How many times are you in the middle of something important and you get interrupted by a person, an email, a phone call, or some other request for information?

It breaks our momentum and mental focus. It causes us frustration. And it tests our resolve when it comes to sticking to something more important.

Here are some solutions to this never-ending concern that you face every day.

Interruptions from others:

• Explain you’re busy and set a time to meet later
• Accept the interruption and state the time you have available now. At the end of that time period, tell them you really do have to get on
• Don’t have chairs right next to your desk. If you have room, put two or three chairs in another area of your office. This means people can’t just drop in. They have to interrupt your flow and get you to move away physically form your desk. If it really isn’t that important now, people will wait until it is convenient for you
• Set open and closed-door times, and make them known
• Meet in someone else’s office, so you can control your exit time
• If it’s really important for you to work without interruptions, consider working from home, a conference room or a spare office where it’s obvious you are there for a specific purpose and can’t be interrupted.

Email or instant messaging:

• Don’t keep compulsively checking email. Turn off the audio signal that tells you an email has come through. Allocate times in the day where you deal with email, timed so YOU control it.
• Go offline if you have to. If you’re uninterruptable, prove it.

Information Requests:

• Give people who work for you enough authority and information to deal with these matters for you. Don’t be a hoarder of information so that people have to come to you and only you
• Let your team know you are incommunicado for a time period
• If you make promises, keep them. Then people won’t have to chase you up when you don’t want them to

Phone:

• If you’re in the middle of something, don’t take unscheduled calls. Have set times when people can reach you
• Make a list of calls you are going to make and bunch them together, so you control the time it takes
• Call people at lunch time or before closing time, so conversations are short and to the point
• Ask people who call you what specifically you can do for them, and say ‘I only have ten minutes. Can we get this done in that time?’
• Leave your phone off in the evenings. Interruptions while you’re away from work should be seen as interfering with the rest of your life with people who deserve better. If it’s that important, they will leave a message and you can get back to them when you are free. That way, you control your time

Interruptions are a natural part of your working day, but using these ideas should minimise the effects and help build your productivity.

Thanks again

Sean

Many people think the best way to get things done and produce more is to muti-task. Laura Stack thinks we have bought into what she calls the myths of multi-tasking; that is, we are doing more than one thing at a time, and we’re increasing our efficiency and productivity by working more quickly.

What we really mean is that we are switching between tasks. When we do that, none of the tasks gets our full attention. In the Journal of Experimental Attention (August 2001), research has shown that multi-tasking actually reduced productivity.

Switching takes time, even if we aren’t aware of what our minds need to do. It was interesting that when experiments were done with people who were carrying out multiple tasks, it was found that performance was detrimentally affected. When people in their twenties were talking on their mobile phones, they had reactions of 70-year-olds. And they were using hands-free phones! In fact, the studies showed their reactions were worse than drunk drivers who exceeded the drink limit by one-and-a-half times! (Human Factors, Winter 2005)

If your job entails you doing lots of different things, concentrate fully on each one as it comes up. This technique is known as ‘spotlighting’. Give whatever you are doing 100% attention, even if it’s for a brief time.

If you remember something you need to get done while you are doing something else, make a note of it, and come back to it later.

Think results, not activity. Focusing on the outcome you want means saying ‘I’ll finish two sections of this report by lunch’ rather than ‘I’ll work on this report for a while’.

Giving yourself deadlines also encourages you to stay focused.Having too much time to accomplish something means you may become wavering and demotivated to complete it.

Make plans but don’t try to make everything perfect. If something isn’t working, try something else. As the Chinese proverb goes “No matter how far down the wrong road you have gone, stop!”

Doing one thing at a time is a good starting point to cut down on stress. Focus and see what happens to your productivity.

So, how good are your multi-tasking skills? That might not be the right question. Instead, ask ‘What should I do to be the most productive?’ Focusing on one task at a time may well be the answer.

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

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One thing is certain as a manager…you will never have enough time to do everything you need to get done. At least, at the quality you would like to.

So, one of the best qualities you can develop as a manager is the ability to make the best possible choices with the time you have available.

Our studies of great managers has revealed a list of techniques they use when deciding how to get the best out of their time. Here are just five:

1) They carry out ‘audits’ of their time to ensure they are spending the right amount on priorities. They decide what their broad goals are, based on their manager’s expectations. They know what barriers and obstacles come up regularly to stop them achieving those goals. And they recognise what tasks will get them the best results in the long-term as well as short-term

2) They initiate action and facilitate action in others. They work within the ‘important’ framework every day, and are not driven by the ‘urgent’ at the expense of the ‘important’. Their to-do lists are manageable, they dump things that are unnecessary, and concentrate on delegating those things that will develop others’ skills, as well as freeling up time to do things only they can do.

3) They work to the 80/20 principle. Managers who master their time recognise that, of all the tasks they need to complete, only 20% are criticakl to the success of the business. They make sure these items get top priority.

4) They use 5 or 10 minute ‘blocks’ of time to get things done. Imagine you have a meeting in ten minute’s time. How would you spend those minutes? What you do in that time could make the meeting valuable or a distraction. Rather than thinking there’s too little time before the meeting to get anything done, time-masters recognise that these ‘blocks’ of time add up during the day and offer great opportunities for ticking off small items on their to-do lists. If you think that you might have four or five of these ‘blocks’ of time during the day, you could get nearly an hour’s work done, when others are just letting that time slip through their fingers.

5) Great time managers really plan effectively. They actually make plans to plan. Either just before they leave for the day, or at the beginning of each day, they plan the best way to spend their time. They have weekly plans that give them a good overview of what they need to accomplish in that period and they have long-term (montly, quarterly, annual) plans that help them think strategically, instead of being side tracked by the ‘urgency’ of tasks.

I suggest you analyse your time-wasters and time-stealers, and see if some of these tips can help you achieve great results as you master time.

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

Follow us here on Twitter

Organising your working and personal life is not just important these days…it’s vital. You simply cannot manage everything you have to without specific skills, and the most pertinent is how you organise your working day.

One of the biggest challenges managers face is getting jobs done on time. This can lead to poor performance, stagnation, loss of customers and worse. Good organisational skills starts with analysing what jobs need to be done and working to a schedule to complete them.

One of the most effective things you can do is prioritising your priorities. Everything that seems to cross your path doesn’t have to be a priority. Identify what really is vital to be completed today and what isn’t. Set the priorities so that you have a clear view of what needs to be done. Having to deal with overwhelm won’t help you achieve much.

Calculating how much time each piece of work requires takes practice but will be well worth it. If you work better with small chunks of work, then do so. There is no perfect way to approach a big project, but most people seem to feel better if it’s divided up into chunks. Don’t make it appear bigger than it really is. Be aware of how you personally approach tasks, and let them fit into your style, not the other way round.

Learning organisational skills at work is the step towards reaching the pre-determined goal. Mastering organisational skills at work, gives you an opportunity to be more effective and increase your productivity. It gives an edge over the other in your professional life as your manager recognises the potential in you. Organisational skills save you from stress in the workplace and undue pressures of life. Organisational skills are priceless as they show you the value of time and the importance of using it wisely. If you master this specific skill, it will open the way to other areas of development within your company.

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

Follow us here on Twitter

To wrap up this recent series on stress management we’ll pick up where we left off and take a look at how task management impacts the amount of stress you feel at work. We’ve already covered time management and some of the ways you can use it to feel better, so how can you shuffle your actual workload?

Task management means being able to complete projects effectively and efficiently. Someone feeling completely stressed out and overworked may not feel as though those things are possible, but they are.

Start by prioritizing your tasks for the day. Decide which ones are more important and put them at the top of the list. If there is a task you dread, put that at the top of the list as well. It’s better to get it out of the way early than to let it linger over your head all day.

Look at your larger projects and decide whether or not it is possible to break them down into smaller subprojects. Work on one subproject at a time until the entire task is complete.

Here it is again, folks – delegation. You are not responsible for completing every single project you encounter on your own. Use your authority as a manger to delegate some of your responsibilities to the appropriate members of your team. That’s why they were hired, isn’t it?

Properly handling the tasks you must tackle daily will also make a huge difference in the way you are able to handle stress at work. You may want to be a superman but it’s really not necessary!

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training Course

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”