I recently joined the Best Life Ever Facebook group. They were running a daily challenge at 4.44am and joining made me realise that it is easy to wake up even a little earlier to get more done. Also, that it is illogically satisfying to see all the 4s in a row when you wake up. Tim Ferris says he has lots of phone screenshots of 5.55pm as he has a superstition about that number after finishing his first book at that time of day.
4.44am to me seems the best time to wake up. It still feels like you are part of the 4am club but it is really closer to 5am and you can get still get so much done before anyone else is even awake. Get up earlier. Go to bed earlier. Nothing good happens at night in the week anyway. What else would you be doing? Would it move you closer to where you want to be? To sacrifice the morning is to sacrifice the day. To win the morning is to win the day. Try it and see what happens for two weeks.
It is not until you are ill that you value your health. It is not until you are injured that you consider being able to do exercise as a privilege and not a chore. It is not until we run out of time that we value it.
Is there a better way of realising these things ahead of time? Writing in a journal every day helps. A practice of gratitude helps. Meditation helps. In a world where we can get anything we want at the touch of a button, creating habits that cultivate mindfulness is key to cutting through the bullshit, so you can "see the matrix: of what is actually important to you. Think about what you would miss if it were gone. Are you doing any actions today that will make the most of it or anything that will prolong it? If you are likely to regret your health deteriorating, are you going to have the burger or the salad for lunch? Are you going to take the stairs or the lift? Are you running today? Likely to regret your wealth? How much are you saving? Do you know where your money is going? Have you researched the best passive investments? Could you get a second or third stream of income? Likely to regret love leaving your life? Have you told your wife or kids that you love them today? Do your actions back up your words? Are you spending enough time with them? Onto the biggest regret of them all - running out of time. Are you spending your time how you want to spend it today? Are you stuck in a meeting instead of playing with your kids? Did the meeting run over so you cancel your workout and have a fast food lunch? Make time for the important, not the urgent. This is a keystone to all other areas of your life. Regret nothing, use every minute. Should You Work And Work And Work And Wait For The Payoff Later Or Should You Enjoy Yourself Now?16/2/2018
It all depends on what you drive joy from.
The most successful, in monetary terms, and probably achievement, enjoy working, grinding, moving closer towards something meaningful. For the person that achieves longevity, the money is usually a side-effect. They like doing what they are doing and they need to do it to be who they are. On the flip side, you could die crossing the street tomorrow. Is it really worth putting yourself unnecessarily through all that hardships rather than going to that party, buying that car, spending time with your family? Well, probably not. However, what if you do not die tomorrow? What if you live to be 100 plus? You have a lot of time left AND it is going to go quickly. What are you going to do with it? Why not do it all? Just like tasks, you can batch things. Why not spend some amount of time, that could be a week, a month or a year, solely focussed on building your business, then take some time off? Or, like eating healthy, focus on being how you want to behave 80% of the time and take one day a week off to do anything that you want. In the hyper-connected world that we live, the reality is that you can probably do it all. The only thing that will stop you is not doing anything at all or spending too much time on one thing at the expense of the rest. You can still keep up to date on binge-watching Netflix as long as this is not the only thing you do. You can go travelling and party as long as you are working on something for the future too. There are examples of success all around you of how different people did it. All with different balances. The common thread? No one did it without hard work. If you love what you do, then you are halfway there.
Time is relative. A year for a one-year-old is her entire life. Asking them to wait a year seems like a lifetime away because it is. Even when you are ten years old, waiting for the next Birthday is ten percent of the time you have ever known. This is why the years fly past faster and faster as we get older. Yet we value time less and less until the very end of life is in sight.
A toddler can barely manage 20 minutes of attention. It is a really long time for them and they do not want to waste it on this one thing when there are so many other possibilities to explore. When we are adults, at work, we flitter away 20 minutes as if it were nothing. We do not even give it a second thought. It goes faster for us than a toddler so logically we should look after our 20 minutes slots as if we were guarding our life against an attacker. But for some reason, the faster time seems to fly by, most people value it less. We have this the wrong way around. We should be valuing it more and more. And of course, your life is being attacked. By Jean who just wants to "pick your brains for half an hour." By Derek who holds the same meeting every week despite not knowing why and having nothing ever come out of it. By Margaret who never picks up one-to-one with anyone and just invites swathes of people to a half-day workshop without knowing what their jobs are or how they can help (but also copies on everyone's bosses to make her feel important). Your life is under attack. Your time is under attack. No one will care when you get to the end of the week, the end of the month or the end of the year and you have not achieved anything because you went to other people's meetings. Get free. Give the gift of MeeTime. What To Do When Nothing Gets Done Or: How To Cope With Others Wasting Your Time In Meetings14/2/2018
You have just spent all day in that meeting. The one that, at best, kept you from doing actual work and at worst kept you away from family, friends and anything else you would rather be doing with your time - the gym, a side business, the pub. You are getting paid to sit there in that meeting, the one with no outputs - or worse, actions that are so benign as to be utterly meaningless. The organisation is spending a huge amount on this hidden cost.
What should you do when you are in a meeting like this? 1. Move towards the contrary to find balance. Recurring meetings have two schools of thought - either never miss a recurring meeting or never have a recurring meeting and just hold them when necessary. For me, it depends what the meeting is for. If a meeting is required, ask, "is this a meeting we want to be in every day or every week?" If not, it is probably not a very good use of time. In contrast, if you already have a regular meeting, ask, how could we reduce or eliminate this meeting - what tools, people or processes could we use to not have this meeting or to halve the time? Continuously thinking of the opposite is what moves towards the best solution. 2. Review the inputs before the next meeting. Ask the organiser one on one, "so how will this change things if we did all of these?" Better inputs to think of: what can we do today, and every subsequent day, that will move us closer to our goal. Why do we need a meeting to do these? If we need a meeting, what needs to be true to do it in half the time? And half the time again? 3. Help the organiser be more action-oriented. Is everyone clear on when the meeting will finish? Bad meetings do not even finish on time. Great meetings finish when the objective is met ahead of time. Is everyone clear on the output we are trying to get? Is everyone clear on the actions we are trying to drive? No one comes to work trying to do a bad job. No one is trying to trap you in meetings that go nowhere. Using a tool like MeeTime can help if you or someone you know is struggling.
If you read this far, thank you very much.
As a Valentines special, so you can get back to your loved ones today, we have five promo codes to give away to the first five people to do the following: simply visit the website (www.meetimeapps.com), go to the support page (top right) and send an email or fill in the form asking for a promo code and including your job title, where you work, how the app might help you and also mention where you consumed this article. First come first served - good luck. More On MeetingsMore From The BlogHow To Get To The Top Of The Life List Or: Why You Should Forget Results And Focus On Your Effort13/2/2018
How do we define the best? Rankings, metrics, striving to get ahead? Life is filled with competition. What is the best book? What is the best blog post? What is the best phone to get, the best TV, the best laptop?
Why does not everyone have the same stuff? Know the same things? Behave in the same way? Now we can share information so freely, why is not everyone operating on the best way of doing things - just like pushing out an operating system upgrade. Why do not all humans already do the best thing for themselves? Firstly, the best is subjective. What is best for me might not be best for you. Secondly, there are outside forces not wanting us to be our best - tax law; governments; special interest groups; companies who sell arms, kill animals, stuff humans with sugar. And thirdly because we are wired to fit in. We want to do what everyone else does. Standing out is dangerous. But standing out is what is necessary to be the best you. You will not make it to the top of any list if you do what the majority of people do. Most people use any "free" time to consume - media, chocolate, fear. To whittle away their time on purpose - with chores, with a day job, down the pub - rather than living like mortals and using their short time with purpose. We try to emulate the results of others without putting in the effort - this is how the middle class was created. To buy the car that they see others driving as a status symbol, not realising that the rich are buying the car using money their money has earned whilst they themselves are doing the opposite - paying for both the car and the interest on the credit they took out to buy it. Same with their house and their lavish holidays. If you want the life of your dreams, then you better put in the work rather than dreaming. Life is a balance of effort and expectation - you can get in balance by raising or lowering each end.
What will you do with your life? What will you do with your time? Our time on this earth is short and fleeting, yet it is still enough to those that spend it wisely.
How you spend your days is how you spend your life. What are you doing today? How you spend your hours is how you spend your day. Which hours are being wasted by you or by someone else? How you spend your minutes is how you spend your hours. Do you really want to spend ten minutes in the shower instead of five? Do you really want to watch just one more YouTube video before you start? Do you really want nine more minutes of snooze time (why is the snooze button always nine minutes anyway?) Being mindful of your minutes is where you can carve out vast amounts of time if you know where to look. But if you do not know how to spend your time in the first place, you are unlikely to even want to try this out. What do you want from your life? What would you do if you could not fail? What would you do if you already had $100Bn? What would you do if you thought you were better than you are? Whatever you came up with you can do all these things now. You can be all of these people now. You might not have all that they have yet, but you can be the same type of person that you need to be and do the same actions needed. If you do these things, then you have already won. You will be the person you want to be, doing the things you want to do. Therefore, you cannot fail. You might not be able to have the things you first thought of, but if you are doing the things you want to do and already feel like the person you want to become then you are likely to not be bothered about having those things anyway. Take the pressure off. Focus on the inputs (being and doing) and the outputs will likely come anyway.
Having time. Is it strange that some people get stressed and others do not?
Sometimes this may be the same person under different circumstances. Sometimes in our lives, we feel stress and sometimes we do not. Quite often, we attribute this to external factors. Too much to do. My boss is an asshole. Not enough time in the day. All seem reasonable and, in my experience, it does not matter how good the company is, it only matters what your boss is like. But why do we give external factors such power over us? We have an abundance of choice. We could work for someone else. Wo could focus on only the important tasks. We could realise that we all have the same amount of time. Or do we? It is amazing to see that people get resigned to having to do things. I have seen employees about to go off with stress, aching to just finish what they need to do before they go home and yet they are accepting meetings where they do not know what outcome is expected; they do not know why they need to be there and they never even try to not go to it. Even worse, is that when they do go to it and realise both that nothing productive is going to happen and even if it was, they do not need to be there, they resign themselves again to having to stay rather than just excusing themselves and walking out. It is important to remember that you do not have to do anything, there are just consequences if you do and if you do not. The consequence of giving too much control over your day to other peoples meetings is that you will not have time to do the things you already know you need to do: workout, be present with loved ones, eat right, or just doing the important things and being prepared to take shit for not doing someone elses "urgent."
Written by Brad Egeland
Meetings are a way of life in project management. Weekly project team meetings, daily stand-ups on agile projects, weekly customer status calls and meetings, quarterly reviews on large government programs and projects and kickoff meetings on just about every project I've ever led or been involved with. How meetings are conducted can either make your job as a project manager easier or harder... sticking to some good meeting management techniques is always going to be your best plan for success.
From my experience, there are five things to consider when preparing for just about any meeting needed for your project. As I present these, please consider your own meeting prep processes and comment with any additional tips you might have... Plan well. The initial key to great meetings is up front planning. Never just call a meeting based on a need or want or decision. Always do at least some up-front planning no matter how small the issue may be. You never want to be labeled as that meeting facilitator who just "wings it." You'll find out rather quickly that people don't want to give up valuable work time to attend one of your meetings that doesn't have a well-defined purpose or goal. If it's a meeting to gather information providers together for a critical decision that needs to be made on a project, then make sure you document well what information you are seeking, what decision needs to be made, and what the next steps will be. If it's a regular project meeting, make sure you have a detailed agenda that includes current project status and what's happening next as well as any other agreed upon regular information. Usually a project status report is a good piece of input for this process. In other words - no matter what the meeting purpose is, have materials for the potential and planned attendees that will help you get the most relevant information out of them during the meeting session. Send out information in advance. Always send information - including a detailed agenda - out to your planned meeting participants in advance. Twenty-four hours in advance is a good rule of thumb if that's possible. The more time you give attendees, the more likely they can come prepared to participate and provide you with the information you need. The goal is to get this done in one session - those who always need multiple meetings to accomplish one thing are quickly labeled disorganized time wasters and their meeting attendance will dwindle. Adhere to a plan and timeframe. Stick to the planned timeframe for the meeting. Start on time and finish on time. Your stakeholders' and various attendees' time is valuable and your ongoing meeting attendance and participation will be high if you have a reputation as the facilitator who gets going and runs efficient and effective meetings. Don't be the one who stops the meeting to bring the late comers up to speed (unless it's your CEO and even then...) because that will frustrate those who do show up on time ready to participate. Better to teach the 10% late comers that it's not tolerated rather than to accommodate them and frustrate the other 90% who always show up on time. And end on time... these individuals have work to do and if they know you always run long, they'll be doing their other work on their laptops while your meeting is going on. You don't want that - in fact you may want to ban laptops during your meetings. I do that if it's a critical meeting and I need 110% of their attention. If laptops are present, I guarantee that you don't have all of their attention. One more thing... never cancel your regularly scheduled meetings. Even if a project seems to be coasting between phases for a couple of weeks and nothing is really happening, continue to conduct weekly meetings. Even if you all you do is spend 10 minutes going around the room or phones to all the attendees for a quick update or status of what they are working on or any questions they may have - it will still be helpful and it will keep them coming. You never know when a key piece of information is going to come up during a call or meeting like this that would otherwise fall through the cracks. If you start to cancel meetings, it will only make it more difficult to get them back in those seats when the project starts up full force again. Plus, the goal is for everyone to stay on the same page at all times and these quick meetings will only serve to help ensure it stays that way. Document well. Make sure you take good notes on all of the information provided and for any decisions and task assignments being made. You'll need this for yourself, the project schedule updates, the status reporting and for the next step as you'll see shortly. Communication is Job One for the project manager and information gathering and dissemination is part of that. What you understand from a meeting like this may not be the same as what everyone else - or at least some percentage of the attendees - understood, so take good notes for you and for everyone. Follow-up afterwards. Following every project meeting, be prepared to send out notes from the session. Again, the key is to keep everyone on the same page at all times during the project engagement. When you send out notes from the meeting to all attendees and key stakeholders request that they send back any feedback, questions or alternate understandings of what was discussed and decided upon during the session. Not everyone catches everything or hears things the same. You don't want to wait a week or two to find out that an attendee missed an assignment that you gave them... a critical project deadline may be missed as a result. Ask for responses by noon the next day, revise your notes if needed, and resend the meeting information out to everyone one more time. Summary / call for input The bottom line is always to keep everyone moving forward on the project, get decisions made, get information from key participants and keep everyone on the same page. The project manager who can do that through effective and efficient meeting leadership will win more projects than they lose... and that's always good. Readers - what are your thoughts? What do you do to ensure your project meetings are as effective as possible? Do you agree with this list? What would you add or change? Brad EgelandBrad Egeland is a Business Solution Designer and IT/PM consultant and author with over 25 years of software development, management, and project management experience leading initiatives in Manufacturing, Government Contracting, Creative Design, Gaming and Hospitality, Retail Operations, Aviation and Airline, Pharmaceutical, Start-ups, Healthcare, Higher Education, Non-profit, High-Tech, Engineering and general IT. Brad is married, a father of 11, and living in sunny Las Vegas, NV. Visit Brad's site at http://www.bradegeland.com/.
Do the biggest. Do the hardest. Do the one that will make the most progress.
Even if you can only get part of it done. Just start. Do it first thing in the morning, with no distractions for 90 minutes and see how much you can get done. Do the top priority then move onto the second for 45 minutes. The move onto the third for 45 mins. Do all these things before checking email. Turn off your phone and Skype. Obviously turn off your email, but it already will be turned off, won't it? Shortcut to productivity: Proactive in the morning. Reactive in the afternoon. I have not read makers schedule managers schedule but the principal sounds similar. You cannot get much actual work done in tiny chunks. Do not let other peoples meetings whittle your time down into bite-sized bits. And don't let them go over your most productive time - usually the morning. In the morning you can usually go for 90 minutes without a break. In the afternoon only 45. Schedule accordingly. Once you have done work on your top 3 priorities (or it may just be the top 1 depending on the day) then forget the rest. You are done for the day. Most people never get this much done in a whole day. Congratulate yourself that you have just done in 3 hours more than anyone else because you took the time to carve out some uninterrupted block of time big enough to actually do something meaningful. Most people scatter this time throughout the day - checking email. Making tea. Chatting. Getting overwhelmed with other peoples agendas. Remember, just because it is important and urgent to them, does not mean it is automatically the same for you. What if you were on holiday? What if you were off sick? What if it was the middle of the night because they are in a different time zone? They will cope for 90 minutes. Look after yourself first. |
Archives
August 2020
Categories
All
|