Mastering the 'P' in Productive

Leave the Office Earlier: The Productivity Pro Shows You How to Do More in Less Time...and Feel Great About It
by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP

Long hours. Juggling family and work. Deadlines. High stress levels. Today's professionals are feeling more overworked and overwhelmed than ever before. Yet you CAN get more done than you ever thought possible — and still get home to your real life sooner. Laura Stack, "The Productivity Pro,"® shows you how.

Leave the Office Earlier explores the ten key factors that improve results, lower stress, and save time in today's workplace. Fun, interactive quizzes speed you to exactly the advice and techniques you need the most. You can tailor this information-loaded book to your own needs by focusing on your problem areas — such as time-wasters, distractions, email overload, or poor organization — and by following the easy-to-implement solutions. With Laura Stack's help, you'll work more efficiently and be more productive in every area of your life, so that you can really live according to your priorities. Don't just work faster. Work better, reduce stress, and leave the office earlier!

Chapter 1

Preparation

Preparation relates to how well you've planned and laid the foundation for your daily activities. Most people don't have well-articulated goals. Perhaps you don't know how to set them. Perhaps writing goals down seems like too much effort, or you simply haven't taken the time to write them. Perhaps your goals seem out of reach. It's worth the work to create goals, because the goals you set will provide direction for your life and focus your activities.

An established direction, outlined with purposeful thought, ensures your life won't be governed by whim. In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice stops at the crossroads to ask the Cheshire Cat which road to take. He asks her where she wants to go. When she tells him she doesn't "much care where," he replies, "Then it doesn't much matter which way you walk." And so Alice wanders somewhat aimlessly. In contrast, productive people devote a great deal of thought and time to planning their life goals.

The toughest part of setting goals is translating the lofty, long-term goals into actionable tasks you can work on today. The process itself looks like this:

VISION (personal mission statement)

LONG-TERM GOALS (dreams with a deadline)

SHORT-TERM GOALS and objectives (projects)

MONTHLY PLANS (action steps)

DAILY TASK LIST (specific activities)

When you start with your personal mission statement in front of you as a guide, create personal and professional long-term goals, break them down into short-term objectives, create monthly plans, and then daily activities, you have direction and focus. Bottom line, you achieve your long-term objectives by focusing on today. This section will help you define these things for yourself.

Preparation quiz item #1:

1. I abide by a personal mission statement for my life.

What Do You Value?

Much like a corporate mission statement, your personal mission statement defines who you are, what you're all about, and why you're on this earth. Why do you need such a statement?

• It helps you make difficult decisions when faced with the choices life presents.

• It helps you realize how very little time you truly have to accomplish the important things in your life.

• It helps you recognize when you're off course and steers you back in the right direction.

Life is precious, and time is short. The best engineer cannot create more time, and the best scientist cannot invent more time. You cannot accumulate time or borrow tomorrow's time. We all have the same amount of time — 24 hours a day, 168 hours every week, 86,400 seconds every day. Since it feels like we have plenty of time left, we can take for granted our 86,400 seconds every day.

Discovering your true priorities

The main objective of a personal mission statement is to define what's important to you. Many people say "this is important" and "that is important," but how do you narrow it down to what's truly important in your life? I like to use the following visualization:

SCENARIO A: Picture a thick banded-steel cable about two feet in circumference and one hundred feet long, stretched out across the floor. You are standing at one end, and I'm on the other. I call out to you, "I'll give you $100 if you can step onto the cable and walk across it to me without falling off." Would you try it? Sure! Most people would. Why? Basically, it involves a fairly low risk with a relatively high payoff for the effort required. It could be fun and a little challenging.

SCENARIO B: Now we're going to suspend the cable just a bit. Have you ever been to the Royal Gorge Bridge in Canon City, Colorado? It's the highest suspension bridge in the world, with a cable like ours spanning a chasm with a rushing river below. A tram with a clear glass bottom hangs from the cable and carries passengers across the chasm. Except you don't get to ride the tram. You are standing on one side of the chasm, and I'm on the other side. The cable is suspended between us. I yell out, "Hey! If you can walk across the cable without falling off into the river below, I'll give you $100!" There is no way anyone in his or her right mind would attempt that. The risk is too high for the reward involved. But let's up the ante. Would you cross it for $250,000? No? How about $1 million? How much would I have to offer you? What if I let you crawl across on your belly? For some of you, the reward would never be high enough to risk your life.

SCENARIO C: Let's add a little wind (a slight 40 mph breeze) and a tad of rain to make the cable slick. I'm on one side of the chasm, and you're on the other. In my arms, I hold your child hostage. I yell, "If you don't cross the chasm in two minutes, I'm throwing your child in the river." Would you come now? Of course you would! Despite the incredibly high risk to your own life, the child is so priceless to you that you'd risk your own life to save that child.

Perhaps if you don't have children, it could be your parents, your significant other, or your friend. Clearly, that person is a core value in your life. What other things like that exist in your life? Probably not very many. What principles, values, or character traits are most important to you, such that if I were to rip them out of your life and throw them into the chasm, you would be willing to cross the bridge to save them? What things are so integral to who you are that you cannot imagine existing without them?

Copyright © 2004 by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP. Excerpted by permission of Broadway, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Laura Stack is an internationally recognized productivity expert and bestselling author of Leave the Office Earlier. As president of The Productivity Pro®, Inc., she gives over 100 seminars and keynote speeches a year on managing time, reducing stress, and getting organized.