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productivity

How Can I Determine Which Thing on the List Should Be Done First?

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It’s Amazing How Things Become Clear with a Limited Amount of Time

The discussion in our mastermind group this past week was around productivity and how to be more productive. It started with the question of, what does productivity mean and what does it look like to be productive?

What is productivity? Now there’s a question for you to answer. We have a limited amount of time in a day, a year, or a life.

Productivity generally refers to the ability of an individual, team, or organization to work efficiently within that time in order to maximize output.

High productivity results from a mix of factors: motivation, personality, natural talent, training or education, environment, support from others, time management, and things that happen that are outside of our control.

Output / Input = Productivity

So, what is output? This is one of the things that makes the question of productivity so hard to answer. But this is where we need to start with the productivity question. What is the most important thing to accomplish in this finite amount of time we’ve been given?

There are so many things trying to get on the “to do” list and each one competing for the top position. Deciding which one should get that spot is tough. There are so many great and important things that we need or want to do.

It’s easy to say that we have limited time, but hard to actually schedule things that way.

My computer’s battery is not lasting as long as it did when it was new. Recently while working out of the office, without the power cord, I had 2-3 things that I wanted to get done before the computer shut down. This limited time forced me to sort and prioritize them.

How do we decide what to say yes to?

Emergency situations often require triage. This is the process of prioritizing a patient’s treatments based on the severity of their condition and the resources available. In these situations, victims are divided into three categories.

  • Those who are likely to live, regardless of what care they receive;
  • Those who are unlikely to live, regardless of what care they receive;
  • Those for whom immediate care might make a positive difference in outcome.

These choices aren’t easy and often require a quick “gut decision”. A pre-determined system, training, and experience aid in the process and provide for the greatest number of survivors.

Another life and death choice is deciding who gets a transplant when there are a limited number of organ donations available. Take for example a set of twins who both need a liver transplant, and their father has one liver to give. Which little girl gets it? The early thoughts of a father would be to give half to each. The problem with this, half wouldn’t help either. The final decision will be determined by which one needs it most or which one is most likely to survive.

Most of the choices that we make in business aren’t this critical…or are they? The decisions we make can mean life or death for our business.

In medical life or death situations, there is a system and plan in place before hand. This same type of system should be implemented in our business. We should predetermine how we are going to choose the most important thing to the life of our business. This is where things get hard.

What makes one thing more important than another?

What should be the highest priority? Should it be production or proposals, record keeping or customer service, marketing or staff? We’re faced with tough decisions in business every day.

I can’t answer this question for you, but having a “business triage” system will give your business the highest chance for survival.

Our 5-step BUILD process helps us prioritize and manage all the hundreds of decisions we’re faced with every day in our business. You can find out if the business building tools are right for you here.

The Benefits of Combining Your Calendar and To Do List

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The Strength of These Two Things Together Can Increase Your Productivity

As business owners, entrepreneurs, hardworking employees of companies, and active people, we find ourselves busier than ever during this time of the year. As we approach the end of one year and begin preparing for next, there just isn’t enough time to get everything done. Add to this the Holiday season and everything that goes with this…it can get overwhelming.

As busy people we struggle trying to get everything done. The thing we need to remember is…

We don’t have to get EVERYTHING done.

Instead, we should prioritize our actions and focus on the first next thing. What is the most important thing currently on the list? At the same time we need to remember there is a limited amount of time available.

Recently I had a day that made the importance of a calendar and the limits of time very clear.

I typically have my calendar packed tight. Some of you have seen my calendar and know what I’m talking about. On this particular day, I had no meetings or events scheduled. I was lazy about putting things on the calendar.

As always, I had a long list of things to do. More than I could ever get done. The problem with not having things scheduled on the calendar is…the importance of time available is lost. At the end of that day, I was disappointed in how little I got done. I should have put things on the calendar.

This is why it’s important to use a list and a calendar together.

A calendar is a visual view of the time available. As you put things on the calendar, the day, the week(s) and the future begin to fill up. It’s a gauge for what you can get done. It isn’t an exact science; you already know that some things are going to take longer than you plan for.

Seeing this limited amount of time packed to the point of running over amps up the sense of urgency. This increased urgency improves productivity. It’s a black and white way to see the limited time available, a list of things to do doesn’t show you this.

A calendar is a great way to measure the time you have to do the things on the list.

The purpose of lists is to keep track of things that need to be done. We all have lists of things to do, whether it’s in our head, on paper or electronic. I use OneNote for my lists because of its simplicity, connect-ability, flexibility and options available.

The thing that I like about my OneNote list is that it improves my ability to keep track of the things on the list and allows me to easily move things around and add or remove as things change. And we all know that things never change. 😊

A list is a great way for prioritizing things that need done first and keeping track of the rest.

A calendar is a time focused tool. The “to do list” is just what it says…a list of things to do. These are two different tools, with different purposes and abilities that work well together.

Most of us business owners, entrepreneurs, hardworking employees of companies, and active people want to be more productive. Using these two tools to support each other is a good place to start.

Urgency Can Be Good or Bad, Depending on How You Use It

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I Find That Intentionally Creating a Sense of Urgency Can Increase Productivity

How you view and handle urgency is a choice. You can choose to use urgency to your benefit, or you can let urgency be a negative thing.

When something has urgency, it requires speedy action. If you’re standing in your front yard and a tornado is coming straight toward you…there would be some urgency to take cover from the storm.

Urgency is a pressing importance requiring speedy action.

Some people view urgency as positive…others not so much. The perspective with which you view urgency is the choice.

I have a relatively extensive and structured morning and evening routine. It might feel a little daunting to some people. 😊

As a part of that routine, I review my…

As I was going through the goal portion of my morning routine a few days ago, I realized we are rapidly approaching the end of 2022 and we are not where we need to be to accomplish our goals.

As I thought about this, my sense of urgency became elevated. We are going to need to start pushing extra hard to even get close to those goals.

This is where urgency, as a negative, begins to set in. One of the things that often happens in a situation like this is, you start running around like a chicken with its head cut off and no clear direction.

Or you can take control of the situation, choose to make the decisions needed and start moving forward.

Another part of my routine is to narrow the overwhelming number of things that need to be done down to the first next thing. This is a part of how I prioritize. What is the first next thing that needs to be done? One of the ways I do this is by reading through this list of eleven actions.

FIRST NEXT THING

  1. Start with prayer
  2. Get off my “BUT”, stop making excuses
  3. Put it on the calendar
  4. Don’t be afraid to ask for help (delegation / accountability)
  5. Take goals seriously (create a sense of urgency early)
  6. Maintain positive forward momentum
  7. Celebrate wins
  8. Don’t overthink it
  9. Break the goals down into brick size pieces
  10. Make goals about giving and not about getting
  11. Review progress regularly, and be accountable

#5 Take goals seriously (create a sense of urgency early)

As I read through this list I was thinking about moving forward with our goals. When I got to #5, take goals seriously (create a sense urgency early) I remembered where this came from.

Before I started Timber Creek Construction, I was a partner in another construction company. My role in this partnership was production management.

One of the things that seemed to happen constantly is that as we got nearer and nearer the completion date, the sense of urgency picked up. And with that, productivity picked up. I was amazed at how much more got done as the deadline approached.

That’s when I realized that if we would create that sense of urgency early, it would increase productivity throughout the entire project and the company. Now that was easier said than done.

The tricky thing is how to consistently create that sense of urgency early.  

Just like our company is behind on our goals and the sense of urgency is ramping up…

I should have created the sense of urgency EARLIER.

I can’t go back and change the past, but I can learn from it and change the future.

One of the Most Important Tools in My Toolbox

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How You Can Improve Productivity by Using OneNote

Let’s take a peek inside my productivity toolbox.

Most of the time when we hear the word “tool”, the first thing we think of is a circular saw or nail gun…not computer software.

However, production is more than just the physical aspect of producing things. The more organized we are, the more productive we are.

By nature as a recovering perfectionist, having things well organized is important to me. I know that to some people the level of organization that I love, makes them feel trapped.

The more organized we are, the more freeing it can be.

It’s about taking control of your life and making it what you want it to be.

For years I worked on ways to get and stay organized. Am I where I want to be? Not yet, but remember, I’m a perfectionist by nature. Getting and staying organized is a difficult thing and it only increases the more you try to do.

One of the best tools I’ve found for organization is Microsoft OneNote.

This tool is great for organizing and communicating. It does so much, so well, that I don’t need a bunch of different apps to do different things. Too often these various apps don’t sync well across different systems and devices.

I would equate OneNote to a three-ring binder with improved technology.

OneNote is the “Six Million Dollar” binder. Just like “The Six Million Dollar Man” this computerized version of a ‘notebook’ has superhuman bionic computerized capabilities.

A good comparison of OneNote to a binder is how I used to have project binders on site at construction projects. This was a place where information would be kept organized so that employees, sub-contractors, project management, architects and the customer could all have access to the specifics of that project.

OneNote is organized similar to a binder. You can have different “notebooks”, each book can be divided into multiple “sections” and each section can have “pages” and subpages.

Here are a few of the superhuman bionic capabilities of OneNote –

  • Share information with other people across multiple devices. This can be as simple as sharing a shopping list with your spouse or as detailed as an entire notebook with colleagues on a project.
  • Syncs automatically across multiple devices. If someone adds to the shopping list or checks something off a “to do” list, you will know it instantaneously if you’re connected to the internet. If not, it will sync once you are.
  • When changes are made, they are marked until viewed. If someone makes a change, I will be able to know that, go to the specific change and know who did it and when it was done.
  • Insert almost anything on a page. You can insert copies of other documents, screen clippings, photos, audio and video recordings, links to other pages and/or web locations, etc. This is only a part of what is available with OneNote.
  • Link from and to multiple locations. I can put a link for a specific OneNote page in a task reminder or calendar event or on a word document. Click on it and it will open that page, even if OneNote isn’t open.
  • Editing is really easy. Things on a OneNote page can be clicked on and moved to a different place on the page. This feature is great for prioritizing a list. If I want to move something higher on the list, I just move it there, no cutting or copying or pasting (although you can do those things as well).
  • It’s always ready to open and use. It doesn’t require the opening of a program, folder or a file before you can write something down. Click on the OneNote icon in the task bar and it’s open. A couple more clicks and you can write down your note before you forget it.
  • Great place for filing and storing. If I want to save an email from a customer with a picture and a link to a web site, I can do that right from Outlook.
  • Can protect sensitive info within a shared notebook. If I have a page that has ideas for my wife’s Christmas or passwords to my bank account, I can password protect those pages. This means that if my wife “accidently” goes to her Christmas page when she meant to go to the shopping list, she can’t open it without the password…and she doesn’t have the password.
  • Can draw or write on it just like paper. This feature is great for quickly gathering information with my tablet or phone. I can draw the floor plan for a room addition and write dimensions and notes right in OneNote.

This tool can do all this and more. Some people will probably say that it has too many bells and whistles or it’s too complicated. I’m sure this isn’t the best tool for everybody and that’s okay. Not every person uses the same cordless drill.

This tool is simple to use and a great way to stay organized.

Even if you aren’t a recovering perfectionist like I am, OneNote can help you be more productive and…

Isn’t that what we all want…to be more productive?

This post was originally published January 21, 2017

It was updated again on October 4, 2020

What Makes One Rock More Important Than Another?

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This is the Real Question When It Comes to Prioritization

Last week I wrote about deciding what your big rocks are. The process of putting the big rocks in the jar first works great but, most of us are trying to squeeze in too big rocks. There is a limit to the number of rocks that will fit.

So how do we decide which rock is more important than another?

Deciding what is most important and focusing on that is critical to productivity. As I researched for last week’s post, I came across an article about priorities by Mark Nevin’s. He points out the word “priority” has no plural.

The word “priority” entered the English language, via Old French, sometime in the 14th Century. Deriving from the mediaeval Latin word prioritas (“fact or condition of being prior”), the word meant “the most important thing”—the “prior” thing or the thing with precedence.  When it was first coined, the word “priority” had no plural.  You could only have one priority. 

Sometime in the middle of the 20th Century, almost certainly related to the rise of corporate and office culture, the word “priorities” began to appear. Now people began to claim that they had more than one “most important thing.”  They could have three or five or 14 priorities.  A client once shared with me a deck laying out his business’s “Top 30 Strategic Priorities.”  Sadly, if you have 30 priorities, you really have no priorities: no organization can even remember 30 things, never mind focus on them all.

So how do we decide which thing is the priority?

I think this is where the real battle takes place. What makes one thing more important than another? In last week’s solution I referred to Steven Covey’s book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In this book he shares a time management quadrant consisting of – urgent and important / not urgent but important / urgent but not important / neither urgent nor important.

We use these options for prioritizing everything we do…whether we know it or not. It’s up to us to be intentional about what goes in which quadrant.

All tasks can be categorized based on their urgency and importance: An activity can be one, both, or neither. Urgent matters are time sensitive, and they tend to grab your attention; this can be something as simple as a ringing phone. Important matters contribute toward your goals, values, and personal mission statement. We react to urgent matters, while important tasks that are not urgent require us to be proactive.

Picture a square divided into four Quadrants: One axis measures whether or not something is urgent, and the other measures whether or not it’s important. In the 7 Habits, Quadrants means four different classifications. Stephen Covey’s Quadrants 1, 2, 3, and 4 break down like this:

Quadrant 1 is urgent and important. Crises and problems live here, and life inevitably throws some Quadrant 1 tasks at all of us. However, some people seem to spend all their time constantly putting out fires and feeling like they never have time or energy to tackle anything that’s not urgent; in need of respite, they occasionally escape to the more leisurely Quadrant 4, where things are neither urgent nor important. The catch is that the more time you spend in Quadrant 1, the more you will be stuck there, because you don’t have time to do the maintenance and preventive measures that help avoid crises. 

Quadrant 3 is urgent, but not important. These kinds of activities can eat up your precious time and energy, without giving much value back to your life.  Some people don’t even realize that these matters are not important, assuming that urgency implies importance; but the urgency is often dictated by other people’s priorities and expectations — what other people tell you must get done — rather than your own goals and values. 

Quadrant 4 is neither urgent nor important. These are things you may do purely for enjoyment, or out of confusion about what’s truly important. Quadrants 3 and 4 are irresponsible uses of your time, because they contribute nothing toward your life, and effective people tend to avoid these activities. 

Quadrant 2 is not urgent, but important. This is where effective people focus their time and energy, and the discipline to prioritize these tasks is key to self-management and achieving your personal mission. Quadrant 2 includes activities that could easily be put off for their lack of apparent urgency, but which will greatly benefit your life in the long term if you invest the time in them; they include developing relationships, defining your personal mission statement, exercising, and performing preventive maintenance (e.g. oil changes for your car, health check-ups, flossing, or home maintenance). These Quadrants all help you understand and prioritize, but Quadrant 2 is where you want to spend most of your time.

Steven Covey’s 4 Quadrants: The Secret to Productivity

The things in these quadrants will be different for each of us. Ultimately it is your choice what things you decide to do and which quadrant you put them in.

This is where planning and looking forward to the end of your life and working backward helps. It gives you a clearer vision of what things should be the most important and which ones aren’t.

How I Use My Calendar to be More Productive

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Investing Your Time Intentionally Is the Key to Unlocking Productivity

There are as many different ways to use calendars as there are people. Not only that, but if you’re like me, the way we use them continues to change. Not to mention, that calendars themselves keep changing. They have gone from tracking days by scratching a mark in the wall of a cave to now being computerized.

Purpose driven people are constantly looking for ways to be more productive.

I don’t know if I’m going through a phase or if getting older is making me more aware of the limited time I have to spend. Either way my desire to be more productive is at an all-time high.

When scheduling things, it is important to be flexibly rigid. This is balancing the importance of planning with intentionality and the realization that life happens. Finding that balance is hard.

One of the benefits to a computer calendar is the ease with which things can be added, shared, moved or deleted…this is also a detriment. Over the past few years I realized that I was moving things on the calendar that I had scheduled with myself. I would schedule tasks for myself on the calendar and they would get pushed back and back and back again. Then I realized I wasn’t giving meetings with myself as much importance as those with others.

Then I realized the calendar is like any other tool. It doesn’t serve its purpose if it isn’t used properly.

The first thing with any tool is to determine what its purpose(s) is and use it accordingly.

  • Scheduling meetings – The most basic purpose of a calendar is for scheduling meetings. These may be recurring meeting or one-time meetings. Scheduling our tasks as meetings with ourselves and giving them equal importance is critical to productivity.

  • Reminder of things ahead – This could be meetings, events, actions, birthdays, anniversaries, etc.

  • Budgeting time – Similar to money a calendar can work like a budget for time. When you start filling out the calendar there is a limit to how much space there is. When it gets filled up, you’re going to need to stop trying to spend more.

  • Prioritizing what you spend time on – Once the calendar is full and there are still things to put on it, you must decide what goes on and what comes off. This calls for a time triage

Determine what works best for you and use your calendar accordingly.

Some days I would accomplish almost everything on my list and then there were days where it felt like I hadn’t achieved hardly anything. As I began to study why that was, it became apparent that the most productive days were the ones that I had packed the calendar full, from beginning to end, even little things. The days that were less productive had more unscheduled and open time. I realized that when my day was scheduled so full that I didn’t think I could get it all done, I was focused and did much better at staying on task.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been scheduling my calendar full, to the point of some days being scheduled tight without any open space. In doing this I have noticed that I have been consistently more productive. This doesn’t mean that everything gets done, just that I’ve been more productive.

There’s still a lot of room for improvement, but this seems to be working.

I still need to work on being wiser about what I spend my time on. There’s limited time so we all need to be good stewards of the time we’ve been given. Being productive requires intentional action. Productivity seems like a big monster, but we can take him out if we’ll just start implementing small steps in the right direction.