Less-Is-More Blog by Pierre Khawand

Our tasks can take much more time than necessary. This tends to happen more so when we are dreading the task for one reason or another, our motivation is low, and we would rather be doing something else or not doing anything at all. We try to keep at it, and hope that miraculously we will get it done, and it keeps expanding and spiraling into this never-ending thing as our resistance grows and grows.

Now consider this. It is a similar task but on a different day or time. But this time, we happen to be in a good "mood". Life is good for whatever reason. We are motivated. We are moving faster (mentally and physically). We seem to stumble upon creative ways to address issues that once before were challenging or even overwhelming.

Wouldn't be nice to be able to somehow inject a doze of the latter "attitude" in the former situation and turn things around.

Here are some "attitude" changers to consider and act upon

1. Stop! There is no point in going when our wheels are spinning in place. We are not getting anywhere anyway. We are hitting the diminished return area on the Results Curve^TM. Stopping may involve resetting expectations, but whatever it takes, we need to stop!

2. Play! Go as far away from the task as you can, mentally and physically. Whether a 5 minute meditational exercise, a 10 minute walk, or a dance class, or whatever it takes to dissolve whatever it is that is getting a hold of our motivation. The Now Habit goes as far as suggesting scheduling play time first before getting to the task time.

3. Better Manage Stress! It is possible that there are some underlying issues that are causing us more stress and worry than usual and that are confiscating our energy and our motivation. No matter how hard we try to solve the surface issues, if not addressed, these underlying issues will continue to slow us down. The thing to do is to address them one way or another. Refer to chapter 10 in The Accomplishing More With Less Workbook for some practical techniques.

4. Divide & Conquer! Divide the task into smaller components. Make each component no longer than 30 or even better 40 minutes worth of effort. Reset your own expectation about how long this task will take based on your new plan.

5. Acknowledge "effort"! Instead of being only end-results driven in this case, it would help us to shift our mind to "effort" instead of "results." Maybe counter-intuitive, but this may be exactly what we need to get over the hump and get to the end results. Don't forget to reward yourself along the way as you make progress.

6. Reach out! Reach out and get support in whatever way, form, or shape is applicable. Never Eat Alone emphasizes that more often than not, people are willing to help and we just need to ask, and we need to help them help us.

Happy new "attitude"!

I needed to dive into this task that I reserved time for on my calendar which was to prepare for a Lotus Notes training session. I scheduled this on my calendar because it is important and I would like to get it done soon. To tell you the truth, lotus notes is not my favorite. I know my IBM friends may be a bit disappointed, but I think deep down, they know that too. So my mind came up with several interesting excuses, giving me great reasons and alibis for not doing what I know is the "right" thing for now.

Excuse #1 (my mind talking to me): "You need to post the blog entry that you promised your SharePoint participants earlier this week."

Excuse #2: "How about catching up on e-mail, making sure you're up-to-date, and no important issues outstanding before you dive into your focused Lotus Notes session."

Excuse #3: "And there is this preparation for this other presentation tomorrow, don't you want to at least capture your initial ideas in a rough draft?"

Well, I decided to fall for Excuse #4 (i.e. my mind came up with a new one that was very plausible and very difficult for me to resist) and that is to share these thoughts with you as they are happening. And then no more excuses after that. There is one and only one thing to do after this blog entry is posted. This would be facing the task. Facing Lotus Notes head to head!

Your to-do?

Check-in with yourself right now, as you read this blog entry, what is it that you are avoiding or postponing? What is your "Lotus Notes". Finish what you're doing, and tackle this important task head it to head.  Dedicate the next 40 minutes (not 30, but 40) to be fully focused on this task!

Write to me afterwards any reflections you might have had and the results were.

We all seem to complain about e-mail, and that we get too much e-mail, and yet we all seem to contribute considerably to this e-mail mess! How do we sent our documents? Via e-mail. How do we setup meetings and coordinate events? Mostly through e-mail. How do we ask questions, answer questions, and share information? via e-mail. This needs to stop, if we want to get a handle on e-mail.

How can we change this? By using better collaboration tools such as blogs, wikis, and Microsoft SharePoint.

Let us consider Microsoft SharePoint for a moment which is one of the tools that we have been using, evangelizing, and teaching for years--as an effective way to help streamline collaboration and information sharing while easing the e-mail overload instead of adding to it.

Here are 3 ways to get rid of e-mail, using Microsoft SharePoint

1. Instead of e-mailing documents around and filling these mailboxes with attachments, how about storing these documents in document libraries in SharePoint. While I am editing a document in SharePoint, if someone else tries to edit the same document, they will be gracefully notified and given the opportunity to take control of the document as soon as I am done with it. Most importantly at any point in time, I can see the revision history, and review each of the edits that were made to this document along the way.

Figure 1: Notification that user receives if they try to edit a document that is in use by someone else

2. Instead of coordinating the next meeting or event via e-mail, and sending these supporting documents and action items back and forth, how about creating a meeting workspace in SharePoint and customizing it to enable tracking meeting tasks and a list of things to bring. This may rid of a few dozen e-mails and avoid these endless confusions about who is doing what.

3. Instead of answering the next question you get via e-mail (relating to your subject matter expertise), how about your start a blog in SharePoint where you share the answers so that everyone on the team can benefit from them.

Join us at the Microsoft SharePoint Techniques webinar and learn more!

It seems that many of the people we talk to fall in one of these two categories. Either they spend too much time on organizing (these are the persistent few) or they have largely given up on organization (the more common scenario) and they feel out of control most of the time. Is there however an optimum amount of organization that would be feasible for most of us and yet give us the best return?

This graph, which resembles to some degree the Results Curve(tm) graph that I have been teaching in our Accomplishing More With Less workshop and workbook, describes the returns that we get from the time spent on organization, and below are some related note:

• There is a minimum amount of organization that we all need, and without it, our lives are likely to be chaotic, stressful, and unfulfilled. 
   
• The minimum amount of organization is a lot less than what you might think, and if done strategically, it is likely to bring big returns. 
   
• There is an optimum amount of organization that if we go beyond it, we would be doing so at the expense of more important activities and therefore incur a very high opportunity cost.
   
• Both lack of organization as well as organizing beyond the optimum point are equally disadvantageous. While Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman, authors of A Perfect Mess, suggest that disorder is far more advantageous than order (and that most organizational systems are a waste of time), I wouldn't go that far. I promote an optimum level or organization which I also believe is different for each person.

Your to-do's

1. Reflect on where you are on the organizational curve above and find out where you are on this scale. 
    
2. If you think you are under-organized, identify an area where some additional organization would give you high returns and act on it. 
    
3. If you think you are over-organized at the expense of more important initiative and activities, identify an area where you can reduce your effort and make room for more strategic things. 
    
4. Keep an eye on organizational tips and see what might work for you. Subscribe to this blog and to similar ones and contribute your comments and get engaged!
   

When technology gets in the way, work life can become inefficient, things can take longer, and most importantly the opportunity cost rises. Instead of focusing on the next marketing campaign, or strategizing on the next customer win, we find ourselves waiting for the computer to recover from a sudden crash, or being significantly slowed down by the computer poor performance-and resorting to restarting it all together which on my Windows Vista machine would take 10 to 15 minutes.

Will Windows 7 be the answer?

Apple users would say Apple is the answer, but if you don't to go that far and many of us can't go that far, I am pleasantly surprised by Windows 7, and so far it is demonstrating that it may be the answer. 

The upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 was seamless and it seems as if a new life has been injected into the computer. While I still need more time to confirm these findings, but I have to say that many of the performance issues and some of the awkward behaviors that Windows Vista displayed are no longer an issue.

Technology & productivity go hand in hand

In my work with business professionals, I emphasize that accomplishments are mostly the results of strategic thinking and channeling our resources in the areas that are most promising--among other things. In addition however, I emphasize that the way we use technology has a significant impact on how much we accomplish. My belief is that technology alone doesn't necessarily lead to accomplishments, however, technology is a key enabler when it is working well, and when it is not working well, it can be an obstacle. So yes, technology and productivity go hand in hand.

What could the takeaways be?

1. Reflect on your technologies and your tools and see if they are serving as key enablers or if they are becoming obstacles. 
    
2. Identify the areas where you can apply new technologies or tools and get the biggest returns. 
    
3. To help you identify the returns, take into account the opportunity cost. What would you be able to do if you weren't spending or wasting time in these technologies or tools. 
    
4. Put a plan for addressing one of these technologies or tools issues soon. This could be one of your holiday gift to yourself!
   

This is the first post in what is likely to become a series of reflections on the role of e-mail and Social Media today and the upcoming years.

After 15 years of internet, is e-mail hanging on by a weak thread?

E-mail is overused and even abused, and users' mailboxes are congested--worse than traffic in the busiest metropolitan areas of the world. People are tired of scrolling up and down the inbox and many stopped looking at, and not to mention responding to, e-mail messages except for the urgent messages from their bosses or customers. Reaching people via e-mail (unless you are their boss or customer) has become quite challenging. It is "extreme" e-mail fatigue that we are suffering from. So many things fall through the cracks and so many inefficiencies are invading the work place and our personal lives. Does this sound like "chaos"? Well it is!

Is Social Media taking over?

While Web 2.0 tools (such as blogs, wikis, and Microsoft SharePoint) are emerging as the better alternatives for collaboration and information sharing, in this post, I am interested in focusing on the Social Media platforms and reflecting on their relationship to e-mail today and in the future.

Social media is the new kid on the blog (relatively new compared to good old e-mail).  People are still excited about the Social Media platforms. Even though these platforms are quite busy, they tend to be less intrusive than e-mail, and they give users the ability to scan the feed casually and jump in and respond only when they desire to do so. The expectations are less while the reach is much broader. And these platforms provide messaging functionality (similar to e-mail and Instant Messaging) which seem to get more attention and better response time than the traditional e-mail. 

And now the questions about the future of e-mail and social media

• Where do you see the future of e-mail versus Social Media? 
   
• Will it get to our work life as well (having more structured enterprise Social Media platforms that would include collaboration and social media all in one within the firewall)? 
   
• Will the traditional "public" e-mail approach eventually go away?
  What do you think of this hypothetical chart showing how the time spent on e-mail (and therefore the role of e-mail) will diminish over the next few years while the time spent on Social Media will increase. E-mail me YOUR  version of this chart (training@people-onthego.com):

Graph: Hypothetical hours spent per week on E-mail versus Social Media!

In the past, it used to be e-mail and meetings that consumed everyone's time, and now it is e-mail, meetings, and social media, and not necessarily in this order. For years, in our workshops, we talked about the e-mail overload, and taught ways to overcome the e-mail overload, and now we are broadening the scope to include social media.

So how do you reduce the social media overload?

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Be Strategic: Don't just be there, but be there with a clear purpose.
   
• Follow the relevant people: Those that add value and not just chatter. 
   
• Stay on brand: One of Jason Alba's advice that I keep re-iterating. 
   
• Reuse: Create high value content and reuse it in all platforms, you know they now all link to each other, so you can more easily leverage your content in multiple platforms. 
   
• Time yourself: Don't just be there indefinitely, make it 5, 15, or 40 minutes (again with a clear purpose) 
   
• Don't treat it like a homework (especially twitter): You don't have to keep up with what happened when you were gone. What happened before is mostly old news by now. 
   
• Remember that the time you spend on it needs to be proportional to the number of people you have in your network (otherwise, it is better investing time to growing your network).

Say "yes" to social media, "but" keep it well under control following the time management tips described above!

If we are unsure what to do, or hesitant to take on the next important and challenging task, consciously or subconsciously, what do we end up slipping into?

Into our e-mail inbox!

E-mail is "great" (or not so great) that way! It gives us this immediate satisfaction of getting something done and feeling good.  Does it sound like an addition? It is. And like any addition, the feeling good doesn't last too long, and we seek more of it to bring back that feeling, but what happens is that we get increasingly and chronically "e-mail fatigued."

So what can we do about it?

• How about becoming more purposeful and more intentional, and instead of resorting to e-mail (or Twitter-which is e-mail on steroid one might say), resorting to a few minutes of stopping and strategic thinking to really identify something meaningful to do. 
   
• How about we take on the challenging task first instead of e-mail first. Let e-mail be the reward (if it can be called a reward) instead of being the pre-requisite. When we take on the challenging task first, we learn and develop. We also prompt the issues and bring ourselves to face the issues. As a result we feel more accomplished and we contribute more significantly to our team and organization! 
   
• How about we disconnect for a bit (from e-mail, and even the web if applicable) and just focus on moving forward this important and strategic program or initiative. Adam. S. Christensen (our guest speaker, at the Gen X in Action webinar recently--recording available) said "I get the best work done when I am disconnected". Try it out and see for yourself!

Whatever it is for you (E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, or whatever else)  what are you going to do about it? Put it on the side for a bit, maybe even "disconnect", and get engaged into something more purposeful!

Environmentally aware consumers are producing less waste by practicing the "3 Rs": Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. When it comes to productivity and accomplishments, we can use these same guidelines and reap some enormous benefits:

Reduce = Reduce the scope

Follow the 80/20 rule which says "80% of our results come from 20% of our effort". Reduce the scope of most tasks by focusing on the core parts that produce the highest returns, and reduce or even eliminate the parts that are less impactful.

Reuse = Reuse what you do

Work on items that have multiple "applications" and that can be leveraged in many ways. If you are creating a marketing collateral for instance, could it be used on the website and on the blog. But don't stop here! Why not include an excerpt and a link to the blog entry in your newsletter. 

Recycle = Recycle the useful parts

Reflect on the projects and activities that you do, and see if you can identify components that can be repurposed. It maybe the actual content, the logic, or the process that can be adapted or re-engineered and then redeployed.

Try them out and report back

With applying the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle principles to managing your priorities and tasks, you are likely to discover valuable time management tips, streamline your getting organized effort, and even succeed at better managing stress!

Whehter your are delivering online courses as part of a corporate training program, a keynote speech at a virtual conference, or marketing and sales webinars to promote your products and services, here are some pointers for making your webinar successful:

Starting with some simple but important logistics

• Provide a support number, especially for 1st time users
• Provide a backup plan, like a recorded version
• If more than 10 or 15 participants, put people on mute
• Use the "raise their hand" and/or "chat/question" panels to manage interactions
• If you can, have a moderator (other than you) monitor/handle the audience questions

Remember that "Content is Still King"

• Content is still king, nothing will make up for mediocre content
• Live demos are much better than static slides
• Visuals like images and charts are far better than just text
• Let the session tell a story, and create some suspense whatever the topic is
• Include some polls, get some interaction going
• Make it short & sweet, 45 minute to 1 hour
• Include a short break if longer than 1 hour
• Talk with a smile and with energy, like it is the most exciting content and it is the first time you deliver it

And after the Webinar

• Get immediate feedback via web survey, or else you might never get it
• Follow-up, follow-up, follow-up!
• Adjust and do it again!

Happy Webinar-ing!