Leave the Office on Time

Leaving Ready for the Rest of Your Day
Here's what you can do, on a typical weekday, to leave on time when you choose to:

1. Tell everyone that you have a personal commitment at 5:30 that evening. If you have a
child you could say that your child is in need of important parental assistance. Schedule
something for 5:30 that evening if it helps.

2. Mark on your calendar that you'll be leaving at five.

3. Sleep well the night before.

4. Eat a light lunch.

5. Strike a bargain with yourself at the start of the day, in late morning, in early
afternoon, and in late afternoon.

6. View any intrusion as merely part of the workday.

7. Once striking the bargain with yourself, don't add more items at the last minute.

8. Imagine how you'll feel when you leave right at closing time (however, there is no
reason for you to be staring at the clock for the last 45 minutes).

9. Ask a co-worker to walk you out at closing time.

Deskmanship

Is your desk always piled high with papers? Does the situation seem hopeless? It doesn't have to be that way. In my book Breathing Space: Living & Working at a Comfortable
Pace in a Sped-Up Society I observe that you spend so much time at your desk -– it just has to be a comfortable place for you!!

To create more surface space, you could buy a mechanical arm that hoists your monitor over the desk. I have has one and do not know how I lived without it beforehand. Also By clearing your desk every evening, you automatically have to choose what to work on the next day.

Institute a Replacement Policy

Here’s how to institute a replacement policy: If you bring in something new, something else that you don't need anymore has to go. (Be honest, most of what you're retaining is obsolete or
confirms what you already know).

In your office, regard all of the pieces of paper in your information kingdom as mutineers, capable of overthrowing the whole kingdom at a moment's notice.

Tips for a PC Virus Attack

* Call a PC guru
* Don't shut off your PC which could trigger the infection.
* Disconnect your online connection.
* Back up any new data, it might be your only chance. Try to clean it later.
* Use another PC to learn about the virus.
* Employ anti-virus software to scan and clean. If not treatable, delete the file.
* Brief your anti-virus software vendor, in case it's an new virus.

Multi-Tasking is a Bad Idea

What happens when you jump between different projects at one time? It may feel dynamic -- after all, you're exerting lots of activity. There's a severe loss of productivity, however, because your brain works on one thing at a time. Multi tasking is fine for computers but not so great for human beings.

Although it may seem like you're working on several things at once, your brain is turning back and forth between the tasks. Switching from task to task is not as productive as staying on one job until it is completed. Studies have been published that indicate the harmful, long term effects of multi-tasking. Practice the art of doing one thing at a time!

Don't Just Do Something

Don't just do something, sit there: Reading or merely looking out the window in contemplation could be the most important and productive activity you do today. Too often, people throw their time at tasks when they should be exerting more brain power.

The single best way to handle several different projects is to begin working on one thing at a time, until its completion, and then go on to the next project, and then the next, until you are finished.

"Paperwork" is Here to Stay

Business Week: At 20 large U.S. banks, the cost of complying with U.S. laws and regulations grew 159 percent from 2001 to 2006, far faster than profit growth, an industry survey found. It costs the average big bank $83.5 million a year to keep up with Surbanes-Oxley, the Patriot Act, and other laws.

Given this reality, each of us needs to build greater "administration" time and effort into our plans. Society inherently grows more complex all the time. Our challenge is to harness that complexity and convert it to a competitive advantage.

Leaving a Voice mail Message

Many times you'll need to leave a voice mail message for one of your staff people. Before even dialing, think about what you want to say during this message. If it helps, write down three or four key words on a scrap of paper so that once you actually deliver your message, you can come right to the point.

Speak slowly but leave a succinct message of about 20-40 seconds. This may not seem like a lot of time, but actually allows for three to six sentences. There is no need to race, particularly when leaving your phone number. Say it slowly and carefully, as if you were writing it yourself. That's the Breathing Space way to leave a message.

Human Billboards on the Loose

My home town newspaper, the Chapel Hill News, which seems to have an ongoing convoluted social agenda, recently glorified two college students who got tattoos which enabled them to get a discount on cups of coffee at a local coffee shop. Anthropologist Margaret Mead referred to tattoos and body piercing as self-mutilation. While the two young people, with a strong yen for coffee (or is it addiction to the psychotropic drug caffeine?) were exalted in the article for becoming human billboards, the rest of Chapel Hill's students were potentially exposed to more bizarre behavior, sanctioned by the home-town newspaper.

Here's what the newspaper article and other articles like don't seem to include:

1) Tattoos, however seemingly cool initially, can become god-awful looking over time, and what you thought was nifty at age 20 can appear ridiculous at 30 or 40.

2) The tattoo removal business is thriving. Removal, however, can be painful, involved, and costly, possibly exceedingly $1000, with only semi-satisfactory results.

3) What if the sponsoring coffee shop doesn't stay in business?

4) Many workplace policies don't permit tattoos or piercings unless they're under cover. Having tattoos can limit or end your career prospects, reports USA Today. Many companies are concerned about how much contact their "modified" employees will have with customers.

One local medical supplier requires employees in the field to cover tattoos and remove facial piercings. Walt Disney World, in its "cast" appearance policy, permits employee tattoos only if they can be covered with opaque makeup, not a bandage. Caribou Coffee (O! the irony) does not allow "facial jewelry" or visible tattoos.

PetSmart allows only covered tattoos. In the hot, steamy climate of Houston, Texas, law enforcement officers must wear winter clothing year-round to cover what would otherwise be visible tattoos with short sleeves.

Employers say that it's "a matter of professionalism." Applicants who aim to serve the public must keep the public's trust and confidence in mind. Would you trust an officer who appears to frequent the nearest biker bar?

If you land a job in an air-conditioned office and it's possible to wear long sleeves all year long, maybe you can get away with tattoos on your arms, chest, or back. However, what about a company picnic, a company baseball game, or some other outing? And do you want to wear long sleeves in the summer for the rest of your career?

As for the Chapel Hill News, what's next? A front-page, top-of-the-fold feature on getting eyebrow rings for discount prices on donuts? Please! Give us some Breathing Space from such lame-brain articles.

Mastery in Your Life

What does "mastery" of information overload look and feel like for me? As author of Breathing Space, people ask me.
* Keeping my desk clear, because clear spaces are an invitation for me to create.
* Having my email inbox periodically at zero because I've allocated everything.
* Maintaining a few key subscriptions via mail and a few online services.
* Focusing on the handful of key indicators that tell me how I'm doing.
* Staying in touch with knowledgeable peers, people who can share with me
* Forsaking megalomania – developing the ability to let go, not be on so many lists, not receive so many subscriptions, not have handle to much information.


How do we each to whittle down the number of choices?
*If you have too few choices in life, if you’re socially or economically disadvantaged, at any given time you tend to feel stressed and anxious. You don't have a lot of control.
* If you have too many choices, too many places to go, too many people to meet, and it's like this all the time, paradoxically, you also feel stressed and anxious. You get to the point where too many choices leads to a condition that Alvin Toffler called "future
shock."
*In any given field, if you have 12 trade magazines, you want to immediately narrow down the field to maybe 2 to 4 and form a smaller subscriptions list. It's possible for you to not only stay on top, but to also feel more comfortable.
* Who are the best and brightest in your industry or your company? What are they reading? What have they selected and why? That's usually a pretty good indicator that those publications are highly viable information sources.
*When the number of choices starts to climb, your quest is to narrow the field to a manageable few.

Stand for Health

A recent feature in Men's Health caught my eye, as I have been using a stand-up desk for the last 18 months:

Stand In The Place Where You Work: "Quit sitting down on the job. Australian scientists found that workers who log more than 6 hours of chair time a day are up to 68 percent more likely to be overweight than those who sit less. One solution: Ask HR for a stand-up desk. You burn one more calorie each minute when standing than when sitting. (Do the math.) Request denied? Create your own stand-up workstation: Place your monitor on a box, with the top of the screen at arm's length and at eye level, and elevate your keyboard so your elbows are bent 90 degrees. A bonus: Your posture will improve from standing instead of slumping."

The Need to Let Go

Speaker Joe Calloway says that we all need to let go of erroneous notions. Joe's mantra: "I need to let go of..."

* comparing myself to others
* trying to meet someone's expectations other than my own
* doing it all myself
* only telling my clients what they want to hear
* thinking it's all about getting spin-offs or more jobs
* playing small

* not trusting my own opinion
* working with people I can't stand
* pretending like I'm president of a big company
* stepping over dollars to pick up nickels
* not having fun

Shrinking/Disappearing Offices

A recent article in BusinessWeek reveals that thirty percent of white-collar workers still have private offices, according to a poll of 9,300 people by office furniture maker Steelcase. However the typical office has shrunk. It was about 16 by 20 feet a few years ago; it's about 8 by 10 today.

So, 320 square feet versus 80 square feet. Where is the Breathing Space?

Cell phones Disrupt Relationships

HealthDayNews.com: Cell phones and pagers, part of the technological revolution that was supposed to liberate everyone, is tethering people to their jobs to an unprecedented degree, to the point where family life is suffering. The study limited the blame to cell phones and pages, and not computer-based communication such as e-mail. Cell phones and pagers were linked to increased psychological distress and reduced family satisfaction for both sexes.

The research, by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee sociologist Noelle Chesley, appears in the December issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family. "The use of cell phones and pagers was linked to increased distress and a decrease in family satisfaction over time," said Chesley, an assistant professor of sociology. "There is clearly a link between using the technology and experiencing increased access."

Filing: Divide and Conquer

If you're facing volumes of information, divide and conquer. You may be facing a ten-inch pile of information. Put it into file folders, and group like items together. Eliminate duplicates and prioritize the important items in a given file. It's harmful to ingest too much information
at once. At least half the job of dealing with most information is simply dividing it into piles, categorizing, or putting it into various directories on your hard drive.

Are You Racing the Clock?

No matter how conscious I am of saving time throughout the day, I still find myself racing the clock. What, if anything, am I doing wrong?

A. Consider the following example: any one-hour activity that you undertake in the course of the day will consume one solid year out of the next 24 years of your life. One hour is to 24 hours as one year is to 24 years.

B. With this realization, consider the cumulative effects of reading junk mail for only 30 minutes a day or spending 15 minutes a day in line at the bank – both of which could be avoided if you used mail, phone, or email services.

C. Obviously there are some things that you couldn't or wouldn't want to give up and it is silly to apply this kind of arithmetic to activities such as personal hygiene.

End of the Work Day

Do you sometimes get anxious in the late afternoon or as you make your way home at the end of the work day? "With emails, faxes, voice mail, "snail" mail, memos and reports, your boss, and your peers, in too many offices 4:45 p.m. can be as hectic as 9:15 a.m. Here are some tips for heading home with more energy and peace of mind:

* Each day, before you are about to leave, pause for a minute to acknowledge yourself for what you accomplished or did not accomplish. This simple mental exercise frees you to experience the rest of your day.

* Once inside your car or on the bus, consider that you are already "home." You don't have to wait until you are actually in the door and kicking off your shoes.

* If traffic is slow, stop off at a drug store or hardware store and get the household items you usually buy on Saturday.

* If you perpetually bring work home from the office, give yourself a break -- several times a week come home empty-handed.

Avoid the Post-Vacation Slam

Would you like to minimize stress following your travels? Suppose your time away from the office is ending. Once back at work, you have a stack of phone messages on your desk. Your mail is eight inches high. There are memos, reports, and announcements all over the place. You experience extreme pressure to catch up. The moment you return, the whole
world seems to falls in on you.

The Remedy? Plan your trips so that you return before you announced you would. Include a "decompression" phase in your plans; your trip is not complete until you comfortably reintegrate yourself. Also:

* Take one less vacation day and build in a day for transition and decompression rather than coming back too abruptly.

* Avoid returning to work on a Monday; it's already a high-pressure day.

* Instruct others to handle or reroute as many phone calls as possible; and to segment your mail and other papers that come in. Return to a clean office and a clean desk.

* Unpack all your bags quickly. You may be tired, but the task will only be more burdensome later. Put all notes and papers in their place as soon as possible if you ever intend to act on them.

Long Term Job Security

Are you concerned about long term job security? Ever feel like you lack the time and energy to compete? There are many things you can do that don't take too much time and help you to secure and enhance your position:

* Take a few minutes to actually read your organization's annual and quarterly reports, bulletins, press releases, and memos. Read between the lines to determine real needs and what you can do to make a positive difference.

* Look for small tasks that others pass over. Your willingness to help out in little ways, can payoff in big ways.

* If you're good at writing persuasive sales letters or conducting an effective meeting, volunteer for assignments where you can display your talents and play to your strengths.

* Become the resident 'expert' in what the competition is doing, and thus automatically become more valuable to your own organization.

Regardless of where you work, there are always ways to demonstrate to others
within the organization, the supreme advantage of retaining your services.

Leaving the Office, part 2

In the first month when you've decided that each Tuesday will be a normal eight or nine hour workday and nothing more, you will automatically begin to be more focused about what you want to get done on Tuesdays. Almost imperceptibly you begin to parcel out your time during the day more judiciously. So, at midday stop and assess what you've done and what else you'd like to get done.

Near the end of the day assess what more you realistically can get done and what's best to leave for subsequent days.

Recruit Others: Once you've solidly made the decision to leave on time, say on Tuesdays, every cell in your body works in unison to help you accomplish your proclamation. A natural, internal alignment starts in motion. Your internal cylinders fire in harmony with what it takes for you to have a buoyant, productive work day on Tuesday and leave on time. To ensure that you get out on time, let others know about your plans.

Strike a bargain with yourself. Suppose it's 2:45 p.m. and there are three more items you'd like to accomplish before the day is over. Ask yourself: "What would it take for me to feel good about ending work on time today?" This phrase gives you the freedom to feel good about leaving the office on time because you struck a bargain with yourself wherein you said exactly what you needed to accomplish in order to leave on time and feel good about it.

Re-strike the Bargain. Suppose you have three items on your plate that you want to finish so that you can feel good about leaving on time. Then the boss drops a bomb on your desk late in the day. Strike a new bargain with yourself, given the prevailing circumstances. Your new bargain may include simply making sufficient headway on the project that's been dropped in your lap, or accomplishing two of your previous tasks and X percent of this new project.

Leave Work Ready for Life

When you consistently work longer hours or take work home from the office you begin to forget what it's like to have a free week night and eventually a free weekend. To sustain the habit of leaving work on time, start with a small step.

Leave without guilt. Hereafter decide that on, say, every Tuesday you will stop working on time and take no extra work home with you. After freeing up Tuesdays for an entire month, perhaps add Thursdays. In another month add Mondays, and in the fourth month add Wednesdays.

Adjusting to Gridlock

Does it seem as if it's taking you longer merely to drive a few blocks? It's not your imagination--and it's not going to subside soon. More densely packed urban areas have resulted in gridlock. And our population and road use grow faster than our ability to repair our highways and bridges. Three quarters of the nation's 575,000 bridges were built before 1938, and nearly half are structurally deficient. Meanwhile, city planners report that there will be no clear solution to gridlock for decades.

Fortunately, there are things you can do to take personal control. Beat the traffic by getting up earlier, or later. Ask your boss if you can work flextime or at home a couple days a week. If you drive to work, put your CD player to use. I recommend listening to books on cassette, or relaxing with music of your own choice. Commute with people you enjoy talking to, not merely those who live nearby or work close to where you do.

Of course, you can move closer to your job, telecommute, change your job, or self-employ. Otherwise, recognize that gridlock will always be a part of your life.