by Sheila Green
Special to the Daily Record
You know the drill. It is the beginning of the work week. You arrive at work exhausted from a weekend spent entertaining the kids, paying bills and running errands. You fire up on your PC and 70 new e-mails greet you, not to mention the 85 opened e-mails that you’ve not addressed. Your phone’s voicemail light is already blinking, and before you can clear the messages, another call comes in.
With each ring, with each colleague who drops by for office uninvited, comes a new demand for attention, for reaction, for a decision, for your time. By noon, when you take 10 minutes to inhale a sandwich at your desk, you already feel overworked, overbooked and overwhelmed.
According to Sheila Green, a nationally recognized productivity expert of Green Productivity Solutions (www.sgps.biz), this is the “silent disease” of knowledge workers everywhere. We inhabit a work environment, she says, in which there are “no end or boundaries to our responsibilities.” And in a competitive environment that is continually being reshaped by the Internet, we feel compelled to reconfigure our work on a monthly, weekly or even hourly basis. Unfortunately this haphazard approach is a recipe for chronic stress and permanent disillusionment — all too common emotions these days, for so many.
Green says that the real challenge is not managing your time but managing yourself. “If you get too wrapped up in all of the ‘stuff’ coming at you, you lose your ability to respond appropriately and effectively. Remember, you’re the one who creates the pace, because you’re the one who allows it all to come into your life. You actually have more control than you think.”
Common sense is not always common practice. Take control of your workday, improve the way you work and live by starting with a fresh focus on productivity:
Work smart, not hard
First things first, it’s the mosquitoes that bring down the big game. That is a colorful way to say it’s the little things that hold you back. Start with the obvious:
1. Optimize your online data. Outlook, Gmail, Evernote, Jott and the list continues; the internet provides a plethora of products and services that will enhance your productivity and protect your data.
2. Create a workspace that promotes success. For your space to work best for you it has to be functional. This is more difficult than most believe as many of us “put up” with the annoyances that interfere with work. Unfortunately, these annoyances add up and are often death to overall productivity.
Make sure your chair and desk are the correct height and ergonomically correct and that your mouse and keyboard are easy to use with a gel cushion for your wrist and forearms. Get rid of the clutter, file where it is easy to retrieve and most of all make sure that your personality is reflected somewhere in your space. When you experience stress, memory triggers of friends and family are incredible boosts to morale.
Keep a schedule
Whether you know it or not, we all have preferences about when and how to do certain activities. When we honor those preferences, it’s easier to get things done. Much of the fettered time and energy of any project is deciding what to do next. Take the time at the end of each workday to plan out your basic strategy for the next day. Make sure your appointments are synched with your phone to remind you of upcoming events. Consider this your roadmap. You might get detoured throughout the day but you’ll always have your roadmap to get you back on track as quick as possible.
Be flexible
It would be great if we could create a set of best practices and rigidly adhere to them. But then, life happens. Your carefully planned out day can be derailed in a flash with an irate customer, a botched report, a surprise visit from the corporate office, etc. Being flexible decreases stress levels allowing you to be more proactive and more productive.
Be positive
This sounds a little hokey, but it’s not. A positive, optimistic and friendly outlook will make you more productive because it keeps us from being annoyed and frustrated which keeps our stress levels down. We are able to transition smoothly between tasks, confidently handle change and our overall perception of our work/life balance is less daunting.
Know your limits
With significant corporate downsizing and layoffs, many employees are asked to absorb additional responsibilities. More than ever, in today’s work environment, it is imperative to work smarter, not harder.
If you constantly push yourself to work seven days a week, diving for the Blackberry every time it rings and texting while you watch TV, you will burn out much like a light bulb. You have to back off and be quiet. Retreat from the task at hand, so that you can gain a new perspective on what you are doing. If you get too wrapped up in all the stuff coming at you, you lose your ability to respond appropriately and effectively. If your inbox and your outbox are completely full, or if people are constantly pulling at you, then it is too difficult to back off and think about things at a different level.
Most people major in minor things because of unrealistic expectations. Working smarter not harder, keeping a schedule, being flexible and positive and knowing your limits will give you the tools needed for a fresh focus on productivity.
Sheila Green, founder and president of the corporate organizing and consulting firm GPS: Green Productivity Solutions, develops custom productivity solutions to dramatically increase the bottom line. During her 23 years in market development and corporate organization, Green has earned recognition as a national efficiency expert in creating productivity strategies and implementation.
For more information, visit www.sgps.biz