Free Your Mind and Make Your Day More Productive
Here’s one thing you can do today to help this day and every subsequent day be more productive.
One of our fundamental human needs is to feel useful, and here are 2 things we allow ourselves to succumb to feed that need:
- We let others schedule and invite us to way too many meetings, on their terms, rather than ours.
- We engage in the time and productivity sucking practice of “MULTITASKING”. At least, multitasking in the form of trying to use the same part of our brain to do more than one thing at a time. Resistance and the Instant Gratification Monkey LOVE multitasking, and the great technology we have at our finger tips are the weapons of their trade. When we attempt to multitask on tasks that use the same part of our brain, we are simply just causing each of the individual tasks to take longer and have less quality, because we are less focused on each.
Multitasking, and the ways we can effectively use it, and the ways that it absolutely kills our productivity will be the subject of many of posts here. This post, however, focuses on some things you can do to help fight this urge and to help you take back control of some of your time…At least those of you who’s work typically includes meetings.
Does this sound familiar?
You’ve risen for the day with purpose. Mindset is right. Gratitude and affirmations are complete, and you’ve made your list of tasks for the day, one or two of which will require your creative effort and you’re looking forward to them. Now you’re looking to get started crossing off those items on the list. You are feeling especially creative today.
You look at your calendar to schedule those focus + recovery periods and….whamo! You realize that there is NO time today to schedule a proper focus period. You see a 9am meeting till 9:30, then a 10-11:30, then a 12:30-1:30, and 2-3. Ugh…none of these meetings are related to the things you need to get done.
What to do? Well..I’m going to release you right now from the noose of productivity killing meetings 🙂
It comes down to 2 concepts. I have implemented these 2 concepts in my own life, and I can absolutely vouch for them. One is empowering, and the other is a simple discipline that leads to more time efficient meetings (and it rubs off on those around you):
- RESPECT your own TIME by being the MASTER of your own TIME
- NEVER MULTITASK during your meetings
Respect Your Own Time
All this means is YOU be the MASTER of your own TIME. YOU be in charge of YOUR SCHEDULE. It’s your time, act like it. If you see a tough day or week of scattered meetings ahead that won’t allow you get things done, see how you can change, shorten, or remove those meetings in a fashion that will allow you to schedule and keep contiguous blocks of focus time during your day.
- Step 1: Decline/remove all meetings for which you are not presenting information, or directly receiving useful information. Always, always, always question the requirement for you to be at a meeting. If you have been invited out of courtesy, and you won’t be receiving useful information, decline it. If you’ve been invited because, “We might need something from you”, decline it and ask to be called/messaged if that does indeed occur.
- Step 2: For all meetings at which you are actually required, always make sure they fit into your schedule in a way that allows you to be productive outside of the meeting. Your focus times should be at least 60-90 minutes in length. Even if you are only trying to get one good focus time in a particular day, make sure the meeting times support YOUR window. Propose new times for those meetings that don’t work for you.
- Step 3: Always seek to shorten the meeting length. I’ll discuss this further below, but suffice it say, most meetings are twice as long as they need to be simply because the attendees are trying to do multiple things during the meeting, rather than just focus. If the meeting request is for 60 minutes, see if the organizer will shorten it to 30 minutes.
OK, you may be thinking to yourself, “But what if my boss….”, or “I don’t want to miss….”, or “The customer ….”, or “We have a regular group meeting…”
- You boss will never respect your time if you don’t first. Most bosses will respect you more if command it. Respecting your own schedule is a start.
- You must decide what is important in YOUR WORLD, and ignore what is not. This does take some discipline, but you have to recognize that just because you go to a bunch of meetings, that does not make you more important than somebody else. The most important people, whether they are employees or entrepreneurs, are the ones that get useful stuff done. The boss knows this, and if you are entrepreneur, well…if you don’t get stuff done, you don’t make money.
- Sometimes your customer does demand a particular meeting with your presence for a particular time. That doesn’t mean that you can’t attempt to fit it into your schedule. It’s a negotiation.
- You likely do have regular daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly meetings with a regular group. You may or may not contribute at each of these, but you presence is required. OK, so be it. But see below….DON’T MULTITASK. Be present.
The reality is that sometimes, you will still find yourself attending meetings on somebody else’s schedule, and on topics that aren’t that beneficial to you. But the point is, you can minimize these. You have the power, you just need to wield it.
Never Multitask during Your Meetings
Multitasking (again, referring to using the same parts of your brain) is a top 5 productivity killer. Just ask any ACTUAL successful person. They will tell you focusing on one thing at a time is all your brain can actually do, therefore, enhance that ability by allowing it to focus on one thing at a time. So don’t do it…If you are in a meeting, whether it is face-to-face or virtual, be fully present in the meeting. Don’t work on other stuff while you attend the meeting in the background.
Here’s the great thing about changing your own attitude and approach to being present during your meetings: This absolutely rubs off on those around you, and in the end, it creates more efficient and useful and shorter meetings! Shorter and more focused meetings are beneficial for everyone. If you show up to a physical meeting with no laptop, and your phone is put away, and then you engage the other members…they will do the same. Maybe not right at first, and maybe not that first meeting, because they also have fallen pray to the same human needs the you have. But they will. If you lead by example, that’s as good as demanding their attention. And as time goes on, you will be known as one who demands focused meetings.
You also need some personal integrity here. Let’s say you’re on that monthly town hall, but you are in listen only mode. Well…you are there because the person who is holding it thinks the information he/she is presenting should be known by you. Respect that, and the person, and don’t multitask. Be present.
Summary
Try this out for one week. Take next week and decline/reschedule your meetings so that your days will work for you and your ability to accomplish the things you need. And then, make sure you are fully, and singly present at the meetings that are useful or necessary.
As always, please let me know your experience with these concepts! Please connect with me and share this if you find it helpful.
Have a great day!
