How Managers Can Help Their Team Focus

February 5, 2023Leave a comment

Have you ever been on a team that lost its focus? You and your teammates may have wasted time wandering down dead ends, getting caught up arguing over trivial items, or had assumed next actions lie incomplete due to a lack of delegation? While there are many contributing factors to such failures, a good manager can make or break a team.

In an increasingly distracted world, one skill that can elevate managers is the ability to focus their team on the priorities. In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, GTD founder David Allen and Justin Hale break down seven ways that managers can help their teams focus on work. Not surprisingly, the ideas are born out the GTD principles. This first suggestion is to inventory tasks and projects.

This is a discipline where common sense is not common practice. If your people don’t have a complete list of their commitments and projects, they can’t realistically prioritize. As a leader, hold people accountable for keeping current to-do lists and give them time each week to do a full weekly review of these commitments so they can stay in control.

Another way managers can help their employees focus is to make meetings meaningful.

Most people’s workdays are monopolized by meetings. Help employees stay focused by allowing them to decline meaningless meetings. To improve meeting efficacy, one manager we coached set a bold precedent. He said, “If someone invites you to a meeting without a clear agenda and reasons why you’re vital to the success of the meeting, you have my permission to decline it.” This manager put the onus back on the meeting creator (which was often himself) to show greater respect for others’ time. It also put employees in control of their days so they could focus on high-priority work.

Read the other five suggestions at the Harvard Business Review website.

Productivity Propaganda?

February 1, 2023Leave a comment

At first glance it would seem that productivity is a good thing. After all, who doesn’t want to get more done in less time? However, what happens if the push for increased productivity comes at the expense of enjoyment of life? Does it matter if you get more done if that which is being done is of little value?

Digital anthropologist and author Rahaf Harfoush recently explored this topic in a book called Hustle & Float: Reclaim Your Creativity and Thrive in a World Obsessed With Work. In her book she explored workplace burnout and how to avoid it. Bloomberg Businessweek interviewed her during the COVID pandemic to learn more about how to balance work and life in the era or work-from-home.

This isn’t a normal time, so it shouldn’t be treated as normal work-from-home time. The lines between home and work, personal and professional, are blurred with an additional pressure to be productive since the thinking is that we all suddenly have more available time. This isn’t the case, and furthermore, working nonstop simply doesn’t work. We have turned busyness into a coping mechanism. Now, people are applying that to their personal time while sheltering at home, filling it with back-to-back Zoom calls, baking, workouts, and more activity. It’s important to use some of this time to process our emotions and reflect on the discomfort from all this productivity propaganda. Operating as usual will not only negatively affect your work but could compromise your health.

The interview ended with a warning for those who work around the clock.

If you’re a high performer and recovery isn’t an intentional and strategic part of your time and workflow, you’re only damaging your output in the long run.

Read the whole interview online.

Are You Overthinking?

January 15, 2023Leave a comment

Have you ever slept on decision? Spent weeks debating both sides of a problem? Kept looking for that extra bit of information to sway you one way or the other? If so, you may have been overthinking!

While thoughtful deliberation can be very helpful to make a decision, it is also easy to waste too much time before making a choice. Sometimes this is driven by a lack of confidence, other times it is fear of making a mistake, and simply worrying about how other people may react.

Harvard Business Review writer Melody Wilding looking into the issue and wrote a short article to outline ways to prevent overthinking. The first tip is to avoid seeking perfection.

Perfectionism is one of the biggest blockers to swift, effective decision-making because it operates on faulty all-or-nothing thinking. For example, perfectionism can lead you to believe that if you don’t make the “correct” choice (as if there is only one right option), then you are a failure. Or that you must know everything, anticipate every eventuality, and have a thorough plan in place before making a move. Trying to weigh every possible outcome and consideration is paralyzing.

What are the ways to avoid this trap? Wilding suggests you ask yourself these questions:

Which decision will have the biggest positive impact on my top priorities?
Of all the possible people I could please or displease, which one or two people do I least want to disappoint?
What is one thing I could do today that would bring me closer to my goal?
Based on what I know and the information I have at this moment, what’s the best next step?

Learn four more ways to avoid overthinking by reading the entire article.

After you finish reading, consider this question: What decision are you overthinking?

Once you identify one, pick one of the five tips to help reach a resolution. Then enjoy the clarity that comes from making a final decision.

Steps to Successful Resolutions

December 26, 2022Leave a comment

It’s that time of year again, the end of the year that is, when people consider making New Year’s Resolutions. The changing of the calendar is often seen as a time to install new habits and behaviors, but the rub is that it rarely works. The web site, Discover Happy Habits breaks down the rather depressing numbers:

According to a 2016 study, of the 41% of Americans who make New Year’s resolutions, by the end of the year only 9% feel they are successful in keeping them.

Part of the problem is that the initial enthusiasm for the resolution fades over time. However, the article also shares many other reasons they fail:

In one 2014 study, 35% of participants who failed their New Year’s Resolutions said they had unrealistic goals.
33% of participants who failed didn’t keep track of their progress.
23% forgot about their resolutions.
About one in 10 people who failed said they made too many resolutions.

Should we simply abandon the practice of making resolutions? Probably not. After all, if there is something in your life you want to change, it is important to start at a specific point. However, one cannot rely on willpower or excitement alone to make it work. To help make a change stick, the article shares four success tips.

The first tip is to develop the necessary skills and mindset ahead of time:

Multiple studies have shown that self‐efficacy and readiness to change predicted positive outcomes for those who made New Year’s resolutions.

Having the skills necessary to change was another important factor.

Conversely, social support and behavioral skills were not predictors of a successful outcome.

In another study, men achieved their goal 22% more often when they engaged in goal setting and set their New Year’s resolutions in terms of small and measurable goals such as “lose 1 pound a week” instead of “lose weight”.

Read the other tips and then put them into practice to help you succeed.

Happy 2023!

Avoiding Procrastination Regret

December 11, 2022Leave a comment

Have you ever put off doing something? Of course, you have!

However, have you ever put off doing something for a long time, years even? Perhaps it is taking that dream vacation, or switching careers, making a commitment to exercise, or telling that special someone you love them? If we wait too long to try new things or take risks, this procrastination can lead to regret. How do we avoid it?

On his blog, Darious Foroux recently shared his thoughts on procrastination.

We all know that putting off our dreams for one week turns into a month, then into a year, and then into decades, and finally, we die with regret.

If that sounds harsh, it’s because it is harsh. When you keep procrastinating you become one of those people who never do what they say.

How do we change our behavior to avoid regret? Foroux offers ten behaviors that challenge us to keep moving forward. The first one is stay curious.

Never stop getting excited about doing new things. If you let your curiosity drive you, you will never run out of motivation and inspiration.

Along with curiosity, he advises us to never stop learning.

Your curiosity will lead you to new topics, challenges, goals, and desires. To achieve those things, we need to learn more. When you do that every day, you keep making progress.

Review the other eight on his blog, then see if they can help you avoid the regret of prolonged procrastination.

Thriving in Uncertainty

November 27, 2022Leave a comment

With all the rapid changes happening around us, it seems like the only certainty is more uncertainty. While some enjoy the chaos, the everchanging landscape makes it hard to set worthwhile goals that can be realistically achieved. Rather than give up, is there a way to cope with uncertainty?

Tiago Forte explores this question in a recent post on this website titled How to Thrive in a World of Uncertainty. It is part of his exploration of the concept of 12 Favorite Problems. In this piece, he shares an important shift to our thinking that makes all the difference.

Goal-setting was once central to our conception of what it means to navigate the future successfully. But goals can no longer serve as guides to an unfolding future that we have so little control over.

But this doesn’t mean that we have to throw up our hands in defeat. It doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do to influence our fate. It just requires us to make a shift from leading with goals to leading with questions.

What does he mean by this? In essence, he proposes a way to embrace the uncertainty and use it as a force for creativity and accomplishment.

Questions ask you to start with what you don’t know but would like to discover. They draw in others to pitch in and make their own contributions. They serve as open invitations to collaborative projects, versus the solitary path of individualistic achievement envisioned by goals.

In a world of uncertainty, questions are more powerful than answers. Answers serve you for a season, but a question lasts forever.

Read the posting to learn more about this shift in perspective, including three values proposed by physicist Richard Feynman that can make the transition smoother and more enjoyable.

The Fear That Should Scare You the Most

October 30, 2022Leave a comment

It is the day before Halloween (All Hallow’s Eve Eve?) and most people’s thoughts turn to frights! This is the season when we enjoy being scared. Of course, fears stay with us the entire year, but in the spirit of the spooky season, now is an ideal time to consider the fear that scares you the most.

Shola Richards has looked fear in the eye and blogged about it. In a post titled, Never Too Late, he shared the one thing that he fears the most. It is not snakes, vampires, the dark, or taxes, but something much simpler and profound.

I have always found it so strange when people say that they’re fearless. Let me tell you upfront that I’m not one of those people.

Just like most rationally thinking human beings, I have fears (quite a few, to be honest). And without question, this is the fear that scares me the most:

Looking back on my life and realizing that I haven’t lived fully.

How is that his greatest fear? Shola proceeds to tell us exactly why over the next few sentences.

If you are going to be afraid of something, don’t be afraid of what may happen if you decide to fully live your life and chase your dreams.

Instead, be afraid of what will happen if you decide not to fully live your life and allow the ghosts of “what might have been” to haunt you relentlessly for the rest of your days until you finally die with a pitiful whimper.

That’s freaking terrifying to me. It should be for you too.

Through this post, Shola is issuing a challenge. What plan or dream for your life is being left to gather dust on the shelf due to fear of failure or ridicule? Just as on Halloween we face illusionary frights then laugh about it afterwards, why not do the same with the fears around your goals?

Face the fear and see what happens next.

It may not be as scary as you fear.

Five Meeting Rules from Ray Dalio

October 23, 2022Leave a comment

Bad meetings are inevitable. Good meetings are fortunate. Great meetings are designed.

Meetings are a core component of knowledge work. However, very few people are trained on how to run them effectively. A focused, structured meeting benefits all the participants and moves everyone closer to their goals. Therefore, it is important to understand how to run a successful meeting.

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, has thought very deeply about the workplace. In addition to the unique methods that comprise the Bridgewater culture, Dalio has set out specific rules for productive meetings. A recent article in INC magazine focused on five of them. The first is very simple yet often overlooked: clarify the meeting’s purpose.

Dalio says that you should emphasize a meeting’s purpose well before it begins. That way, everyone can walk into the meeting prepared and the group can be intentional with their time. He also adds that “Meetings without someone clearly responsible run a high risk of being directionless and unproductive.”

Another rule of successful meetings is to avoid “topic slip”:

Topic slip, as defined by Dalio, is the “random drifting from topic to topic without achieving completion on any of them.” If you’ve ever left a meeting feeling more confused than when you walked in, topic slip is a likely culprit.

To dive deeper into these two rules and then learn the other three, visit the article on the Inc website.

From Hope to Trust

October 10, 2022Leave a comment

How confident are you that all your priorities have been captured outside your head?

For most people, their regular practice is to keep their responsibilities and duties saved only in brain cells. Storing these things in our fallible minds makes it hard to be confident about our next actions. Once people discover this problem, they often try to create elaborate systems to remember. However, this may prove just as problematic. GTD founder David Allen explored this problem in a recent blog post:

It’s natural to want to create a system for priority coding (like “A, B, C” or the flagging feature in many apps) to tell you the most important things to do. But it’s a short-term insurance policy that won’t give you the trust you need when the time comes to take action.

If these complex approaches don’t work, is there a better way? David certainly believes so as he adds:

People would often love to be able to give up the non-stop accountability for their intuitive judgment calls about the moment-to-moment allocation of their resources. That’s why the ABC-priority and daily-to-do-list structures have often seemed so attractive as a way to “get a grip.” But reality has a way of requiring us to be more on our toes than that.

So how can we really know for sure what action to take? Prepare for the worst, imagine the best, and shoot down the middle.

Dive deeper into this philosophy by reading the rest of the post.

Efficient Librarian

Exploring the Intersection of Efficiency and Librarianship

Category: Decision Making