Joelle K. Jay

time management

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Get Off Crack

Are you an addict? Let’s find out. Check the statements below – which apply to you?

  • I answer my phone in the middle of a conversation.
  • I can be reached by phone, text or email 24/7.
  • I’ve been known to check my PDA in movies, at the dinner table, or in the middle of the night.
  • I attend meetings at two levels – one above the table where the action is, and one under the table with my PDA.
  • If I can’t find my PDA I start to shiver, sweat and shake.

There’s a reason so many of my clients call their BlackBerry their CrackBerry. It’s addictive. And unless you want it to take over life, you’ve got to take some control.

Because it’s not just about turning off the machine. It’s about turning off the distraction. Paul Melchiorre, the vice president of global strategy at Ariba, puts it bluntly.

Even if you were good at managing your time before PDAs came along, now you need to adjust to this CrackBerry world. You have to know when to turn it off – not turning the BlackBerry off but being able to turn off the work mindset.

Time management now isn’t about having slots of time for home and slots of time for work. It’s all in the mix. What most people have done is learn how to shift back and forth from what’s happening in the present to what’s happening on their PDA, much the way my husband is right now flipping the channels back and forth between ESPN and the news.

But if you want to be effective as a leader, you need to stop flipping back and forth. You need to focus.

I don’t care if you’re the CEO, Barack Obama’s own attorney or the highest paid entrepreneur ever to cash a check – your family wants you there at dinner. Your team wants you in the meeting with them now. You deserve to work an uninterrupted hour.

Try this trick every time your PDA rings. Imagine the person trying to reach you is actually physically present. Feel the sense of intrusion when they barge through the door mid-sentence in the middle of meeting, or tap on your shoulder incessantly as you’re trying to work.

Do you have the power to turn away from the spectre of efficiency and take back your life?

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. Click here for more information.

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Priorities – The Key to Balance

What does it look like for accomplished leaders to have “balance?” Does “balance” even exist?

When I coach executives on the personal side of leadership, I try to steer them away from this hypothetical question before it spins into a useless debate. The question isn’t whether or not work/life balance really exists. The question is, are you getting what you need to feel fulfilled and renewed so you’re thriving in every part of your life?

What helps you stay sane? What do you love to do? What’s your down time? Where’s your rest?

Lisa Weber was the president of individual business at MetLife – a job that requires high visibility and extensive travel. She has been named one of Fortune Magazines 50 Most Powerful women several times, she is a beloved mentor, and on top of it all, she’s also a mom. And yet, as busy as she is, she’s able to find a sense of balance by prioritizing the kinds of activities that sustain her every day.

I don’t compromise my morning run or going to my daughter’s school and reading them children’s books. To be able to sustain myself and work the long hours I do, I need to keep my priorities straight and keep everything in balance.

“Keeping her priorities straight” is key for Lisa, who has learned not to fall into the balance trap.

You can’t allow yourself to use balance as a measure for your life. You’ll always feel like a failure but when you think that way. It’s a mistake to ask, “Do I live a balanced life or not?” – as if it’s left to the whole world to judge.

The question isn’t, “Do you have balance or not?” The question is, “Do you feel balanced right now? What do you need to prioritize today in order to feel your best?

In other words, the point isn’t that you, too, should go running or read a children’s book. The secret isn’t in the activities, it’s in the prioritizing. Lisa explains:

No one can measure your priorities but you, so accept the priorities of your work and life. If prioritizing means you want to work a flexible works schedule so you can get home at 2:00 to take your kids off the bus, then you’ve set the agenda, you’ve prioritized what’s important to you, and you are going to feel a sense of balance. If prioritizing means you want to work a little harder to meet an important goal, then do that.

In the mornings, when I choose run, I prioritize running over sleep, or I prioritize my run over going to an early meeting. But other mornings, if something else feels more important than the run, I prioritize differently.

The only way to do that is if you are in control of what your priorities are. What are your priorities? How do they relate to each other? What decisions could you make today to help you feel more balanced? What decisions could you make tomorrow or in the coming week to help you align your activities with your values and goals? Says Lisa,

Balance is not a thing you achieve or a place you arrive. You constantly rethink and reprioritize your activities. If you’re feeling balanced, you’ve got it right. If you’re feeling out of balance, you need to go back and reprioritize your activities again!

Work and life are closer together than most people think. When you integrate them more fully, you lose the guilt and anxiety that comes from second-guessing your decisions. You make the decisions that make you feel at peace.

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. Click here to order.

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Go to the Calendar

Having trouble getting everything done? Come along with me on a trip. We’re going to the calendar.

“Going to the calendar” is a strategy I often recommend for leaders who want to make changes but aren’t quite sure they’ll be able to stick to them. Going to the calendar means literally

  • opening up your calendar,
  • turning on the PDA,
  • getting out your schedule,

or in any other way physically putting in front of you the written, concrete system you use to organize your life. Then you write down the commitments you’ve made, transferring them from your head to the page where they become real.

For example, Gloria wanted to set up what she called “Customer Contact” hours five hours a week, during which the only thing she would do would be to circulate among the customers in the winery she ran to discover what their experience was like. After three weeks of “flaking out,” as she put it, I made her go to the calendar and schedule those five hours a week. She wrote “Customer Contact” between four and five o’clock each day for the rest of the year. From them on, customer contact wasn’t just a good idea, it was an appointment she was scheduled to do. Her calendar never let her forget.

This strategy is most helpful if you use a calendar system that matches your strengths. Most calendars are arranged into tidy hour-sized boxes into which you’re supposed to compartmentalize your life. When you go to the calendar, give yourself permission to break out of the boxes. Just as you can control your time, you can also control your calendar. Don’t let it control you. Some examples:

Ann:    Every year I get a fresh paper calendar. I claim the days I want for myself and block them out with an opaque permanent marker. Then I use those “blackout dates” however I choose.

Nico:   Once I took a whole month of pages out right out my calendar. I had been wanting to take a vacation, but somehow it always got bumped. When the pages weren’t there, the time stayed free and for once I actually took that vacation.

Rick:    I gave a list of times to my assistant that I wanted to keep free for working on projects. Now my assistant turns down all requests for my time that interfere with those parameters.

Mitch:  My PDA locked me into a very linear way of thinking. Now I do all of my planning on a white board where I can scribble and draw and make diagrams; later I pin the ideas down into the system.

Peter:   I don’t like calendars at all. I think in terms of projects. I started a project wall where I can pin up all my action plans instead.  If you want to maximize your time, you do need to keep track of it by going to the calendar. You decide what that calendar should be.

Exercise

Think of something you’ve been wanting to do to achieve your vision. Go to the calendar now and figure out how you can make it happen. Be sure to put it in writing.

The ideas in this article are drawn from The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership and the accompanying eBook called The Extension. The eBook is designed to give you simple, engaging personal leadership exercises and activities to help you be a better leader, and lead a better life. Get your copy today! Click here for a Preview and to Order.

 

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Look Under the Rug

Have you ever wished you had more time to do what you need to do?

“Ha!” You say. “How many times a day?!”

Me, too. And then I remember – oh, wait. I do have more time. I have all the time I need. And so do you.

So where is it? You’ve got to find it. In you.

There’s a process for increasing your productivity. In order to get more out of your efforts, you’ve got squeeze every moment out of your energy. Find the shortcuts. Eliminate the distractions. Expand the time you need for the things that really matter.

To do this, you’ve got to be creative. It’s the same process you’d use to look at your expenses if you suddenly decided you wanted to go on vacation. You look closely at the details and find that little extra – and a little more – and maybe a big chunk over here – until you amass the money you need and Hawaii, here you come. Only now, you’re trying to save up your time.

Saly Glassman, Senior Vice President-Investments at Merrill Lynch, is a master of this. She is a financial advisor who has been listed consistently in the top third of the Barron’s 100 Financial Advisors. With a successful family business, two daughters, dogs, horses, and a few little hobbies (like enjoying a lovely 60-mile bike ride), she knows what it means to make the most of her time. Here’s what she says.

You’re looking for every angle you can get more productivity. You have to go into every little corner and look under the rug to see if there’s anything in here.

So where do you look? Try here.

Time checking email Time cooking and cleaning Time on the phone
Time in traffic Time shopping Time reading
Time running errands Time in meetings Time writing

Every single one of these can be eliminated – not just reduced; eliminated – if you get creative.

What are you waiting for? There’s no time to lose.

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. Click here to order.

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Three New Shortcuts to Maximize Your Time

One of my favorite topics to write, coach, and speak on is Maximizing Your Time. It’s not just a topic for me – it’s an obsession! Your time is too precious to waste. I’ve started a collection of good ideas for maximizing time (which is the Sixth Practice of Personal Leadership). Most of these are available in The Inner Edge, and even more in The Inner Edge Extension. Here are a three more for today.

A New Kind of Balance
Paul Melchiorre, VP of Global Strategy at Ariba, once reframed for me the topic of “balance.” He said, “It used to be that there was office time for your work and down time with your family.” Now, though, our PDAs, laptops and cell phones bring the office right home. Flex time, telecommuting, and compressed work weeks likewise bring family life right into the workweek. “It’s not like you have a work life and a play life anymore,” Paul went on. “It’s just your life.”

Paul had a good suggestion for managing the co-mingling of the various parts of our lives: Set Rules. Don’t answer the phone during dinner, for instance, or schedule a family breakfast if you know you’ll be working too late to make dinner. If work and home are to share your time, make sure they both get an equal part.

Fun on the Run
It’s not just that our work and home lives are so integrated that we have trouble maximizing our time. It’s also because we’re so busy. Who has time for the full work day and the homemade meal and the family time and the workout all in one day, everyday? (It can be done, mind you…I coach people how everyday!) In a full day, sometimes you’ve just got to double up.

My friend and client, Saly Glassman at Merrill Lynch, often has creative ideas for Maximizing Time. She once told me a very funny story about how much fun she and her daughters have as they run errands. A trip to CVS might not sound like the typical Family Fun Night, but given all the laughs they have, it can be equally as good! Exercising with your spouse, taking your kids on business trips, or cooking dinner as a family all offer ways to get in quality down time in the middle of a busy day (or life). You really can do more with less.

Interruptible Time
Personally, I find peace of mind in compartmentalizing. I like to separate my work life and my home life. It’s my way of finding focus and relaxing into the moment.

But I am coming to realize more and more how much people can make interruptible time work.

“Interruptible Time” is time that is scheduled for one thing but doesn’t require so much concentration that you can’t switch to something else that comes up. I am convinced that this how executive search consultant Christine Heidenreich can work seven days a week and feel perfectly balanced, or how the CEO of a health care association can enjoy a long day at the zoo with his nephews right in the middle of the week.

To practice interruptible time, it’s best to plan a bit ahead. Make a list of the tasks you have that you can easily “switch into.” For many people these include phone calls, but could also be reading or making simple decisions. Then look at your schedule to see when those tasks could be intermingled with others for an acceptable balance – for instance, on a low key Saturday or some evening after dinner.

As the world changes around us, we are all learning to adapt. Technology is transforming the human experience. Suggestions like these are surfacing where the people who have found peace with the changes can show the rest of us what to do.

Don’t worry. I’ll keep looking for more great ideas, and I’ll post them as I do!

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. For more information email Info@TheInnerEdge.com.

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10 Techniques to Make More Time

One universal barrier to living and leading well is time. Being your best takes time – time to think, time to plan, time to align to your most important priorities. Here are Ten Time-Saving Techniques to get you that time.

1. Start with what you want to do, not what you have to do.

With all of the different systems out there for helping people organize their time, I have found the most effective tool to be a blank piece of paper. Every day, get out one small blank sheet. A 4×6 note card works great.

1. On the top half, write in the appointments you have today.

2. In the spaces between the appointments, schedule uninterrupted time to work on your most important priority.

3. On the bottom half, write no more than three to five actions you must accomplish – or want to accomplish – before the day is done.

You will start every day focused and end it having moved on your goals.

2. Open and close up shop.

The beginning and end of the day are the most critical for saving time, because you use them to get your thoughts organized. Reserve the first and last hour of the day for yourself.

At the beginning of the day: Take the time to consult your action plan, assess your schedule, and plan your day.

At the end of the day: Tie up any loose ends, put away projects with a note about what to do next, revisit your action plans, schedule time in your calendar for important tasks, and ready your desk for when you return.

3. Set the boundaries.
To get extra hours for yourself, try these suggestions:

• Refuse to schedule meetings when you need time for yourself. Don’t make excuses. Your time alone is just as important as your time with others. You will be more available and present for them when you return.

• Extend your day. If your meetings usually start at eight, your hour for yourself starts at seven. If your day usually lasts until five, the “last hour” you reserve goes from five to six.

• Shrink your day. If adding two high-quality hours to your day is impossible, try cutting the time you make available to others. If you need to start your day at eight and end at five, then you’re available for appointments from nine to four.

• Sweeten the deal. Make your time for yourself nurturing. Treat yourself to a good cup of coffee and some music, or some other special indulgences, routines, and niceties to remind you that the time you save is special time for you.

• Get out of there. It’s easier to resist temptation if temptation can’t find you. Try taking your hours to yourself into private, either by closing your door or by getting away from the office.

Are there barriers that sometimes make it difficult to do this? Of course. But if you can discipline yourself to make it happen, you will learn that these hours do more to help you stay on top of your work and enjoy your life more than any other hours in the day. With just a little time to get focused, you will feel complete, clear, rested and renewed.

4. “Go to the library.”
When you look back on the times you’ve had to study – really study, for something important like your hardest exams – where did you go? For many of us, it was the library. You can recreate the space and silence of the library in your everyday life.

• Turn off the phone.
• Leave your PDA, Internet connection, pager and so on behind.
• Turn off your email.
• Escape to a quiet place, alone – a conference room, an empty office, a café, your kitchen table.
• Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Just slip away.

It is so hard to concentrate in our beeping, buzzing, urgent, ever-available world. But you will accomplish exponentially more if you can escape even for an hour at a time to a place where you can think and get things done.

5. Give yourself permission.
The most common words I hear when I help leaders look for time is, “I can’t.”

• “I can’t turn off my cell phone.”
• “I can’t schedule time for myself during the day.”
• “I can’t get out of work any earlier.”

Ask yourself: Whose permission do you need to do any of these things? Chances are the one who is holding you back is you.

6. Get permission.
If there really is someone who keeps you from getting the time you need to work on your inner as well as your outer edge, ask them for time.

• Ask your boss: “I need to find at least an hour a day of uninterrupted time to concentrate on important behind-the-scenes work and stay aligned to our/my priorities. When would be the most convenient time for me to do that?”

• Ask your employees: “We could all use time to get our work done. What time of the day or week would it be possible for us to agree not to schedule meetings?”

• Ask your family: “I need some time for myself to work on some of my personal priorities so that I can be my best here at home and also at work. Let’s make a plan for when I can have that time.”

As a mother of small children, I can tell you even toddlers understand that grown-ups need some time alone. Surely reasonable people around you (who also need time for themselves) can respect your needs to get time to yourself. Give them credit. Ask for their help.

7. Lop something off.
One reason it’s hard to get big chunks of good quality time is that we’re nibbling around the edges. An hour here, fifteen minutes there, squeezed between a hasty lunch and the nagging To Dos.

Think bigger. If your time for yourself is important, what is it more important than? Look in your life for a whole area that you can eliminate, saving you several hours in one fell swoop.

The trick is to find those activities that are less important than you really thought. You can do this both in your personal life and at work.

• Gina figured out most of her clients came from referrals. She lopped off networking events and saved several hours a month.
• Mahendra chose the most valuable of her social groups (five college friends) and lopped off book club, her parenting group, and the gourmet group and saved at least two hours a week.
• Tony realized he spent hours on yard work every weekend, and he didn’t even enjoy it. He hired the neighbor kid to mow and weed, lopping off a time-consuming chore and buying him half a day every week.
• Mik recognized how tense and grumpy all his meetings were making him. He made a list of the meetings he had to attend. They tallied up to over forty hours a week. He lopped off half of them by getting off two committees and finding more efficient ways to communicate. Then the meetings only tallied up to twenty hours.
• Brian counted up to three hours a day in traffic. He lopped off drive time by shifting his schedule for a less conventional commute, saving him over two hours a day.

Whether we want to admit it or not, we’re the ones who fill up our time. Lop off a hunk of the time you spend on lesser-value activities and you’ll suddenly have all the time you need.

8. Bring it in.
Many of us drive all over town out to do our errands. We drive out of our way to get to our favorite gym, then swing back across town to hit our preferred supermarket, then head all the way out the other way to meet friends for dinner. This unconscious habit eats up your time, adds to your stress and hurts the environment. To eliminate the waste, think about the places you go and experiment with ways to bring them in closer – closer to each other, closer to home, or closer to your route to and from work.

A client of mine who was a master at this technique changed her entire community from all over the city into a two-mile radius. She pulled her dry cleaners, gas station, bank, drug store, doctors, mechanic and gym all closer to home. You can do the same by filling in this sentence as many times as you can: “My is too far away. How can I bring it in?” Quality services are everywhere. Give up the need to travel for miles to get them.

9. Farm it out.
Just as effective as bringing your community in closer is the strategy of farming things out. In your personal life, have you ever considered farming out:
• your cleaning?
• your laundry?
• your errands?
• your personal accounting?
• your plant care?
• your cooking?
In your professional life, have you ever considered farming out:
• your filing?
• your phone calls?
• your meetings?
• your writing?
• your sales?
• your marketing?
• your travel?
If you have ever delegated any of these items, you know it’s possible to let others do some of the work so you can get more time to yourself. Challenge yourself. What else can you farm out? Put the word out. See who’s out there to help. Save yourself time.

10. Do the hardest thing first.
It’s stressful not to get to the things that matter to us, and it exacerbates the feeling that we never have enough time. Turn that situation around by doing the thing it’s hardest for you first. Whether it’s exercising in the morning, or working on your most challenging account first thing in the day, or making the difficult decisions before doing anything else, you will feel like you’ve saved time because the pressure is off. You will actually have saved time because you won’t waste it worrying and procrastinating.

What are your best techniques for saving time? Send them to us at www.theinneredge.com. Look for updated postings on the website to help you get the time you need for the practices of personal leadership that help you live and lead well.

Please join us for The Inner Edge Book Club! This month we will be “making more time” as we apply techniques that will reduce your stress and leave you feeling peaceful and able to achieve everything that’s important to your life. For more information, click here or email info@TheInnerEdge.com.

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Have Two Lists

Busy high achievers often see themselves as people of action, but they’re not always as efficient as they think. Check your own efficiency with this question:

How many To Do lists do you have?

Do you have one gigantic list that’s so long you can’t even read it in one sitting?

Do you have dozens of sticky notes plastered all over your desk?

Do you not even have a list at all?

If your answer to any of these question is “yes,” the better answer is “no, NO, NO!”

To excel as a leader, you’ve got to get the system down. There are many ways of list-making and action planning that are far more strategic than the To Do list. You can find some of them for free on the website (www.TheInnerEdge.com).

But for starters, consider how Adam Barnes, vice president of External Affairs at AT&T, makes his lists.

“You have to come up with priorities that are realistic. You can’t make every single thing a priority. You have to be disciplined in your rankings. I have two lists: the list of stuff I need to get done and the list of stuff I want to get done.”

Right now find a piece of paper and divide into two halves. On one half, write one list by answering the question, What do you need to get done today? On the other half, answer the question, What do you want to get done if you can?

Follow this system for 21 days. If you do, you’ll soon find yourself with no list at all. As one of my clients recently reported, “I never have a To Do list, because everything’s already done.” Imagine. That could be you.

Taking Effective Action is the Third Practice of Personal Leadership. You’ll know you’re taking effective action if:
• You know exactly what to do today to attain your vision, and you’re doing it
• You end every day feeling energized and fulfilled
• You’re getting the results you want.

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. For more information email Info@Pillar-Consulting.com.