Is Everything Really Worth Doing?

Jackie English
Instructional Design Manager
Baker Communications, Inc.

We are all under tremendous pressure to get more done in less time these days. Corporate clients, as well as individual customers, are increasingly seeking help by enrolling in time management training in hopes that there is some secret technique or magic bullet - maybe some kind of space/time multiplexor that would expand the bounds of physics - and allow them to get more things done every day.

Sounds ideal, doesn‘t it? But guess what? Getting more things done should not be the goal. The problem is that people are trying to get too many things done! Yes, you read that correctly. People are trying to schedule too many tasks, accepting too many assignments, juggling too many responsibilities, and getting totally bogged down and overwhelmed as a result.

The key to increasing your personal productivity is very simple: Learn to say NO.

Wikipedia defines time management as the act or process of exercising conscious control over the amount of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase efficiency or productivity. Another way to say it is that effective time management means being intentional about the tasks you commit to, or allow yourself to be committed to. Translation: time management is largely what you say "yes" and "no" to.

With that in mind, here are 5 tips for how to say NO to things that can erode your productivity:

1. First of all, you must have a good handle on what your high-value goals are—those things that are the most important to you and your organization, and that determine your ability to be successful. The phrase "make or break" comes to mind, doesn‘t it? For a sales manager, that high-value goal may be to spend more time coaching team members; for a sales rep it may be cultivating that top 20% of the customer base that drives 80% of the revenue; for a parent, it might be keeping weekends clear to be with your kids. Whatever it is, you have to know what it is so you can protect and emphasize those most important goals.

2. Separate what is merely urgent from what is truly important. Very often, we get hit with requests that are urgent to someone, and these folks try to pull us into helping them manage their "emergency." However, just because it is urgent to them doesn‘t necessarily mean it should be urgent to us. Despite what we often think, "urgent" and "important" are not synonyms unless we behave as if they are.

Several years ago Stephen Covey popularized a handy little graph that you can use to guide you as you sort out requests and activities, and decide how to deal with those urgent interruptions that create havoc for your schedule. It looks like this:

The top left box is for important, urgent items. These "go-to-the- head- of-the-line items" need to be dealt with immediately.

In the bottom left box, put items that are important, but not urgent. They are significant enough to require your attention, but not immediately. Block out time to deal with them at a later date.

The top right box is for items which are urgent to someone, but un-important to you. That may seem contradictory until you realize that the phrase "poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part" was coined for these kinds of projects. Unless this request comes from your boss, avoid getting drawn into these tasks by applying the techniques in 3 and 4 below.

The bottom right box is for items that come across your desk which are not only not urgent, but which have no value in helping you achieve your most important goals. They don‘t have to be seen about any time soon, and would add little, if any, value to you even if you did commit time to them. In short, they are trivial time-wasters and should be minimized or eliminated.

3. Learn to delegate.

Not many people are good at delegating, and when you think about it, not many people are the top of their professions. Could there be a connection? There could, and there is. Excellent leaders and managers do not do everything themselves. They encourage, enable, and motivate others to do important assignments. When you come down to it, a lot of people are afraid to delegate. The first thing they tell themselves is that by the time they assign the task to someone else, and maybe have to train them to do it, they could do it themselves. What they don‘t realize is that this is a formula for them to keep doing it forever.

The next thing to worry about is that if I did delegate it to someone, that person wouldn‘t do it up to my standards, the project would suffer, someone – maybe a customer or the boss - would get mad, and I would still have to come in and clean it up later. So, I think, "I might as well go ahead and do it myself." Again, when we think like this, we fail to recognize the consequences. We have trapped ourselves into having to do it again (and again,) while stunting the professional growth of someone in the organization who could learn by doing. In fact, the other person to whom the task could be delegated might find even better ways to do it if the "won‘t-let-go-of-it supervisor" would get out of the way. In the beginning, delegating does take effort and patience, but in the long run it frees up loads of time.

4. Learn to firmly, carefully say "no" to requests that come in, but which don‘t relate to your most important goals for the day. You don‘t have to be rude. You just have to say "I would like to help with that, but I am booked up today with other commitments." (You don‘t have to elaborate any further by mentioning that those commitments include trying to keep a commitment to yourself to get your high priority tasks done today.)

You might also be able to defer it –"I could get to it next Monday if that would help." – Or, you could refer it – "Have you checked with Gloria?" But if you don‘t say no to these interruptions, you will be buried by them.

What do you do if the request is from a boss who is loading you up with requests, the kind boss who doesn‘t remember that he had already given you a big project yesterday? You may not be able to say no, but you can push back by saying: "Here are the current projects you have assigned to me. What do you want the priorities to be? Which one do you want completed first? Where does this one fit? Here is when I can complete this newest project unless you reorder my priorities." The main thing is to keep lines of communication open. Don‘t assume that since a new request came from the boss it should automatically trump everything else on your list.

5. Say no to yourself. You also have to set boundaries for how long you will work and when you won‘t work, or you run the risk of becoming a workaholic. Workaholics become addicted to the adrenalin rush and to the sense of self-importance they get from staying busy all the time. They often have an image themselves being the "hero" who will go to extreme measures to get the job done.

Most workaholics are out there flying that super-hero cape, coming to the rescue of the team or the company or the customer. At the same time, they are killing themselves with stress and killing their relationships with neglect. They never really stop working in order to give their full attention to the other important people and activities needed in life to be happy and healthy.

If you have these tendencies, you need to learn to set hard and fast rules about when to quit working every day, when to stop checking your email, stop texting, and what to do and not do regarding work on weekends and holidays. If you don‘t, the quality of your work will plummet, you will lose your focus and your creativity, become emotionally exhausted, and end up hating your life. No matter how successful you are in your work, and how big a hero you may appear to be to everyone on the job, learning to say "no" is the tonic you need in order to do a better job of managing your time, which - in the end – means you will do a better job of managing your life.
 

Walter Rogers is the President and CEO of Baker Communications. Baker Communications is a sales training and development company specializing in helping client companies increase their sales and management effectiveness. He can be reached at 713-627-7700.

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