CHAPTER 7

PRODUCTIVITY: HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU’RE BEING PRODUCTIVE?

THE PARETO PRINCIPLE

In 1906, an Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto observed that 20 percent of the Italian people owned 80 percent of his country’s accumulated wealth.¹⁰ It was the official start of a famous rule now known as the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule. It is a versatile principle that helps describe the many areas of human activity in which a small amount of something has great impact over a larger amount.

When taking inventory of plans, situations, and goals, the 80/20 rule helps both to identify activities that have the greatest value, and to remind us that success comes more easily when allowances are made.

For example, it can be said that 80 percent of our productivity and achievement comes from 20 percent of our day. It seems we work hard all day, every day, that we are always busy, that there never seems to be enough time. But in truth, the ratio of real productivity to perceived work is a surprising one.

If you’ve gone on a diet, for example, you’ve probably been told to rigorously track every piece of food that passes your lips. Either by assigning a point value to each bite, or by logging it into a record book, nutritionists emphasize the importance of honestly recording every piece of food that we eat. Why? Because what we think we eat and what we actually eat are very different. Serving sizes, snacks, little things here and there add up to much more than we care to admit. The same thing happens during the workday. The activities and distractions that go unnoticed or accepted as day-to-day work add up to a surprising amount of lost time.

EXTERNAL TIME EATERS

Let’s refer to our inventory technique to look at some of the many things that keep us from getting our real work done. These are predictable distractions that come at us from every direction, every day, and they don’t just pull us away from the work at hand, they also make us forget the constant passage of time. They have been accepted and absorbed as a normal part of our workplace existence.

External time eaters (as opposed to internal time eaters described next) are products of our working environment. They are external events that capture our attention and rob us of our control of the moment. They include:

• delays leaving the house (can’t find my keys!)

• commuting delays

• conversations/small talk with colleagues

• computer and network problems

• dealing with e-mail

• attending meetings

• looking for things

• taking and making phone calls

• attending training sessions

• receiving visitors

• listening to voicemail

INTERNAL TIME EATERS

There are also time inefficiencies whose origins are internal. These are personality-driven traits or actions that cause delay, pressure, and stress. They are often more difficult to spot than external time eaters because they are part of our own personal makeup. They include:

• not saying no to additional tasks

• reluctance to delegate

• attempting too much at once

• becoming immune to static to-do lists

• ineffective prioritization skills

• starting before all facts/tools are available

• setting unrealistic estimates

• not setting deadlines at all

• wanting to always appear available

• not keeping track of the progress of tasks

• procrastinating

• getting distracted

• accommodating interruptions

• not listening or not hearing

• not taking notes

• socializing a little too much

• working without adequate rest

• relying on a system that is all in your head

As difficult as they are to spot, internal time eaters are also more difficult to eliminate since they are part of our own personality. So much of what we do is simply done according to internal social motivations: If someone is chatting with you in your office, it’s considered rude to bring the conversation to a halt, so we wait. These actions are not factored into our perception of the time available for work in any given day. Few people will stop to calculate how long it takes to refill the coffee machine or fix a copier jam, but those minutes are being spent, not loaned. Our actions inspired by internal motivation come back to haunt us when day turns to night and we find ourselves still at the office.

Can we eliminate all these external and internal time eaters? Should we? Well, not all of them.¹¹ The idea is to be aware of their existence and to be cautious about the surprising level of influence they have. We cannot defeat an enemy until we understand it, and recognizing the sheer amount of time in a workday that is devoured by external and internal time eaters opens the door to the potential of increased achievement within the same number of hours.

REALISTIC TIME ASSESSMENTS FROM THE WORLD OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT

So what do internal and external time eaters have to do with the Pareto principle and productivity? For a start, they help answer the question “Where does the time go?” They show that the amount of time left over for the real productive work of the day is surprisingly small—so small that it’s almost insulting.

Remember in Chapter 2 when we talked about taking a stopwatch to a football game, and how that correlates to the workplace? And remember how we discussed how project management plays such a major role in successful time management? A project manager understands that for every person-day available to spend on a project, he must allow for between two and three hours of productive time per day, not the eight or ten you’d expect. Only a small fraction of the day is given over to true productivity. The rest of the time is spent in support activities. Simply put, 20 percent of your day—Pareto’s magic number—is the really good stuff.

But which 20 percent? This is a matter for you to identify by focusing on clues such as your personal energy levels, the busy-ness of your workplace, the frequency of interruptions and crises, your ability to focus, your ability to handle deadlines and pressure, and, of course, your inventory. This is precisely the type of discovery that is afforded by the I-Beam Base—the Kaizen portion—as you end and review your day.

You might have a job where optimum time for keystone time/ payback time is obvious, perhaps between 4:00P.M. and 5:30P.M. after the phones stop ringing, the markets have closed, or as most of your colleagues head home. Perhaps the morning is better. Some people schedule keystone time for the lunch hour when there are fewer colleagues around, which is a great strategy, provided you allow some time to eat just prior to or just after this productive block.

But for many others, keystone time is something that must be scheduled and defended. This takes practice and perseverance. But once you become adept at focusing in on this crucial 20 percent of your day, you will be able to double your productivity.

OTHER PARETO APPLICATIONS

Twenty percent of your incoming calls will yield 80 percent of your business. During the course of the day you will receive many calls and e-mails, but they are not all of the same importance. During keystone time, for example, if a high-priority client calls, of course it makes sense to take that call. It’s worth it. But the others can wait. They’re not urgent; they just seem that way. And as long as your substantive voicemail greeting manages the expectations of those callers (see Chapter 10), you can focus on what you need to focus on. Ignore 80 percent of your interruptions and allow the other 20 percent in. That’s far more productive than accepting everything and never getting around to the important work.

Twenty percent of your colleagues aren’t going to play ball with this. Some will still interrupt, distract, and lay waste to your time management plans. Some people just have that kind of personality. Also, your boss and other high-ranking people will also have a different set of privileges, though most managers will be surprisingly accepting of Cool Time initiatives once they’re educated about them. (See “Huddles with Your Boss,” page 57.) If you can eliminate 80 percent of walk-in interruptions, you will still win overall.

Eighty percent of a meeting’s productivity comes from 20 percent of its duration. Just like the rest of the day, a meeting is an event that is rife with time wasters. We cover this fully in Chapter 8.

Fill your day calendar 80 percent full and leave 20 percent empty. This is covered as “Opportunity Time” in Chapter 6.

All of this Cool Time stuff will work only 80 percent of the time. There are some phone calls and people that should be seen to right away. Some meetings will still go overtime, there will still be crunches and crises, and there will always be some things beyond your control. The trick is to aim to reduce 80 percent of the time-related problems in your life. If you aim to eliminate 100 percent, the odds are that something will slip through, which might disappoint you. Aim for excellence rather than perfection.

PRIORITIZING AND TRIAGE

Probably the most common question asked at time management work-shops is, “How do I prioritize all the tasks that I have to get done?” Much like the “magic-bullet aerosol spray” described in Chapter 1, people are looking for the formula to help them deal with the mental chaos that comes from conflicting tasks.

Let’s look first at a situation that is probably far more life-and-death-like than any of us will hopefully ever have to face, and that’s emergency triage. The traditional battlefield definition, credited to a surgeon in Napoleon’s army, refers to the technique of sorting out a group of injured people into three categories (from the French word trier, “to sort”) so that the most serious cases are treated first or by the appropriate specialist. The three categories are: (1) those who will survive if given immediate medical help; (2) those who will survive with medical help, but can wait a little while; and (3) those who won’t survive. It’s an act of Cool judgment in the most extreme situations, such as on the battlefield, at accident scenes, and in the emergency room. The obvious message here is that medical professionals, whom we come to rely on to solve life-or-death situations, rarely lose their cool. Though they cannot predict what emergency or crisis will be next, they will always take a few moments to sort out priorities using objective procedure rather than subjective, emotion-based decisions before they begin.

Translating battlefield triage to your personal agenda requires the same cool head and the same ability to sort out the critical from the mundane. It also requires that you recognize from the outset that there is only one of you, and you can do only one thing at a time.

Take, for example, the term “multitasking.” This horrible term has mutated within the collective unconscious from its original meaning of “being able to do a number of tasks” to “being able to do a number of tasks simultaneously.” This is akin to choosing a bucket rather than a hosepipe to extinguish a fire. When water is thrown from a bucket, the water is distributed randomly and ineffectively, much of it missing its target. If the same amount of water is pumped from a bucket through a hose, the jet can be concentrated at the base of the flames for better results.

Prioritization is triage. The best plan of action is in ensuring that work is viewed not by a false sense of immediate urgency, but through the filters of cool, higher-level assessment.

First, turn to gut feeling. Most of us have a sense of which task should be dealt with first, based on current knowledge of things going on in the business and in the office. Whether you’re setting up your day during your I-Beam Review or whether a colleague drops another project on your desk while you’re hard at work at something else, make sure stress doesn’t overtake the Cool thinking of triage. Don’t get caught up in the false urgency that your central nervous system thinks it’s seeing. Not everything in front of you should be dealt with first. The best prioritization technique is to allow yourself the time to stop, think, and then plan.

Recall from Chapter 3 that the more you craft and refine your inventory, the more time you will be able to reserve in advance for the types of work that you can reasonably predict and expect on a given day.

Second, place each task in the perspective of urgency and importance. One of the greatest lessons from Stephen Covey’s classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is to ensure that tasks fulfill the criteria of being both highest in urgency (usually deadline related), and also highest in importance (contributing to your main mission).¹²

If the tasks confronting you still seem to be equal and conflicting, it’s time for some interrogation. You might want to assess the tasks according to this checklist to see which one emerges as number one:

• Is this task directly related to one of my top three current projects?

• Does this task need to be completed today?

• Does this task need to be done by me or should it be delegated?

• Does this task have high value to my manager or client that he will notice if it is not done?

• Can this task be quickly taken care of?

• If I don’t do this task immediately, will the resulting trouble be greater than the gains I expect to achieve from it?

• If I have to put aside something else to do this task, will the benefit be greater than the task I’m currently doing?

• What if I don’t do this task at all?

• What will this task mean to me a week from now?

• What will this task mean to me a year from now?

• Is this task directly related to my job’s responsibilities or are there job-related tasks I should put before it?

These questions neutralize the urgency of change by placing the new task in proper perspective, in other words, triage. For example, the final question sounds like people should merely “work to rule,” but that’s not the case. If your job is in accounting, let’s say, and someone comes to you with a computer-related problem, and you take it on just because you happen to know how to fix the problem or because no one else is around to help out at that moment, then you set yourself up for two main problems:

• First, you place a task that is unrelated to your work before your own priorities.

• Second, you set a precedent, conditioning the requestor to come back to you for the same type of assistance the next time it happens. This should be nipped in the bud early by saying something such as “I’m doing this once for you as a special favor, but in future, you should talk to Mary about these types of problems.”

This is why “Huddles with Your Boss” (Chapter 5) are so important. Only through regular and frequent communication can you, your colleagues, and your manager work together to ensure that your time is being used best: on the work you’re best suited for and for which you are primarily accountable.

WHEN THEREʼS NO TIME FOR PRIORITIZING:KEEPING COOL IN A CRISIS

THE STORY OF CHUKO LIANG

On the eve of an important river battle, the great third-century Chinese strategist Chuko Liang found himself falsely accused of secretly working for the other side. As proof of his loyalty, his commander ordered him to produce 100,000 arrows for the army within three days or be put to death. Instead of trying to manufacture the arrows, an impossible task, Liang took a dozen boats and had bundles of straw lashed to their sides. In the late afternoon, when mist always blanketed the river, he floated the boats toward the enemy camp. Fearing a trap from the wily Chuko Liang, the enemy did not attack the barely visible boats with boats of their own, but showered them with arrows from the bank. As Liang’s boats inched closer, they redoubled the rain of arrows, which stuck in the thick straw. After several hours, the men hiding on board sailed the vessels quickly downstream where Chuko Liang met them and collected his 100,000 arrows.¹³

The Chuko Liang story illustrates the beauty of grace under pressure—of keeping a cool head. Today, we use the term “firefighting” in the context of business situations to describe the art of quickly resolving a crisis.

There are some who pride themselves on being masters at putting out such “fires,” and if they truly are good at it, it’s because they know how to remain in control. For most of us, however, firefighting is not comfortable. It requires that we focus resources and energies on a situation that should never have been allowed to happen. It diverts us from the real priorities of the day, priorities that will now have to be put off, which in turn compounds the existing workload and builds a mountain of unstarted and unfinished work. Fighting fires also means using instant, hurried judgment; risking irrational, improper decisions; and less-than-productive outcomes.

If you are in the midst of a crisis at this moment, remember there are rules to follow:

Be aware of overreaction. Crises do have solutions. They may require urgent phone calls, changes of plans, fast travel, and fast thinking, but crises can be resolved. What is crucial during a crisis is clear thinking and the avoidance of “alarm mindset.” Don’t fall prey to your first instinct. Take a moment to assess the situation and plan the most expedient and practical course of events to solve it.

Never succumb to anger. Anger makes people do irrational and possibly long-remembered, negative things. Anger is the ultimate example of stress pushing aside the rational part of the brain. During periods of anger and frustration, the best thing to do is to breathe deeply, and count to ten—seriously. Few things done in anger can ever be repaired entirely. Often, the damage that anger causes lasts longer than the crisis itself. Ask yourself if it will really matter a year from now. And, if so, in what way?

Avoid angering/panicking others. Panic and anger are contagious. When one person displays these emotions, it becomes very easy for them to affect everyone else. But similarly, so does calm. A calming presence in the face of fear can just as easily be picked up by those around you. When you take the time to pull your own “cool” back together, you stand a great chance of inspiring others to do the same.

Avoid the superhero syndrome. This is the feeling that everything must be done by you and you alone. This is commonly felt by people who are used to decision making and fast action. However, more can be done through delegation and leadership than by becoming a single-person rescue squad. Take the time to assess your resources, assign tasks appropriately, and follow up with them to ensure that nothing gets left behind. (More on the superhero syndrome in Chapter 15.)

Use checklists. If you have prepared a crisis checklist, be sure to use it. Make sure you know where it is. Make sure other people know where it is and how to use it, as the odds are always greatest that the person who best knows what to do in a particular crisis will be on vacation when it happens.

Ask yourself, “What would happen if I did nothing?” Some crises can be left to blow themselves out. Urgency and adrenaline sometimes make us do more than is actually necessary. Assess the nature of the crisis and consider whether your actions would solve or prolong the situation.

THE OVERBOARD RULE

Here’s a classic example of how both keeping a cool head and avoiding the superhero syndrome pay off out on the water. If you’re on a boat and you see someone fall into the water, your responsibility from the moment you shout “Man overboard!” is to never take your eyes off the person and keep pointing to where he is. You let someone else bring the boat around, and someone else prepare the rescue. If you were to lose sight of the person, especially in choppy waters, you might not be able to locate him again. Teamwork, a cool head, and adherence to existing crisis management rules stand a far greater chance of saving a life.

No fire should ever have to be fought twice. Once an unexpected crisis has been resolved, it now becomes part of your collective knowledge, an experience that can be planned for in the future. In your post-crisis meeting you ask (and answer):

• What happened to precipitate this crisis?

• How did we fix it?

• How well did we fix it?

• What can we do to prevent this from happening again? Or:

• What are the odds of it happening again, and how will we prepare for it next time?

WHAT A FIASCO!

Fiasco is a term used to describe a mess, a screw-up, the kind of thing you don’t want to happen again.

It comes from the Italian word for “bottle.” When the glassblow-ers of medieval Italy made a mistake and their beautiful, delicate glass sculpture collapsed while being blown, all they could do to cut their losses was to reshape the glass and sell their ruined work as a bottle, a fiasco.

OTHER PRIORITIZATION TECHNIQUES

If you recognize that the conflicting tasks in front of you share the same levels of urgency and importance, have passed the triage test above, and still need to be done by you right now, then do the following.

Get the small tasks out of the way first. If small tasks are obscuring your view of a larger, more important task, then clear your mind of these “hangers-on” by doing them first. Use your I-Beam Review to list the tasks, along with their expected durations, directly into your day’s agenda. Always bear in mind the importance of making this list tangible on paper or on screen, not just in your head.

Alternately, do the larger task first. If your mindset is one that prefers to get big things out of the way first, then do the big thing, and then enjoy the feeling of achievement that it brings.

Delegate upward. Most people think of delegation as passing work to someone else, but upward delegation can also refer to involving your manager/client in the decision-making process. If you have two or more tasks that appear to have equal validity, importance, and urgency, and you can’t decide which one should be done first, and if there is a risk of negative repercussions if one of the tasks doesn’t get done, then it is safer and more proactive on your part to involve the stakeholder. Similarly, if you work for two or more people, each of whom thinks her tasks are the more important, you risk being caught in a power squeeze in which you’ll come out the loser. Conflicting priorities between two managers need to be recognized and resolved between the three of you.

Inviting your manager(s) to assist you in the triage process is not complaining. It’s a proactive meeting of minds intended to get the right work done in the right way. A quick huddle that lets all sides know what you’re working on and what you’re not and ensures that expectations are suitably managed.

THE SMARTS TEST

This is a technique for prioritization taken straight from the pages of project management. It helps assess whether the task before you can and should be done by you, or whether more information is needed. Should you find yourself faced with a vague project or task that you can’t get a handle on, it’s worth reviewing this procedure before moving ahead. It’s also strong background material for consulting (upward delegation) with your manager. SMARTS is an acronym that stands for the following:

Specific: Is the task definite? Is it an identifiable task, or is it a vague collection of subtasks? “Buy a loaf of brown bread” is a specific task. “Ensure the pantry is stocked” is not specific.

Measurable: Can you measure the task? How can you tell when the task is complete? When does it start? When does it end? “Redesign the company website” is not a measurable task—it’s too vague. Does the website project end when the site goes live? What about ongoing maintenance, updates, and corrections? Is that part of the project, or is it a separate project? What clearly defines the parameters of this task?

Achievable: Can this task be done? Is it possible? If you ask me to install a marble tile floor in your foyer and I have no experience or skill in this area, then the task is not achievable, no matter how much money or time you offer me.

Realistic: Using the marble floor example above, assume that I am qualified to do the work. If the job takes two days to do, and I have nothing else scheduled for the next two days, then, yes, I can do it, and it would be realistic to estimate and quote the job as a two-day job. However, if my schedule is full, and I can’t even get to your house before the end of next week, then promising two-day delivery is not realistic, even though I’m qualified to do the work.

Time-oriented: Is there a schedule, a time line, a deadline for the completion of the task? This ties in closely with the “measurable” principle, in that I’ll need to know not only what defines the start and end of a project, but also the dates for starting, ending, reviewing, delivery, etc. Without written time lines, it’s easy for a task to drift or to move onto the critical path.

Signed-off: To whom do I report? Who is the person who approves this project, who will be authorized to accept the finished product, and to whom all questions and issues should be directed? Who am I working for on this project?

The SMARTS test ensures that before any actual work is done, there is a clear understanding of the scope and the parameters involved. It’s an example of stepping back and getting a higher-level view before proceeding.

DO THE RIGHT THING

In addition, when prioritizing all the tasks in front of you, remember that not all of them can get done. We routinely pack our days full of tasks of varying importance and payoff, and expect to get it all cleared by the end of the day, just so we can start again tomorrow. According to the 80/20 rule, 20 percent of the work we do yields 80 percent of the payoff. The rest is small stuff or stuff that has a misleading amount of urgency. It makes sense to identify, isolate, and focus on those activities that really pay off. Get them identified, scheduled in, with enough time to complete them rather than leaving them mixed in with the less valuable tasks. Your energy is finite, and your excellence should be treasured. Effort wasted in multitasking and working on insignificant tasks is lost forever. Identify the right thing and do it first and singularly. Remember the words of Confucius: “He who chases two rabbits catches none.”