A collection of short tips on productivity topic published in Harwad Business Review magazine originally & quoted from there and sent to IBS employees(yes, I am an IBS employee) daily in their daily corporate update mail.
1. People want their contributions
People want their contributions to be acknowledged. But fairly assigning credit is difficult in collaborative environments where several people come up with new ideas together. If you want to eliminate resentment over recognition, you need to give credit the right way. Tie individual recognition to the overall success of the group. This reduces tension over who did what and reinforces teamwork. Recognize results instead of activities. Align your reward systems with the outcomes you want, not metrics like length of service or attendance that may not have a direct bearing on those outcomes. And embrace risk-taking by recognizing team efforts even if something fails. This will encourage people to learn and improve.
2. Forget motivation, you need follow through
When approaching a difficult task — getting to the gym, writing an important presentation — you may chide yourself for lacking motivation to get it done. However, it’s often not a question of motivation, but follow through. You may want to do the task — you know it’s important — but your brain talks you out of it. You tell yourself you can do it tomorrow or you have more urgent things to do. Don’t let your mind sabotage your aspirations. Make a specific decision about what you want to do and don’t question it. Tell yourself: I will work out tomorrow at 6 AM or I will finish the presentation by Tuesday at 1 PM. If your mind starts to argue with you, ignore it.
3. Don’t just prioritize—say No to things
When pressed for time, we're often advised to "Prioritize!" as if that will solve the problem. But prioritizing accomplishes relatively little, because it assumes that everything and everyone merits our time and attention – we'll just get to the less-important items later. But later never really arrives, so the list never ends. The key is to
recognize that while prioritization is necessary, the critical next step is triage. You have to actively ignore the items whose importance falls below a certain threshold.
Decide where your cut-off point is and stick to it. You don’t have to get through your entire inbox or to-do list, you just have to get through the truly important messages and cross off the most important items. Actively ignoring things and saying no to people is difficult, but it’s the only way to reclaim your time.
4. Rely on routines to free your mental energy
Every time you make a decision — which candidate to hire, whether to delegate a task, even what to eat for lunch — you create mental tension. Our energy to make decisions is limited; stress and fatigue can keep us from making good ones. Use routines to reduce the number of decisions you have to make: If there’s something you need to do daily, try doing it at the same time every day. For example, establish a ritual for preparing for work in the morning. That might begin with checking e-mails and voice mails and responding to the urgent ones first to make it easier to move more quickly to important projects. Set up a similar routine for packing up to go home at night. Once you’ve put less-important decisions on autopilot, you'll these elements from hazy and unspoken to focused and written.
5. Know your unwritten plan
When preparing for the future, you need two plans--one you write down, and one that's unwritten, fluid, and evolving. This blueprint exists in your mind as a living, changing understanding of where you're going, why you're going there, and how you're going to get there--all based on your current understanding of how the future will unfold. While your written plan includes specific objectives, action steps, and clear assumptions, the unwritten one consists of gut feel, general direction, and broad priorities. Over time, as
you gather information and test ideas, you'll move many of these elements from hazy and unspoken to focused and written.
6. Keep people from feeling left out
Social rejection is hard in any setting, including at the office. When people feel excluded, they can't be productive, innovative, or collaborative. As a manager you need to create a work environment that discourages rejection. Here’s how:
1. Prime the room for trust. To downplay hierarchies, start meetings by stating that all viewpoints are welcomed and valued. This will ease fear of rejection and put people into a more collaborative state of mind.
2. Start with a shared reality. Send agenda items out before a meeting or give team members an article to read – and ask them for input. This signals that you care about what they think.
3. Encourage candor and caring. Use open, non-judgmental language and listen with respect in all conversations. Thank people for sharing, and make sure that there are no negative repercussions for doing so.
7. Too much to do? Help someone else
It can be irritating to hear someone else whine about being busy, especially if you’re busy too. But instead of competing with your own sob story, offer to help. Start by empathizing. Tell her that you understand, and paraphrase her complaint back to her. Then offer to help in a specific way: Tell her you’ll look over her work or offer some valuable input. Chances are she’ll take you up on the offer and feel appreciative. This act of generosity will make you feel better and more productive. You’ll likely see that if you have time to help someone else, you have enough bandwidth to do your own work.
8. Be strategic in how you handle success
People often prepare for failure, but they rarely prepare for what they will do when they succeed. Even when we consciously want to be successful, enjoying that success can be a challenge. Being successful can leave others envious, and even hoping to see you fail. To avoid causing resentment, it's important to learn when, where, and how to share the good news. When you discuss your wins, talk about other things you are still developing so as not to appear boastful. This doesn't mean you can't enjoy your victories — just don’t flaunt them. Celebrate the value you bring, not winning per se. It’s also important to keep looking for new challenges. No one wants to be bored, even at the top. When you
have mastered something, ask yourself: How can you innovate around this?
9. Four tips for managing your energy, not your time
You may not be able to make the day any longer, but you can replenish your energy. Use these four simple tips to help you work smarter and prevent burn out:
1. Take brief but regular breaks. Step away from your desk every 90 to 120 minutes. Take a walk, get a drink, or just stretch your legs.
2. Say thank you. Being positive boosts your energy level. Regularly express appreciation to others.
3. Reduce interruptions. Perform tasks that need concentration away from phones and email. Instead, designate specific times in your day to respond to messages.
4. Do what you love. Understand where your strengths lie and what you enjoy doing. Find ways to do more of those things and less of what tires you out.
10. Set boundaries to protect your time
We’re all too busy. And we can’t stand people who distract us at work and derail our productivity. There may be no escape from other people, but you can take steps to regain
control of your time and schedule.
1. State your preferred method of communication. Limit aggravation by proactively informing colleagues about the best way to reach you, whether it’s via phone call, text, email, or tweet.
2. Require an agenda for meetings. Vague or rambling meetings eat up too much of our time. Insist on seeing an agenda before you commit to attending meetings so that you can contribute fully. Model the practice by creating an agenda for any meetings you chair and offering to share the template with others.
3. Make others prepare. Before you commit to a meeting, ask if people have done their research and if the real decision-makers will be present.
11. Exercise ambidextrous decision making
Do you rely on data and analytics to make big decisions or do you follow your instincts? While analytical decision-makers are usually more likely to make the right judgment call, intuition and gut feel can't be overlooked. In fact, many leaders have missed great opportunities because the data didn't support the risk, and the risk was actually worth taking. Great leaders adeptly use both inputs. If you are really good at collecting and analyzing data to inform decisions, find ways to check your data against a gut feeling.
If you generally rely on creativity and an intuitive understanding of the customer, see if you can develop more analytic muscle.
12. Get things done by deciding when and where
Managing your workload with a to-do list can be a productive way to organize your work and keep yourself on task. But don't let your list become a collection of everything you want to do but will never have time for. Make sure each item on your list has a time and place attached. Don't add "write management presentation" without including the day and time slot in which you'll do it. Consider foregoing the list and scheduling items on your calendar instead. You may still want a place to write down things you hope to get to,
but be sure that each day you know what you need to accomplish and when.
13. Help your team voice their concerns
No one wants to upset the boss. That's why it can be difficult to get candid opinions from your employees. But you need to encourage them to speak up if you want to know about minor issues before they become big problems. If some people are uncomfortable airing concerns in large group settings, initiate more casual one-on-one conversations. You should keep an open door policy, but don’t wait for people to come to you — go out and talk to them yourself. You can get people in the habit of speaking up by routinely asking if
there are any issues you should be aware of. Offer regular financial updates so people will know what’s working and what’s not. If they feel that they have a stake in the success of the organization, they’ll be more willing speak up.
14. Stop the shouting matches
You don't have to raise your voice to appear to be yelling. There are many ways to inaudibly be aggressive: sending nasty emails, enlisting others to exert pressure, and escalating disputes to your boss, to name a few. Yelling, even when done quietly, betrays your frustration and anger, and certainly doesn't encourage real understanding or acceptance of your message. If you find yourself in a silent shouting match, restart and reframe the discussion. Take a step back and ask the other party to as well. Work backwards by asking questions like: What are our shared goals? What do we want to accomplish? From this defused spot, you have a much better chance of making progress.
15. Two ways to repair a damaged relationship
It's happened to all of us: a disagreement in the conference room leads to bad blood between you and your colleague. It's nothing personal, but the relationship feels strained at best, and downright damaged at worst. Try these two tactics to restore peace:
1. Ask for a favor: This may seem counterintuitive, but it works. Allow your colleague to demonstrate her knowledge and/or her generosity. By allowing her to help you, you've put her in a magnanimous position.
2. Flatter, genuinely. Even if someone is difficult to work with, you can probably find a quality you admire: strong ethics, conviction. Compliment your colleague on that quality and watch him soften. Be genuine, or it can easily backfire. Deliver compliments in the context of a project or meeting and don't say anything you don't mean.
16. Stop sabotaging yourself
When faced with a big challenge, it’s tempting to anticipate the obstacles that might get in the way, and use them as an excuse not to move forward. But this type of self-handicapping will prevent you from reaching your potential. Here’s how to stop it:
1. Watch for the warning signs. These include holding back, generating lists of excuses, or excessively focusing on the potential obstacles.
2. Articulate goals, not excuses. Use "what-ifs" and "if-onlys" to help generate ideas about how you might remove obstacles. For example, if you think you might fail because you lack a certain skill, find out how to acquire it.
3. Manage your negative emotions. When faced with obstacles (and there are always some), you’re likely to feel disappointment or anger. Be kind to yourself in working through these emotions and focus on what you can change.
17. Don’t put off addressing the people issues on your team
People issues often pose the most difficult challenges in project management. Rather than trying to ignore, deny, or avoid them, you need to address them quickly and decisively before they get too big. Specify the problem, think about possible causes and the impact it’s having on your team, and then take action. For example, if conflicts of personality or working styles are wasting time and lowering productivity on your team, propose solutions, not blame. Focus team members on project goals, not on personal feelings. If team members become too friendly, reorganize subgroups to disrupt cliques and emphasize that social gatherings are for after work. Pay attention to small signs, like a team member’s increased irritability, loss of enthusiasm, or difficulty making decisions. Raise these issues quickly. The only way you’ll squash problems is through frequent, daily communication — not weekly staff meetings.
18. Try taking a mini e-mail vacations
Gaining control over email is a constant, nagging struggle for most office workers . Instead of checking it continuously throughout the day from multiple devices, schedule specific times to process what’s in your inbox. You are most efficient when you answer messages in bulk at your computer. You can more easily access files and paste links quickly via a desktop or laptop. When you take your messages head on like this, you are more focused and waste no time transitioning from one activity to another. Process your
email three times a day in 30-minute increments, once in the morning, once mid-day, and once before leaving. Use a timer and when it beeps, close your email program. Outside these designated times, don’t access your inbox — from any device. Consider this an email vacation. (Feasibility varies according to the nature of your job. Caution is advised)
19. Three tips for raising an ethical issue
Disagreeing with a colleague about whether to raise prices or when to launch a new product is often easier than confronting a colleague about an ethical issue. Here are three
tips for raising the issue in a non-combative and productive way:
• Treat the conflict as a business issue. Present the issue as you would any other business issue: provide sufficient detail, tailor your message to the audience, and deliver it in an appropriate context.
• Recognize that it's part of your job. Ethical issues may feel like a distraction from "real" work, but identifying, thinking through, and acting on them are part of everyone's job.
• Be yourself. Don't assume that you have to be confrontational, assertive, or courageous to bring up an ethical issue. The best approach is to be yourself and use a style you are comfortable with.
20. Decide what to ignore
Keeping pace with new information, thinking, and technology is exhausting and time-consuming. The key to staying on top of your game is to ignore the distractions. Start by creating a list of diversions you are willing to do without. Be sure it includes things that don't make you happy, are getting in the way of your productivity, or detract from your ability to focus on your goals. Get rid of irrelevant newsfeeds and be selective about which emails you read and respond to. Each time there is a demand on your attention, refer to your list and ask yourself whether it's truly worth your limited time.
21. Disagree with your boss? Convey it well
You should be able to express your views openly and honestly, but it can be tricky to disagree with your boss. You have to express dissent effectively. First, have a conversation about how to handle disagreements when they arise. It helps to establish these practices when emotions are calm and stakes are low. Before disagreeing, assure your boss that you respect her and her position. Then help her see the bigger picture. Frame your argument in the context of a mutual purpose to remind her that you’re working toward the same goals.
22. Help people raise difficult issues in meetings
You won’t accomplish much in your meeting if there’s an elephant in the room. The team might just stare at their notebooks and refuse to make eye contact, or people will start to speak and then censor themselves. For example, firing a bad vendor might solve your problem, but if it would create more work or hurt someone’s feelings, people might not bring it up. You have to raise the issue yourself to get the group unstuck. Then ask people to explain in detail the nature of the problem, issue, or opportunity. Find out how long it has existed, who is involved, and what the consequences are. Thank people who bring up controversial or different viewpoints. And let everyone know how important it is
to raise all options, concerns, and issues, even if they are difficult. Once people know you won’t kill the messenger, they’ll feel safer tackling thorny subjects.
23. Elevate performance without waiting for a crisis
Crises often motivate people to achieve new levels of performance. Since you likely don't want to operate in crisis-mode, how can you access the hidden reserves in your company without waiting for a disaster? Tap into the three factors always present in a crisis response:
1. Urgency. People feel motivated when they know time matters. Set clear goals and clear consequences if the goals are not achieved. Don't run fire drills, however; people know false urgency when they see it.
2. Empathy. People want to feel emotionally connected to what they're doing. Show employees how their work will matter to others — their coworkers or your customers.
3. Innovation. In a crisis, there's no time or patience for red tape. Remove unnecessary organizational obstacles to being innovative. Get rid of the time-consuming processes that would be the first to go in a crisis.
24. Behave ethically by respecting others
There has been a lot of debate in the past few years about what is ethical in business. There are certainly gray areas, but recognizing that your actions impact others is the first step toward ethical behavior. Here are two rules to consider when trying to do what's right:
1. Help others while respecting their dignity. Offering assistance to colleagues is ethical. But, no matter how intended, the offer could come off as patronizing. Balance your desire to help with their need for self-respect.
2. Remember you are responsible to others. No one exists in isolation and while some work cultures may emphasize individual achievement, remember that you rely on, impact, and collaborate with others.
25. Change the way you start your day
What's the first thing you do when you get to your desk? Check email and listen to voicemails? This is the worst way to start the workday. Instead of automatically going into reactive mode and focusing on other people's priorities, begin your day with a brief planning session about what you need to get done. The moment you sit down, ask yourself: The day is over and I am leaving the office with a tremendous sense of accomplishment. What have I achieved? Thinking this through will help you distinguish truly important tasks from those that only feel urgent. Determine what to focus on, and then break down these tasks into specific actions and goals. Think about how to prioritize your list, and try starting your day with tasks that require the most mental energy.
1. People want their contributions
People want their contributions to be acknowledged. But fairly assigning credit is difficult in collaborative environments where several people come up with new ideas together. If you want to eliminate resentment over recognition, you need to give credit the right way. Tie individual recognition to the overall success of the group. This reduces tension over who did what and reinforces teamwork. Recognize results instead of activities. Align your reward systems with the outcomes you want, not metrics like length of service or attendance that may not have a direct bearing on those outcomes. And embrace risk-taking by recognizing team efforts even if something fails. This will encourage people to learn and improve.
2. Forget motivation, you need follow through
When approaching a difficult task — getting to the gym, writing an important presentation — you may chide yourself for lacking motivation to get it done. However, it’s often not a question of motivation, but follow through. You may want to do the task — you know it’s important — but your brain talks you out of it. You tell yourself you can do it tomorrow or you have more urgent things to do. Don’t let your mind sabotage your aspirations. Make a specific decision about what you want to do and don’t question it. Tell yourself: I will work out tomorrow at 6 AM or I will finish the presentation by Tuesday at 1 PM. If your mind starts to argue with you, ignore it.
3. Don’t just prioritize—say No to things
When pressed for time, we're often advised to "Prioritize!" as if that will solve the problem. But prioritizing accomplishes relatively little, because it assumes that everything and everyone merits our time and attention – we'll just get to the less-important items later. But later never really arrives, so the list never ends. The key is to
recognize that while prioritization is necessary, the critical next step is triage. You have to actively ignore the items whose importance falls below a certain threshold.
Decide where your cut-off point is and stick to it. You don’t have to get through your entire inbox or to-do list, you just have to get through the truly important messages and cross off the most important items. Actively ignoring things and saying no to people is difficult, but it’s the only way to reclaim your time.
4. Rely on routines to free your mental energy
Every time you make a decision — which candidate to hire, whether to delegate a task, even what to eat for lunch — you create mental tension. Our energy to make decisions is limited; stress and fatigue can keep us from making good ones. Use routines to reduce the number of decisions you have to make: If there’s something you need to do daily, try doing it at the same time every day. For example, establish a ritual for preparing for work in the morning. That might begin with checking e-mails and voice mails and responding to the urgent ones first to make it easier to move more quickly to important projects. Set up a similar routine for packing up to go home at night. Once you’ve put less-important decisions on autopilot, you'll these elements from hazy and unspoken to focused and written.
5. Know your unwritten plan
When preparing for the future, you need two plans--one you write down, and one that's unwritten, fluid, and evolving. This blueprint exists in your mind as a living, changing understanding of where you're going, why you're going there, and how you're going to get there--all based on your current understanding of how the future will unfold. While your written plan includes specific objectives, action steps, and clear assumptions, the unwritten one consists of gut feel, general direction, and broad priorities. Over time, as
you gather information and test ideas, you'll move many of these elements from hazy and unspoken to focused and written.
6. Keep people from feeling left out
Social rejection is hard in any setting, including at the office. When people feel excluded, they can't be productive, innovative, or collaborative. As a manager you need to create a work environment that discourages rejection. Here’s how:
1. Prime the room for trust. To downplay hierarchies, start meetings by stating that all viewpoints are welcomed and valued. This will ease fear of rejection and put people into a more collaborative state of mind.
2. Start with a shared reality. Send agenda items out before a meeting or give team members an article to read – and ask them for input. This signals that you care about what they think.
3. Encourage candor and caring. Use open, non-judgmental language and listen with respect in all conversations. Thank people for sharing, and make sure that there are no negative repercussions for doing so.
7. Too much to do? Help someone else
It can be irritating to hear someone else whine about being busy, especially if you’re busy too. But instead of competing with your own sob story, offer to help. Start by empathizing. Tell her that you understand, and paraphrase her complaint back to her. Then offer to help in a specific way: Tell her you’ll look over her work or offer some valuable input. Chances are she’ll take you up on the offer and feel appreciative. This act of generosity will make you feel better and more productive. You’ll likely see that if you have time to help someone else, you have enough bandwidth to do your own work.
8. Be strategic in how you handle success
People often prepare for failure, but they rarely prepare for what they will do when they succeed. Even when we consciously want to be successful, enjoying that success can be a challenge. Being successful can leave others envious, and even hoping to see you fail. To avoid causing resentment, it's important to learn when, where, and how to share the good news. When you discuss your wins, talk about other things you are still developing so as not to appear boastful. This doesn't mean you can't enjoy your victories — just don’t flaunt them. Celebrate the value you bring, not winning per se. It’s also important to keep looking for new challenges. No one wants to be bored, even at the top. When you
have mastered something, ask yourself: How can you innovate around this?
9. Four tips for managing your energy, not your time
You may not be able to make the day any longer, but you can replenish your energy. Use these four simple tips to help you work smarter and prevent burn out:
1. Take brief but regular breaks. Step away from your desk every 90 to 120 minutes. Take a walk, get a drink, or just stretch your legs.
2. Say thank you. Being positive boosts your energy level. Regularly express appreciation to others.
3. Reduce interruptions. Perform tasks that need concentration away from phones and email. Instead, designate specific times in your day to respond to messages.
4. Do what you love. Understand where your strengths lie and what you enjoy doing. Find ways to do more of those things and less of what tires you out.
10. Set boundaries to protect your time
We’re all too busy. And we can’t stand people who distract us at work and derail our productivity. There may be no escape from other people, but you can take steps to regain
control of your time and schedule.
1. State your preferred method of communication. Limit aggravation by proactively informing colleagues about the best way to reach you, whether it’s via phone call, text, email, or tweet.
2. Require an agenda for meetings. Vague or rambling meetings eat up too much of our time. Insist on seeing an agenda before you commit to attending meetings so that you can contribute fully. Model the practice by creating an agenda for any meetings you chair and offering to share the template with others.
3. Make others prepare. Before you commit to a meeting, ask if people have done their research and if the real decision-makers will be present.
11. Exercise ambidextrous decision making
Do you rely on data and analytics to make big decisions or do you follow your instincts? While analytical decision-makers are usually more likely to make the right judgment call, intuition and gut feel can't be overlooked. In fact, many leaders have missed great opportunities because the data didn't support the risk, and the risk was actually worth taking. Great leaders adeptly use both inputs. If you are really good at collecting and analyzing data to inform decisions, find ways to check your data against a gut feeling.
If you generally rely on creativity and an intuitive understanding of the customer, see if you can develop more analytic muscle.
12. Get things done by deciding when and where
Managing your workload with a to-do list can be a productive way to organize your work and keep yourself on task. But don't let your list become a collection of everything you want to do but will never have time for. Make sure each item on your list has a time and place attached. Don't add "write management presentation" without including the day and time slot in which you'll do it. Consider foregoing the list and scheduling items on your calendar instead. You may still want a place to write down things you hope to get to,
but be sure that each day you know what you need to accomplish and when.
13. Help your team voice their concerns
No one wants to upset the boss. That's why it can be difficult to get candid opinions from your employees. But you need to encourage them to speak up if you want to know about minor issues before they become big problems. If some people are uncomfortable airing concerns in large group settings, initiate more casual one-on-one conversations. You should keep an open door policy, but don’t wait for people to come to you — go out and talk to them yourself. You can get people in the habit of speaking up by routinely asking if
there are any issues you should be aware of. Offer regular financial updates so people will know what’s working and what’s not. If they feel that they have a stake in the success of the organization, they’ll be more willing speak up.
14. Stop the shouting matches
You don't have to raise your voice to appear to be yelling. There are many ways to inaudibly be aggressive: sending nasty emails, enlisting others to exert pressure, and escalating disputes to your boss, to name a few. Yelling, even when done quietly, betrays your frustration and anger, and certainly doesn't encourage real understanding or acceptance of your message. If you find yourself in a silent shouting match, restart and reframe the discussion. Take a step back and ask the other party to as well. Work backwards by asking questions like: What are our shared goals? What do we want to accomplish? From this defused spot, you have a much better chance of making progress.
15. Two ways to repair a damaged relationship
It's happened to all of us: a disagreement in the conference room leads to bad blood between you and your colleague. It's nothing personal, but the relationship feels strained at best, and downright damaged at worst. Try these two tactics to restore peace:
1. Ask for a favor: This may seem counterintuitive, but it works. Allow your colleague to demonstrate her knowledge and/or her generosity. By allowing her to help you, you've put her in a magnanimous position.
2. Flatter, genuinely. Even if someone is difficult to work with, you can probably find a quality you admire: strong ethics, conviction. Compliment your colleague on that quality and watch him soften. Be genuine, or it can easily backfire. Deliver compliments in the context of a project or meeting and don't say anything you don't mean.
16. Stop sabotaging yourself
When faced with a big challenge, it’s tempting to anticipate the obstacles that might get in the way, and use them as an excuse not to move forward. But this type of self-handicapping will prevent you from reaching your potential. Here’s how to stop it:
1. Watch for the warning signs. These include holding back, generating lists of excuses, or excessively focusing on the potential obstacles.
2. Articulate goals, not excuses. Use "what-ifs" and "if-onlys" to help generate ideas about how you might remove obstacles. For example, if you think you might fail because you lack a certain skill, find out how to acquire it.
3. Manage your negative emotions. When faced with obstacles (and there are always some), you’re likely to feel disappointment or anger. Be kind to yourself in working through these emotions and focus on what you can change.
17. Don’t put off addressing the people issues on your team
People issues often pose the most difficult challenges in project management. Rather than trying to ignore, deny, or avoid them, you need to address them quickly and decisively before they get too big. Specify the problem, think about possible causes and the impact it’s having on your team, and then take action. For example, if conflicts of personality or working styles are wasting time and lowering productivity on your team, propose solutions, not blame. Focus team members on project goals, not on personal feelings. If team members become too friendly, reorganize subgroups to disrupt cliques and emphasize that social gatherings are for after work. Pay attention to small signs, like a team member’s increased irritability, loss of enthusiasm, or difficulty making decisions. Raise these issues quickly. The only way you’ll squash problems is through frequent, daily communication — not weekly staff meetings.
18. Try taking a mini e-mail vacations
Gaining control over email is a constant, nagging struggle for most office workers . Instead of checking it continuously throughout the day from multiple devices, schedule specific times to process what’s in your inbox. You are most efficient when you answer messages in bulk at your computer. You can more easily access files and paste links quickly via a desktop or laptop. When you take your messages head on like this, you are more focused and waste no time transitioning from one activity to another. Process your
email three times a day in 30-minute increments, once in the morning, once mid-day, and once before leaving. Use a timer and when it beeps, close your email program. Outside these designated times, don’t access your inbox — from any device. Consider this an email vacation. (Feasibility varies according to the nature of your job. Caution is advised)
19. Three tips for raising an ethical issue
Disagreeing with a colleague about whether to raise prices or when to launch a new product is often easier than confronting a colleague about an ethical issue. Here are three
tips for raising the issue in a non-combative and productive way:
• Treat the conflict as a business issue. Present the issue as you would any other business issue: provide sufficient detail, tailor your message to the audience, and deliver it in an appropriate context.
• Recognize that it's part of your job. Ethical issues may feel like a distraction from "real" work, but identifying, thinking through, and acting on them are part of everyone's job.
• Be yourself. Don't assume that you have to be confrontational, assertive, or courageous to bring up an ethical issue. The best approach is to be yourself and use a style you are comfortable with.
20. Decide what to ignore
Keeping pace with new information, thinking, and technology is exhausting and time-consuming. The key to staying on top of your game is to ignore the distractions. Start by creating a list of diversions you are willing to do without. Be sure it includes things that don't make you happy, are getting in the way of your productivity, or detract from your ability to focus on your goals. Get rid of irrelevant newsfeeds and be selective about which emails you read and respond to. Each time there is a demand on your attention, refer to your list and ask yourself whether it's truly worth your limited time.
21. Disagree with your boss? Convey it well
You should be able to express your views openly and honestly, but it can be tricky to disagree with your boss. You have to express dissent effectively. First, have a conversation about how to handle disagreements when they arise. It helps to establish these practices when emotions are calm and stakes are low. Before disagreeing, assure your boss that you respect her and her position. Then help her see the bigger picture. Frame your argument in the context of a mutual purpose to remind her that you’re working toward the same goals.
22. Help people raise difficult issues in meetings
You won’t accomplish much in your meeting if there’s an elephant in the room. The team might just stare at their notebooks and refuse to make eye contact, or people will start to speak and then censor themselves. For example, firing a bad vendor might solve your problem, but if it would create more work or hurt someone’s feelings, people might not bring it up. You have to raise the issue yourself to get the group unstuck. Then ask people to explain in detail the nature of the problem, issue, or opportunity. Find out how long it has existed, who is involved, and what the consequences are. Thank people who bring up controversial or different viewpoints. And let everyone know how important it is
to raise all options, concerns, and issues, even if they are difficult. Once people know you won’t kill the messenger, they’ll feel safer tackling thorny subjects.
23. Elevate performance without waiting for a crisis
Crises often motivate people to achieve new levels of performance. Since you likely don't want to operate in crisis-mode, how can you access the hidden reserves in your company without waiting for a disaster? Tap into the three factors always present in a crisis response:
1. Urgency. People feel motivated when they know time matters. Set clear goals and clear consequences if the goals are not achieved. Don't run fire drills, however; people know false urgency when they see it.
2. Empathy. People want to feel emotionally connected to what they're doing. Show employees how their work will matter to others — their coworkers or your customers.
3. Innovation. In a crisis, there's no time or patience for red tape. Remove unnecessary organizational obstacles to being innovative. Get rid of the time-consuming processes that would be the first to go in a crisis.
24. Behave ethically by respecting others
There has been a lot of debate in the past few years about what is ethical in business. There are certainly gray areas, but recognizing that your actions impact others is the first step toward ethical behavior. Here are two rules to consider when trying to do what's right:
1. Help others while respecting their dignity. Offering assistance to colleagues is ethical. But, no matter how intended, the offer could come off as patronizing. Balance your desire to help with their need for self-respect.
2. Remember you are responsible to others. No one exists in isolation and while some work cultures may emphasize individual achievement, remember that you rely on, impact, and collaborate with others.
25. Change the way you start your day
What's the first thing you do when you get to your desk? Check email and listen to voicemails? This is the worst way to start the workday. Instead of automatically going into reactive mode and focusing on other people's priorities, begin your day with a brief planning session about what you need to get done. The moment you sit down, ask yourself: The day is over and I am leaving the office with a tremendous sense of accomplishment. What have I achieved? Thinking this through will help you distinguish truly important tasks from those that only feel urgent. Determine what to focus on, and then break down these tasks into specific actions and goals. Think about how to prioritize your list, and try starting your day with tasks that require the most mental energy.
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