Reclaiming Work Productivity
Does email run your day? Do you feel like you waste hours a week dealing with, reading, or sorting your emails? Is your work productivity hindered by emails? According to a McKinsey study, “The average professional spends 28% of the work day reading and answering email. For the average full-time worker in America, that amounts to a staggering 2.6 hours spent and 120 messages received per day.” Compounded by the added distractions of IMs, chats, texts, and phone calls and it is safe to say that we waste a significant amount of our time each week. This is a large pet peeve of mine—wasted time! I would love to reclaim work productivity, gaining more time to exercise, take a long lunch, go to coffee with your colleagues, or develop new skills! Much better uses of my time!
And, of course, we couldn’t talk about how to take charge of your work productivity and time without also sharing guidance on how to navigate the biggest time waster there is… the executive fire drill! Nothing bothers me more than the chaos created by executives who need things done ASAP, and leave everyone scrambling.
HAS THIS EVER HAPPENED TO YOU?
You sit down at your desk. Starbucks coffee and breakfast bagel in hand. Your action plan for the day mapped out in your head. You are filled with excitement and anxious energy in preparation for your 10 AM meeting with your boss or team. The meeting will be kicking off your new project, and on your drive into the office, you carefully outlined your plan and vision in your head. It is an exciting day and one that you have been looking forward to for a long time, as this will be great for the business and sure to help you all bring in thousands of new customers! You open your laptop and type in your password.
In typical fashion, the first thing you do is open your email. As your eyes scroll down you notice the long list of new emails with red exclamation points. Your shoulders sink in towards the screen and your heart starts racing. It is almost like you are holding your breath. You notice that a large number of your emails are from the new CMO. As you open the first email string from the CMO, you notice a full list of frantic, deflective responses, appointing you as the person to answer, ASAP. You audibly gasp.
Next thing you know, people are walking towards your desk, with urgent frantic looks on their faces. Your IMs are blowing up. So you read on, apparently, the CMO needs a report from the last major launch, and he wants it urgently for a meeting he has at 9:30 AM. His notes contain zero salutations or pleasantries. He seems angry and annoyed. You could track down what he needs, but sadly, it will not be easy to put it together and it will take all your morning preparation time. What choice do you have?
WHAT CHOICE DO YOU HAVE?
You jump into action, looking through old emails and correspondence. Pulling data from different places, muttering sarcastically to yourself in anger, “Of course we don’t have this kind of data readily available to access, that would be way to easy. Why isn’t this already gathered for him, put together in an easy to share dashboard? Seems like something the company should have put in place a long time ago. The technology exists. We are just way too freaking cheap to spend the money on the right tools or hire the right people. Sure, we bought marketing automation tools, but did we implement them correctly, no! Of course, it really doesn’t help that leadership has built this incredibly siloed and disjointed organization that doesn’t collaborate or help each other! If this information is crucial to the business, I could think of a million better ways that we could be prioritizing it.
An hour later data is gathered, the presentation complied, and you’re racing as fast as you can to draft your email response. Once you send, your body slumps back into your chair, utterly exhausted. Sadly, the reality is that your morning was derailed. Your precious preparation time is now all gone. This urgent task, which could have been avoided with the right tools or technology in place, leaves you angry, irritated, frustrated, and frantic as you try to refocus yourself for your 10 AM meeting. Somehow you have to try to get something down on paper or on slides and a smile back on your face to walk into your meeting!
IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME!
Throughout my 20-year business career, this kind of situation has played out in a variety of different kinds of scenarios, degrees of urgency and problems, thousands of times. While you are in the moment, it feels like the absolute right thing to do. If your bosses, bosses, boss, needs your help, you do it right? I’m in no position to say “No” to the CEO. But, looking back from the perspective of experience, “Yes” is not necessarily the correct answer.
The reality is that the CMO or leader may need those data points for a business meeting, to discuss budget, to look good in front of his peers, or brag about his team, but your project may bring in millions for the company? If you think about it those terms, then it might not be as urgent as you think. If their request completely derails all your work productivity for the day, or takes you away from an urgent task or project, then you have a valid reason to question the request. Many times when you push back you will get your time back. I can’t tell you how many times the result of these kinds of dramatic situations shared above here was the equivalent of the CMO saying, “oh nevermind, I decided to go with presenting different data,” or “Suzie or Bob gave me this and I will use that instead….”
And you are left staring into space wondering why you just wasted all that time, pushed your anxiety through the roof, and drained your valuable energy… and it now seems that it is all for no reason!
FIRE DRILLS
We commonly refer to these situations as “fire drills.” They can be especially disruptive and stressful during times of changes, reorganizations, leadership incompetence, and/or new leaders in their roles. It wastes so much work productivity, time and energy from employees every week! The reality is that there will always be fire drills from leadership. They love the fact that they can send everyone into a tizzy with a few words over email or text. I have seen this sort of power abused more than I can count. Recognizing it is the skill that young businessmen and women need to develop! When is the “fire drill” email really urgent and when is it just unnecessary ego or drama?
A great example of both ego and drama is the scene from the Devil Wears Prada where powerful magazine editor, Miranda Priestly, demands both a steak lunch and the unpublished Harry Potter manuscript from her doting executive assistant. It was clearly a test. Her poor assistant races around, multitasking, almost killing herself to make it happen and then after all that effort, Miranda… goes out to lunch. Although exaggerated for the movies, this is not very far off from the regular fire drills that happen in the workplace. The feeling that your boss demands something of you, which requires you to drop everything you are doing and “jump through hoops” to accomplish, and you feel that your job or ranking with your boss is in jeopardy if you don’t get it done, then regardless of the task, it will be super stressful!
DEVIL WEARS PRADA SCENE
TIME AND PRIORITIZATION
If this kind of situation is all too familiar for you then let’s start with the recognition that you might have a leader who loves drama, thrives in pressure situations, or whose ego loves throwing challenges your way. Sadly, that is common and these scenarios are difficult as you are often stuck, especially if your job is threatened as in the movie.
Most of the time, your job is not at stake. Therefore, you are in the position to be a little more strategic and proactive in your response. Here is where you will need to build up your skills to recognize real urgency from drama and ego! The best advice there would be to try to avoid being the go-to “Rockstar” or favorite employee for that leader in your organization, you know the one that solves every problem for them. This will mean that they will go to others first and you will avoid many stressful days.
If you find yourself in the situation where it is a legitimate urgent request and not the fault of your leadership, then it is recommended to look at each situation and be ready with some appropriate responses. A great example, “I would be happy to jump on that task for you, but I really need the next few hours to focus 100 percent of my energy on XYZ project.” Another great direction would be, “I am working on this urgent XYZ project, would you prefer if I focused on your request instead?” If that doesn’t work, deflect! “I don’t have that report, but Sally might.”
Leaders are constantly required to make decisions and balance priorities. Placing the decision back on them to derail your other urgent work priorities or work on their task, will often will help then realize that their task can wait or wasn’t as important as they originally thought.
Once you calmed the executive “fire drill” then you can focus on taking charge of your work productivity and owning your own time.
TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR WORK PRODUCTIVITY AND OWN YOUR TIME WITH THESE HELPFUL TIPS:
1. Spend 15- 20 minutes, at least, of quiet time everyday on focused thinking and creative problem-solving. You will find that after a focused break you are more productive and you are far more creative with new and fresh ideas!
2. Block time every day for your lunch and personal time. I’m not just talking mentally or figuratively. Actually block out the time on your calendar so that people can’t schedule that time. You will be so glad that you did.
3. Don’t let email and IMs run your day! Schedule time during the day to check your emails and be disciplined about your time management throughout the day. For example some suggest hourly, maybe at the beginning of the hour while others suggest just 3 times—morning, afternoon and end of day. Did you know that over-checking email wastes 21 minutes per day? According to a McKinsey study, “on average, professionals check their email 15 times per day, or every 37 minutes. Do most people expect a response within that time frame? No. In fact, only 11% of customers/clients and 8% of coworkers expect a response in less than an hour. But about 40% of people expect a response in about an hour. If people checked their email hourly rather than every 37 minutes, they could cut six email checks from their day.
4. Turn off your notifications and create a situation where you can work uninterrupted for a period of time. There is nothing like being in the zone! Research shows it can take up to 25 minutes to get back on track after an interruption. So do your best to create uninterrupted time.
5. Great email hygiene is crucial to saving time. Don’t use folders or sort— use automated rules instead…and unsubscribe to everything that is unnecessary.
6. Block time on your calendar to get work done, especially before big due dates. Also, a fantastic strategy is to block off your lunch every day. That way you are guaranteed your time and you don’t have to work through your lunch hour.
7. Keep your files organized and make it easy to find important files. I always advise to creating your own, detailed note-taking system. I like to use Microsoft OneNote.
8. Get in the practice of doing important tasks the day before. Fire drills will always happen, so it is best to never “leave it until the morning!”
9. Create an end of the day routine, get plenty of sleep, take time to recover and exercise everyday.
10. Use Sundays to plan out your week to optimize your work productivity during business hours.
It’s true, you can take charge of your work productivity, own your time, put hours back in your week, and get your email under control by implemented these helpful tips. Hope these help! If you have found different tactics to be helpful, please let us know, we would love to hear about your experience and insight.
Some curated Career Tips and Inspiration for you!
Read more about us!
Sign up for our newsletter
Connect with us:
Instagram
Twitter