Help!

This statement might be intimidating to those amongst us with high ambitions (such as myself). Fortunately for us, this has nothing to do with lowering your ambitions in terms of believing you are capable of less, of the quality of what you deliver and produce, the level you are creating at, or your competence.

This only intends to change and reduce your perception of how many tasks you can manage to complete in a day.

Let’s recall the old Swedish saying which translates into “He who is always greedy for more, often loses everything”. One must admit that there is a grain of truth in this statement. If our ambitions are set too high in terms of what we want to have time for, we run the risk of ruining our set agenda for the day, as well as creating stress over all the things we didn’t have time for.

If you increase your stress-levels, you also increase the risk of making mistakes, of lower quality in what you do and produce, or that you forget something which will come back to haunt you later. Instead of doing fewer things more accurately and with our full attention, we tend to do more things but too fast and not very thoroughly, which results in an absence of the effect we desired by trying to do more than we were able to truly complete.

Do this

1. In the morning, list all the things you really feel you need to do today. Some people do this by noting a few keywords for these particular tasks on a separate note, even if they normally keep their to-do-list in a digital format. Some use a list-app or some form of a to-do-list-software where they highlight the tasks which you intend to do today, even if there are other tasks of which the due-date has already passed.
2. Done? Good. Now postpone half of the things, perhaps leave it for another day. Cut the list in half by crossing items of the “do today”-note, remove the highlighting from the tasks in the app, et c.
   Are you now thinking “Well alright, but it isn’t that easy to postpone things. If it was that simple, I would have done it long ago. Everything must be completed today.”?
   OK, but if we assume that it is common, not to say inevitable, that your daily planning fails to correspond with reality, we might as well assume and accept that you will not be able to finish all these things you have intended to complete today.
   Isn’t it better to at least be aware and conscious of what 50% you will actually complete, and what 50% you will have to postpone to later this week anyway, regardless of your efforts to complete them?
3. Now get to work on achieving and completing this new and more realistic list of tasks.
4. If it turns out that you are done with what you wanted to do before the day is over, pat yourself on the shoulder and proceed with completing other tasks, but now with a greater sense of relief and satisfaction.
5. If you still do not have time for what you hoped to complete in spite of your efforts to reduce the size of the list, you will need to select even fewer tasks tomorrow.
6. If you truly feel that you simply have no other option than completing all of the tasks, there are simply not enough of you. You have too much to do, so you need someone to help you. Delegate tasks to your colleagues, buy help by outsourcing tasks, or call a recruitment agency to initiate a process to hire someone to help you.

Don’t lose everything

If you accept that you will achieve less, you can be more thorough in what you choose to do. This drop in ambition in terms of quantity might very well be reflected in a significant increase in our ambition concerning the quality of what we deliver.

And as more of your day-plans hold and get completed as you intended, you will probably feel more pleased with what you accomplish, which in turn makes it easier to achieve even more in the future.

What is your method?

How do you make sure to avoiding the trap of being overly ambitious concerning what you estimate you will be able to do in a day? Leave a comment to spread your wisdom.

The inbox – a jungle

But in many of the organizations and companies I encounter in my work, the e-mailing-culture has gotten way out of line, and e-mailing has gone from being a helpful tool to being a source of severe frustration.

The car is also a terrific and flexible tool, only it is intended to aid us in something entirely different – to transport ourselves.
But, you aren’t entitled to put the pedal to the metal just because you have bought a car, and drive according to your own preferences. We have agreed to follow certain rules to make traffic safe for everyone.

Just as we regulate traffic by rules to make it function smoothly, we can define guidelines regarding how to use the phenomenal tool which the e-mail constitutes in order to make the e-mail-traffic within the company more functional; in other words, we can create an e-mailing policy.

If we do this, and agree upon how to e-mail each other (at least within the company), we make it possible for the tool to become truly functional again.

By creating constructive rules we can receive fewer e-mails without receiving less information. We can have more time over for the truly important matters since we needn’t waste energy on hesitating, asking complementary questions or misunderstanding each other, since the e-mails are more concrete and clear now.

Do this

Create an e-mail policy.

1. Meaning, agree on what you need to do in order to make e-mailing an efficient tool in your particular organization. If you are self-employed you can still create your own policy, make sure to follow it and feel pleased when you notice how your e-mailing etiquette is infectious as others begin to mimic your method.
2. A good way to get started in the construction of your policy is to narrow down what needs to be regulated in your organization. I have listed the most recurring rules I have encountered in the organizations I have worked with:
   • Expected time to respond to an e-mail
   • Which e-mails that have the highest priority
   • Try to call first, and then send an e-mail?
   • What type of information you never send by e-mail (due to confidentiality, for instance)
   • Link to files or attach them?
   • Change the subject-line if the subject of the e-mail changes?
   • What the signature should contain
   • The appropriate length of e-mails
   • How should you organize tasks and questions? By 1,2,3… and so on?
   • Appropriate greeting- and closing-phrases
   • One subject per e-mail or several?
   • If it is important to have a clear heading and subject-line for each e-mail or not
   • When to send CC:-mail…
   • …and when to use BCC:
   • When to forward…
   • …and how to approach a FWD: you received
   • If it is OK to subscribe to
   • Is it OK to send personal e-mails using the office e-mail?
   • How to act if you should receive an offensive/ racist/ sexist e-mail
   • How to handle a conflict you get into with someone via e-mail. Do you keep arguing via e-mail, do you pick up the phone or should you arrange a meeting to discuss the matter?
   • Should you start a long e-mail with a short summary?
   • What to do when the subject-line begins with Re: Re: Re: Fwd: RE: RE:.
3. You are fortunate if you are in an executive position of some kind since you have the mandate to push for this matter by yourself. But if you aren’t you can bring this matter onto the agenda in any natural forum for discussion existing in your organization. Highlight whatever issues you are experiencing concerned with e-mailing in your company, and make it clear how things would be different if you had better guidelines to adhere to.
4. In order for you to never feel as if the policy is just another set of rules you have to follow “because the boss said so”, make it vividly clear what the concrete and positive consequences of adhering to every rule will be. After each rule you could write “, since…” followed by a description of the positive effects it will have. For instance, “Whenever you e-mail, be brief, since this will enable the receiver to handle the e-mail faster and hence be able to send you a reply faster as well.”

Cooperation is key

If you agree upon what to consider when e-mailing, you can all rely on these guidelines in a positive manner in your daily work. Instead of feeling unsure of how quickly a reply is expected of you, you can rely on what you have discussed and act in accordance to that.

Even if not everybody will adhere to the new set of rules all of the time, the part of your work conducted through e-mails will become easier and smoother since more e-mails will be shorter, fewer will be sent as a CC:, a greater quantity will have descriptive subject-lines, and so on.
Since we spend such a large portion of our time “in our inbox”, wouldn’t you also agree that making this part of our work more structured is well worth the effort?

How would you do it?

What e-mailing-rule could you really use at your office? Leave a comment to let me and other readers know.

On the matter of context

A familiar concept is to tag the tasks on the to-do-list by where we need to be to perform them, so in other words, sort them by context. The context is often denoted as ”@office”, ”@the car” and so on.

The purpose of categorizing the to-do-list by context is usually to segregate the tasks we are able to do where we happen to be at the moment, from those we cannot do right now and would hence prefer not to see in order not to get distracted by them.

But what occurred to me the other day was that if you use the concept of context properly, this way of sorting your tasks is in addition to its original purpose also a way to get more done; to become more efficient, in other words.

You see, the context doesn’t only answer the question “What can I do where I am at the moment?”, but also “What should I try to get done as well while I am here, before I leave?”.

Try doing this

Let’s say you are at your office and in front of the computer with your cell-phone next to you.
Then you will be able to choose tasks from the to-do-list from the contexts @office, @the computer and @the phone.

If you disregard all other possible ways of prioritizing, primarily choose to do the “@office”-tasks since the office is the most scarce resource out of the three.

Assuming you own and use a laptop, you will be able to do the “@the computer”-tasks elsewhere from where you are at this very moment. And your phone is probably equally portable, so the phone-calls you need to make will also be possible to call when you are not at the office.
Only the “@office”-tasks are the tasks you need to be where you are right now in order to do.

So, if you have several possible to-do-tasks you could choose to do next, choose the ones which require your present context to be completed.

And while you are at it, before you are about to leave the context where you are right now (for instance @office), take a moment to skim through that context on your to-do-list to determine if there are more tasks requiring the same context which you could do and be done with, since you are here now anyway.

Get more done and procrastinate less

If you make sure to pose both the question “What can I do where I am?” as well as “And what should I also do while I am here?” you will use the situation and you being in it, optimally.
You will not have to postpone as many tasks to when you are back in the same context the next time as if you hadn’t asked yourself these questions, since you make a conscious effort to make the most of the situation while you are in it.

What is your way?

How do you make sure to use every moment to the fullest without pushing it? Leave a comment below to share your tip.

Less things – more space

Rid yourself of what you no longer need. Perhaps it is old and out of date, maybe it does not work any more, or perhaps it was inspiring in the past but has now lost its engaging power.
If more of the documents and objects you keep are of the kind that you truly need, it will simply be easier to find what you are looking for. With fewer things and piles in your office you will have more physical space for working on those important tasks you need to do with as little effort as possible.

If you are like me, clear spaces give greater peace of mind.
But perhaps you are one of us who figure something along the lines of: “Well, I really should clean things up around here, but I don’t have time right now; I’ll do it during the summer then things have calmed down”.
There are other options. The principle of taking small steps is applicable even in this scenario.

Do this

1. Give yourself a real challenge: Decide to let go of and get rid of one thing every day.
   It can be a physical object, pens you aren’t really comfortable using, magazines you will never read, old documents no one is interested in, something given to you as a gift and which you hence believe you have to keep et c.
   “Getting rid of” means giving away, throwing away or selling. Putting it away in a box or in some other storage space does not count.
2. In order to make your cleansing-process more concrete, designate a lined paper to tracing your progress.
3. Every day, make note of what you dispose of on that particular day.
4. Make a conscious decision on how long your challenge should be.
   • Will you do this until the sheet is full?
   • Will you continue for a whole year (which sums to about 250 work-days)
5. When and if you feel like it, or when you have finished the challenge, write to me and tell me what happened, how it went and what effect it had on you and your work-day. You will reach me by e-mailing me.

Looking for things is a nuisance

Perhaps the exercise will have the same effect on you as it did on me by giving you a great sense of relief, fewer places to look for your material in (and hence less time spent looking for things) as well as more energy and desire to acquire new things which inspire you in where you are and who you are right now.

What is your way?

What is your method to avoiding visual distractions when you are working? Leave a comment to spread the word.

Leave the “hunt and peck”-system behind

If you perform many of your to-do-tasks by typing on your computer, you could manage more tasks in less time by simply typing faster, mechanically speaking.

How? Believe it or not, it is possible to learn.

The method is called “touch typing” and is said to have been invented in 1888. If you also took the class “Typing” in High School during the 80s’ (like I did), this is the method you would have learned. The classes with fast-typing exercises on double sheets with carbon-papers in between the sheets might not have been very inspiring, but things have changed and today there are many more accessible and fun ways to learn the same techniques.

Is increased speed really an end in itself?

But why spend time on learning how to type faster? Is there really any point to doing so?

Well, if you use the “touch typing”-technique you will be able to type what you want to type, only faster. Writing will simply become less of an inconvenience.

Another positive consequence of using this technique is that it will be easier to put the text you have in your mind on paper since you will not have to wait for your fingers to catch up with your line of thought. With a bit of practice, “touch typing” will eventually help you write almost as fast as you think.

If typing faster will make it more likely that you make note of your ideas on the computer, write down thoughts or the information from that sales-call you had, to a greater extent than you previously have, you will gain time since it will now be easier find what you previously wrote on a matter since digital documentation is more convenient to search through than analog material.

Learn with ease

Personally, I get bored and restless in a minute if I have to learn something new by just practicing. I need either to do something fun while learning or practice in a fun way in order to bare with myself through the learning process.

That is why I will now provide you with suggestions of two tools which aid you in learning to type faster and does so in fun ways.

Do this

1. First you need to learn the actual “touch- typing”-method.
   
   There is an excessive selection of free online-services with lessons and exercises. My personal favorite is Typingweb. Typingweb supplies everything from beginner lessons to exercises for the more advanced typist. The webpage is financed by commercials, but that does not reduce its utility and quality, if you ask me. If you wish to track your progress in typing faster, you can sign up for a free account, and if not, you just use the features as a “guest”.


2. Once you have learned “touch typing” (or while you are learning), it is time to increase your speed. Make sure to make it fun and playful!
   
   At Typeracer you compete with others in a game similar to the Horse Racing game you find at a carnival. You are all given the same text and at a given signal you go ahead and type. Whoever is first to finish and with the least amount of mistakes, wins.
   
   If you are like me, you will want to play “just one more time”. And while doing so you will improve your “touch typing” skills.

Being faster frees up more time

If you improve your typing-speed, all your at-the-computer-tasks will be completed faster and easier. You will have more time and energy to spend on the tasks you tend not to have time for.

You will also have an opportunity to enjoy some healthy competition and enjoyment in your work-day, as well as enjoy your progress in learning something new.

How do you improve yourself?

What is your best way to learn something new which you might need to know, in a fun way? Write a comment to let the Done!-readers in on your best tips.

In English, it translates as follows:

"Take command of the details

When we wish to improve our structure, a common misconception is that we need to make drastic changes. But according to my experience, it is all in the details. For instance in these:

• How available the to-do-list is. If you need to look for, flip through, log in to access or wait for the list, you will soon start writing tasks on readily available notes again.
• Phrase the to-do-tasks concretely. It may be tempting to write them as if dictating a telegram, but we only know what we actually mean right now, and will later be aided by being specific now.
• If we set random due-dates. If we set deadlines on tasks which do not require them, we risk having the whole list in urgent-mode and high-lighted in red for no good reason.
• Decide when…
  • the calendar is full and no more urgent tasks can be completed this week.
  • when we are available for others.
  • when we check our e-mail.
  • what projects we will put our energy into completing and which ones we will put on hold.

If you make sure to have these details under control, you will achieve a super-structured way of working long before most other people.

What if we happen to throw away something we one day might need?
Sure, you could go through the entire bookshelf thoroughly binder by binder, tab by tab and sheet by sheet, but when do we actually have time to do such a comprehensive clean-up other than in time we could otherwise have been free and out of the office?
Today, you will learn a simple technique to effortlessly get an overview of what material you are using and what you can throw away without thinking twice about it.

What is the problem? Why even bother cleaning your shelves out?
Well, the less good-to-have-material you have, the easier it will be to find what you are looking for. If you have too much unnecessary and unusable good-to-have-material, it will be quite a challenge to find what you truly need.

Do this

1. Alright, the first thing you do is to flip all your binders upside down so that the upper edge of the binder is now touching the shelf. They are still in the same position in the bookshelf, only upside down.
   Another way to go about the first step, in case you prefer something less drastic, more discrete and practical, is to tie a rubber band around each binder.
2. The next time you take a binder out and use it, put it back right-side-up (or remove the rubber band if you chose to do follow that procedure instead).
3. A year from now, simply get rid of the binders which are still up-side-down (or still have rubber bands around them). Either file them away or throw them away.

Remember, you haven’t even touched them for a whole year.

Look less

If you do this, it will be evident what you use and what you do not use without having to set aside extra time to find this out. After clearing the unused binders out, it will be easier to find what you need and you will have more space to store new material in without having to purchase another bookshelf.

This way you will have more open space in your office which you can either leave free and empty or fill with things that inspire you.

What’s your way?

How do you make sure that you do not keep to much good-to-have-material which might be both old and outdated? Please feel free to leave a comment to let me and others know.

In English, it translates as follows:

"Get an overview of your life

When you live an intense life and you feel as if every day is either Monday or Friday, it is easy to loose your perspective. We work to progress fast forward with intensity, but is everything really on board? Are we remembering to work on what we in the near future will wish we had invested our time in today?

Take a moment a few times a month when you pause for a while and get yourself a complete overview of your life.

• Go through all your major engagements, projects and deliveries and make sure that it is completely clear what you (or someone else for that matter) need to do next. Is the next step unclear and hence preventing progression of your projects?
• Skim your to-do-list and cross out or tick everything you have finished. Make sure to enjoy every completed task.
• Go through your list of what you are waiting for from others and remind whoever was supposed to get back to you if you spot something on the list which is getting increasingly urgent.
• Go back a month in your calendar and make note of all the things you promised others you would do but still have not made into to-do-tasks. Now flip through the next month to come and make a mental note of the approaching deadlines. Reserve time in your calendar to do the tasks which you might otherwise not complete in time."

They are themes which seem to permeate the working methods of those who most successfully keep track of things and who by doing so have more time to do other things.

One of these themes is scarcity.
In lack of a better expression, by “scarcity” I mean that there is a small amount of something rather than too much of it.

It is not about living a minimalistic or scanty lifestyle with nothing but empty spaces, but rather that having less of one thing makes it possible to have something else in abundance.
Sometimes you need to be able to spread yourself and your papers out freely in order to work on the task you are focusing on at the moment. When doing so, you need to have less of other material which does not concern your particular task, on your desk. Why? Because abundance of everything only leads to chaos.
So whenever you feel that “it is just too much” – think “less”.

Less of what?

So what can and should we then have less of in order to make our lives easier? Here are some ideas:

• Meetings – If you tend to spend your days in meetings and your nights catching up with all the work you should have gotten done during the day, think about which meetings you could without further repercussions cancel, which meetings that do not need your presence, which you could postpone for a month, and which are work-meetings that might as well be replaced by that each and everyone does their part of the project or task and then check in with everyone else.
• Places – If you spend too much time looking for documents and papers you put away at some point, think about which of the several places you store information in that you could get rid of in order to combine the places into a single location. Do you really need to have both magazine file holders, inboxes, piles and binders?
  If you also tend to make note of what you have to do in several places, try to figure out what could serve as the best single location to keep all your to-do-tasks in.
• Ways of communicating – If you communicate in many different ways in your project-group, such as by e-mailing, online chatting, using Skype, calling each other, have meetings, discuss while having coffee, brainstorming when you travel together, communicate through your project-tool, and so on, and you feel that it is difficult to get your heads around all the different thoughts and ideas, try determining what your primary means of communication should be.
  Direct all conversations, decisions and ideas which emerge in other forums than the primary ones, into your chosen means of communication, and your documentation and managing of the project will run a whole lot smoother.
• Different versions of processes – If you tend to give service to different clients in different ways so that each relationship with a customer gets its own, unique solutions, try giving more clients similar treatments. Make an active decision on how you want the process of supplying service X to be from start to finish, and create outlines and checklists which will aid you in working faster and with less effort.
• Piles and things on your desk – If your desk is cluttered with so much irrelevant stuff that you get distracted from what you are working on every time you look up from your work, make an effort to at least get rid of one pile.
  Set aside an hour this afternoon to go through the pile, throw away what you can, do the to-do-tasks which might emerge from you processing the pile and save what you might actually need later on (but make sure not to just put it “at the top” of another pile).

Less gives your more focus

If you think “less” and act accordingly, you will find it easier to focus on the right thing at the right time. You will finish a greater amount of your tasks in less time and find the material you are looking for faster.

Perhaps it is just me, but the empty space, the empty inbox and having the day free from meetings reduces my stress significantly. Wouldn’t you agree?

What have you done?

What have you made sure to have less of than you previously had? And what effect has that had on your daily life? Enlighten us! Leave a comment!

In English, it translates as follows:

"Create the perfect week

Sure, we can allow for our weeks to just turn out however and adapt ourselves and our work accordingly, but we will experience more efficient and enjoyable work days if we make conscious decisions on how we want our weeks to be. Design your ideal week and try your best to make it happen.

Take a moment to consider:

• Do you have a day without meetings?
• Are there particular tasks you prefer doing in before noon?
• Do you check your e-mail at a certain time every day?
• Do you let yourself go home early on Fridays?
• Do you have lunch with a friend once a week?
• Do you set aside time to reflect?
• When do you prefer making sales-calls?
• When are you always available?
• When do you prefer to travel?

Some calendar-software can display bookings from calendars in different programs in the same window. Create a “norm-calendar” to compare with in order to plan your week according to your desires. Or, schedule the “norm-bookings” with the status “Free” so that they do not hinder you when you schedule meetings.

If you set the standard for how you want your weeks to turn out, they will indeed become more to your liking and less according to how other people plan theirs. If you make an effort to realize your standardized week, you will soon obtain a work-rhythm which gradually approaches your ideal. "