Cameron Test Bootstrap: March 2015

Red Light, Green Light

By Kevin Payravi (Own work)
[CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)
or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Did you ever sit through a traffic light, only to have it turn green and only allow enough time for two or three cars to go through before it was red again?
Every time this happens to me, I begin to have delusions that I am a civil engineer and I could plan traffic flows better than the folks that do it. Maybe I could, maybe not, but ultimately that's not my job. But I have to think that for me, the driver, having a non-stop green light in my lane would clearly be the most efficient way for me to get to my destination.
Likely, you (like me) have erected stop lights throughout your day to prohibit you from being as productive as you could be. Or perhaps you have set up obstacles to accomplishing your goals throughout the year. Some of those obstacles may just be other goals or tasks.
When we try to do too much at once, we really accomplish less. There is a certain sweetness to the flow that we can get into when we focus on important tasks and clear everything out of their way until they are accomplished. Several studies show that our desire to multitask actually impedes our ability to get tasks completed. So why do we continue to bite off more than we can chew?
Imagine again that traffic light, cars lined up in every direction. The light turns green for three seconds at a time. Only a few of them are ever making it through that collision spot that is the intersection, even in a ten to fifteen second window. Now imagine it as a single lane of cars with a green light in their direction and no cross-traffic. How many cars make it through the intersection in this fifteen seconds?
The key to getting your productivity to look like that second line of cars is to treat it the same way. Align your goals so that they are heading in the same direction. Clear obstacles or directional changes out of the way so they can go full speed ahead. And then work them serially. Most important first, then the next, then the next. Make those interruptions that would skewer your productivity fall in line, somewhere in the priority list of actions. And press down on the accelerator (for the front car, at least).

Simple Formula

Business and commerce are not concepts that are particularly complex or confusing. In fact, any successful business follows a relatively simple formula:

Make a product or provide a service that people want to buy
Get people aware of that product or service
Sell the product or service for more than it costs you to produce
Do it over and over again and scale alongside it

Everything about improving business boils down to "sell more at lower cost." So which side of the business do you find yourself on? Selling more or reducing cost? If you don't know, how can you effectively move the needle for the company?

Vacation Day

By English: U.S. Department of the Interior,
Office of Insular Affairs 日本語: アメリカ合衆国内務省島嶼局
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Today's a vacation day for me. Although I wish that I could say I was relaxing on a beach that looks something like the one in the picture here, today is not one of those kinds of vacation days. Perhaps it is more of a "staycation" day as I plan to spend it at home.
Americans have, in recent years, been flagged as taking fewer and fewer vacation days. This article on MarketWatch indicates that in general, Americans only take about half of their allocated vacation days. And there is a whole initiative driven by the travel industry to study the effects of unused vacation on the economy. Their study said more than four of ten people left vacation days on the table, resulting in 429 million unused vacation days in 2013.
That is a lot of beach time, or even stay at home time, unused.
For me, my vacation time is often booked up, clearing up to do lists around the house, doing yardwork, or even playing golf or doing something fun that then takes up the day. Rarely do I just sit on the couch and waste a day away (though I have done that, one, too). Still, there is a huge importance to taking these days.
The studies above would tell you that most Americans feel they can't miss a day of work because they will get further behind, they will have perceptions of being a slacker, or they will just end up working on their day off anyway. I would offer a counter-opinion.
If you never take a day off (even to just do chores around the house), you will end up burned out at work, blaming your job for never getting anything done outside of work, less enthusiastic about making a difference at the office, working with lower energy, feeling locked in the "rat race" with no ability to enjoy the fruits of your labor. And at the end of the year, you'll either try to take lots of vacation at once or just turn that excess in.
For me, even if I just take the day to do some writing or knock out chores around the house, I'll return to work Monday feeling more accomplished, with a shorter to do list at home looming over my head, and refreshed and recharged to get back to work. And, let's be honest, I'll build in some total time-wasting slack time today, too, to help reduce stress and relax. If I return to an extra four hundred emails in my Inbox? I can likely process those in quick succession if I dedicate some time to it, or I can chunk away at it in pieces without feeling like it controls me.
So go ahead, if you have paid time off, use some of it. Every now and then. Your work will be better for it.

Cloak and Dagger

By Julo (Own work) [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

Last night, I had a dream about international espionage, murder, and a conspiracy to cover it up. At the office. Makes the real issues and drama that we experience in the workplace so much more mundane, doesn't it?

In the end (right before I woke up), the plot had started to unravel, just like it would in a spy novel. Lies started to be exposed and the liars who told them. Gossip spread around the office about the truth coming out. The entire cover-up began fading away as more and more facts surfaced. Those responsible became more and more nervous that they would soon be found out.

All in all, it was a pretty intense dream. More intense than workplace situations that I find myself in on a normal daily basis. The dream highlighted something for me, though: the need to conduct yourself in the workplace as an open and honest individual and to operate with integrity. That doesn't mean you have to be an open book. It doesn't mean that there aren't pieces of information, upcoming events, business practices or strategies that the entirety of the corporation does not need to know about. It doesn't mean sharing details that are inappropriate for the audience. But what it does mean is doing everything from the right place. Having an honest and positive intent towards your actions. Being able to learn from your mistakes rather than hide them or pass them on others. Recognizing, as a manager, that ultimately the actions of your employees are your responsibility.

We all make mistakes. But those mistakes are easier to accept within an organization if two things are true: First, that the intent was good, even if the execution was flawed. And second, if the person who made the mistake can admit it and move on from it.

What other traits or examples do you find demonstrates a person's integrity?

Follow The Leader

By Christopher Michel from San Francisco, USA (follow the leader)
[CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

I posted the following thought a few weeks ago on LinkedIn:

It would be pretty difficult to teach kids to play Follow The Leader if the leader is at the back of the line. Leaders lead from the front. Easier said than done, sometimes, but worth a try and you can set an example.

Got a couple of comments back - one being that those being led need to consent. One other comment pointed out that leadership is not something you can self measure, but rather something that is judged by those that follow.

Both great points - but one other thing I think I missed in that comment. Leaders have to know where they are going. Doesn't matter if you are leading from the front or pushing from behind. If you don't know where you are going, you might steer (or push) the rest of the team off of a cliff. Still better, in my opinion, to be the first one off the cliff. At least you can let the rest of the team know what perils lie ahead.

Getting Stuff Done

I bet you have a "To Do" list. I do. In fact, I have a list at work, a personal list, a list of things to write about, a list of places I'd like to visit, things to do around the house. All in all, I have several To Do lists.

The challenge comes when the list gets so long that it seems unmanageable. I know I catch myself snoozing 30 reminders that pop up en masse, and after snoozing the third time or so, I start to challenge the effectiveness of my list.

How to Start Getting More Done

Rather than wonder why you can't seem to get anything done (maybe I'll touch on that later), I'd respond with a challenge: Get one thing done today.

Pick something off of your list that you can accomplish today. That is your one goal for the day. If noise, interruptions, other obligations, meetings, or anything else gets in the way, know that that means overtime or staying up late until you get that one thing done.

What's your one thing
to get done today?
Tweet This!

Do that every day until you get one thing done for two solid weeks (hint, it can be something off of any of your lists). Once you make it two weeks, try to get two things done.

What's your one thing to get done today?

Why You Should Start This Way

If you feel overwhelmed, you may start to fall into paralysis trying to figure out how to start. Trying to get just one task off of your list a day forces you to think about your ever-growing lists of to-dos.

More importantly, though, you are trying to build a habit. This phase tries to build out a few different habits all at once (both a reason to start here and a reason that starting is difficult).

First, you establish the practice of getting one thing accomplished of course. That's the obvious step. But you also build up a habitual routine of evaluating your backlog of items, prioritizing them, sizing them, and knowing your own limitations. You also get into the routine of pushing the noise and interruptions out of the way to accomplish your one most important task.

What's Different About This Methodology?

Just about nothing.

That's right. This method looks a whole lot like every other productivity hack out there, filling up articles on every share-friendly site on the web.

But by taking a gradual approach to boosting your throughput, it does minimize the shock to your system. You shouldn't get overwhelmed by one more thing to do, prioritizing your tasks. Instead, you should start to feel liberated as tasks disappear from your backlog every day.

Want to know what else is different here? You. Right now you are still reading this article, thinking to yourself, "I can do one thing a day. How hard is that?" That mentality will fuel you to get started and run faster than you know in terms of checking those items off your list.

But I'll warn you right now: it's really hard. You might make it two weeks. You might make it through the whole challenge. But when you don't have a clear timeline and set of tasks, you become responsible for pushing yourself forward. The good news, though, is that once you establish good patterns and habits? You can jump back into them.

I'll be perfectly straight with you, though. If you can't commit to focusing on this exercise every day, you will fall out of the habit pretty quickly. I have. Several times. But when you recognize you're once again out of sorts, you can always start again right here.

So What's Next?

Oh, you're so smart you want to jump ahead, do you? Don't. Get yourself in the habit of prioritizing and doing one thing a day. You can do that. Master it. Own it. Know that you can do it. You sit in complete control of your tasks.

Once you have completed that, then you can jump ahead to step two. Once you're ready, here you go. I'll warn you now - it's not flashy. This whole process is based on brute force and slowly acclimating one step at a time towards an almost subconscious process.