Increase Your Concentration

If you find concentrating hard, try these tips:

CLEAR EVERYTHING

• Clear your desk.

• Turn off email/phone ringer/alerts/texts.

• Put on your headphones. Even if you don’t listen to music, you will prevent [most] people from approaching you.

• If someone comes over, know what you will say: “Hi Joe, I am heads down working on an urgent deadline right now [this may or may not be true]. Can we have this discussion in 2 minutes or less? Or, how about sending me an email with the request and deadline and I will respond by 3 pm today.”

• Set a timer (20-30 mins) to focus without distractions.

DO IT

• Do the task.

• If you can concentrate longer than the time, keep going as long as it doesn’t take up time you scheduled for another task.

• Once you find yourself getting distracted, STOP and refresh.

EVALUATE & ASK

• Did you concentrate for the whole time? If not, what distracted you? How can you prevent that next time? Do you need to set smaller amounts of time to concentrate for, or maybe find a quieter less distracting space to work in?

• How far did you get? Determine what of the task is left to do. Decide if you can take a short break and continue working or if you need to revise your schedule.

REWARD!

• Figure out your reward system: do you take a 10 min break, watch hilarious cat YouTube videos, check your email, go for a walk, call a friend…?

• Reward yourself and/or take a break.

• Start the cycle over again.

Multi-tasking: A necessary evil or just plain evil?

We all do it, and sometimes even job descriptions or interviewers say we should be awesome at this in order to succeed in the job. During my next interview I will remind those interviewers that multitasking reduces task efficiency by 60%, reduces IQ by 10 points, and damages working relationships (How and Why Not to Multitask, Harvard Business Review).

But, if you have to do it, here are some DOs and DON’Ts:

• DO batch similar tasks together and complete them using a streamlined process or template. Then before finalizing make small customizations for each. Ie. You have to crank out 10 prospect emails to various clients. Create a template and then customize. Limit your customization to 5-7 minutes per client.

• DO schedule time in your day to scan emails in your Inbox. Respond to any that will take less than 3 minutes of your time. This usually entails “Yes/No” responses or forwarding onto someone else. For anything else, defer it and block out the task in your calendar.

• DON’T multitask when you are speaking with someone. This means one-on-one conversations, phone calls, and meetings. If you can’t focus on what they are saying kindly request that you reschedule or reconvene at a time when you can focus. Otherwise you are damaging your credibility and relationship.

• DON’T multitask with items that you have identified as urgent or important (I will be posting a follow-up blog on tips for prioritization and concentration next week).

• DON’T multitask with items that require creative thought, brainstorming, research, strategic or deep thinking.

Be more productive and work LESS!

Have you ever heard or said this?

"I had such a long week! I worked 60 hours this week..."

It really bothers me that telling someone that we work more than 40 hours is an indicator of how hard we work or how successful we are. I truly believe that we don’t have to work 40+ hours and neglect the other parts of our lives to be professionally successful. Instead we need to find ways to work smarter.

I have been reading the book The Four-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss and wanted to share his tips on increasing productivity so that we have more time to do what we actually want to do.

We could all take a cue from Pareto’s Law that says:

• 80% of outputs result in 20% of inputs

What does this mean when you apply it to your own work?

It could mean that 80% of your results come from only 20% of your effort & time. Or 80% of your revenue/sales is coming from 20% of your products/customers/clients.

Do a truthful analysis of how you spend your time each day and connect your time and effort to results and achievements. Take a look at your customers, what you spend the most time doing, and who takes up most of your time. I use www.Toggl.com to help me monitor how long it takes me to complete a task, which I can tie to projects and deliverables. At the end of each week and month Toggl gives me a report on how much time I spent on everything that I tracked.

One you have collected the date, prioritize:

If you find that 80% of your prospect follow-ups are unproductive, can you streamline your communications to them? Can you cut out high maintenance customers that contribute less than 10% to your bottom-line? Can you politely, yet firmly decline requests to work with difficult people who cause 80% of your frustrations?

Give it a try and work smarter, not harder!