
Chapter 13: Supporting Marginalized Groups in Libraries: Questions, Reflections, and Future Directions Micaela Deogracias

If you are intrigued, purchase a copy today at the Bloomsbury website. You can also find it at your favorite online bookstore.

“Hot Sauce” Applause

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I’ve noticed a new pandemic sweeping the nation. Don’t worry, it is not necessary to break out those old facemasks from storage, nor hunt for a vaccine. This particular problem is one of energy, not biology. It is the trend towards “weak sauce” applause.

Watch carefully next time you attend an event or gala. When it is time to applaud a speaker, the results are often underwhelming. A “weak sauce” applause that has no flavor. Clapping that dies before the speaker has even taken the stage. It is one that reveals people are more interested in scrolling their phones or catching a quick snooze than acknowledging the person at the front of the room. “Weak sauce” applause lacks enthusiasm, turning any potential gourmet event into a bland fast-food combo.

At a recent Toastmasters Learning Institute, I gave a short keynote to raise awareness about the pandemic of “weak sauce” applause. To combat this worrying trend, I advocated for the audience to follow the lead of chef Emeril Lagasse and “kick it up a notch”. Let’s turn “weak sauce” into a “hot sauce” applause!

Photo by Dominik Gryzbon on Pexels.com

Why is this important? It has to do with the power of applause. We clap our hands for many reasons. Two big ones are to show respect for the speaker and to recognize the hard work it takes to stand at center stage. “Hot sauce” applause bring energy to a proceeding. It fires up both the crowd and the speaker. It adds spice to what could otherwise be a dreary dish.

Even more enticing, “hot sauce” applause makes any event more enjoyable. When fun enters the equation, learning becomes easier. Learning requires energy and “hot sauce” applause brings that in heaping dollops.

Therefore, I challenge you to put this into practice. The next time you are at an event, bring on the “hot sauce” applause. Clap loudly. Clap long. Give the speaker your full attention. Then watch the proceedings grow more exciting and more inviting as the fun kicks up several notches.

A dash of “hot sauce” applause brings excitement to any event.

Reframing: A Solution to Most Problems?

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Do you know someone who is always in crisis?

Many people live their lives worrying about the load of problems that besiege them. They bemoan their fate and wonder why fate dealt them so many difficulties. Even the most optimistic people can fall victim to this mode of thinking. If you enter this trap is there a way out?

According to Darius Foroux, there is a simple, yet powerful way to escape pessimistic thinking. In an article on his website titled The Reframing Theory: The Solution to 95% of Your Problems, Foroux shares how changing the appearance of perceived problems in your mind can lead to better outcomes. This steams from an understanding of how labels are applied.

You have a label for everything in your life.

  • You are disciplined or undisciplined.
  • Successful or unsuccessful.
  • Healthy or unhealthy.
  • Happy or not.

These are the mental labels we use in our minds. They sound like facts, but they’re not.

They’re interpretations. And interpretations can be changed.

Darius Foroux

So how can interpretations be changed? The answer is to reframe the issue. Instead of accepting the first impression of a situation, see if it can be viewed from a different perspective. Foroux suggests the following exercise:

Positive thinking asks you to pretend bad things are good.

Reframing asks something different. It asks you to find the most accurate and useful interpretation of a situation.

Not the most flattering one. The most functional one.

There’s a difference between lying to yourself and choosing a better lens.

As an example, Foroux envisions someone who feels undisciplined and is beating themselves up over it.

Old frame: I lack willpower. Something is wrong with me.

New frame: My goals aren’t aligned with who I actually am, what I actually want, or what my life actually allows right now.

The old frame offers no solutions other than to try harder.

The new frame provides a way to analysis one’s actions and recommit to the goals set. It might even show that the reason no action has been taken is that the goals have no value. Therefore, resetting the goals with ones that inspire and excite the mind will lead to effortless action.

To learn more about how to apply reframing to your life, please read the rest of the article.

Process Now – Decide Later

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There is a quiet tension in knowledge work. Throughout the day we are constantly getting new inputs, as emails, phone calls, and messages stack up. However, we also must spend time making decisions in order to move forward on our goals and projects. Focus too much on the first and we make little progress on important goals. Focus too much on the later and the stress of overflowing inboxes weighs heavy on our minds. Therefore, must we make a choice? Is one of these more important than the other?

In a post on his Substack page, GTD creator David Allen considered the apparent paradox that knowledge workers face between processing new input and making decisions on objectives. He ultimately finds they are not in conflict at all. That is because they occupy different spaces in workflow. To start with, Allen believes it is important to process new input when it first shows up.

When you put off this thinking for longer than a day (or two or three or more), the more mental effort it will take to reconstruct what that input was about and reduce or eliminate your backlog. Research on memory suggests that if something is more than seven days past, it’s extremely difficult to remember or recreate what happened, and what it’s about. Not a long time. but magnify that by as many unprocessed things you have. If you zero out your in-baskets daily, it’s not such a drain on your energy to get things clear. 

David Allen

Keep in mind that processing an item is not the same as making a final decision on it. While some two-minute rule items can be dispatched quickly, for more complicated projects there is an advantage to delaying a decision. In fact, letting it marinate until the deadline may be more productive in the long run.

There are times and situations in which it could be more productive to wait to engage with making a decision or acting on something until it would be critical if you don’t. This is particularly true when new information is likely to arrive that would change your call. …

On a more subtle and strategic level, it could mean waiting for the environment to shift before making a judgment call that would have lots of impact. 

Allen summarizes this approach in a simple phrase: Clarify fast, decide patiently. Do this and the tension will dissolve as you work with a mind like water.

I invite you to read the full post to understand the relationship between processing and deciding.

Does a 100-Year-Old Productivity Tip Work in the Digital Age?

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Productivity tips are everywhere. Yet, how many of them actually work and will they stand the test of time?

We tend to think that a focus on productivity is an Internet era obsession. However, people have been searching for better ways to do work since the rise of the information professional at the beginning of the 20th Century. As unlikely as it seems, is it possible that a tool from that time period is still useful in the age of AI?

On the Todoist website, editor Anna Sonnenberg recently shared the 100-year-old Ivy Lee Method. It is a technique named after its creator, Ivy Ledbetter Lee, back in 1918. The method is designed to concentrate focus every day on the most important tasks to accomplish through a rank order system. At its heart are four rules, which Sonnenberg describes:

1/ At the end of your day, identify six important tasks you need to do the next day. This number creates a constraint, forcing you to get clear on your priorities. It also limits you to a manageable number of tasks.

2/ Rank tasks by priority and do them in order. If you could only finish one task tomorrow, which would it be? Order your task list from most important to least important. Then, work through them in that order.

3/ Don’t move on until the task is complete. The key to this method is working on one task at a time until it’s finished. This approach helps you fully concentrate on what you’re doing and avoid leaving tasks unfinished.

4/ Move unfinished items to the next day’s list. Each evening, look at what didn’t get done and decide if it still matters. If it does, include it on tomorrow’s list. This daily reset prevents old tasks from piling up.

Ivy Lee

Why would this approach work today? Despite all the emails flying in, our digital reminders popping up, and AI agents set to serve, a knowledge worker must still decide where to direct their focus. With the distractions populating our workplace, the Ivy Lee Method is a way to keep attention on the selected tasks against the cacophony of digital noise. As Sonnenberg shares:

If you’re prone to distraction during the workday like I am, this method helps you hit the ground running in the morning and stay focused throughout the day. All you have to do is pick six tasks and work through them.

Just make sure you create your list the night before. Otherwise, you might get distracted by all the possibilities when you sit down to do the work.

To learn more about the Ivy Lee Method, and most importantly, tips on how to implement it in a digital environment, I invite you to read the rest of the article.

Doing More & Avoiding Burnout

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Have you ever heard a manager say that we need to do more with less?

Many workplaces lack the luxury of abundant staff and large budgets. These are work environments where everyone pitches in on multiple fronts. Often this means people work longer hours, sacrificing evenings and weekends away from their families to get the work done. While this might be needed for significant deadlines, that level of pace is unsustainable. It quickly leads to burnout. Therefore, is there a way to avoid the overwork trap and still reach the organization’s goals?

Recently, consultant Irina Bilenko shared her thoughts on LinkedIn in an article titled, Doing More With Less Without Burning Out Your Team. She regularly talks with nonprofits struggling to get things done and at the risk of wearing themselves out. Her initial observation on the problem is a simple one.

The phrase “do more with less” is often repeated in the nonprofit sector. But I think it’s misleading. If people are already working at full capacity, asking them to simply do more isn’t a sustainable answer.

The answer is not working harder. The answer is making it easier to focus on what matters most.

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com

Ramming through with grit and putting in extra hours is actually highly inefficient and wasteful. Instead, Irina believes that stepping back to examine the organization’s workflow leads to better productivity in the long run.

What I discovered was that the problem wasn’t effort. The problem was the system.

Work was held up by unnecessary approvals. Decisions took too long. Information wasn’t available when people needed it. Teams were solving the same problems over and over. Meetings filled calendars without producing decisions.

When those barriers were removed, something interesting happened.

People didn’t need to work harder. They suddenly had more capacity.

Irina found that improving the system starts with removing unnecessary items. Eliminating low value tasks and pointless meetings relieved tension and led to more success on the individual and organizational levels. For example, getting rid of producing pointless reports and streamlining levels of approval saved hours of time. This in turn allowed employees to enjoy their evenings and weekends, confident in the knowledge that they were accomplishing their goals.

To learn more from Irina on how improving systems can generate better results, I invite you to read the rest of her article.

Why Young Professionals Say “No” to Leadership Roles

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We have all heard the standard career advice: start at the bottom, work hard, and get promoted into leadership. Becoming a supervisor or manager has often been seen as an important step on the career path. However, what happens if a person decides that traveling the leadership route is not worth the stress and workload? Is there a way to make these positions more appealing?

In an online post titled, Why Library Workers Are Saying “No” to Leadership Roles, Choice360 contributor Alejandro Marquez shares reasons why some young library professionals choose to stay away from leadership roles. While his focus is on the library profession, many of the factors apply to other professional careers. Among the several workplace issues Marquez cites, one is the arrival fallacy.

The arrival fallacy is the mistaken assumption that a goal or outcome will allow an individual to achieve happiness. In an organization, bosses often promise their workers a reduction in workload or stress simply by hiring new people. Often, there is no reduction as other people leave, positions are frozen, or institutional priorities shift. Instead of a reduced workload, leaders often inherit a backlog of issues, and the initial optimism can quickly fade as they grapple with the same systemic challenges. The cycle of hiring new leaders with the expectation of change, only to see the same problems persist, creates a sense of disillusionment and fuels discontent.

Photo by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels.com

Does this mean that critical leadership roles will go unfulfilled in the years to come? That does not have to be the future. Marquez suggests several ways that young professionals can be encouraged to view leadership roles in a positive light. A starting point is by ensuring that organizations have carefully considered the concepts of compensation and workload equity.

Leadership roles demand significant time, energy, and expertise. Compensation needs to reflect a workload that accurately represents increased responsibilities. Workload differentials—recognizing that leadership roles often extend beyond a role’s core duties—are essential and must be accounted for. Transparent workload assessments and the equitable distribution of responsibilities are tools that can help this process.

To learn more about the reasons why young library professionals are avoiding leadership roles along with ways to address their concerns, please read the rest of the article.

Have You Rediscovered Reading?

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Summertime is the best time to return to the simple joy of reading.

This year the Palm Beach County Library System has launched the Rediscover Reading campaign. No matter where you live, we are encouraging everyone to pick up a book and tap into the many benefits of reading for pleasure. If you have never stopped reading, we invite you to expand your horizons and tap into new authors and genres. With so many choices, there is definitely a novel novel awaiting you!

It might seem counter-intuitive, but sitting in your quiet reading chair actually benefits your neighbors and friends. As our society wrestles with loneliness and separation, pleasure reading offers an affordable, evidence-based path for a better life. In fact, a growing body of research finds that reading leads to reduced stress, better sleep, enhanced empathy and improved well-being. Simultaneously, shared reading like book clubs and read-aloud sessions activate brain regions tied to social cognition and emotional connection. This counters feelings of isolation and distrust.

It’s simple. Reading for pleasure combines the private delight of enjoying a novel with the social lift from shared reflection.

Therefore, I challenge you to spend 15 minutes a day reading for pleasure. Then, once a week share your reading suggestions with others, whether a work, around the dinner table, or in your favorite online space. The more we talk and think about the books, the more engaged our minds become with the material and with others.

If you are not sure where to get your next book, remember that public libraries are ready and waiting to serve you. Not only do we offer traditional print books, but most libraries have a growing collection of eBooks. All of them are available through your library card. Don’t have one? No worries. Plan a trip to your local branch this week to get a card!

Photo by ArtHouse Studio on Pexels.com

Finally, I must put a debate to rest. Yes! Audiobooks count as reading. The act of listening to a book forces our minds to imagine scenes and view the world through the eyes of the characters. This is different from watching a movie or TV show where actors and camera angles guide your interpretation. Any type of read-aloud allows the listener to create the scenes in their mind, deepening the connection to the story.

The challenge is issued. This summer, put down your smartphone, turn off the TV, and step away from your computer. Instead dive into a good book. The benefits are worth it!