Procrastination breakthrough

November 3, 2022

Have you got something really important to do that’s top of your list and requires your best effort and absolute focus?

Do you also find that a tonne of other things keep getting in the way and jumping the queue for your attention?

And do you, like me, recognise that this is at least partly because of your own tendency to procrastinate when it comes to getting started on things that are a bit more challenging than responding to the next email, or picking up some other incidental task?

This was exactly where I was yesterday. I had some writing to do for our monthly newsletter and absolutely had to get it done.

Knowing what to do – I’m coaching others on this stuff every day – and doing it are not the same thing!

I was working at home, so I finished up for the morning and had lunch with my wife. Over lunch I told her that I had been procrastinating on doing this work, and straight after lunch I would be tackling it. So now I’m accountable.

After lunch I sat at my computer and closed down every possible distraction – Outlook, WhatsApp, Teams. I put my phone to airplane mode. I chose an instrumental playlist that I find good to work to – there’s lots of evidence to suggest deep focus is easier when there’s some noise rather than absolute silence which tends to mean you become aware of every sound.

I opened the clock on my PC and selected ‘Focus Sessions’. There are options in 15-minute increments. I find 30 minutes works best for me.

I started the music and started the clock, keeping the countdown visible on my second screen while I got into the work.

The first 7 or 8 minutes were quite tough. Getting into it is the hardest part, which is why regular distractions are so damaging. We can find ourselves constantly throughout the day fighting to get into things rather than breaking through that initial barrier until the work becomes easier.

Yesterday afternoon was, because of the preparation, not one of these occasions. I got properly into it!

Suddenly the 30-minute timer was beeping. It didn’t seem possible that it had already been half an hour, but I was progressing well with the work by then. Sometimes it’s good to pause and have a quick break before getting on again, but sometimes when you’re in the flow, stick with it. I started another 30-minute timer straight away, and then another. 90 minutes of what felt like my maximum concentration and I’d done what had been hanging around in my mind and on my list for a few days, and quite enjoyed it.

Preparation. Focus. Discipline. Process.

Ah, one other key thing. I had already decided what I was going to do, something I was looking forward to, once I had finished. That helps a lot.

Everyone struggles with this kind of thing to varying degrees and it never hurts to review what you’re doing and work out your strategy for when you need to tackle something important.

Just one focus session like this every day can make an incredible difference.

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Posted by nick howes

Simple, but not easy!

October 18, 2022

I was talking with a client who is going through the LMI Effective Personal Productivity programme and expressed embarrassment at the fact they are still hindered by what are, in essence, very simple challenges. The reality is that these ‘simple’ challenges are not easy to deal with and it takes time, practice and grace towards ourselves and others.

Here’s a short video on the matter:

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofl56J2TF_8

What we know from experience is that knowing what to do and doing it are two very different things, which is why it takes a process, over time, with practice, feedback and accountability, to make lasting, long-term changes.

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Posted by nick howes

Rediscovering #Mission168

October 11, 2022

It’s time to rediscover and reactivate the blog, and specifically the Mission168 hashtag which is embedded in my banner image.

#Mission168 is about making the most of every single week, each gathered cluster of 168 hours. Since I last wrote, I’ve come across Oliver Burkeman’s excellent book, “Four Thousand Weeks” which I have listened to on audiobook at least twice. I very much share his thoughts about productivity and fulfilment coming not from constantly seeking to do as much as we possibly can, but from ’embracing finitude’ and accepting we can’t do everything.

I absolutely love Burkeman’s phrase, “the joy of missing out” – i.e. I have consciously chosen to do what I am now doing and gladly embrace the fact that I am not doing everything else that I could possibly be doing instead!

All this has been brought to the front of mind by a few recent conversations with clients centred around the power of the weekly plan. In LMI we use a very simple form called ‘Time Picture’ or ‘My Ideal Week.’

It’s outrageously simple, prompting the user to complete a plan that outlines what they would like to include in their ideal week. Here’s the thing I love about this excercise. Nearly everyone I speak to feels busy and overstretched. Almost all have things they’d like to be doing – specific, important things around health, family, community, wellbeing and work – that they currently don’t have time for and yet, when you start to map these activities onto the 168 hour slots in the weekly plan, including plenty of time for sleep, eating, travel etc, they almost always fit, with plenty to spare.

If you’d like to have a go at completing your own Time Picture, get in touch and I’ll send you a copy.

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Posted by nick howes

Do what you always do, but different.

June 1, 2020

It’s the start of a new month, June 2020. We are in a period of history that none of us will ever forget. Remember February this year? How different does that seem now?

The times are changing again; the rules are flexing. Who knows what the world – your world – will look like in another four months!

So, as we start a new month, indecision and uncertainty can easily payalyse us.

Because there’s so much you don’t know, how can you possibly make plans? How can you take action when you don’t know whether they’ll be the ‘right’ actions given the changing circumstances?

All valid questions. So what should you do?

Answer: do the same as you always do, but different.

Go to your system – the one you use every month to review the previous and plan the next. The system that helps you set goals and establish priorities for the next four weeks. The system that helps you set up progress tracking towards your goals and recording your success with the habits you’re working on developing.  The system that you rely on to make sure you schedule time for your high payoff activities and reminds you of your ‘big picture’ (purpose, mission and values) so the vision of what you are living for is crystal clear.

Such a planning system is absolute gold. Most people had them in the 80s and 90s. Their large, leather-bound organisers with templates for setting goals, making plans, communicating well and remembering to spend time doing the most important things, day by day, week by week, month by month.

Then we went all technological. We moved on.

But we didn’t take our systems with us into the new media. We left them behind and with it a whole heap of healthy habits were lost.

If you’re reading this and you don’t have a brilliant system for planning June 2020, we need to do something about that. You see, when you have a system that you know inside-out, one that you’ve used time and time again, it’s much, much easier to adapt to changing times. Just follow the process but with different inputs. I can’t do X this month, but I can do Y. A and B may be uncertain, so I’ll focus extra effort on C because that’s within my control.

I’ll end simply with this: get a system. LMI have a brilliant one and I’m always happy to share that. You can design your own if you’re so inclined. Buy one – Best Self Planner is a great option – borrow one, phone a friend. By any means, get a system that works for you. Then you can do the same, month by month, every month, but different.

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Posted by nick howes

DIY Deadline Day

August 31, 2017

It’s Transfer Deadline Day in the football world, with the transfer window bolted shut at 11pm tonight. Any business that clubs don’t get done by that cast-iron cut-off point doesn’t happen….at least until the window opens again on 1st January.

Many I know, and I humbly confess to being one of them, will be refreshing the deadline day news apps on phones quite a few times between now and 11pm.

Watch

Whether you’re a fellow ‘refresher’ or have no interest at all, you can’t escape the fact that the deadline creates activity and lots gets done. The transfer window has been open all summer but it’s today that many of the deals get completed. It’s do or die, now or never, time to go and make it happen!

There’s something incredible about the deadline that generates action. We humans can’t seem to resist it’s power. Whether it’s ‘last day of early bird booking rate’, tax return submission day, job application cut-off, the big tender due date or the last day at work before holidays, the time when time is running out is so often when we are at our most productive.

Somehow our lack of self-discipline, poor self-motivation and well-honed procrastination skills all get put aside as the shadow of the pending deadline looms large!

My aim here is not to look at why this is, but rather to think about how we can use this naturally occurring phenomenon to our huge advantage.

What happens when we don’t have a big, externally-dictated deadline looming?

Here are three ways to harness some of the power of the deadline every single day:

1) Set a deadline for when you are going to finish working today

Make your plans, write your lists, set about your daily work but with a definite end-time which is 100% inflexible. I guarantee you’ll work more efficiently knowing that you can’t just keep going ‘for as long as it takes’.

2) Set the clock on a piece of work

When you have a large project or specific task that needs your focussed attention and you don’t know how long it will take, it can be really hard to get going with any sense of urgency. This is especially true if it’s one of those long-term projects that will generally improve the world but lacks any definite ‘we need it by then’ dates. Here’s where it can be really helpful to set yourself set blocks of time to make as much progress as possible. Choose a realistic period, an hour often works, to get your head down and concentrate only on that task. Set a timer and keep it visible in front of you and keep going until it beeps. Then schedule your next block of time to pick it up again.

3) Create an arbitrary deadline and make it public

Sometimes we will be more motivated by the potential for public shame than just the satisfaction of our own achievement! Where this is the case, set a date for a project, a launch, an event…anything really…and tell people. ‘Going public’ might be telling your family, your team, the whole office, your clients, all your social media followers or even the Stock Exchange. But do it and see the difference it makes!

The unavoidable truth is that deadlines work like a dream and, as is the case for many ‘refreshers’ today, can even make things a little bit more exciting!

 

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Posted by nick howes

Success by routines

August 30, 2017

Are you feeling rested, refreshed and energised to launch full-steam ahead into the Autumn? Perhaps for you or some colleagues, “exhausted and glad the kids are going back to school is more like it”?!

However you’re feeling as August comes to a close, the Autumn does tend to be a really productive – dare we say, ‘busy’ – few months where the natural lull in routine created by the summer gives way to full-scale activity.

Here’s a warning right away. As you well know, activity doesn’t equal productivity. Being busy and working hard doesn’t guarantee results.

With this in mind, my ‘one-percent’ recommendation is that you take some time to review and re-establish your routines – the regular habits that keep you on track. After a break in the norm, it can take more effort than we think to get back into good work habits rather than starting with email and seeing where the day takes us!

There are key activities that if practised routinely, make a huge difference to your productivity. Here are just a few examples:

– 10 magic minutes daily planning
– week review & planning meetings
– regular team meetings and one-to-one’s
– booked out periods of uninterrupted time
– finishing work at a set time to do other stuff!

I’m sure you could add to the list. Give it some thought and make a conscious effort (& book it it the diary!) to re-establish those routines that will help you stay a little bit more in control, focused on your high-payoff activities and working towards important goals over the next few months.

Here’s to a fantastic September!

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Posted by nick howes

We Buy Any Hour

March 1, 2017

Have you seen the latest WeBuyAnyCar.com adverts? They are very interesting.

If not, here’s 30 seconds that will put you in the picture:

https://youtu.be/p10Oiwe7MdM?list=PLTci7XJwYZCkOuOqKbOdTaxPY61D5hCPM

There’s a whole series of these. In one, the lady on the sofa tells us that she happily sold her car with this company even though she could have got a better price selling privately, then adds:

“Yeah, they just let me say that in an ad for WeBuyAnyCar.com… cos they know quite a lot of us value our time more than a few extra quid.”

timecartoonlinkedinTime-pressure is consistently one of the greatest challenges most of the people are facing. In fact, it’s becoming a national epidemic and yet, despite the continual frustration of not having enough time to do everything we want to do, we can still invest significant amounts of our precious 168 hours each week doing things that really aren’t that important.

This is what WeBuyAnyCar.com have tapped into. What they are saying is, “Your time is the most valuable thing that you have. Spend it on important things, with important people, not in doing something you don’t like, you aren’t very good at and, at the end of the day, isn’t worth much anyway.”

One of the most helpful things I think you can do to help with this is to settle on a fixed figure, yes an actual amount – in pounds, of how much one hour of your time is worth.

How you come to this figure is not so important. You can divide your earnings by the hours you work. You can divide the amount you aspire to earn by the amount of hours you’d like to work. You may just come up with a number based on what someone would have to pay you to take you away from doing something very important and give them that time instead.

Let’s say you settle on £50/hour. Now write that figure down and carry it with you for a week. Put it in your wallet, your purse on in your pocket. Now consciously live with it and see how it affects what you do with your time, inside and outside of work.

Is an hour round the dinner table with my family or good friends worth it? Yes. How about an hour watching something rubbish on tele? Perhaps not.

This is what these adverts are tapping into. Is an extra 150 quid worth half of your weekend and all that hassle?

I’m not one who advocates living at high intensity all the time. The truth is that if we spend enough of our time concentrating on the most valuable activities in a focused and productive manner, the likelihood is we will have plenty left to relax and enjoy the things we value most.

If some more insight on this subject would be helpful, I ran a webinar called ‘Who Stole My Day?’ and it’s available here as an on-demand reply. It’s a better use of your time than watching adverts on YouTube!

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Posted by nick howes

#FreeMyFriday – Start with a list

February 13, 2015

It’s Friday, which, in my world immediately poses one question: is my Friday free?

For some time now I’ve been really focused on helping managers and leaders to seriously improve their productivity to the extent that they have a whole extra day each week, typically Friday though sometimes taken in a couple of half days or shorter regular slots, to concentrate entirely on the the important development work that will improve or move things forward in significant ways. The key to this is the implementation of proven techniques and finding innovative new ways to get the usual five days’ work done in four so our heads can emerge from the day-to-day and consider the bigger picture.

Don’t we all face the massive challenge of handling the myriad of stuff that comes our way every day, spinning those plates as best we can just to keep our heads above water?

Doesn’t that continually leave us with that irritating (sometimes downright depressing!) feeling that genuinely important work that would make a big difference if we could only get time to do it, lies untouched for yet another week?

This is what #FreeMyFriday is all about and it starts with making that list.

Start with writing a really clear and concise list of the things you would love to get round to doing – things like going after new customers, training your team members, taking your team out to lunch, designing some new product or service offering, reading more, perhaps even finishing early and taking the kids out after school…the list will be specific to your role and the demands of the business you’re in. But do – for goodness sake – go ahead and write it!

It’s just the beginning, but it’s a super-important beginning. Being clear about where you want to go has an incredible way of enabling you to find solutions to the challenges that prevent you from getting there.

Have a fantastic Friday…and maybe now even you could start writing the list of what you’d like to be doing this time next week?

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Posted by nick howes

One hour: massive change

December 16, 2014

There’s a problem, a challenge, an issue – something is not right.

It may be a relationship issue with a colleague or a client, a friend or partner. Often it’s a member of our team, or the boss! It may be a process issue, perhaps a ‘how can we get more of xxxxxx?’ or ‘how can we make sure less xxxxx happens?’ question.

Sometimes these things can hang around for months – years in some situations I’m aware of. Some can be very complicated and require an awful lot of work and skilled help to resolve however, an incredible amount – I’m going to make an informed guess of around 80% – of the challenges that you and I face on a day-to-day basis can be massively improved if the relevant parties can sit down, block out all interruptions, get some good coffee…AND TALK. It might take longer or shorter, but aim for an hour.

I’ve seen it with clients. I’ve experienced it myself. If you face something like this, try it. One hour: massive change.

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Posted by nick howes

A simple lesson from school we stupidly forgot!

July 25, 2013

Do you remember being at school and worrying about how you were going to fit everything in? I mean, it was crazy – so many different things going on, way too much to remember!

How on earth did we manage to fit in Maths, English, French, History, Geography, General Studies (!), Chemistry, Biology, P.E., R.E., Physics….the list goes on.

And yet, as I recall it, I never once fretted about how I was going to manage to squeeze in enough lessons of each subject to get through the curriculum and be ready for exams at the end of it.

Why not?

Simple. We had a timetable.

This is very profound. We had a schedule to follow that allocated blocks of time for each subject that would allow us sufficient number of hours working on the material that would prepare us for the end goal – passing exams.

Why is it then that having left school, and with just as many different things coming our way in life and in work, that we tend to wing it…hoping we’ll manage to fit it all in, responding to the things that shout loudest, often leaving insufficient time for seriously important things.

Solution? Simple. Timetable it.

The creation of a weekly timetable, or Time Picture, as we call is, is often one of those massive ‘light bulb moments’ for our clients as the realisation dawns…

“You don’t find time; you schedule it.”

We used to know that in school. We forgot.

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Posted by nick howes

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