Taking Back Control of your Workday
In the previous post, I gave you a template of a tracking sheet to help you figure out where you are losing time in your day – or rather who or what is controlling how you spend your time.
I left you with some homework to track work/interruptions for a week to determine the top factors (or people) keeping you from staying on task with your planned work.
From this sheet you will have discovered what or who is controlling your day and it normally will be you or someone else in the top spot.
Top Contenders for this #1 place are:
- Co-workers
- Clients
- Yourself
These interruptions can come in a variety of ways:
- Phone calls
- Someone walking in your office
- Skype or other types of Instant Message
No matter the method, they all are competing for your attention. They take your focus from the task at hand and turn it to the Interrupter. In all cases, however, you are giving the Interrupter permission to make you stop what you were doing. This permission is really a choice you have made to stop and divert your attention to the Interrupter.
You chose to answer the phone, to look at emails (especially if your Smartphone is beeping to let you know new emails are in!), to respond to that Skype ping and, yes, even to talk to the person walking in your door.
If your top Interrupter is, in fact, you, then your choice has been to drop one task in favour of another.
Now, I am not advocating being rude to all of these people because, in most cases, the Interrupter is a person. What I am saying is you need to set some boundaries to regain control of your time.
How do you Regain Control?
Regaining control is really a matter of retraining your work habits and prioritizing tasks, as well as letting others know your ‘work schedule’. You regain control with time blocks in your calendar.
*** One note regarding email: If the majority of your inbox is emails for tasks that others look after (that you delegate out), then consider sharing access to that email. Allow the main person responsible to have access so they can just jump on the task as opposed to running it through you. If you have built a team you can trust, this should not be an issue.
Create a secondary, more private email for your own communications and access this in a different way so you are not giving away the private area of your inbox.
What type of Time Blocks?
I like to mark off my calendar for the following areas:
- Start of Day Organization (or as I have written about before, your “Meeting with Yourself”). This is 15 minutes to review your plans and schedule for the day.
- VIP & Intensive Work. Generally this is used for your most intense work of the day and should be blocked off in a time where you know will have less interruptions and in a time slot where you are most productive.
- Email Review/Check In. Setting aside 2 to 4 times a day to be used for checking your email really will help you keep much better control of your day. Email tends to be the worst Interrupter and can easily get you off track by moving on to something new. For a good system on dealing with the emails during this time slot, review this blog post on Email Management.
- Team Support. If you also have colleagues, employees requiring your attention for direction, feedback, etc., then add in a time slot for these check-ins. They can be as disruptive as emails and making time for it helps keep you productive. Whether you work side by side or remotely, make time for these check-ins. Depending upon your setup, you may need one or more spots for this. More importantly…SHARE THIS! Let your team/staff know that this is their time to talk to you to ask questions.
- Regular meetings and appointments. Have these scheduled slots in your calendar so you know when you are free to book meetings or appointments as needed. Hooking these slots to an appointment booking system (like TimeDriver) is even more effective as you can allow the other party to book the best time for them in your available meeting spots.
- Client Work. Set aside a time block for working on projects, client work and the other work that you do in your day.
- New Work. You also want to add in time for new work that will inevitably pop up during the day / week. Give yourself the space to add new items in your day or you will become stressed about when and how you can get that done.
VERY IMPORTANT!!!
If others were your main Interrupters on your tracking sheet, you will need to share this schedule information with them. The people you work with need to understand your limits and that you have made time for them in your day but that it is going to be in a more controlled manner than before.
Subtly share with people (clients and colleagues) that you check your email certain times during the day and will not always respond immediately. You are simply asking for respect of your time. You will have times when you need to choose not to jump up and respond.
Turn off Skype, don’t pick up the phone (that’s why we have voice mail), and stick to your email time. I am not saying always ignore every call that comes in, but watch how fast you are to respond to every call, Skype or email…If you are working in your block of time for emails or team check-ins, etc., then by all means, answer. But, if you are working on your most intense work of the day, most calls can wait.
So grab your tracking sheet and your calendar. See if you can work these 7 steps into your weekly schedule (some may be daily slots and some may only be a few times a week). Leave room for flexibility and try not to make it too blocked off. It may seem like a daunting task to get this organized, but if you can try this for three weeks, you will have formed a new habit and also may find yourself in total control of your workday. This generally means you will get more work done! More work tends to lead to more sales which means more revenue!
Please let me know how your progress is going, share your successes (or questions) in the comments below.
Who Has Control of Your Workday?
One of the biggest issues every business owner has is time…or rather the lack of time. We all want more time in our day, but the reality is there is no known way to change how the universe is setup and add more hours to the day. What has to change is us and how we use our time.
No matter how in control things may feel, if you track your activity throughout the day, you generally will be surprised at the results. You will see where your time is being spent and who or what is controlling that time. It is the control of your time that can help you find more hours in the day.
To figure out how you spend your time, you will need to do a bit of work, but it always pays off in seeing what is actually happening to your workday. You start by keeping a record of all your activity – everything you do, how long it takes – do this for one week. Picking a normal week too – not a week when you are at a conference or not doing your ‘typical’ work.
Your time log should include:
- The Task
- The start time and stop time
- Interruptions
- Who or What interrupted you
- The start and stop time after the interruptions too
- Whether you completed the task
This will take dedication to do and do for a whole week. I suggest doing it on paper – keep the sheet of paper by your side so you can quickly take out your pen and fill in the sheet. Using a computer-based tracking means leaving your work and interrupting the task at hand to enter the time. Paper is a little mightier and more effective in this case. (I have created a sample sheet you can print out and keep handy. You can copy the sheet template from this Google doc.)
Once the week is up, tally up your results. Review the “interrupted by” column more than anything. Make a tick sheet of the interruptions and the instigator of each. Tally up your top 10 ‘interruptions’. This list will tell you who or what is controlling your workday and you may be surprised at what you find.
If the list is full of names, other than yourself, this tells you others are in control of your day and time. If your name or just a new task is the top factor, then it is, in fact, you controlling your day by the choices you make. Now you know what or who is in control. So, what can you do about it???
Take the next week and track yourself, even if you think everything is fine. You may be surprised at what shows up on the tracking sheet that can help you regain control of your day.
Meeting with Yourself
One of my goals this year is to keep myself better managed with time and tasks. Like many people I struggle to find the best system that works for me. My online calendar is a must for all my appointments and meetings. I like the pop-up reminders that happen and the ability to set them at a time to fit how my brain works.
It’s always been the new tasks that come into play every day that needs to get on my radar as an item on my to-do list. For tasks and work, I am a very visual personal (A ‘Piler’ they call it in the professional organizing world). I need to ‘see’ what I have to work on in order for it to get into my brain as something to focus on and complete.
In the past, I have used a time manager diary book that opens to a week at a time and allows for spaces for meetings (which I never used), as well as a list area. It is here where I would enter my items for the week. Very visual, so that part is great. The annoying part of this system is that I have to rewrite the same stuff every week – mostly client names as well as my own plans for blogging, articles and my own marketing work. Some weeks I found the page for the week empty because I did not have the time to rewrite everything and carry it over from last week. As someone who is always focused on time, this time to rewrite the same info is not in-line with the way I want to be – always as efficient as possible.
Recently, I started a new system – seeing if it will be more effective for my needs. I am using a Google spreadsheet with a list of my main task topics (so I don’t have to rewrite every day / week) and then enter in the new work to be done. So far it seems to be working better for me. I do make a point of keeping a special browser window open with this document. This way I can tick off the items as they are done and also enter in new ones as they pop up during the day.
The trick I have found is to start the day off with a Meeting with Me. 10 minutes to check what was done yesterday, what came into the list and what I need to focus on for the day. So, now when I open my office door each morning, that is where I start – a Meeting with Me.
It’s been a lot more helpful and also the list is more fully completed these past couple weeks than it had been when I was using my old system…time will tell if my ‘Meeting with Me’ is going to work out.
If you have any great methods that work for you, please share them on my Facebook Page. I am always looking for new ideas and ways to improve!
Acknowledging Success in Business and Life
I have an accountability partner and we meet weekly to discuss our businesses and keep each other on track with our plans and progress. One of the things that I have been working on is my list of 100 Successes.
One of my biggest issues is allowing me to be okay and celebrate the good things in life I do. Like many of you small business owners, my specialty in business comes easy to me, so understanding how that skill can help others and the feelings that come from it, is something I easily brush off as nothing important. It may not be to me, but to the client or online friend who I help, it is a big deal – and they achieve their own success from my help.
This is just one small example of how success happens but doesn’t get celebrated. I bet you can all share at least another example or two!
My Success List has been making me stand back and look at some of the great things I have done in life and business, and really give myself a little shout out about my accomplishments.
I have been preparing to go to Myrtle Beach to meet with my Business Coaches. I have to bring along a PowerPoint about me, to share with the group. This time, I added something different to it… after each section about me, my business, how I help clients, my services etc… I added another slide – my Celebrate Success Slide.
On these Celebrate Success Slides, I included the info I was most proud about in that area. It was very exhilarating writing these slides out. I did the titles in all CAPS and bold to make them really stand out – and I plan to share them with the group in the same way, presenting them in all CAPS and Bold! (Okay I have been practicing what I am going to do, I always like to be prepared – I should have been a Scout!).
My plan is to really own the successes I have so boldly written into my presentation. But in preparing all this, I have really seen the boost my mood takes when I am in the celebration mode – all the more reason to keep filling in my list and get more than 100!
Am I alone in my unease at celebrating or are you the same? Have you ever written out a list of your successes? What experience did you have from doing this? I would love to hear from someone who has been through it too.
Pay it Forward – It does comes Back!
One of the things I did in 2008 when I started networking online for my business was to set a goal of helping others online. If I see someone who looks like they were hacked, have a typo in their BIO, you know, the little things… I try to help by letting them know how they can fix the situation. If I see someone asking a question, needing help I point them in the right direction. It’s my way of paying it forward ( the concept of asking that a good turn be repaid by having it done to others instead – ie. if you help 3 people and they each help 3 people, it’s just like word of mouth or viral marketing, but instead people helping others) for all the help I got in my life from others and especially when I started my business.
It’s the little things that I see when I am networking online – looking at new followers, chatting on a Facebook page, and talking to people. Really, it’s the same as you would help out people in person too (well, except for the old one of someone’s ’fly being down’ and never knowing if you say something or not – can’t see that situation happening online!) – just being kind and helpful.
Anyhow this past week I ran into a different type of way I could help someone. It started when I got my mail and my new Moo Cards were in there. Whoohoo – More Moo! And the Bonus was these were the 100 FREE mini moo cards I got from a Klout Perk. They were even free but for the shipping. I flew in the house all excited to open the package and see them (and by the way if you are wondering what a Moo card is, you have obviously never held one in your hand. They are a delight to hold and touch and feel. If you want to see one live and in person, send me an email with your address and I will mail you one of mine! Seriously, I will)
…. back to the story
I get the package open and then open the little box they come in … and the first one is usually a reference card for the order, I look past that and it is another odd card, I keep looking and then finally it dawns on me… they are all these odd cards and not mine! UGh! All the excitement for nothing!
I had someone else’s cards! I called Moo Customer Service and we go through the order numbers and they realize that I have someone else’s cards and someone out there probably is getting mine. A little shipping mixup. No big deal, they tell me to chuck the cards in the garbage because they are sending me a rush order, as well as this other person whose cards I have in my hands.
Chuck them out??? No way - they are Moo Cards. Mini or not – they are too nice to put in the recycle bin. Luckily the cards had the twitter id of the company – @QuipMag (and the special order reference card had the name of the person who made the order) – so I looked them up on twitter, got their website, then found the right person on the “About” page.
I emailed and said what happened, that she would probably get an email about an order problem and that more cards were coming… but in the meantime – what is her address so I can mail this box of cards off. (I could not in any way throw them out).
She was so happy I emailed and very appreciative that I was willing to mail the cards. I did, she got them last week and was so grateful I took the time to send them. We also got to know a little bit about each other’s business in the process.
A little help and a little pay it forward – it always comes back I say…
So today I got a tweet from Kateryna:
@timeontaskva So guess what, I just got your cards! Will mail them tomorrow please DM me your address
Pay it Forward, It ALWAYS comes back one way or another and not always from the recipient as was the case today – but somewhere somehow it will come back to you.
PS. Don’t forget to send me an email if you want a sample mini-moo card. The postage is on me!
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