What a great way to end the week! So looking forward to some down time!

Mychael Hyatt - Courtesy of www.MichaelHyatt.com

Michael Hyatt, who – to me – is an amazing guy on several levels, wrote two blog entries recently on delegation.  Though I am a very spiritual person, I know some are not, and the title and content of the first blog entry may turn you off.  However, I encourage you to stick with it anyway as they are great tips for personal productivity.

What The Bible Says About Leadership And Delegation

How Do You Delegate If You Don’T Have A Staff?

Photo by 'laffy4k' as posted on www.Flickr.com

Buzzzzzzz, buzz-buzz buzzzz!

5:45am and my Palm Treo is buzzing to wake me up for another work day.

I am not a “morning wake up” person.  When my Palm goes off, I am not an “Oh, boy!  I’m ready to go!” person. I generally say “Oy!  I have to get up,” and, very slowly (if I’m lucky) I get out of bed.  Though, I am not a “morning wake up” person, I enjoy being a morning person once I am up as I get much more done and believe it is important for success.  The other morning, I stumbled across something that changed my whole attitude and helped me succeed at getting up.

Instead of saying I have to get up, stated in the future tense, I said to myself, “I am getting up,” as in the present tense.  This one little change sent such a good feeling of energy through me that it made it a TON easier to get up and do what I wanted to do; be that morning person.  I am now working more on applying this to other areas.  For example, instead of saying, “I have to work on that goal,” I will say, “I am working on the goal.”  It just changes the whole ball game.

Question: What can you change to the present tense to help you succeed?

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/09/chai-wallah.html

Make it a great weekend!

Just like most weeks, this week was another intense one keeping everything moving forward.  Let’s wrap up the week, and series, and talk about Friday:

• Had conference call right out of the shoot.  While waiting for it to start, banged through the DCL.  Being that I keep my inbox (well, inboxes, see my other post), at zero everyday, this was a breeze.
• Transitioned to my Next Action list (Projects Widget), and managed to hit about five different projects.  Again, I date things for follow-up, so three different projects popped up for follow-up, and I got them all done.
• The rest of the day consisted of work on one project.  I was able to get that one wrapped up; a nice way to end the week.

So, all in all, I think this was a relatively good week.  I helped a lot of people move forward on their projects.  Also, I moved forward on * all * of my projects (even if it was a quick glance during the Weekly Review to assure they have follow-up dates on them so they will pop up in the Projects Widget) even with all the interruptions.

What were the lessons learned from this week?

• Quick Capture Interruptions.
  • As I think I commented about this week, interruptions are the real killer.  You have to capture them and keep your focus.  I didn’t do as well in this area as I like and will need to focus on that more next week.
• Break the addiction to email, IM and Twitter.
  • These are all major sources of interruptions.
• Block out more time, especially when you have projects that require big chunks of un-interrupted time.
  • This, along with corralling interruptions, will be my goals for next week.

That wraps up this series for this week.  On the onset of this series, I had said that I had two goals for it:

1) To give you some ideas / tips / tricks on managing multiple projects.

2) For me to track what I’m up to – helping me see progress as well as possibly see where I can improve.

I hope this series helped you out; it did me and I have some great goals for next week to help boost productivity even further.  Make it a great, relaxing weekend!

Small problem kept me up till midnight (hence what I think is a really hilarious graphic above – the corporate icon symbol, the warning – that is actually on GE’s support page!).  That, plus an overcast day today made it a rough day. 

Here’s what I did to get through it and make progress:

• Americano!
• DCL - I kind of just blew through this.  Email traffic heavy, but I pressed through to get them out of the was because I really wanted to make progress on my large “report” project.
  • Because I glanced at my calendar (as apart of my DCL), I saw that commitments on two projects were coming up – so I made sure I was ready for those.
• Successfully focused my my report; good progress made.

Signing off for the day.  Stick a fork in me; I’m done!

As I’ve written about in the past, flexibility is a must to effective and relaxed productivity.  And, as I reflected on at the end of the day today, capturing and containing stuff is a must!  Here’s Wednesday:

Americano (this one is a deal breaker; I lived above – no flexibility for me on this one first thing in the AM!  Well, I lied again, I don’t go to Starbucks very often; instead, I bought one of their home espresso machines and keep plenty of beans in stock.  My Fiancé is an incredible Barista!

On to the Daily Check List….

• Voice Mail (had call from internal client and returned it immediately as I feel that if they left a voice mail, as opposed to email, they are desiring a call back sooner than later.  Glad to be of service to Mr. WW!)
• Check e-Mail (Though I still believe that this being my primary form of communication and job for my employer, I’m starting to feel I’ve become way to addicted again – it comes and goes – to checking email.  I feel like I’m in the movie “You’ve Got Mail!”)

Side Note: Wow; crazy day already (though, this is not unusual – hence why I want to write more about relaxed productivity).  Several things, a couple via IM, popped up and put me off down some different paths.  Fortunately, and as usual, they are related to current projects, so, progress has been made.  If they were not related to current projects, I would have Quick Captured them and got back on track.

Wrapped up DCL.  Wrapping up the “different paths” from above.  Then, I’ll stop, take a couple of deep breaths, and regroup to make sure I get my focus back.  Decided to drop the blogs today; especially with how busy it is today.

(Later that day…) Well, “wrapping up” really never happened.  Today ended up being a “chase several fronts” day and I now am noting that I didn’t make much progress on “Big Rock” projects.  Some, progress mind you – I have one thing checked off.  And, I’m going to SHUT OFF email, IM and focus on getting one more “notch in my belt.” for the day.

Lesson of the day, or at least something to ponder – how to stay pertinent and relevant in today’s connected society, without letting it eat you (and the important stuff you need to be working on) alive.  One things I didn’t do as well today as I usually do — and it’s pretty much in line with David Allen’s advice, capture everything that hits your plate, get it contained, get it off you mind and get back to -a- mind like water and -b- the important task at hand.  That ultimately needs to be my goal for tomorrow, use Quick Capture much more.

(To put picures in the blog, or not?  That is the question)

The secret to my success – follow-up’s; after I touch base with someone, or delegate something, I put a follow-up task on the project, dated, so it will pop up in the Projects Widget, reminding me, and basically forcing my attention back to that project.

This is something I’ve always done, but then had it really solidified for me when Jack Welch said in his book that * you have * to follow-up with people.  It’s the only way to make sure things keep moving forward – and that’s so true!

14 projects, 150+ tasks, yet this is what’s on my radar scope for today – exactly what I need to be working on.  I love my product!

* Americano

* Set my Twitter status – at the company I work for, we have recently begun using this as our In-Out board.  Having one “in-out” board in on location for a company of four geographically diverse locations just really didn’t make sense to me.

* Start processing my Daily Check List…

>  Clear Voicemail.

>  Clear E-Mail – as I mentioned yesterday, I * really * preach that one not do this and first try to jump into something important first thing.  Yet, I’ve been personally torn about this as, in my position with the company I work for, e-mail is the major way I communicate with my clients.  So, my alternative is I have two items on my Daily Check List – check email ** once ** in the AM, then once again at the end of the day — leaving the rest of the time to work on projects and not participate in “e-mail conversations.”  (See this post and series of posts for more ideas and information). 

Yes; every day, I do get my inbox to zero.

And, I’m glad I did as a client needs me to call them….

>  Check our enterprise management software for internal messages.

 >  Glance at my calendar and see what’s coming up over the next three days – making sure I’m ready for any commitments I made.  Generally, if I see something coming up (i.e., a meeting), I’ll divert at this point and work on any projects related to that, before I get to my project list.

>  I do have “Catch Up on Blogs” on my DCL.  I’m torn on this one.  I * so * want to keep up with things.  But, there is so much out there.  I have iGoogle tied to Google Reader, limiting what I see to only a couple of blogs.  I’ve been 50 / 50 on the “success” or value add of following blogs.  For instance, I love Seth, and this made me chuckle (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/08/weirdest-billboard-ever-or-brilliant-targeting.html) but probably wasn’t worth the time.

 This one was good and made me stop and think: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/08/who-spreads-your-word.html

 * Done with the daily check list.  Like I said yesterday, I’m hoping to do some fine tuning on myself with this series.  In this case, it sure feels like this took a lot of time out of the day already.  As Peter Drucker said, “No Thy Time!”  I started at 7:15, and it’s now 9:00am.  I’ve touched back with clients via email, I’ve talked with someone on the phone that needed to talk to me, and my decks are COMPLETELY CLEAR to focus on my projects.  So, even with reading the blogs (and, I forgot – doing some spiritual reading, which I’m also trying to get more in the habit on), and writing this post, I think I’m doing ok.

 * On to projects.  Which, because of doing my Weekly Review yesterday and having my Project Widget all ready displaying my Next Actions, I’m ready to go – no “guessing” at “what’s important or next.”

So, off to work…… More later.

Side Notes:

>> Missing from my day:

* Exercise / Workout – I used to run, however fell out of the habit a couple of years ago after accomplishing my goal of a 5K.  This is something I’ve got to get my way back to.  I have a plan; the subject of a great post I want to get to.