ACT AFTER YOU PLAN

• start with a written plan of action to avoid getting distracted
• keep your plan simple and straightforward
• start with the one thing you must get done today to feel productive
• should be a manageable item you can complete in 10-15 minutes
• break the day up into a number of “action sessions” for other tasks
• balance the time spent planning with time spent creating or doing
• avoid over-planning — another method of procrastination
• before ending your day, spend 10 minutes reviewing your progress
• take time to plan your actions for the next day

BE VISION-DIRECTED

• your tasks should match your values or purpose
• if not, you will find it hard to summon the energy to tackle them
• bring each task into congruence with your basic mission
• if you can’t, take it off of your list

BITE-SIZED PIECES

• don’t put any “to-do” on your list that takes more than 30 minutes
• if it takes longer, it’s actually a series of smaller “to-do’s”
• break each step out and list it separately
• you don’t have to tackle all the steps of a project in one sitting
• spread a large task out over several work sessions
• you will see greater progress as you check more items off your list
• you will avoid getting bogged down in one large task or project

DECIDE TO SCHEDULE IT

• determine how much you can do or tolerate at a time
• don’t push yourself too far or you’ll get bored or frustrated
• plan these project “pieces” into your daily activities
• set a “completion point” for accomplishing each small task
• completion points give you an end in sight to look forward to

GOOD ENOUGH IS GOOD ENOUGH

• don’t try to do everything perfectly
• perfectionism often causes procrastination
• perfectionists would rather put it off than do an incomplete job
• rather than perfection, aim for progress
• any small step toward completion is an accomplishment

JUST DO IT

• do the worst job (or part of the job) first and get it out of the way
• once you tackle the part you are dreading, the rest is a breeze
• stop spending time planning and just jump into doing it
• set a time limit — “I’ll file papers for 5 minutes”
• alternate unpleasant jobs with tasks you enjoy
• delegate out items you can’t make yourself do

PLAN AROUND INTERRUPTIONS

• interruptions tend to occur in identifiable patterns
• notice when interruptions occur, by whom, and why
• take steps to prevent those interruptions before they occur
• if they can’t be prevented, learn how to delegate to someone else
• if they can’t be delegated, learn how to delay until you are finished

REMEMBER TO MAKE IT FUN

• make the project and environment as pleasant as possible
• play music, open a window, have a cold drink, etc.
• give yourself the best tools and work space for the project
• take a few minutes to organize your work space
• a clean desk allows you to focus without visual distraction
• it’s only a chore if you think of it as a chore

STAYING MOTIVATED

• find an “accountability partner” to track your progress
• schedule a regular time to check in with a friend or colleague
• rewarding your accomplishments encourages productivity
• give yourself a break, a treat, a nap — whatever is a reward for you
• reward every step along the way, not just the end result
• the bigger the accomplishment, the bigger the reward

Copyright 2000-2009 Ramona Creel

About the Author: “Ramona Creel is a modern Renaissance woman and guru of simplicity — traveling the country as a full-time RVer, sharing her story of radically downsizing, and inspiring others to regain control of their own lives. As a Professional Organizer and Accountability Coach, Ramona will help you create the time and space to focus on your true priorities — clearing away the clutter and other obstacles standing in the way of that life you’ve always wanted to be living. As a Professional Photographer, Ramona captures powerful images of places and people as she travels. And as a travel writer, social commentator, and blogger, she shares her experiences and insights about the world as we know it. You can see all these sides of Ramona — read her articles, browse through her photographs, and even hire her to help get your life in order — at www.RamonaCreel.com. And be sure to follow her on Twitter and on Facebook.”

Recommended Training Resource: Accountability That Works! This innovative training program will provide everyone in your organization with the tools they need for a greater sense of responsibility and increased productivity, including teaching the skill of “self-empowerment” – doing whatever is necessary to complete the task, including overcoming procrastination, interruptions and other barriers to completion.

Last month, I shared a very powerful time management tool which has proven to be very successful for those who have attended our time management seminars.

In that article, Start a “Stop-Doing” List, I explained that a “Stop-Doing” list is nothing more than a simple inventory of bad habits or negative actions currently practiced by an individual, team or organization that would provide better results if they were discontinued.

I pointed out in that article that our seminar break-out sessions have clearly demonstrated that everyone’s list is uniquely focused on their own daily routines. While some commonalities emerged from the exercise, most attendees produced examples that differed greatly from others in the session.

For that reason, I chose not to share examples. However, since the appearance of that article, I have received several requests for some examples. Therefore, I’d like to share a few of the more generic samples which have been generated in our “I Hate Time Management” seminars.

Hopefully, one or more of these examples will inspire you to create your own list customized to reflect your own personal daily routine.

“I’m going to stop hiring the first body that walks through the door simply because I’m short-handed.”
Experience has proven that it’s actually much more painful and expensive in the long run.

“I’m going to stop telling employees how to do their jobs.”
Far better that I tell them the results I want and expect, and let them figure out how to attain them. I’ll offer to coach them and provide them with support, but allow them to figure it out.

“I’m going to stop managing people.”
My job is not to manage people. My job is to provide a context within which people can manage themselves.

“I’m going to stop trying to change people.”
I’m going to focus instead on utilizing their existing assets.

“I’m going to stop thinking I have to know the answer.”
I’m going to focus on knowing how to find the answers or surround myself with those who have them or know how to find them.

“I’m going to stop sending employees to training of any kind without explicit expectations.”
I did exactly that after our last session and was embarrassingly shocked at the positive results.

“I’m going to stop treating others as I would like to be treated.”
I’m going to instead treat them as they would like to be treated.

“I’m going to stop doing just annual performance reviews.”
Monthly reviews have proven to be much more effective.

“I’m going to stop thinking of salaries and benefits as an expense.”
I’m going to consider them instead as investments and treat them as such.

“I’m going to stop enabling my staff and start empowering them.”
They’ll never grow until I allow them to do so.
�
Now create your own personal list of things YOU need to stop doing. Significant improvement will never come until we learn how to stop doing things and behaving in ways that are no longer effective. Now is the time to start!

Recommended Training Resource: Time Challenged follows Kent, a harried supervisor, as he joins a self-help group for time-challenged individuals, and learns skills to better use his time, including giving up tasks and meetings that aren’t absolutely vital to his top priorities. This program also now available as an e-learning course.

If you do not have vacation time blocked off on the company schedule now for the end of the year, do not despair.  It seems everyone wants to have the holidays off, yet when we submit our annual vacation request, we may be turned down.  If you are glum over the prospect of limited holiday time off, console yourself with what you will actually be facing:

Reduced traffic
Quiet atmosphere
Limited interruptions
Greater concentration
Shortened hours
Lower stress
Sympathy from others

Throughout the year, it is easy to be swept up by the crisis du jour.  You may be responding to constant interruptions, multitasking all the time.  There is often no opportunity to pause for thinking and planning.  More involved projects get set aside for a “better” time when you can concentrate.  Many times these delayed activities are the most “important” projects, the ones that will actually make a difference.  However since they did not have a deadline or an “Urgent” tag attached to them, they were shuffled aside. 

• 51% of workers rate their productivity as just as high during the holiday week.
• 25% say it is even higher. (Harris Interactive Survey)

What can you do that would make you feel energized for the new year?  After catching up on key projects, look around and see where organizing could help you be even more productive.  Areas to examine:

Daily Systems:  Do you have an effective system for handling all of your daily incoming items?  A good system allow you to easily prioritize each day and ensures that you will never overlook and opportunity or miss a deadline. 

Desk:  Only what you use on a regular basis needs to be close to you.  Remove the accumulation from the past year.

Email:  When was the last time you zeroed out your inbox?  Set up folders both for Daily Action items and for reference files.

Filing:  Are your file folders stuffed and drawers overflowing?  Clean out unused, unneeded items.  Do you hesitate to file anything because you will never find it again?  A good program to help with that is the Paper Tiger filing system.

When you find yourself at the office during those holiday lulls, enjoy the peace and look forward to another time when you really need a break.  Hopefully it can be a time without peak fares, overbooked resorts, crowded slopes, and too many obligations.  Meanwhile you are organized and ready for a productive new year!

About the Author: Denise Landers is the author of Destination: Organization, A Week by Week Journey and the owner of Key Organization Systems, Inc.  As a national speaker, trainer, consultant, and writer she provides clients and audiences with the time management training tools and techniques that improve daily work flow and increase productivity.

Recommended Training Resource: Celebrate What’s Right With the World.  Rather than let ourselves feel glum about the hand we’ve been dealt, this program reminds us to celebrate what’s going right. How your employees view the world at large has a great effect on how they view their jobs, their coworkers, and their employer. In this program, National Geographic photographer Dewitt Jones shows them how to choose views that include bright possibilities for themselves and the organization.

Every health and lifestyle magazine contains articles claiming stress is bad for us. They list dozens of ways to relieve stress, from exercise to eating healthy foods. A wide range of relaxation techniques have also been proven to help manage stress in our crazy-busy world, especially for people who take care of others and tend to neglect themselves.

But stress is not always as bad as these cautionary articles insist. In fact, some stress is actually necessary to keep us going and growing.

Our individual responses to different types and levels of stress can either drain or energize us. It is how we perceive and process both ongoing and unexpected stressors that intensifies or reduces their impact on our bodies, minds and emotions.

The term “stress” was first used in the mid-1950s by endocrinologist Dr. Hans Selye in his book “The Stress of Life.” In his research experiments, Selye discovered that we experience stress not only when we hear bad news but also when we receive good news. He differentiated these two types of stressors by calling negative stress “distress” and positive stress “eustress” (the Greek prefix “eu” means well or good).

The idea that we naturally feel stressed by positive experiences — like getting married, having a baby, graduations, promotions, winning awards or races — is echoed in the Social Readjustment Ratings Scale. Devised by University of Washington medical researchers Holmes and Rahe, the SRRS ranks the impact of good stress-events as well as bad stressors like death, divorce or losing a job.

They discovered it is the accumulation of minor plus major changes over a period of time that increases one’s chances of developing stress-related ailments like heart disease, cancer or a weakened immune system. Stress effects also intensify when several changes occur without enough time between them to recharge our physical and mental resources.

When dealing with normal life changes, Holmes and Rahe also concluded that a single event is rarely stressful enough to cause significant illness if we have some control over the situation and are able to view it as a challenge or opportunity instead of a threat.

So stress is not always bad or unhealthy. It can actually keep us from becoming complacent or staying too long in jobs, relationships or environments which are not good for us. When bad stress builds to the “breaking point,” it usually forces us to make choices and change our behavior or environment with positive and healthier results.

Stress is also necessary to keep us moving forward while working toward a goal — like a creative or business project — or training for athletic events like championship games or marathons. This type of eustress prevents us from slowing down or giving up too soon and helps us build momentum in the early stages to empower us to reach the “finish line.”

So positive stress management can actually give us a competitive edge via increased focus and drive. As we move forward on what researchers call the Performance Stress Curve, eustress helps us make choices, take actions and communicate more clearly.

When it comes to managing stress, there are two basic approaches: Defensive or Offensive. If we take a Defensive approach, we subconsciously distort reality by hoping the situation will change without having to do anything about it. But this keeps us in a state of denial and often amplifies the internal impact of distress, contributing to disease or depression.

Taking an Offensive approach, however, enables us to manage stress by using it to our advantage. By consciously changing or adapting, we adjust to life-changes organically and can view things in perspective that at first feel like problems. Then we can reframe these “problems” as opportunities or challenges and take appropriate action.

Offensive ways to manage stress include:
1. Changing our situation whenever possible
2. Increasing our ability to cope with the situation as it is
3. Changing our perception so the situation looks and feels different
4. Changing our behavior, as this is truly where we have the most control

Whenever we feel stressed, it can be useful to first determine whether it’s Distress or Eustress. Then we can decide whether to become Offensive by utilizing or adjusting it, or remain Defensive and wait to see if the situation changes on its own. Sometimes choosing to live with stress is appropriate, like when it energizes our competitive edge.

We can also balance our stress levels to avoid being thrown off-center too easily or often. Ongoing stress management techniques for creating balance include sleeping well, eating healthy foods, exercising, meditating &/or focusing on the positive things in our lives. These are simple and inexpensive ways to relieve pressure, especially when we’re faced with unexpected events or must manage stress over a long period of time.

While the bad news is that it’s nearly impossible to avoid stress in our crazy-busy world, the good news is that using stress management techniques and being mindful can actually make stress empowering instead of draining. This puts us in control of the stressors in our lives so they can’t stop us from continuing to go forward and grow more joyfully empowered every day.

About the Author
Barbara Schiffman, C.Ht., is SelfGrowth.com’s Official Guide to Stress Management, a Life Balance Coach, Certified Hypnotherapist and NLP Practitioner. For a list of her favorite stress relief books/resources, send her an email request for “The Eustress List” with your name and city/state to eustress@balanceradio.info or visit www.hypnosynergy.com

Training Resource: Stress is a Gift tells the true story of acacia trees in the Biosphere project, and what researchers learned from them about the necessity of some stress in our lives. A powerful, short video, perfect for opening a meeting.

Every minute of every work day employees are bombarded with distractions they must work with or around to get things done. Whether it’s the meeting that runs 30 minutes over, the Blackberry that won’t stop buzzing, office gossip about the newest employees or even family matters, there are a myriad of conflicting matters vying for employees’ attention.

According to a recent survey* by Workplace Options, 42 percent of workers are extending their workdays by coming in early or staying late in order to avoid distractions. But what happens to those who contribute to the constant interruptions? According to the survey, nearly one in four employees (22 percent) are aware of someone in their workplace who has been fired for wasting time in the office, disrupting other employees or partaking in other distractions.

It is estimated that American businesses lose around $650 billion a year through workplace distractions, according to Jonathan Spira, chief analyst of consulting firm Basex, who authored a report called “The Cost of Not Paying Attention: How Interruptions Impact Knowledge Worker Productivity.” And according to the Workplace Options survey, it’s evident why: more than half of those polled (53 percent) report that distractions in the workplace impact their productivity.

Results from the Workplace Options survey reveal employees are most distracted by some of the following activities in the workplace:

• Personnel (office romances, water cooler gossip, etc.): 24%
• Technology (emails, phone calls, social media, internet glitches): 23%
• Meetings /Luncheons: 12%
• Surroundings (loud coworkers, music or television noise, lack of privacy): 6%
• Celebrations (birthdays, baby showers, sports): 4%

“It’s expected that employees will be inundated with plenty of distractions throughout the workday,” said Dean Debnam, chief executive officer at Workplace Options. “The important thing to remember is for employees to find a way to balance their work day and find ways to focus. For example, if employees have assistance in taking care of their personal issues and family matters, they can concentrate on work related activities while in the office.”

Other noteworthy findings from this survey include:

• 58 percent of employees feel that having a handheld device increases their productivity.
• Yet, 35 percent of employees report their handheld device increases distractions during their workday.
• And 50 percent of those who own handheld devices claim they are an increased distraction in their personal life.
• 55 percent of employees feel having access to social media at the office is either “somewhat” or a “significant” distraction.

For those who find it more difficult to balance personal issues, technology, and their office surroundings, 33 percent of workers believe it would help their productivity if employers provided work-life benefits aimed at alleviating stress caused by such distractions.

*The national survey was conducted by the North Carolina firm of Public Policy Polling, August 6-9, 2010. The survey polled 606 working Americans and has a margin of error of +/- 4.0 percent. Full survey results can be viewed at www.workplaceoptions.com/polls.asp.

About Workplace Options
Workplace Options helps employees balance their work, family and personal life in order to make their lives healthier, easier and more productive. The company’s world-class employee support and work-life services provide information, resources, referrals and consultation on a variety of issues ranging from dependent care, legal and financial issues to stress management and wellness.

Drawing from an international network of credentialed providers and professionals, Workplace Options is the world’s largest integrated employee support services and work-life provider. Service centers in Raleigh. N.C., London, Toronto and Dublin support more than 22 million employees in 19,000 organizations, across 153 countries. To learn more, visit Workplace Options.

Training Resource:  Time Challenged. Effective time management involves making an ongoing commitment to reviewing our actions and improving them day by day. This memorable program inspires people to turn time wasters into opportunities for increased productivity.

© 2010 Workplace Options, Inc. All rights reserved. Article used with permission.

Netbook computers with expanded capacity that can fit into your pocket and coin-sized mp3 players holding thousands of songs have established the expectation that good things (and a lot of them) come in small packages. Is it any wonder that organizations expect training to follow suit?

So, what can learning and development professionals do to respond?

Become a ruthless editor: Cut Through the Clutter
Today’s learning professionals must develop the ability to ruthlessly eliminate the non-essential, lay out the ‘critical path’ to new knowledge and skills and delete all else. Eliminating the ‘nice to knows’ allows the available time to be focused on ‘need to know’ information.

Revisit knowledge acquisition: Leverage Multimedia
Current applications allow for the quick and inexpensive development of multimedia presentations that can deliver considerable content in an efficient and engaging fashion. Transform group discussion and discovery exercises into tidy learning objects that can be used in a variety of ways.

Think beyond the event: Quickly Develop Self-Sufficiency
Let’s be honest: compressed timeframes can only accomplish so much. Leave learners with tools and resources that extend their ability to perform where it really matters: on the job. Memorable models, powerful job aids, online resource libraries turn the entire workplace into a training room.

Re-conceive materials: Order up a Combo
Re-thinking training deliverables for greater efficiency can support shorter timeframes. Look for each element and activity to do double – even triple – duty. Get creative. Even name tents can carry critical content.

Re-train the trainer: Change up the Tempo
Among the greatest challenges facing classroom trainers is replacing the previously leisurely learning rhythms with today’s crisper cadence. Comfortable patterns of extended discussions, getting-to-know you exercises, and storytelling must be confronted and adjusted.

These strategies can help to deliver results – even in today’s hurry-up world.

Written by Karen Voloshin and Julie Winkle Giulioni of DesignArounds. DesignArounds designs, develops and delivers training that works in today’s dynamic and pressure-packed workplace. For more information, visit www.designarounds.com.

“A” Activities are “must do” activities that are important and often urgent. If they do not get done, negative–sometimes severe–consequences can happen. Such activities include turning reports in to your boss, delivering scheduled presentations, attending and preparing for important meetings. (For example, if you don’t turn in your health benefits information by the deadline you may not get any health insurance with your company.)

“B” Activities are important activities that ultimately will affect the degree to which you are successful in your job, but you may not need to do any or all of them today. They could become tomorrow’s A activities or you may need additional information to complete them.

“C” Activities are things that—if not done—probably won’t have short-term consequences that impact job success.  However, they may create problems if they are never attended to. (These could include reading journals, organizing your computer files, networking with peers.)

“D” Activities are your DON’T do’s. These may be tasks you need to delegate or skip altogether. (Example: Something is on your desk that someone else wants done, but you are not the right person to do it. Or it could be reorganizing your paper files when they are already sufficiently organized.)

Note: Procrastination can sometimes take the form of spending excessive time on D activities such as sorting through mail/email, reading the newspaper, or restocking supplies. These activities often seem productive but they can usually be saved for another time.

For each day, you should list 5-8 activities you plan to do. Estimate the time each should take and give yourself at least a 10% cushion.  Then label each activity A, B, C or D and tackle them in that order.

Excerpted from the Leader’s Guide for the CRM Learning program Time Challenged.

Need help in this area? Time Challenged is a favorite with trainees in all types of organizations. The humorous video provides the perfect introduction to the highly effective workshop that is included.

“A Little More Time” Role Play Scenario

Marketing VP Kimberly is preparing her 45-person consulting firm’s major proposal for a year’s worth of work from a major client.  She knows that demonstrating the staff’s depth of experience will be the key to winning this contract.  That means a strong, focused, well-written resume section in the proposal document.

At the weekly managers’ meeting, Kimberly asks Sam to take responsibility for collecting the resumés and background information from seven team leaders who will have key roles on the project.  Sam will need to make sure the resumés are up-to-date, consistent in format and clearly focused on the client’s industry.  Only four of this group are present at the meeting.  Sam is one of the seven.  He willingly accepts ownership for the task and aims to please.

It is three weeks until the proposal is due.  Sam and Kimberly meet to discuss how the resumés will be used in the proposal—but they don’t spend time discussing the actual process of collecting and updating them.  Kimberly expresses her appreciation to Sam for taking on the task, and he agrees to have the updated resumés to her in ten days. No problem—it all seems straightforward enough.

Ten days later, 3:30am.  Sam is working at home the morning before his deadline.  He is rewriting two of the resumés, and he is missing another two altogether.  Sam was certain he had emailed these managers to request their resumés,—they work in one of the firm’s out-of-state offices and he doesn’t know them well.  His own resumé and the ones he received from two other team leaders are in good shape.  He decides to ask Kimberly for two more days to complete the assignment.

Set Up the Role Play

Instruct participants to read the “A Little More Time” scenario (above). Have them role play two ways of concluding the scenario.

1) First, role play Kimberly responding when Sam comes to her to ask for several more days to complete the assignment.  One partner plays Kimberly, the other plays Sam. Allow no more than five minutes for this role play.

2) Second, role play a scene between Sam and one of the team leaders who has not provided their information to Sam.  One partner plays Sam, the other plays the team leader. Allow no more than five minutes for this role play.

Debrief the Role Play Activity

Ask the participants:

1. How comfortable were you in the first role play where Kimberly was responding Sam’s request for more time? 

2. Did people find it more difficult to hold a peer accountable in the second role play? If so, what made it more difficult?

3. What are some things a person should do when holding another person accountable?

Look for responses such as:

·       First, ask yourself, “How may I have contributed to this poor result—was I clear about what I needed?”

·       Don’t jump to conclusions, hear the other person out.

·       In the discussion, use “I” statements such as “I have trouble keeping my commitments when I don’t receive your information by the deadline.”

·       Work together on a plan to rectify the situation and determine how to keep it from happening again.  

·       Ask “What do you need from me? More notice, more help, better instructions, etc.?”)

4. What are the consequences of not confronting those (either subordinates or co-workers) who have not kept a commitment?

This material excerpted from the Leader’s Guide to the video program, Accountability That Works!.

Procrastination comes in many forms. It is doing the urgent rather than the important. It is watching television when you should be exercising. It is lingering over lunch, while things are stacked up back at the office. It is avoiding people rather than facing them when there is a problem. Whatever form it may take, procrastination is something we should strive to overcome.

There are several reasons why we procrastinate: the task is unpleasant, the task appears to be overwhelming, the task requires a decision, or the task is perceived as being of low priority.

To overcome procrastination, we must overcome an inertia that has set in, a tendency to resist taking action. From physics we learn that a body remains at rest until a force is exerted against it. Physics also teaches us that it takes less effort to maintain motion once the initial inertia has been broken. Here are some techniques to help procrastinators get moving and to stay on track.

1. Don’t try to do it all at once.
Too often we avoid starting a project because know we don’t have time to do it all in one sitting. This all or nothing approach rarely works, because most of us don’t have such large blocks of time. The trick is to see how much you can accomplish simply by chipping away at a project, even if it’s just 15 or 20 minutes at a time. You simply must not underestimate the cumulative value of a small amount of time performed on a regular basis. For instance, 15 minutes every day adds up to about 55 hours in the period of a year.

2. Start anywhere.
Starting “at the beginning” makes sense when doing something, which has only one logical place to start. We frequently put off starting on a project because we just can’t decide on the best place to start, even though it may have more than one starting point. And, we lose sight of the fact that starting anywhere is better than not starting at all. If you find yourself in this position, take the first step; any step, just get going.

3. Start imperfectly.
An obsession with perfection can be paralyzing. Believing that everything must be done perfectly can prevent an individual from starting. The beginning stage of a project is not the time to worry about getting everything absolutely right. If you start in plenty of time, you’ll be able to correct, edit, rewrite, and double check the facts. One way to crash through the wall of perfectionism is to start with an obvious error, which you can correct later.

4. The “drive yourself crazy by doing nothing” approach can be very effective.
Assemble all the materials for your project, arrange them in front of you on your desk, and then sit at your desk and do nothing for precisely seven minutes. Don’t even write down any of the ideas that come to you during this period. By the end of the seven minutes, you’ll be itching to start.
Incidentally, the reason for this specific amount of time is to make sure you actually sit for seven minutes. For most of us; “five minutes” or “ten minutes” tends to be a somewhat vague concept rather than an actual time period.

5. Work no more than 15 minutes at a time.
This is a very good way to deal with procrastination. Set a timer and then work full blast on the project for the next 15 minutes. When the timer goes off, you must decide immediately whether to stop, or to reset the timer and work for another 15 minutes. Most of the time you’ll find that you’ve already built up enough momentum, so that you don’t want to stop. You can work for hours using this method, yet it never feels that long because you know that a break is never more than 15 minutes away.

6. Start even when you are not in the mood.
Sigmund Freud once said, “When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it.” If you wait for inspiration, you may never start. It’s more reasonable to establish a daily routine of settling down to work during your usual high energy periods, which will hopefully coincide with moments of inspiration.

7. Unpleasant tasks don’t get easier with time.
If anything, unpleasant tasks become even more so when we put them off. Furthermore, worrying over not working on a project consumes one’s energy, energy that could have been used more productively. It’s like swimming in the ocean when the water is cold. You can run quickly into the surf and deal with the shock in a few frigid seconds, or you can prolong the agony by stepping in, inch by shivering inch. So, when you have an unpleasant task, take a deep breath, jump right in, and get it over with.

8. Schedule a “Hell Day”.
A friend has discovered a way to confront all those annoying little tasks that we tend to ignore. Every month or so, she sets aside a day devoted entirely to those tasks. “Those days are hell,” she admits, “but you can’t imagine how terrific it feels to finally get all those things done.”

9. Honour your leisure time.
Make sure you have a reasonable amount of time for rest, relaxation, or just plain fun. It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we can play only after we have finished our work. The “work before play” mentality is acceptable occasionally, but not over the longer term. Working long hours, for weeks or months on end, and feeling that you have to keep up that pace usually leads to inefficiency, unnecessary stress, and burnout.

You can be more productive over the long run if you treat your work life as a well-paced marathon rather than an overextended sprint. Putting limits on how much work you take on, developing a strategy for dealing with procrastination, and having some fun to look forward to when you’re finished, these things all help you to be more effective at what you do. And as an added bonus, your employer will probably benefit as well.

OVERCOMING PROCRASTINATION
Take a few minutes to analyze your procrastination by asking yourself the following questions:
1. What things do I tend to put off most often?
2. What am I putting off right now?
3. How do I feel about my procrastination?
4. What has my procrastination cost me?
5. What is the cause of my procrastination?
6. What can I do to overcome my procrastination?

People procrastinate for many different reasons. The following tips may help you deal with your procrastination:
1. Avoid feeling overwhelmed by large tasks by breaking them down into smaller components and focusing your attention on these smaller, manageable tasks.
2. Don’t let the pursuit of perfection paralyse you with self criticisms and self doubts. Try to do your work well, but remember that no one is perfect.
3. Don’t wait until you “feel like it” to get started. Warm up by doing a small bit of work.
4. Record your progress by checking off the items on your list of things to do. Step by step, you then experience the satisfaction of accomplishing what you set out to do.

Copyright 2006. Reprinted with permission www.hr.com, your community for knowledge, expertise and resources.

FEATURED SOLUTION: The Value of Time: A millisecond doesn’t mean much to the average worker – but to a marathon runner, it’s everything. This brief meeting opener sets the right time-saving tone.