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12 Ways to Avoid Self-Sabotaging Your Productivity

By John Rampton | Time Management | No Comments

I don’t think that’s it’s always deliberate. But, when it comes to productivity, we’re sometimes our own worst enemy. For example, you did your due diligence by adding your most important tasks to your calendar. But, you didn’t schedule them around when you’re most productive. Here are 12 ways to avoid self-sabotaging your productivity.

That may sound inconsequential. But, since you didn’t plan your day around productivity peaks, you may be working on an essential task during an energy dip. As a result, it may take you longer since you don’t have the energy and focus.

But, that’s just one example of how you may be self-sabotaging your productivity? If you want to avoid participating in this self-destructive behavior, then here are 12 ways you can do so.

1. Manage your attention.

Maura Thomas is an award-winning speaker, trainer, and author of several books, including “Attention Management.” According to Thomas, if you want to avoid self-sabotaging your productivity, then you should first pay attention to your attention.

“We have framed our efforts around productivity and efficiency as ‘time management’ for way too long, all the while knowing that no one can actually ‘manage time,” Thomas told Forbes. “It passes, no matter what we do. We can’t slow it down or create more of it, and we all have the same amount.”

In other words, not having enough time isn’t the culprit when it comes to productivity. “It’s a distraction and misplaced attention that interferes with our ability to achieve the results that are most significant to us,” argues Thomas. The solution? Attention management.

Thomas defines attention management as “the practice of controlling your attention.” While not necessarily a new concept, this idea can be traced back to William James in the 1800s, Thomas believes that this “is an essential productivity skill of the 21st century.”

At its core, attention management is about being proactive and not reactive. It’s deciding where we want our attention to go. And, it’s identifying and changing the bad habits that prevent us from being productive.

To get you started, Thomas suggests:

Either put your phone away or put it in do not disturb mode.
When on your computer, work offline or close distracting websites.
Allocate specific times to focus on less important tasks like email.
Declutter your workspace.
For uninterrupted work, find a quiet space where you aren’t distracted by others.

Most importantly, “plan, organize, and make thoughtful choices about what gets our attention.” Ideally, this should be based around your priorities.

2. Don’t get too comfortable.

“The critical inner voice likes to keep us in a box, pigeonholed by an identity assigned to us and not necessarily one we earned,” writes Lisa Firestone Ph.D. “It can be tricky and flood us with thoughts that are seemingly self-soothing. After all, it’s much easier “to recognize an internal enemy when it’s yelling at you that you’re stupid or a failure.”

However, most of us struggle with identifying those thoughts that encourage us to engage in unhealthy habits. For example, when you’re exhausted after a hectic week, you may tell yourself that you’ve earned the right to eat junk food and veg out on the couch all weekend.

“Listening to this voice may feel comfortable at first,” adds Dr. Firestone. But, “once we give in to bad habits or avoid going after what we want, our inner critic starts in with the self-punishing thoughts,” such as “You’ll never amount to anything.”

Definitely — make (and schedule) time to rest and celebrate your accomplishments. But, at the same, don’t get too cozy. Keep looking for ways to learn, grow, and get out of your comfort zone. When you do, you’ll embark on more productive and healthy habits. It’s also a great way to silence that pesky inner critic.

3. Create a Pavolian reinforcement system.

We all have those days when we don’t feel like doing squat. As a consequence, we end up procrastinating. Next thing we know, your productivity has taken a hit. More worrisome, this could screw up your entire schedule for the day or even week. And, you may also put your business in jeopardy by failing to meet deadlines.

The good news is that you can use some good old classical conditioning to address this problem. It’s a simple way to trick you into doing anything that you don’t want to. For example, I was having difficulty getting in the zone this week. But, I promised myself that as soon as I completed my work, I would treat myself to a trip to the movie theater. It was simple, but it worked.

The key here is to find a reward system that works best for you. If you don’t want to go to the movies, then treat yourself to a healthy snack, having lunch with a friend, or purchasing a new book.

4. Get over your preconceived notions.

I’m sure we’ve all been guilty of forming an opinion about someone or something before meeting or experiencing them. For example, you may skip a party or networking event because you assume that it will be a waste of time. Other times you won’t try new food, tool, or business process since you’ve already told yourself that you won’t like it.

Sure. There will be times when your preconception was right. But, if you always listen to this bias, then you aren’t opening the door to new experiences, ideas, and perspectives. What’s more, by refusing to try out new things, you’re potentially missing out on an improved routine or system that can boost your output.

5. Working through breaks.

In theory, it’s understandable why we do this. You’ve got a million things to do, or you’ve fallen behind on a project. To resolve these problems, you don’t take any breaks throughout the day. You even work straight through your lunch break, subsisting on a Snickers bar — or two.

You begin to believe that it’s counterproductive to stop what you’re doing merely to take a breath — a breather, or eat a healthy lunch. But, breaks are essential to productivity. We need these intermissions to decompress, rest, and recharge. We can also use these lulls to process everything that’s going around us. And, they give us a chance to refuel so that we have the stamina and mental energy to get through the remainder of the day.

6. Making decisions — quickly.

As a leader, you’re expected to make tough decisions daily. Because some of these decisions are important, you should take your time so that you can weigh the advantages and drawbacks.

But what about less essential choices? You should be able to make them quickly. If not, we’ll spend a portion of your day ruminating over something insignificant.

Author and former clinical psychologist Alice Boyes use picking a hotel as an example. Instead of doing extensive research each time you search for a room, you should have five criteria points that you look for. If the hotel meets your requirements, then book it.

“This helps me de-prioritize marginally productive behaviors, like spending 30 mins returning an unsatisfactory low-value item to a store when I could be doing something much more productive,” Boyes writes for Harvard Business Review.

7. Avoid comparing yourself to others.

“How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

It’s so easy to fall into this trap. Between conducting market research or just scrolling through social media, you’re tempted to compare yourself to others. Whether it’s sizing up your competition or seeing which tropical location a college friend is currently at, comparing yourself to others isn’t just a waste of time. It also sabotages your productivity because you’re more worried about others are doing than how you can improve yourself personally and professionally.

8. Don’t fear change.

Change is a part of life. But, that doesn’t mean that it comes easy. Most of us resist change because we’re petrified of the unknown. Others are just creatures of habit and don’t want to shake things up.

Whatever the exact reason, change is confusing and frightening. But, by embracing change, you can evolve into a more well-rounded, knowledgeable, and productive individual.

Some ways that you can fight back against this resistance is to seek out different perspectives and try something new. For example, if you’ve never had Indian cuisine, make visiting that new Thai restaurant in town a part of your date night agenda. And, make sure that you ask lots of questions.

9. Seek out inspiration.

Although often attributed to C.S. Lewis, it’s most likely Les Brown, one of my favorite quotes is, “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” The reason? It encourages me to chase my dreams and find new sources of inspiration constantly.

If you feel like you haven’t felt excited in quite some time, then everything from motivation, residence, and productivity will stifle. Eventually, like The Boss, you’ll get stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps of Jersey.

Thankfully, there’s an inspiration all around you. Books, podcasts, exploring your city, or taking in the arts are all simple ways to give you an inspiration spark when you need it.

10. Lower your standards.

Obviously, you don’t want to ditch your high standards when it comes to your work or the products and services you offer. You should also expect your team to deliver quality work. But, it’s unreasonable and not possible to demand perfection.

Perfectionism prevents you from improving, discovering new opportunities, and wrecks your productivity. To avoid this cycle, lower standards just a little — a smidgen won’t kill you or anyone else. Try:

Not being so demanding and nitpicky.
Setting realistic goals.
Welcoming feedback from others.
Not comparing yourself to others.
Admit to the fact that you’re imperfect.

11. Delay gratification.

Our brains prioritize instant gratification. The main reason for this is because of the emotional part of the brain that responds positively to immediate rewards.

“Our emotional brain has a hard time imagining the future, even though our logical brain clearly sees the future consequences of our current actions,” says David Laibson at Harvard University. “Our emotional brain wants to max out the credit card, order dessert and smoke a cigarette. Our logical brain knows we should save for retirement, go for a jog and quit smoking.”

While you should savor the moment, you also need to find the right balance. If you stay up all night drinking, then how productive are you going to be the next day? If you keep neglecting your health, then you aren’t going to have the energy and focus to power through your to-dos.

So, definitely have fun. But, it should be within reason. And, more importantly, don’t immediately reward yourself. Save it for later so that you’ll make a better choice.

12. Embrace failure.

Finally, don’t fear failure. You should welcome it.

I know that it isn’t fun and wasn’t your intention. But, failing is one of the best ways to learn and grow. You can take that painful experience and use it to your advantage so that you can become a smarter and stronger entrepreneur. It may even make you a better person overall.

What are the 4 D’s of Negligence in Time Management?

By John Rampton | Scheduling | No Comments

How to Squeeze More Time Out of Your Busy Schedule

I’ve experimented with various time management hacks over the years. The time management hack I’ve found to be most practical and useful is the 4Ds of time management. People will continue to get better and better at their jobs and productivity, yet time management will continue to be an issue in business. We’ll look at the 4D’s of time management first, but what are the 4D’s of negligent time management?

The 4D’s of Time Management

If you’re not familiar with this technique, the 4Ds of time management are: delete, delegate, defer, and do.

Delete is where you remove unnecessary time-wasters from your schedule, such as projects you never complete or unproductive meetings.
Delegate is taking tasks that are important but can be assigned to someone else.
Defer means, essential tasks that don’t need to be handled right now. Schedule these jobs when you have the availability.
Do is for the jobs (or anything) that take a couple of minutes to finish quickly. Don’t let these micro-tasks pile-up — get them done and over with, now. But, do also means diving directly into a task, building up your momentum and working on a bigger job to get it done.

Personally, using the 4Ds of time management has increased my productivity. How? Using the principle has encouraged me to focus on what truly matters. Also, because this has reduced the number of activities I need to worry about, I’m not cluttering my calendar. The 4D’s have helped prevent decision fatigue, which gives me more mental energy throughout the day.

What’s interesting, however, is that different industries have their variation of the 4D’s. Case in point, the medical industry has the 4Ds of medical negligence. These (negligent areas) are duty, dereliction, direct causation, and damages.

The 4D’s of Medical Negligence.

Recently, I had to visit urgent care. Nothing serious. While waiting to see the doctor, I saw a parallel between the 4Ds of time management and negligence.

I know. That probably shouldn’t have been my main concern. But what can I say? I’m always on the lookout for ways to improve time management. I think the 4D’s of negligence can be helpful in the Calendar, business, and productivity space.

Duty

No matter the exact field of expertise — doctors must adhere to strict rules, guidelines, and protocols. Drs listen to the patient and are respectful of their views.

The same system of confidentiality should be practiced in businesses, with customers and client’s financials and other information. A physician must also practice confidentiality. How confidential are we with our clients and customers data, requests, sales, and so forth? In short, Doctors must always provide the best care possible for all of their patients. Do we do the same in business?

Additionally, if the doctor believes that they can not help a patient — they must refer them to someone else. For example, if you have a rotator cuff tear, then your primary physician wouldn’t attempt to do surgery. Instead, your primary care doctor will refer you to physical therapy, and then to an orthopedic surgeon.

How duty relates to time management.

To begin with, whenever you accept a time request, you have a duty to follow through with the job. If you accept a meeting invite — then you need to block that timeframe in your calendar to prevent scheduling conflicts. You will follow through with the meetings set up on your schedule.

Ditching-out on your scheduled appointments at the last minute isn’t done unless there is an emergency. Your doctor doesn’t cancel appointments for no reason. It wouldn’t be very professional for your doctor to visit with two patients in the same room at the same time, either.

You have a responsibility to arrive on-time for your appointments and end the event as scheduled.

Not only is this respectful to the other attendees, but it also protects your time. Have you planned a meeting for thirty minutes, and the meeting ends up being an hour? The lax in protocols change your plans for the day — and creates conflict in everyone’s schedule.

Similarly to the medical duty of time management — if you don’t have the availability — then be honest about this upfront. If your Calendar is packed for the next month, don’t take on any new responsibilities. Don’t keep adding to your duties or accept any meeting invites until you have more time.

Finally, like doctors, if you aren’t an expert — then send your clients and customers to someone who is an expert. Obviously, for those in the medical field — it’s for legal purposes. But, for most of us, this is a simple way to avoid wasting time.

For instance, I just repaired a couple of things at my home. These weren’t difficult, but because I had never done them before — I spent hours on the project. It may have been expensive to hire a maintenance specialist — but I would have saved a ton of time. Next time I’ll call the repairman. I’ll stick with what I am an expert at — for the sake of my business.

Dereliction

Whenever a doctor doesn’t meet expectations or overstepped boundaries, this is called dereliction negligence. Examples would be not providing a clean and safe environment, misdiagnosis, missing a diagnosis, doing unnecessary procedures. Dereliction also includes surgical errors or prescribing the wrong medication.

How dereliction relates to time management.

Did you commit to a new work assignment? If so, that should be your priority. You should also allocate the right amount of time to performing the jobs you said you would accomplish. By Calendaring your tasks and meetings you’ll be sure to meet the deadlines. If you don’t have the time or skills for this exact task, just as a doctor would do, the job should be handed off to someone else whose expert.

Furthermore, dereliction is defined as “the state of being abandoned.”

And, as it just so happens, finishing what you started is one of the best ways to manipulate time to your advantage.

“It’s very common for tasks to get interrupted or delayed throughout your day.” Renzo Costarella wrote previously for Calendar. “Often, it’s best to finish the task at hand before starting new ones.” If you visited your doctor to get stitches, you would expect the doc to finish the job — not leave you half-stitched.

“However, other things may take priority,” adds Renzo. “For example, if a customer needs immediate assistance, it’s probably best to serve them right away.” But, “you need to make a point to return and finish your unfinished duties” after handling the current crisis.

“Again, this sounds simple enough, but it’s common for individuals to get distracted and leave loose ends.”

Direct Causation

If there was a dereliction of duty, then it must be proven that the healthcare provider was at fault. Usually, this is straightforward. I’ll give you an example of my personal life. My grandfather went in for simple cataract surgery. But, the doctor operated on the wrong eye. As a consequence, he began to experience vision problems in the wrong eye and he still had a cataract on the original eye.

In this case, the error was obvious. But, other times, errors and mistakes are not so black and white. Let’s say that a patient had a broken arm that didn’t heal properly. Maybe the patient will claim that the error was because the orthopedist did not apply the correct methods to the fractured arm correctly.

However, in the background, we may find out that the patient fell while the cast was on — which was the real causation of further injury. If the patient doesn’t admit the actual error or mistake — it could be challenging to prove that it wasn’t the surgeon’s fault. Dishonesty from the patient causes problems for us all.

How direct causation relates to time management.

Causation and time management fit together like a glove. If you don’t manage your time effectively by holding yourself accountable, there will be negative consequences. You may want to pin the blame on others — but, ultimately, the buck stops with you.

The surgeon who operated on my grandfather’s eye blamed the nurse who prepped my grandpop. But, the doctor should have double-checked the information himself before operating. When it comes to your responsibilities, you can say that you were late for a meeting because your other event ran late. However, if you had built-in a buffer between these meetings, this issue wouldn’t have occurred.

Another example of direct causation is not focusing on meaningful work because you’re getting distracted.

The solution? Identify these distractions and eliminate them. If your phone is the primary causation of your time management lag, then turn it off or put it on do not disturb mode. Behind on your priorities because you’re devoting too much time on unnecessary things? Drop those time-sucks from your to-do-list for the time being.

There are times when you aren’t at fault in business. One way around the vast majority of excuse ridden situations is to schedule white space in your calendar. Leave a block of time blank to catch up and in-between meeting. Leave buffer times in your schedules. If you don’t have anything scheduled use that time to address the unexpected events that occur.

Damages

Businesses have a lot of issues that appear as damages. But nothing could be worse than the current medical malpractice issues. Doctors respond to the question, “did the patient suffer physically, mentally, emotionally, or financially?”

The patient is entitled to a monetary amount that would help cover wage losses or medical bills. Damages would also take care of any pain or suffering or emotional distress that the patient has experienced.

How damages relate to business time management.

Poor time management affects every area of your life. Let’s say that you’re aren’t punctual or always rushing from Point A to B. Not only is this stressful, it also puts a strain on your relationships. If you miss a deadline, for instance, you might lose a client. If you are arriving late at home each night — you don’t have a chance to spend quality time with your family.

Other symptoms of poor time management would be procrastination, inability to set goals, and decreased quality of work. Poor time management causes damage in many areas of your business — and certainly in your life.

You’ll find poor time management causes you, your family and your clients and customers to suffer physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially. Unhealthy habits, like eating fast food, not exercising, and getting burned out can be attributed to poor time management.

In other words, poor time management will definitely lead to physical, mental, emotional, and financial distress — and there is no one to blame but ourselves. You aren’t going to recover any monetary amount for slacking on the job and causing yourself and your family pain and suffering. But you can recover monetary setbacks through better time management.

When you feel pain and suffering in business — look to time management for the cure.

4 Ways to Maximize Your Time Between Thanksgiving and Christmas

By John Rampton | Time Management | No Comments

3 Things to Keep in Mind When Setting Holiday Hours

The holidays are a time for relaxation and reflection, but that doesn’t mean you can afford to ease up on the gas. Some people will take a turkey nap until the new year. Others will keep their noses to the grindstone — and reap the rewards while everyone else nurses a holiday hangover.

CBS News reports that 61 percent of employees admit feeling distracted by the holiday season as early as November first.

Founders can’t take that kind of break. Follow these tips to keep your company growing through the end of the year:

1. Push harder and reward more.

Your employees might be ready to slack off, but that doesn’t mean you should let them. If you push too hard, though, they will resent your leadership. Enjoy the best of both worlds by giving employees extra time off during the holidays and asking more of them in the weeks leading up to the break.

The Olson Group argues that employers should give employees longer periods of vacation time for a variety of reasons.

Not only do longer vacations make employees more productive, but they also make employees feel more motivated to contribute to the success of the company. For startups, where every employee needs to pull a lot of weight, buy-in is essential. Tell employees about the extra paid time off, then use that as motivation to keep them working harder, earlier, in the meantime.

When employees know they won’t have to worry about work for a whole week, they are less likely to spend the middle of December idly shopping for last-minute gifts.

2. Start every day hard.

The longer you put it off, the more difficult it becomes. Rather than stroll into the office at 8:30 and tackle a few easy tasks before lunch, commit to get to work a little earlier during the holiday season. Once you arrive, tackle the hardest thing on your plate first.

Many successful people disagree on this subject. Michael Hyatt starts with the easy stuff and works his way up.

However, I have found that by tackling my hardest project first thing in the morning, I am better able to respond to the emergencies that pop up later in the day. I can also attend meetings and brainstorm without that nagging feeling that something else requires my attention.

3. Plan time to handle personal errands.

Your business is important, but you still have friends and family who will expect gifts, cards and other reminders that you exist during the holidays.

Don’t be that person who waits until the last minute. Research from Needle found that shopping is now the biggest stressor during the holiday season, ahead of other factors like familial obligations and travel. Stress negatively impacts productivity in a big way, so take precautions to minimize the damage.

Take an afternoon off during one week in December to get all (or at least most) of your shopping out of the way. If you absolutely can’t miss work, put a weekend morning on your calendar and keep that appointment. Make time to take care of the personal stuff so you don’t end up trying to multitask and harm the quality of your work.

4. Leave when it’s time to leave.

Even if you work on Christmas to give your team the day off, take some time around the holidays for your own vacation. Make it last at least a week — not just for your benefit, but for your team’s.

Startup teams look to their founders for guidance. If the founder works all through the holiday without a break, team members will feel like they must either follow that example or be perceived as selfish.

Aron Ain, CEO of Kronos, moved his company from a PTO-based vacation policy to an unlimited one to keep more talented workers. During the transition, he discovered that his managers were reluctant to give new recruits as much PTO as they had at their old jobs.

Even though they were allowed to do so, they didn’t want to be the first to break the mold. Only when the executive team set the example did the dynamic change.

Time has a habit of moving quickly after Thanksgiving. Rather than admit defeat and go into hibernation until the new year, use these tips to buckle down and get more done without losing the respect of your team in the process.

What to Do On Days You Don’t Have Many Appointments

By Jason Barnes | Appointment | No Comments

The truth is, most companies can’t fill their schedules with paying customers from the beginning to the end of every day. How your business uses those lulls matters just as much as how it conducts its customer appointments.

So what should you do on days when you don’t have many appointments? Here are some ideas for making each day productive regardless of appointment volume:

1. Do a Deep Clean

With so many customers coming and going on a regular day, office cleaning can be tough to keep up with. But at a certain point, customers will start to notice the dirt and grime piling up. And especially right now, nobody wants to do business in a dirty space.

For the slow days, put together a list of tasks the team can do to tidy up. Stylists can wipe off their counters and give the floors a good sweep. Doctor’s offices can organize and shred paperwork. These jobs need to be done eventually, and you definitely don’t want to stay late to tackle them.

2. Declutter Your System

The online aspect of your business needs a deep clean just as much as the physical one. Take a minute to log into your scheduling system and web interface. You might realize that part of your company website is down, resulting in the lack of appointments that day.

This is a worst case scenario, but the greater point stands: Any digital barriers to bookings must be eliminated. That includes email accounts, where customers’ messages can get lost, as well as SMS-based appointment systems.

3. Tune Up Your Marketing Campaign

When your booking slots are looking a little lonely, take a minute to review the marketing campaigns you’re running. To start reeling in customers again, they may need some changes. As time goes by, campaigns can get stale due to repetition. Mixing things up is in your best interests.

Think about what will fill up those appointment times again. Maybe it’s time for you to announce a new special, in which first-time customers get a 10% discount if they book online. Perhaps you need to put your focus somewhere else, like targeting a new demographic or platform.

4. Balance Your Checkbook

Your company’s finances need to be reviewed regularly. At least once a quarter, check your budget allocations. Go through your receipts to ensure that expenses are recorded properly. Check that your revenue streams are still flowing freely.

While how you manage your money is ultimately your call, employees can help with many related tasks. They can take a deposit to the bank, count the till, or work on next quarter’s forecast. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

5. Make Some Cold Calls

If you’re really dry on business, try to secure walk-ins by making some cold calls. Cold calling may not be fun or terribly effective, but it can help you break even when the customers are in short supply.

Say you’re a mechanic. You might call customers whose vehicles are due for a tune up and inform them about openings that day. Even if you can’t fill up today’s schedule, you can probably beef up your upcoming appointment list.

6. Plan For Tomorrow

How can you make tomorrow better than today? How you answer that question will be unique to your business, but there’s a lot you can do to promote future appointments.

Take the time to straighten out your company’s online calendar. Look for events that have been cancelled, which you can remove to free up more slots for customer appointments. Or, you could do some long-term planning to help your associates learn a new service line.

7. Hold a Meeting

When was the last time you got everyone together to talk about whole-company issues? If you see a slow day coming up, it might be the perfect day to hold a company meeting.

If so, tell employees to hold that time on their calendars while you develop an agenda. Ask them about discussion items they would like to cover.

Company meetings help align your team around its goals. They also give your employees a chance to bring up any concerns they might have about the workplace.

Just be careful not to hold all-staff meetings too often. Not only can they become unproductive, but they may give your team meeting burnout.

8. Close Early

If it’s been a slow day since you opened, why not close up shop early? Not only does this give employees a welcome break, but it curbs overhead costs like labor and electricity use.

You could also split the difference and use a slow day for paid volunteering. Although this means your team is still on the clock, it gives your company a good name in the community. Over time, positive word of mouth can bring in a lot of business.

When all else fails, get creative with how you spend days when you don’t have many appointments. Get to know your employees or coworkers better, set goals for next week, or catch up on some company reading. The only wrong choice is to twiddle your thumbs.

Always Resolve Your Calendar Conflicts

By John Rampton | Scheduling, Time Management | No Comments

If you were able to have a superpower, what would it be? For me? I would want the ability to be in two places at once.

That might not sound like the most thrilling of powers. But think about it? You could tackle your work responsibilities while playing with your kids, reading, or whatever else you enjoy during your downtime.

A Properly Managed Calendar Can Feel Almost Magical

Of course, this isn’t realistic. That’s why it’s imperative that you properly manage your calendar. If you don’t, it will feel like you’re trying to be in multiple places simultaneously.

That might not sound like a biggie. But calendar conflicts are frustrating and stressful. They can also cause you to fall behind in your work. And, they could also fracture relationships if this becomes a recurring issue.

The good news? There are ways to resolve your calendar conflicts? And here are 8 such ways to achieve this feat.

1. Avoid conflicts by going digital.

Want to prevent conflicts from happening in the first place? Then you probably should make a move from a paper calendar or planner to a digital option.

I’m not completely hating on old-school paper calendars. In fact, they can still come in handy. After all, they excel at providing a quick visual reminder. And, we tend to remember events better when it’s written down.

At the same time, they can be problematic. Let’s say that you were at a networking event and agreed to follow-up with a new contact. You agree to a phone call next Wednesday at 1 pm. However, when you go to add this entry when you get back to your office, you see that you had a prior commitment.

It’s not the end of the word for you to reschedule. But, if you had a calendar app, you would have been able to see your availability right there on the spot. What’s more, most calendar software won’t even let you double-book your time and will suggest a different time.

As if that weren’t enough, you could share your calendar with others. When you do, they can either see when you’re available. Or, they can book a meeting with you directly through the calendar.

And, one more thing. Online calendars also come with time-zone recognition. That means it will automatically convert time zones to avoid any confusion.

2. Don’t wait until tomorrow.

The longer you wait to put entries into your calendar, the higher the probability for conflicts to arise. Going back to following-up with the contact you met. Until you had the call to your calendar, it doesn’t exist.

Even worse? Something else might creep in and try to claim that block of time. If that happens, you’re going to have to do some last-minute reshuffling.

In short, schedule your priorities and important dates ASAP. For instance, if you know, there’s a meeting scheduled on the 30th of the month book the conference room this very second. If you have a dentist’s appointment in 6 months, get that in your calendar before scheduling something else.

3. Keep your calendar lean and mean.

As I just mentioned, if something isn’t in your calendar, then it’s not worthy of your time and energy. But, does that mean that you need to literally plan every minute of your day? Not exactly.

By all means, get those key entries onto your calendar. But, also leave some blocks open. One example of this would be having a gap between meetings. It’s a simple way to prevent overlapping — plus, it allows you to catch your breath.

Furthermore, there’s another reason not to pack your calendar too tight. It will let you address any emergencies that might pop-up. In turn, you won’t completely ruin your schedule.

And, it’s also been found that healthy scheduling habits make you happy. Specifically, this applies to your social life. For instance, if you don’t have anything planned after running errands and you bumped into a friend, you could catch-up without feeling crunched for time.

4. Stay cool like a cucumber.

So, you’ve got a conflict? You might instinctively have a panic attack. Take a deep breath and relax. Everything’s going to be OK.

The worst possible outcome is that you might disappoint someone or have to adjust your schedule. It’s an annoyance. But, if you’re honest and aren’t making last-minute changes, everything will get back to order.

Additionally, if the other party made a mistake, show a little empathy. As humans, that’s going to happen. Besides, chastising them won’t help correct their time management problems.

5. Don’t have a communication breakdown.

While your handy online calendar can help avert possible conflicts, you can’t solely rely on it. Case in point, you have a family emergency a couple of hours before a meeting. Your calendar obviously doesn’t know this information. As a result, it’s still going to assume that the event will take place as scheduled.

In this case, you need to let the other attendees know. You also need to cancel or reschedule that event. If you don’t have a new date in mind, just let them know that you will pick a new date as soon as possible.

Long story short, keep the lines of communication open. It may take you a couple of minutes. But, it shows others that you respect their valuable time. And, it may also help you de-escalate any possible workplace conflicts.

6. Have a backup plan.

You can’t possibly prepare for every scenario. Personally, I just don’t think that’s possible. But, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a Plan D, C, and D.

For instance, if you have to reschedule a virtual call, come up with a couple of other possible alternative dates. The reason? Since you have a proposal ready, you won’t play the time-consuming game of cat and mouse.

What if you don’t fill these blocks of time up? No worries. You can use that block to tackle backburner tasks, get the head start on a new project, or kick back and relax for a minute.

Another suggestion could be when it comes to employee scheduling. You might want to have some back-ups in cause someone can’t make it into work. To make this process a little easier on you, you could even permit your team members to pick their own subs.

7. It’s OK to say no.

What if you said yes to a time request only to find out that there’s a calendar dispute? The answer is easy. Just say, “no.”

I know that you don’t want to upset anyone. However, you aren’t doing anyone any favors by spreading yourself too thin. So, if you are already going to a party on Saturday, then you’ll have to pass on another invite.

When it comes to working, you also need to know your limitations. If you’re at full capacity, then don’t accept or volunteer for new assignments.

What exactly should you decline? That’s really up to you. But, some of the most common examples would be:

Anything that could be easily delegated or outsourced.
Actions that don’t align with your vision.
Things that distract you.
Unhealthy habits.
Things that aren’t in your control.

I’d also add that just because you reject a time request doesn’t mean you should feel guilty. In fact, you could offer an alternative date when you have the availability. After all, if you don’t protect your time, then who will?

Is WFH Making You Miserable?

By John Rampton | Appointment, Time Management | No Comments

For years those who were fortunate enough to work remotely praised its benefits from the rooftops. In fact, numerous research backed-up these claims. For example, Owl Labs found in its 2019 State of Remote Work Reportthe following:

83% of survey respondents agree that the ability to work remotely would make them happier.
82% of respondents agree with the statement that working remotely would make them feel more trusted at work.
81% of respondents agree that working remotely would make them better able to manage work-life conflict.
81% of survey respondents agreed that working remotely would make them more likely to recommend their company to a friend.
80% of all survey respondents agreed that the ability to work remotely would make them less stressed.
80% of respondents agree that working remotely would make them feel like their employer cares.
74% of survey respondents agree that working remotely would make them less likely to leave their employer.

In short, remorse workers are happier, productive, and loyal. Reasons include autonomy, flexibility, and fewer workplace distractions. In turn, this is beneficial for their careers and well-being, as well as the bottom line.

Then the global pandemic yet. Suddenly people who had always dreamed of working from home who thrust into this new way of life. Some thrived, others didn’t.

You can’t fault them. A lot of folks just aren’t cut out for the WFH-life. Furthermore, there’s a dark side that’s making people downright miserable.

Why working from home is making people miserable?

“Working from home entails some degree of isolation,” explains business consultant Larry Alton. “If you live by yourself, you may go an entire day without seeing or talking to anybody.” But, even if this isn’t so, “you might customarily shut yourself away in a separate office.”

Why’s this such a big deal? Various research shows that social contact is paramount when it comes to our mental and physical health. Interacting with others can also calm and soothe us.

“Across multiple studies, controlling for factors like income, geographic regions, and even genetics, the single most important ingredient for long-term happiness appears to be how and how often we connect with other people,” adds Alton. “Loneliness, especially on a chronic basis, can subject you to depression, frustration, and career burnout.”

As if that weren’t bad enough, it’s tempting to fall into unhealthy habits. For instance, during your routine, you might tell yourself that you’re only going to catch-up with the local news. Next thing you know, you’re playing along with The Price Is Right.

It may also be easier to sleep-in, make frequent trips to the fridge, and get less physical activity. If you have children, it’s a struggle trying to homeschool them while trying to get your work done. It’s more challenging to leave work at work — I mean, you are essentially living at work.

When you’re working by yourself, there isn’t an opportunity to take advantage of Equity Theory. According to Alton, “This is a sociological phenomenon in which individuals gauge their own performance and sense of belonging against the habits and actions of others. When there are no coworkers around to help you measure your own performance, you might develop a constant, nagging feeling that something is not right.”

The good news? If working remotely has gotten you down, there are ways to turn that frown upside down. And you can start by trying out the following.

Overcome detachment.

In a pre-COVID world, this really wasn’t much of a problem. You could set-up a shop at your favorite cafe. You could join a shared workspace or actually go into work a couple of days per week.

Outside of work, you could socialize with friends or family. I’ve even taken breaks from work to chat with my neighbor. And you could attend local networking events.

While you might be able to do some of the above, it’s definitely more difficult living in a pandemic. If you’re uncomfortable being around others or can’t safely practice social distancing, you can still connect with others.

Obviously, the most popular way is via video calls using a platform like Zoom. Whether it’s meeting with your team or catching up with a friend, this has been a lifesaver. Just be cautious not to overdo it so that you miss a case of Zoom-fatigue.

Also, there’s nothing wrong with just picking up the phone and making a call. If you feel isolated, give your best friend or mentor a ring.

Set rituals, routines, and boundaries.

When you went to the office daily, you had a routine. That structure made it easier to schedule your time. More importantly, it helped you establish boundaries between work and home.

Does this mean you have to follow the exact same routine? Not exactly. The beauty of working from home is that you can set your schedule to fit your productivity peaks and personal obligations.

For example, if you’re a morning bird, you could wake-up before everyone else in your house. While it’s quiet and you have the energy, you can work on your most important task for the day. During your breaks, you could spend time with your family and get some exercise in.

Regardless of how you schedule your day, be consistent. And find ways to transition between your personal and professional lives. It could be something as simple as turning off your computer to changing your clothes.

Create a home “office” space.

I know it’s tempting to work from the comfort of your bed or couch. But, remember, you need separation between where you get things done and chillax. As such, you need a dedicated space that you associate with work.

Ideally, it should be somewhere quiet. A spare bedroom, basement, garage, or even closet would suffice. Additionally, it should also have the right tools and equipment — think desk, high-speed internet, and whatever else you need to work.

But, those are just the basics. Brighten your workspace with natural light, plants, and colors that match your work. For instance, if your job requires a ton of focus, surround yourself with the color blue.

And, go ahead and personalize your workspace by throwing in personal items like photos or memento from a past trip. Most importantly, keep this area clean and organized.

Use your breaks to get a dose of joy.

It’s no secret that frequent breaks throughout the day can boost productivity. The key is to use these breaks to rest and recharge and do something fun.

For me, that’s taking my dog for a walk after lunch — san phone. It’s been found multiple times that spending time outside can reduce anxiety, stress, and depression. But, you could try anything that makes you happy, such as phoning a friend, drawing, or dancing.

Take advantage of working from home.

While there are disadvantages of remote work, look on the bright side. You don’t have to put up with a daily commute. As a result, you’re saving more time and money — which can be spent on something more fulfilling.

Also, you might be able to have your dog be by your side all day. Or, you get to spend more quality time with your kids. And, unless you have a video meeting, every day is casual Friday.

Accept your negative feelings.

Finally, embrace any negative feelings that you’re experiencing. It’s a proven way to help you work them. Besides, constantly seeking happiness can backfire.

“Any time you’re setting a standard for your mood when you don’t meet that standard, it’s painful,” said Brett Ford, a psychologist who studies emotions at the University of Toronto. “You’re basically adding pain on top of a lack of happiness.”

“We can’t be happy all the time, but we can be OK with whatever emotions we are having,” says Dr. Judson Brewer, a psychiatrist who studies behavioral change. “And in that sense, there’s a level of contentment that comes with that.”

“I’m content that I’m happy,” says Brewer. “I’m content that I’m not happy. Whatever emotion is here is here.”

Arrest These 12 Time and Productivity Thieves

By John Rampton | Time Management | No Comments

Because time is your most valuable commodity, you must protect it at all costs. Unfortunately, you can’t hire a personal bodyguard to do this for you. Instead, you’re the only defense between you and time thieves. Here is how to arrest these twelve time and productivity thieves.

On the plus side, you can easily spot those bandits from miles away. TV, social media, and low-income tasks are some of the most common culprits. But, sometimes, these thieves can rob your time and productivity from right under your nose, such as the following 12 crooks.

1. Constant interruptions.

I highly doubt that we intend to let interruptions steal away our time and energy. After all, they just tend to pop-up since we’re so easily accessible. As a consequence, they are without question the leading time thief you have to thwart.

Why? Well, because they’re so frequent and detrimental. In fact, research has found that when you get distracted, it takes on average 23 minutes and 15 minutes to regain focus.

To put that another way, you take 30-seconds to see what message you just received. Harmless, right? Nope. That quick glance at your phone has derailed you for the next 25-minutes.

Even worse? If that happens throughout the day, then how can you possibly get anything done? I mean, just 2 interruptions and 2 recoveries will set you back over 2 hours.

What’s more, this can also influence your health and well-being.

“Our research has shown that attention distraction can lead to higher stress, a bad mood, and lower productivity,” writes Gloria Mark, who studies digital distraction at the University of California, Irvine, in The New York Times. Additionally, this builds-up attention residue. Eventually, this “adds to our cognitive load as we keep switching our focus of attention and trying to reorient to new topics,” explains Mark. “Once overloaded, we tend to do more lightweight activities.”

How can you stop interruptions in their tracks? The basics, like turning off notifications and working in isolation, are a start. I would also make the most out of your calendar. For example, sharing it with others so that they know your availability.

2. Inability to say “no.”

“As Gary Keller points out in The ONE Thing when you say yes to something you are inherently saying no to many other things,” explain The ONE Thing Team. “If you don’t, you end up getting pulled in so many directions it’s like you never said yes to your ONE Thing.”

The problem is that there is a negative association with the word “no.” But, that doesn’t always have to be the case. “It’s simply a matter of prioritizing what matters most. And when no is said in the right way, it can even be turned into a positive.”

To make this easier, first determine what you should decline. Usually, this would be anything that can be outsourced, are distracting, or unhealthy. Additionally, this could also include actions that don’t align with your vision or out of your control.

Next, practice the act of saying “no” by:

Never feel guilty for saying “no.”
Planning your “no’s” in advance. For example, if you always work on your priorities from 9 am to noon, you wouldn’t say “yes” to a phone during that block.
Taking baby steps by declining low-risk situations.
Consulting your calendar by committing.
Being brief, polite, and firm.
Offering alternatives. For example, suggesting a different time to meet or referring a colleague to help on a project.

3. Personal disorganization.

On the surface, you might assume that it is about keeping a neat and clean workspace. And you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. After all, clutter can be distracting, and you’ll protect your time by not looking for misplaced items.

However, I’m actually talking about getting organized so that you can optimize your time and preserve your energy. The reason is that when you’re not disorganized, you know exactly what to do and how to get it done.

If organization isn’t in your wheelhouse, Choncé Maddox has the following suggestions to correct that:

Make a to-do-list of what you need to accomplish tomorrow.
Write down your goals so that you have a sense of purpose.
Pack a lunch to save money and reduce decisions.
Do a brief cleanup like throwing trash away and putting things back where they belong.
Make time to exercise to counter a sedentary lifestyle and enhance your energy.
Layout your clothes so that this is one less decision you have to make.
Turn your devices off when planning out out your day, week, or month.

4. Unclear goals.

I like to think of goals like GPS. They give you step-by-step instructions on how to get from one location to the next. Without it, you may end up making a wrong turn resulting in driving miles to nowhere.

Just like the directions you’re given, your goals should be clear and well defined. If you’re still lost, they should be based on what you want to achieve and how you’ll commit to it. In most cases, using something like the SMART Formula can help you get started and remain motivated.

5. Fractured focus.

“Fractured focus is the division of your attention across multiple tasks,” writes David Perez for Evernote. For example, you may be doing some research online only to fall into the Wiki rabbit role. Next thing you know, you’ve just lost an hour and a half.

Why does this happen? One reason is that you’ve depleted your attention and energy reserves. Because of this, you’re going to be more prone to distractions.

The good news? You can take your focus back. For starters, schedule your most cognitively challenging tasks when you’re most productive. Additionally, you want to remove temptations, like blocking distracting apps or websites when working.

Other recommendations would be to focus on one task at a time and letting your mind wander. And, don’t forget to schedule breaks so that you can restore your attention through meditation or going for a walk outside.

6. Fear of chaos.

Is there a more ominous word than chaos? Not if you pride yourself on being a productive planner. Unfortunately, things don’t always go according to plans.

While natural and inevitable, chaos can stop us dead in our tracks. Since we’re frozen in fear, we can’t progress on our priorities. And, we end up wasting valuable time panicking.

The ONE Thing Team suggests that you can handle this “by letting the smaller stuff slide and not fearing the chaos it creates.” I’d also add that you add time blocks in your calendar. It’s a simple way to protect your priorities while adding flexibility to deal with the chaos.

7. Procrastination.

Conventional wisdom has often proclaimed that a person procrastinates because they’re lazy. Others believe that we put things off because we’re experiencing time management problems. In reality, we often drag our feet because we haven’t managed our emotions.

“We procrastinate when a task stirs up feelings like anxiety, confusion or boredom,” clarifies Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. “And although it makes us feel better today, we end up feeling worse — and falling behind — tomorrow.”

The solution? Change “your habits around emotion management,” adds Grant. You can do this through self-compassion, reconsidering when you work on difficult tasks, and working with others.

If you’re still procrastinating, practice mindfulness and align your to-do-lists with your values. And, when all else fails, just get started. When you do, you’ll build up the momentum to keep going.

8. Meetings.

According to an article in MIT’s Sloan Management Review, the average executive spends 23 hours in meetings each week. Considering that most of us work around 47 hours per week, that means we’re spending half of our time in meetings.

While some events are beneficial, the truth is that we waste a lot of time in unnecessary meetings. In fact, 71% of respondents in one said meetings are unproductive and inefficient.

Before scheduling or accepting a meeting request, make sure that it’s 100% necessary. If not, consider alternatives like a short phone call. If it is, keep it short, stick to the agenda, and troubleshoot any problems in advance — like testing software before the start of the meeting.

9. Poor health habits.

You aren’t surprised by this, are you? Just think about how well you perform when you’re exhausted, feel like trash, or struggling mentally. You’re definitely not in peak condition.

As I’m sure you’ve heard ad nauseam, make your health and well-being a top priority. Get 7-9 hours of quality sleep each night. Engage in physical activity, avoid unhealthy coping mechanisms, and eat a nutritious diet. And, please do not hesitate to ask for help if you need it.

10. Bad communication and task distribution.

Whenever collaborating or delegating tasks, you can save everyone a lot of time, and ibuprofen is clearly stating guidelines and expectations. Moreover, you need to make sure that the right person is working on the right tasks. And, if there are any issues, make yourself available so that they can be addressed immediately.

11. States of emergency.

Emergencies, just like interruptions, will happen. However, you can avoid full-fledged disasters by preventing a crisis in the first place. You can accomplish this by identifying your priorities, defining objectives, and making better decisions.

You could also have continuous plans in place. For instance, if an employee gets sick, know who will step-in and sub for them. And, make sure to leave some white space in your calendar so that you can shuffle your schedule around if need be.

12. Unsupportive environment.

You may have never realized this, but your environment plays a huge role in your life. For instance, it’s been found that if a close friend gains weight, you have a 57% chance of becoming obese as well.

So, if you surround yourself with toxic individuals, then you are more likely to follow suit. Instead, spend more time with those who are supportive and goal-oriented. It probably would be an assist if you can hold each other accountable too.

Positive Work Cultures Are More Productive: 10 Ways to Get There

By John Rampton | Business Tips, Time Management | No Comments

It’s no secret that positive work cultures are more productive. That’s because these types of environments lead to more creative, happy, and collaborative employees. Research has even found that happy employees work harder and smarter. If positive work cultures are more productive, how can you establish a more positive work environment? Well, here are ten ways to get started today.

1. Develop a set of core values and priorities.

The development of a set of core values and priorities will vary from one business to another. A foundation of any positive workplace culture starts with clearly defined values and priorities. Establishing these items give your work meaning and guides you in how you treat your team and customers. Knowing these goals will help you find the right personalities for your startup and aligns everyone towards a common goal.

What’s interesting, however, is that these core values can be whatever you want. “One of the exciting things I found from the research is that it doesn’t matter what your values are. What matters is that you have them and that you align the organization around them,” said Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh.

“And the power comes from the alignment, not from the actual values,” he added. “We’re not out there telling people [that they should adopt the Zappos values] and culture because that would probably not work in most cases. Our message is more ‘you should figure out what your values are and then align the entire organization around them.”

2. Greet your team.

“A little hello goes a long way in the workplace,” Ashely Alt writes on the SnackNation blog. “Your team members want to feel and be happy, so give them a little nudge in the morning with a big old smile that says, ‘I’m happy you are here, and I want you to love your job.’”

Additionally, make it a point to get out of your office and walk around the office. Do a quick pop in to check on your team and ask them if there’s anything you can help them with. If they’re taking a short break, go ahead, and chit chat with them so that you can both get to know each other better personally.

While it may sound simple, kicking the day off on positive note with a smile and a “Good morning!” sets the tone for the day. It can even turn that crummy morning into an awesome day. “Being upbeat and genuine in your approach boosts your team’s self-esteem, causing them to be more motivated and reminds them that working with you is pretty great,” adds Ashley.

3. Enhance your emotional intelligence.

There has been a lot of emphasis on emotional intelligence over the years. And, for a good reason. Those with high EI are more productive, successful, and effective leaders. In a nutshell, this is because of what EI can do for an individual.

Strengthens our self-awareness so that we know what our strengths and weaknesses are.
Helps us self-regulate our emotions.
Encourages us to be more self-motivated.
Increases our empathy.
Using the methods of emotional intelligence will help you develop stronger interpersonal skills like active listening and conflict resolution.

As you can see, when you sharpen your EI, you’ll be better suited to communicate with your team, as well as handle how you to respond to them. After you’ve worked on improving your emotional intelligence, provide opportunities for your team to strengthen their own.

4. Show your gratitude.

Think about how you feel when someone thanks you or acknowledges your hard work. Even if you have an ego that’s in check, it still makes you feel great about yourself. So, imagine how your team feels when you show your gratitude.

The best thing about this is that there are a variety of ways to achieve this. For example, you could give an employee a shoutout at the beginning of a team meeting. You could send them a handwritten note. Or, you could engage in random acts of kindness like buying them lunch or surprising them with a gift, raise, or new perk like flexible hours.

5. Grant employees autonomy.

A tried and true way of cultivating a more positive and productive work environment is to stop micromanaging. Instead, offer your team autonomy. Micromanaging makes your team ineffective and nervous. Independence in work conditions means giving them the freedom to work however and whenever they like — within reason of course. It also encourages them to share their opinions and feedback.

On your end, however, this involves learning how to delegate more effectively. You also have to hold your team accountable, frequent feedback, and making sure that your team has the tools to succeed.

6. Improve the physical workplace.

It’s almost impossible for you to be in a good mood and productive when you’re not comfortable. As such, you may want to look into making your office more comfortable. Some great places to start is by keeping the office at a steady temperature, letting in as much natural light as possible, and filling the office with plants.

Additionally, provide your team with ergonomic furniture and encourage them to take frequent breaks throughout the day. Also, keep the workplace clean so that germs aren’t spreading like wildfire. And, don’t be afraid to let your staff personalize their own workspaces.

7. Be respectful of everyone else’s time.

Time is the most valuable resource we have. Because of this, if you aren’t respectful of everyone else’s time, then it shows your team that this is a less then ideal culture. After all, if you can’t be respectful of other people’s time, then how can you be trusted in other areas?

There’s no one way to do this. But, here are a couple of suggestions:

Don’t leave for vacation or business trip without debriefing your team. They should know what to do while you’re away.
Always start and end the meeting on time.
Do not annoy your employees during their “off-hours,” like nights and weekends.
If your employees are at full capacity, then do not add to their workload.
Clearly define any guidelines and expectations so that they do not always have to redo their work.
Create and share a team calendar so that everyone knows what’s going on.

8. Encourage fun.

Your team is working their tails off for you. Help them blow off some steam while showing your appreciation by having a little fun. Recognition and fun could be as simple as celebrating milestones or even events like birthdays. You could also take everyone out of the office and go on a retreat or volunteer in the community.

As an added perk, this could be an excellent way to strengthen relationships and encourage collaboration among your team. It can also boost morale.

9. Prioritize your team’s well-being.

There’s a strong correlation between your well-being and productivity. I mean, how can you have the energy and focus on getting work done when you’re stressed, sleep-deprived, and feel like garbage because of your diet?

While it’s not always your responsibility to improve other’s health, you can at least encourage a healthier lifestyle at work. You could fill the healthy with healthier snack options instead of the standard vending machine options. You could offer gym memberships, hold more standing meetings, or provide weekly meditation sessions.

10. Don’t use fear.

Mistakes will happen. So, instead of freaking out on your team whenever they slip up, use that as a learning opportunity. The last thing that you want is to have your team be afraid of you. That’s not a healthy work environment for anyone to work at. And, fear is not an effective way to motivate your team.

Positive Work Cultures Are More Productive was originally published on Calendar by John Rampton

Why Business Leaders Should Talk About Their Mental Health

By John Rampton | Time Management | No Comments

For those of a certain age, I’m sure that being transparent about your mental health was taboo. Take my friends’ father, who’s a boomer, as an example. He never opened up about how he was feeling until one day he lost it. The stress, and the emotional and physical toll it took on him, finally came to head. And, he just started crying. I was floored. I mean I was always told that boys don’t cry. Here is why business leaders should talk about their mental health.

There’s been a sea of change when talking about mental health, and we can all learn from the shift.

Take Gen Z. They are more likely to seek help then other generations. Unfortunately, that figure is still low with only 37% reporting that they’ve received help from a psychologist or mental health professional.

Considering that some 450 million people suffer from a mental disorder, we still have a long way to go. And, this is particularly true for those in a leadership role.

For starters, as noted by the World Health Organization, “mental disorders among the leading causes of ill-health and disability worldwide.” As a consequence, this can affect people’s behaviorally, emotionally, and physically, such as:

Feeling down
Reduced ability to concentrate
Mood changes
Excessive worrying
Inability to cope with stress
Insomnia
Changes in eating habits
Substance abuse
Trouble relating to others
Increase in heart disease and cancer

The Link Between Mental Health and Work

Economically, mental health costs the global economy $ 1 trillion per year in lost productivity! Aetna Behavioral Health has also found that employee mental health costs rise twice as fast as other medical costs.

More specifically, mental health can be negatively affected by businesses:

Performance and productivity
Engagement
Communicating with others
Physical capability and daily functioning.
Absenteeism

What’s more, via the CDC, “Depression interferes with a person’s ability to complete physical job tasks about 20% of the time and reduces cognitive performance about 35% of the time.”

Besides impacting your bottom line, there’s another reason why you need to prioritize mental health at your company; employees demand it.

One study has found that 62% of employees want leadership to speak openly about mental health. But, other research has found this to be higher.

“Mental health is becoming the next frontier of diversity and inclusion, and employees want their companies to address it, write Kelly Greenwood, Vivek Bapat, and Mike Maughan over at HBR. “Eighty-six percent of our respondents thought that a company’s culture should support mental health.” However, it “was even higher for Millennials and Gen Zers, who have higher turnover rates and are the largest demographic in the workforce.”

“Half of Millennials and 75% of Gen Zers had left roles in the past for mental health reasons, both voluntarily and involuntarily, compared with 34% of respondents overall — a finding that speaks to a generational shift in awareness,” add the authors. “It is not surprising then that providing employees with the support they need improves not only engagement but also recruitment and retention, whereas doing nothing reinforces an outdated and damaging stigma.”

How to Promote Mental Health Wellness in Your Workplace

So, yeah. Mental health needs to become a priority for your business. By being transparent and removing the stigma around mental health, you’ll improve every facet of your organization. And, to get started, here are the steps you should take.

Change the culture.

“Changing the culture is a top-down process,” writes Greenwood, Bapat, and Maughan. “It starts with transforming leaders into allies. Encourage executive teams, managers, and senior employees to share their experiences (or those of close family members or friends) at all-staff meetings or in other interactions with their teams.”

“Modeling disclosure and vulnerability as strengths, not weaknesses, goes a long way toward reducing the stigma and setting the tone for transparency,” they add.

Considering that almost half of entrepreneurs have experienced at least one form of mental health condition during their lifetime, you probably already have first-hand knowledge of this struggle. The challenge is to be open up about your experience. Once you do, this will help remove the stigma and encourage others to be more open about their struggles.

Additionally, if you want to change the culture, then you need to walk the walk. That means setting an example by showing others that you are addressing your well-being. For example, take breaks throughout the day and eat a healthy lunch. Most importantly, offer suggestions on how you addressed your mental health. If you spoke with a counselor, then refer an employee to that mental health professional.

Create an employee wellness program.

If you’re unfamiliar, an employee wellness program simply encourages healthy habits within the workplace. More importantly, it helps create a culture where health and wellness is a top priority.

To get started though, Howie Jones in a previous Calendar piece suggests using a Health Risk Appraisal (HRA) to assess your needs. “This is a questionnaire that reviews lifestyle practices like smoking and exercise,” explains Howie. “You could also conduct an interest survey and have your team rank what they would want the program to include.”

With this information, you can then design a program that works best for your company. For example, if a majority of your employees have admitted to dealing with a mental illness, then you may want to select a health insurance plan that covers mental health. You could also offer gym memberships, support services, or training to help them combat stress.

Focus on early intervention/prevention.

Let’s say that your bathroom faucet has a drip. You keep ignoring it thinking that it’s no big deal. Eventually, you may have to replace your sink because of water stains. Leaky faucets may also deteriorate caulk, grout, and damage ceilings and floorboards.

In short, don’t wait to solve this problem before it gets any worse.

The same is true with mental health. Educate your team on how they can cope with stress and anxiety. Provide support services, even if it’s paying for an app like Headspace. And, don’t punish them if they need to take a mental health day or leave early to speak with a therapist.

Enforce working hours.

Promote a healthy work-life balance by establishing boundaries. For instance, limit communication outside of office hours. That means not emailing an employee at midnight asking them a question that could wait until the morning.

You should also encourage them to set an out-of-office message in their calendar. Google and Outlook calendars have this feature. And, it’s a simple way to automatically reject event invites when you’re not available.

Cultivate a healthy and positive work environment.

Besides boosting productivity, healthy and positive work environments can improve morale and decrease turnover. Best of all, it’s not all that complicated to implement if you do the following:

Establish organizational guidelines that prevent bullying and harassment.
Show your gratitude and appreciation to your team members by recognizing their hard work.
Invest in your team’s well-being by investing in ergonomic furniture, providing healthy snacks, and placing plants throughout the workplace.
Help your employees curb vices and unhealthy habits.
Never motivate your team using fear.
Celebrate milestones and have fun through games and volunteering.

Frequently check-in with your employees.

Yes. You’ve got a million things to do. But, spend quality time with each team member. Get to know them better and ask how they’re doing. You don’t want to pry into their personal lives. But, checking-in with them builds trust. That means if they do have a mental health concern, they won’t be afraid to come to you for assistance.

Grant autonomy and flexible schedules.

Don’t micromanage your employees. Even better, provide flexible schedules and working arrangements so that they have opportunities to attend to their well-being.

Help them solve their time management problems.

Finally, help your team members improve their time management. That may not sound like much. But, if they’re struggling in this area, then don’t have the time to attend to their mental health. For example, help them prioritize their time so that they aren’t taking their work home with them. In turn, they’ll have more availability to work with a mental health professional or engage in healthy habits like exercising or meditating.

Operations Team Productivity: What They Do (and How to Build and Improve Yours)

By John Rampton | Knowledge Base | No Comments

Even with the most competitive offerings or the most capable people representing them, it’s almost impossible for companies to achieve great things without reliable operations.

Not all small and mid-sized businesses have dedicated operations support, of course. Until they grow more sustainable, smaller companies might integrate operations into other divisions instead. But the danger there is allowing your teams to work in silos. And “by denying the opportunity to collaborate and cross-pollinate ideas,” says The 20 Media founder Pratik Dholakiya, “businesses contribute to their own speedy demise.”

Guess what helps reconnect those dots to keep everyone working toward the same goal? A dedicated operations team.

If you think it’s time to scale your operations workforce, you’re in the right place. In this post, you’ll learn how ops teams run businesses like well-oiled machines and the best ways to build your own.

First, the basics: What are operations, and how does this business function work?

The Operations Team Productivity: Roles and Responsibilities

Would you climb Mount Denali without a guide?

It’s a little easier to climb a behemoth like Denali with a trained mountaineer who can plot the course, gather all the right supplies, and plan for emergencies like bad weather.

In a company, that’s the operations team’s job.

An ops team’s #1 mission is to manage and optimize the details that keep its organization running profitably. That means delivering the resources that enable other departments to do their job – at peak efficiency and effectiveness – and cost-effectively converting their efforts into products and services that meet customers’ needs.

Phew. Let’s break that down a little. Here are a few examples of how the team supports each of the company’s stakeholders:

Employees

Operations might be responsible for keeping plenty of talent in the recruitment pipeline, promoting interdepartmental communication, supervising other teams’ activities, and figuring out how to best leverage resources to prevent and solve problems.

Executive team

Operations also lead business predictability by helping the C-Suite plan KPIs and holding them financially accountable. Some ops professionals are specifically trained to neutralize legal issues, too.

Customers

Ops teams rarely come into direct contact with customers, but it’s still their responsibility to make sure the company delivers the right products to the right customers on time. The product team relies on operations to recommend improvements, as ops are best positioned to weigh customer feedback against the company’s capacity.

Vendors

As any great ops professional will tell you, ensuring quality output means ensuring value at the source. To do this, the ops team focuses on acquiring inventory and services that maximize productivity, minimize risk and costs, and deliver on customer expectations.

You might have noticed a common thread here. For just about all activities, operations teams prioritize quality management. Not necessarily Steve Jobs-level attention to every detail of the business, but enough to:

Produce what needs to be produced without delays, errors, or rework.
Drive down failure costs, both internally and externally.
Find the best possible solutions to problems in any situation.
Ultimately inspire all stakeholders to champion the company’s value.

Before it can manage the quality of other business units, of course, operations must first manage itself. What’s the best set-up to achieve all these goals?

How to Build an Effective Operations Team

Step 1: Start from the Top Down.

A functional and well-run operations team relies on great support from the top down. Beyond the usual traits of great leaders, your ops manager will need a solid grasp of:

Various processes across the company, so your team can confidently coordinate and develop new methods.
Supply chain management, including knowledge of manufacturing, logistics, and transportation, if you’re a product-based company.
Problem-solving means pulling information from both an analytical and creative perspective.
Learning how to communicate effectively with all stakeholders.

Sure, all leaders need to communicate and solve problems. But an ops manager uses these skills on a bigger scale to unite people and processes seamlessly across the entire organization.

TIP: You can make your ops manager’s job much easier by making lines of communication easy to access. Digital channels (like project management or messaging apps) should be accessible for your ops teams to use on the go when they’re on a call, for example, while regular meetings can be a powerful way to sync up teams (as long as they’re not too regular). A written manual on communications processes can help clear up any confusion.

With those resources in place, you’re ready to think about the structure of the rest of the team.

Step 2: Organize Your Operations Team Structure.

In their book, The Practice of Cloud System Administration, three Silicon Valley-based authors describe the three sources and categories of operational work:

Sources of work

Life-cycle management or the functional work — means to run a service within the company.
Stakeholder interaction means meeting the needs of the people who use the service.
Process improvement and automation mean the operational work needed to improve and upgrade various processes continually.

Categories of work

Emergencies like power outages or emergency requests from other teams.
Standard requests include questions about how to use a service or reports of the problems users experience.
Project work, or the projects that automate and optimize team/company systems.

“It can be tempting to organize an operations team into three subteams, each focusing on one source of work or one category of work,” the authors write. But that creates those dreaded “silos of responsibility.”

Luckily, there’s a much simpler way to organize your team: Make project work the priority.

If you want to run your ops team at peak efficiency, you’ll need to focus most of its bandwidth on projects. Projects save them running from emergency to emergency until they burn out, or from slowing down to deal with interruptions (a big productivity killer).

How do you prioritize project work while responding to emergencies and requests promptly? There are two ways:

Assign an emergency response team. If one person owns emergencies, and other standard requests, means that the rest of the team is free to focus all its energy on projects. TIP: Make sure the ERT emails out reports to the rest of the team, including alerts logged, action taken, trends noticed, and recommendations going forward.
Take turns. Using a useful calendar management tool, you can move the team through a rotation for on-call duty (emergencies) and ticket duty (standard requests). TIP: Schedule each shift for no more than a week. Say you had a team of eight people; this would give each member a full six weeks of the cycle to focus on projects.

Depending on the size of the team’s workload, your ops manager might want to assign both on-call and ticket duty to one person or multiple people to one task. As long as they cross-train all team members, you’ll always be able to cover unexpected absences.

Bear in mind, though, that it’s best to limit each rotation to one person for a smoother hand-off to the next. Involving entire teams might lead to unnecessary meetings. It’s also good practice for the ops manager to include him- or herself in the rotation so they can keep tabs on what’s going on.

Step 3: Optimize Your Teamwork.

Congratulations: you now have a well-organized ops team.

But team-building doesn’t end there. It’s a journey – starting with every team member’s commitment to using the following six practices.

A knowledge bank

By documenting and sharing processes and templates across the team, you can streamline project management, cut time and effort wasted on reinventing the wheel, and ultimately ensure customers get the best results.

TIP: As with your communication channels, make it as quick and easy as possible for everyone to find these resources – using a tool like Box, for example.

A system of delivery

Take a standardized approach to deliver high-quality products and services by establishing bite-sized, repeatable processes in which everyone knows their role.

TIP: Projects are best accomplished in small teams. While solo projects disconnect team members and inhibit feedback, large teams face setbacks from decision-making challenges.

A system of measurement

Collect objective data on everything you do. How else can you improve your team’s output?

TIP: Google’s Objective and Key Results (OKR) is a great model to use. The aim is to set aggressive quarterly or annual targets, create incentives for your team to hit them, then stack up against your results against your forecasts.

(Keep in mind that because they’re so aggressive, you should only run 70% of your OKR goals.)

Productivity tracking.

To meet their many demands, operations teams should focus on getting the most done with as little time and resources as possible. Enter: time-tracking and productivity tools.

Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Team building.

Team-building activities are beneficial for many reasons, including productivity. Think of opportunities to bring the team together to take a break, reconnect, celebrate wins, and have a little fun.

Team sports are a simplified example and one of the best ways to foster teamwork and personal connections.

A safe space to vent.

Operations are one of the most complex and demanding functions of the business. That’s why it’s also the most in need of transparency.

There will be times when team members need to deliver criticism, hold others accountable, and admit their own failures to reach goals. The most important lesson they can learn, though, is that effective team performance isn’t always about hitting numbers. It’s about being agile enough to deal with missing them and confronting sensitive issues for the collective good of the team.

Is everyone on board with all six practices? Remember: Feedback makes the dream work.

Final Thoughts

By now, you should have all the ideas you need to build a capable operations team, assign smart roles, and streamline operations over time.

That leaves us with one last important question: What happens when challenges arise?

Nobody enjoys finding shortfalls in their teams or processes. But especially in operations, where one mistake sets off company-wide chains of events, it’s the name of the game. As the leader, your goal should be consistency: bringing underperformers up to standards, encouraging top performers to keep doing their very best, and keeping burnout at bay.

Does your company have a small operations team? What other best practices do you use to improve team performance? Share with us what worked for you in the comments.