I spoke to a friend recently, who mentioned her struggle with saving useful information and research she found online. Typically, she would come across a useful article or fact, and then not know what to do with it.

I suggested doing what I do. When I come across something interesting online, I will email the article or page to myself. Then from my inbox, I will transfer it to OneNote, or email it on to my team, or schedule an action to do something with it.

This suggestion went down like a lead balloon. With a look of horror, my friend told me that if she emailed something to herself, she would never find it again! It would get lost amongst the hundreds of emails in her inbox already.

Her problem was that she did not trust her inbox. It was not a place where she could put things and have any certainty later that she would see them again.

On the other hand, I trust my inbox. I trust it because I keep it relatively clear, and always process to zero at least once a week. This means anything I put in there gets processed within a few days and dealt with in the appropriate way. I love that my inbox is an easy-to-access place to capture ideas, information, statistics, and things to do.

Apart from emailing myself, I also capture voice memos using my phone app, Memo Mailer, and receipts using TurboScan – both of these apps automatically direct important information to my inbox. Sweet!

Always remember your inbox should be there to serve you, and that’s very achievable if you manage it the right way.

Like most people with full schedules, I have lots to get done and precious little time to get it done in. I get frustrated when my time is unnecessarily wasted by other people, because the opportunity cost for me is huge.

I recently bought a new laptop, visiting the brand’s flagship store to pick it up. The tech assistant brought out my shiny new device, and offered to update the version of Windows to the most current. Seemed like a good idea to me, so I sat back while he did his work. As the new software downloaded, he flitted between me and a couple of other jobs, occasionally checking progress. After about twenty minutes the job was done, and off I went with my new computer. All good!

Except, when I got back to the office, I found that the keyboard on the laptop no longer worked. Nothing I did could get it working. Grrr! So, a couple of days later I was back in store, reporting my problem. The tech guy I got on this day knew exactly what the problem was – new drivers needed to be installed. He said this was a known problem and the other guy should have done this. Grrr!

Now at one level, the guy made a mistake. Give him a break. He was busy and missed a step. Maybe. But at another level, a more productive level, he would have made sure he did it right the first time, saving me both time and angst.

So, what could he have done differently to avoid the mistake?  He could have focused on one job, rather than splitting his concentration across three. He could have done a quick mental check to ensure he covered all steps, and a quick physical check to make sure it was working. If it was a complex job, or he was unfamiliar with it, he could have used a checklist.

This is a sad example of what happens in our busy workplaces every day. We rush work because we are under pressure, and end up costing ourselves or others precious time. One of the key concepts from my new book, Smart Teams (available on 30^th April) is the idea of working in a mindful way. This involves trying your best not to disrupt the productivity of others, even when you are busy or under pressure.

I’m glad to say that this blog was written on my lovely new laptop, and all is working well now. And the time was not completely wasted. It gave me this story, which makes it all worthwhile for me.

Just the other day my partner delegated something to me, but unfortunately did not get the result she wanted. She showed me a bottle of laundry conditioner – Fluffy to be exact – and asked me to buy some when shopping for dinner. I made a note of this on my phone, so I didn’t forget, and off I went to work.

Later that day, I purchased the bottle of Fluffy as requested. Such a well organised partner, I thought to myself. When I got home, it turned out that I got the wrong one. I got the right brand, but I bought the large bottle that won’t fit in the laundry cupboard, not the small one that she had shown me. Not the end of the world, but I thought this was a great lesson in delegation.

If you want a specific result, be specific when you delegate!

Her assumption was that by showing me the bottle, I would buy that exact bottle. But without a qualifying statement about being sure to buy the small one, my assumption was that she wanted that brand, but had no strong opinion about size or any other measurement. Nobody was really in the wrong here, we were just both busy and trying to get this done in the cracks. And this is when mistakes happen, and work is wasted or needs to be redone.

In the workplace, I reckon that this sort of miscommunication happens a lot. We delegate work to others and assume that their thinking is the same as ours. But when we work in complex teams, with a diverse range of personalities and skillsets, our thinking is often very different. We need to be careful not to make assumptions, and to take the time to think through what we specifically want before we delegate.

Of course, if you do not need a very specific result, and are happy to leave it up to your team member to make decisions about the detail, then delegate the general outcome you want. But if you want a specific outcome, to a specific level of quality, then delegate specifically. This may take more time, but in the long run time is saved for both of you.

I talked to a client recently about his workload. He was telling me his typical day on the job would start around 6.00am most mornings. With back-to-back meetings to look forward to, this was the only time he could deal with the 400-500 emails he received every day.

While I hear versions of this story on a regular basis, his final comment made me a little sad:

‘The truth is I love my work, but I hate my job’.

He was a great manager, and passionate about the field he worked in, but his job was grinding him down. The endless meetings, the huge volumes of emails, and the constant interruptions were overloading him and stopping him from doing what he was good at.

For many people in this situation, I reckon part of the problem is becoming a victim in this. We know it’s not where we want to be, but we don’t take steps to change it. We often assume everyone is in the same boat, and that there is nothing we can do about it.

I wrote Smart Teams (to be published by Wiley in early May 2018) with exactly this issue in mind. While we cannot completely control our environment, or the people around us, we can take control over our own time and priorities. We can also work with those around us to reduce the collective noise and distraction which cause both individual and team productivity to suffer.

If you become a victim to your organisation’s poor productivity culture, you will just end up hating your job, and that would be a shame, especially if you love your work.

I turned fifty recently. I know – hard to believe when you look at me! I reckon I’ve done OK. I’m still fit and have kept most of my hair. Some say I may be getting delusional, but I’m not sure why.

Anyway, turning fifty reminded me of a sobering and somewhat shocking exercise a colleague used to do at conferences. He would get a couple of volunteers up on stage and ask them to fully extend a metal measuring tape between them. He would ask the volunteer holding the very end of the tape to imagine that it represented their total lifespan. The volunteer was asked to point to where they reckoned they were in life’s journey on the tape.

Next came the shocking part. He would whip out a pair of scissors and cut the metal tape at the point indicated by the volunteer. There would be a collective gasp in the crowd as one end of the tape whizzed back into its holder, with the poor volunteer left holding the other end. He then informed them that the years already passed are gone forever, and the remaining tape in their hand represented the rest of their life. A bit uncomfortable, but it got worse!

He would then remind the volunteer of how much time was not in their control, or at their discretion. Time asleep, time on the toilet, time waiting in queues – cutting bits of the tape off with each statement, until all that was left were a few inches of tape representing the discretionary time that was left. The audience loved it. The participant not so much.

The point he made was a very good one. We don’t have a huge amount of discretionary time, so value it. Make the most of it. Make good choices. Be organised. Make time for what is truly important. Don’t live or die with regrets.

I plan to make the most of my next fifty years. I don’t want to spend that time just being busy. I want to be productive, in both work and in life. How about you?

There is an old joke about meetings that I quite like. Not all meetings are bad – some of them are cancelled. Harsh, but funny. I write a lot about meetings in my new book, Smart Teams, and believe we can all get better with how we organise, run and attend meetings. But meetings are not necessarily a bad thing. We just need to keep our time in them balanced with our other work, and make sure that the ones we do attend are effective.

My friend and mentor, Georgia Murch, shared a strategy with me for quickly and easily increasing the effectiveness of team meetings. Georgia is the author of Fixing Feedback.  She suggests that meetings are a necessary, but expensive and resource heavy way to do work, so should be constantly evaluated.  An easy way to do this is what Georgia calls the ‘five-finger test’.

At the end of each meeting, get everyone to rate its effectiveness with one hand. Five fingers means it was excellent, one finger means it was pretty poor. This is a quick and easy way for everyone to provide their feedback. Then ask the fours and fives why they rated it so well, so you can keep doing these things. Next, ask the ones and twos what could be improved for next time.

If you make this a consistent part of your meeting process, you will be able to adjust as needed to keep your meetings engaging and productive. Changing the culture of your meetings does not need a major change initiative. It just requires you to do a few things consistently. Why not give it a go?

Most of us don’t like change, me included.  Anything that turns my comfortable world upside down is always unsettling. Especially when the change affects one of my favourite productivity tools – Microsoft Outlook.

Anyone using Office 365 in their workplace will no doubt be used to regular updates from Microsoft.  Most changes are tweaks that make Office run better, but every now and again there is a change that you really notice. One such change happened for me over the Christmas break.

When I came back from my summer holiday, a feature I had grown fond of to manage my email noise, ‘Clutter’, had been replaced with something called the ‘Focused Inbox’. Aggh! I liked the clutter feature and now it was gone. Not happy!

I sulked for a few days, which included trying to work out how to get the clutter feature working again. I could see the folder, but alas, it just wouldn’t work the way it used to. So, in true sulking style, I turned off ‘Focused Inbox’ and just let my email noise build up in the inbox. I did not need a focused inbox! I could handle the noise myself.

Well it turned out I couldn’t handle the noise. After a week it was killing me. So I finally put my pride back in its box, and turned on the focused Inbox (Click on the ‘View’ tab and press ‘Show Focused Inbox’). You know what – it is pretty darn clever. Cleverer than clutter! Now I have one view that shows me emails that are to me, from real people, and one view that hides all my newsletters, automated emails and things sent by robots for robots. Once a day I go to this tab, skim through the contents and usually delete the lot. This makes managing what’s in my focused Inbox view so much easier. I love it.

The one tweak I was forced to make for this work with my inbox zero mindset was to start using the Outlook app on my iPhone, as it also uses the focused inbox concept. If I viewed my emails in the native email app on the phone I would just see everything in one big pile. But that turned out to be a good move too, as there are a few cool features for mobile email that I am liking.

So, change seems like a bad thing, until you open up to it, and then it’s often a good thing. Who knew!

Happy New Year everyone, and welcome back to work. As soon as I’m back from the summer break, I always like to clear the way for what I hope will be a productive year ahead. In other words, I move from ‘end of holiday confusion’ to ‘start of year clarity’.

To achieve this clarity, I believe it’s important to do the following:

Get your head clear

My fuzzy, holiday-head is always full of things I could or should do. If I want to start the year in a focused way, I need to clear out this mind clutter.  So, I always take some time to do a ‘mind dump’.  I take all these thoughts, possibilities and ideas and make sure they are captured somewhere other than in my head.  Some might end up being scheduled or tasked.  Others I will include in start-of-year discussions with the team. I always feel lighter for it, especially the stuff I need to discuss with my team.

So, if you’re back at work and feel you’ve waded into where you left off, it might be worth taking some time out to do your own mind dump.

Get your Inbox clear

This is crucial at the start of the year. Don’t carry over clutter from last year into this year. Be ruthless with your inbox and get it to zero for the first time in 2018.

Consider archiving anything in your inbox that’s pre-December. Let’s face it, if it’s still there you’ve probably done it, it never needed action in the first place, or it’s gone way past its use-by date. Move on with your life and clear it all in one fell swoop.  Then take what’s left and process down more thoughtfully, taking any important emails and turning them into tasks or blocked out time in your calendar.

Getting your Inbox to zero at the start of the year will also give you some insight into what other people are expecting you to do. When you are clear about this, you can start to plan how and when you are going to deliver on these requests.

Get your priorities clear

Finally, you need to get clear about your real priorities for the next few weeks, months or even the coming year. It’s not enough to fill up your schedule by clearing your inbox. The real value in this clearing activity lies in working out what priorities you need to focus on over the coming period. Your calendar and task list should be a balance between the reactive activities that have come to you, and the proactive important activities you have scheduled yourself.

2018 is going to be a busy year, no doubt. But whether it is a productive year is totally up to you. I know that starting the year with clarity rather than confusion is always a great start.

One of the most common ways that we cause productivity friction in our team is through unnecessary and unproductive meetings. Not every meeting is unnecessary or unproductive, but many are, and most could be tightened up at least a bit.

I hear stories about meetings from clients that would make your blood boil and your toes curl! Stories of late starts, late finishes, unclear outcomes, no-show decision makers and lack of planning. Meetings are a keystone activity for modern work, yet we don’t seem to have nailed how to maximise productivity when we come together to collaborate.

I reckon there are four things wrong with meetings in most organisations:

1. We call too many meetings;
2. These meetings are generally longer than necessary;
3. Too many participants are invited just in case; and
4. The meetings are poorly planned and organised.

This means many people in your team are spending time in meetings each week that aren’t necessary, or aren’t achieving clear outcomes, or both. There’s a huge cost for the business to run this activity. Firstly, there’s the cost of the resources – the hourly overhead for each person in the meeting, plus lights, equipment and even coffee or refreshments. But the real cost is the opportunity cost. What great work could those participants be doing if not stuck in another meeting, listening to another PowerPoint presentation?

The number one issue I am asked to help senior executives resolve is creating more time to plan and think. They don’t get this because they spend all their waking hours in meetings. It is too much, and in most organisations, it needs to be cut back.

In Smart Teams, my new book coming in May 2018, I will be talking about how you and your team could reduce meetings by 100%! It is easy if you look at it this way – 25% fewer meetings, 25% shorter meetings, 25% less participants and 25% less wasted time in meetings. Easy!

Why not try this quick exercise to see how much of your schedule is taken up with less than effective meetings? Look back at your calendar over the past couple of weeks.

1. How many meetings could have been shorter and achieved the same result?
2. How many were not the best use of your time, and should not have in your schedule at all?
3. How many had more participants than was necessary?
4. Were there more spectators than participants?
5. Finally, how many meetings had a clear objective, with a matching agenda to drive the outcome?

If you are less than happy with the results of this quick review, you may need to think about the meeting culture in your team or organisation. This is something than can be changed with some focused effort, and good leadership. Let me know if you would like to discuss making this a priority for your team in 2018.

My upcoming book, Smart Teams is essentially about how we work together more productively, and how we reduce the friction we cause each other when we interact. One of the main ways we cause productivity friction is when we communicate using tools like email. We may not mean to, but we create way too much noise for our colleagues, and they create way too much noise for us.

This noise consumes a great deal of our time and energy, and may even distract us from our core priorities. And it’s not just email that is to blame. We are distracted by other communication tools like Instant Messaging, Enterprise Social Media, and project tools like Slack and Giro. They all serve a purpose, but come with a level of noise that is unacceptable in my opinion.

In Smart Work we looked at strategies the receiver of emails can employ to reduce the volume of noise showing up in their inbox.  In Smart Teams I explore strategies to reduce the volume of noise caused by the people generating the emails. This has a positive productivity impact across the whole team, and gets to the root of the problem.

So, what can you do to reduce the noise that you are generating when you communicate? Here are a few tips that will help you and your team:

• CC with purpose – Think carefully about who you copy into an email. Always consider when and why.  For instance, will the other person benefit from being included now, or would it be better to loop them in later?
• Reduce one-liner responses – It’s not necessary to respond to every email your colleagues send. For instance, a genuine “thank you” for great work is a no-brainer, but you don’t have to say thanks as a standard response to everything.  To remove any doubt for the receiver, consider adding NRR (no response required) at the end of your subject line.
• Avoid hyper-responsiveness to emails – Do you jump on every email the second it shows up in your inbox? This type of hyper-responsiveness generally leads to an increase in the number of emails being ‘transacted’.  And if everyone in your team does this, the number of emails generated grows exponentially.  This is one of the reasons it is better to batch together when you check your emails.
• Use the right tool for the job – Email isn’t always the best way to communicate, especially if the issue is time critical. For something very time critical, get up and talk to your colleague, or make a phone call.  Perhaps a short IM will get you the information you need faster than if you had emailed.  To reduce email overload, it is important for everyone in the team to agree that, for most emails, an instant response is not expected.

So, nothing ground breaking or revolutionary here. Just plain old common sense. But are you doing these things? Are you communicating in a mindful way that helps your colleagues to maximise their productivity? If you change how you communicate with them, they might change how they communicate with you. Win-win I reckon.