Carson Tate's Blog, page 9
June 11, 2018
Reentry Strategy: Five Tips to Avoid Reentry Stress After a Vacation
Although we all love taking a break from work, vacation can often create a lot of stress. And reentering back into work and the routine of everyday life after being gone for an extended period of time can be brutal!
After you return from your trip, a mountain of tasks awaits you at home, including:
Laundry to wash
A refrigerator to restock
Emails to read
Mail to sort
To do list items
And on and on. Sometimes the stress of just thinking these tasks before leaving for your trip is enough to make you want to cancel. I’ve been there. But don’t cancel your plans! Taking a break by going on that vacation can actually boost your productivity at work afterward—if you go about it correctly.
Before you leave, make a strategy for how you’re going to avoid falling into the trap of reentry stress. Here are five tips on how to make an easy, smooth transition back into your work routine and everyday life after your vacation.
Block the first morning
Make use of travel time
Reflect on your work
Slowly and steadily get back into your work routine
Tackle the house as a team
1. Block the First Morning
If your first day back includes stressful meetings, you may find yourself falling behind and getting overwhelmed. Don’t take any meetings the first day you return to work. Instead, ease yourself back into work. The only meeting you should be booking is with yourself. Block off the first morning or, better yet, the entire first day if you can. Take the time by yourself to catch up on emails and voicemail messages. Respond when you need to.
Get clear and current. What did you miss while you were away? The world may not have stopped, but that doesn’t mean you have to fall behind. Check in with your colleagues to catch up on everything you missed during your time off.
If you take this time to transition, you won’t experience as much stress while you get back into your routine. You’ll be more efficient and effective with the work you get done.
2. Make Use of Travel Time
Depending on how far you’re traveling, you may end up spending a significant amount of time transporting from your destination to back home. Why not make the most of this time? If someone else is driving or if you’re flying, you can take this time to get ready for the week ahead. Organize yourself by reviewing your task and calendar. This will help you mentally get back in the game. Take your time to get caught up emails and send responses if you can.
If you’re driving yourself back home, you might want to consider returning home with a few hours to spare. This way you can still take the time to catch up on emails and mentally prepare for the upcoming week. While you’re driving, mentally transition back into work mode. Think ahead about what you need to accomplish and how you can be the most effective in completing those tasks.
3. Reflect on Your Work
Getting away from your usual routine and environment is the perfect opportunity to reflect on your work. New ideas and insights are most likely to hit you while you’re away from your normal routine.
While your brain is still fresh, take time to evaluate. Be honest about your work. Think about changes you can make and areas that need improvement.
Are you attending some meetings unnecessarily?
Are you generating reporting that no one reads?
Are there some tasks on your calendar that aren’t worth the time you’re putting into them?
For some of these items, you might need to take a different approach. With others, you should eliminate them altogether. Getting away can be a great way of seeing what tasks are worth your time and what simply are not as important. Think about how you’re allocating your time and what you can do moving forward to be the most effective and productive that you can be.
4. Slowly and Steadily Get Back into Your Work Routine
In the coming week, give yourself grace as you ease your way back into your regular work routine. Don’t schedule any especially challenging work for yourself in the first two or three days after returning home. Remember that the world didn’t collapse while you were away. You’ll catch up on everything you missed, but it might just take a little time.
Even though you’re back at work, there’s no need to completely forget your vacation. Get together with friends to talk about your trip and share your vacation photos.
5. Tackle the House as a Team
When you arrive home, put the whole family to work. If you have kids that can help with the chores, let them. You and your spouse can work on different tasks simultaneously. If you think ahead, there might even be some things that you can get done before you leave. For instance, you might be able to order groceries online before you leave for vacation and get them delivered the night get home. That’s one task you won’t have to worry about when you return!
Get creative. Sometimes setting a timer to see how quickly you can accomplish a task will help you work fast. If everyone pitches in, the work will be done in no time. Many hands make light work!
Don’t let the stress of reentering your home prevent you from relaxing while you’re away. If you follow this strategy, you’ll experience an easy transition back into your routine. Don’t feel guilty about taking a break. It will boost your productivity and your mental health. With that in mind, go enjoy your vacation!
Carson Tate is a renowned coach, teacher, and creator of the Productivity Style Assessment® with expertise in providing simple solutions that transform individuals’ personal and professional lives. Learn more about her philosophy and strategies for productivity by visiting https://carsontate.com/
The post Reentry Strategy: Five Tips to Avoid Reentry Stress After a Vacation appeared first on Productivity Coaching.
May 28, 2018
How to Get Ready for Vacation— the Smart Way
I hear it all the time: “It’s just too much work to take a vacation!”
Now, I can completely sympathize. Getting ready for vacation can be a chore! If you’re traveling with your family, you have to make sure they have everything they need, do laundry to make sure your kids and spouse have the clothes they need.
Not to mention, you have to plan out the trip—transportation, accommodations, dates. You might have to reschedule appointments, figure out who’s going to take care of your pets and water the plants. And, at work, there are projects to complete, an inbox to clear, colleagues and clients to connect with before you can leave.
Wondering if Vacation is Worth the Time and Energy?
I don’t say that to scare you away from vacations. Quite the opposite! I want you to know that I understand how overwhelming it can be to get ready for vacation. But I also know that vacation is absolutely ESSENTIAL to your mental, physical, and spiritual health. It can boost your energy, productivity, and happiness like nothing else.
For me, it’s simply not an option to skip vacation. I need it. You do, too.
And there’s a better way to prepare for vacation—a way that won’t stress you out!
My Top Tips for Stress-Free Vacation Preparation
Here’s what I did before our last vacation.
What to Do at Work Before Going on Vacation
First, I carved out about 3 weeks to prepare and plan for the trip. That gave me plenty of time to remember everything I needed to do to get myself, my family, and my work life organized before we left town.
I reviewed all the projects and tasks that I needed to do before I departed. Instead of writing down all the “want-to-do” stuff, I focused on the things that absolutely needed to get done. I also wrote down the action step I needed to take as soon as I got back home. This made it much less stressful to leave my work behind!
One of the most important things you can do in the weeks before leaving is to communicate with your colleagues. Let them know the status of any projects that impact them, and make sure they know what to do while you’re gone. Let them know if you will be checking in, or if you will have any office hours during vacations. If you’ll be totally off-grid, good for you! Just be sure to let people know that they won’t be able to get ahold of you.
While taking to my colleagues in the weeks before leaving, I determined my contingency plans. In other words, I figured out who would be handling the things I normally handle at work on a day to day basis. Some things could wait until I got back, but other tasks needed to be handled, so I made sure there was someone available who could take over in my absence.
I wrote an out-of-office email response that included the dates of my absence as well as a list of colleagues to contact for various different questions and issues.
Another great tip is to put your dates of absence into your email signature a week or more ahead of time. After your name, simply say something like “Note: I will be out of the office June 14-20.”
Right before you leave, you should communicate with any clients, vendors, or other key stakeholders to remind them you’ll be gone and to make sure they know who to contact if they need something during your vacation.
During this time, I also booked a meeting with myself for the first morning that I got back in the office. I wanted to make sure that when I got back to work, I had a chunk of time freed up to do email and phone calls and connect with my colleagues and clients.
All these things really helped me relax and have a stress-free vacation, knowing that I did everything I could to get my work life organized and under control before I left.
How to Organize Your Personal and Family Life Before a Vacation
In the three-week period that you’ve carved out for vacation prep, there’s lots to do at home, too! If you do everything in an organized way and don’t wait until 10:00 the night before you leave, you’ll have a much better chance at success.
First, inventory your vacation supplies ahead of time. Do you or any family members need new clothes or swimsuits? Do you have sunscreen? Do you need to get reading material for the trip? Snacks for the car or airplane? Make sure to figure all these things out before you hit the road! You want your vacation to be special and memorable, not fraught with stress from items that you forgot to bring.
Prepare your home for departure. A few weeks ahead of time, make plans for your pets. Figure out if you need anyone to water the plants or get the mail and newspaper.
And, of course, make sure all your plans are in place for travel, accommodations, and any excursions you might be going on. Keep all your plans organized in a notebook, folder, or even on your phone to make sure you have all your reservations and other information handy.
Go Forth and Relax!
Don’t let anything stand between you and your next vacation! As you can see, it just takes a bit of time, dedication, and organization—but going on vacation doesn’t have to be too hard! And, I promise, it will be totally worth it to get out of town and unwind for a few days with your family. Have fun!
The post How to Get Ready for Vacation— the Smart Way appeared first on Productivity Coaching.
May 17, 2018
A Fun, Relaxing Way to Boost Your Productivity!
When you talk about boosting productivity and improving work performance, the tools and strategies—while helpful!—aren’t always fun. In fact, they can even be frustrating. While there are some people who truly enjoy organizing their desk or making to-do lists, boosting productivity can seem like a chore—even if it ends up being life-changing in the long run. However, there’s at least one way of boosting productivity that is downright FUN and RELAXING! Curious what it is?
Take a Vacation!
The most fun, relaxing way to boost productivity is simply to take some time off. Whether you’re taking a Friday afternoon off to explore your city or taking a whole week to go sip margaritas on the beach somewhere, taking a vacation from the stresses of work and life can be an incredible way to enrich your life. By taking a trip or even just taking a day off, you can make yourself happier and less stressed and make yourself more productive when you return to work.
The Problem with Vacations
There isn’t really any problem with vacations, unless you’re vacationing more than you’re working! But most people are their own worst enemy.
Perhaps you tell yourself you can’t take vacations because you have too much to do. You make excuses like, “There’s no one else to do all the tasks that need to be completed. My manager might think I’m not dedicated to my job! What if taking a week off causes me to lose the chance for a promotion?”
You might even say, “Being busy and working all the time is just who I am. It’s what I do. I can’t change my habits.”
This is crazy talk!
Now, I understand why you’d be guilty taking vacations because that’s just what today’s American culture is like. At the same time, these excuses don’t make much sense. You can be a productive, AMAZING worker while still taking regular vacations. Working yourself to death isn’t going to get you any merit points from anybody, and it’ll be hard on your physical and mental health—along with your long-term productivity.
Why Everyone Needs a Vacation
Everyone should take vacations from work. Like I said, not everyone has the money or time for a 2-week cruise, but there are all different kinds of vacation. I’m talking about everything from an afternoon off, to a long weekend, to a week or two away from home.
Vacation and rest and recovery—whatever that means to you—are absolutely essential if you want to continue to create and innovate with high-quality results. Your mind and body need a break to operate at their best. After resting, you’ll come back refreshed and able to handle all your work-related tasks with more energy and purpose.
Why You Might Be Afraid to Take a Vacation
When you base your self-worth on being productive and hardworking, then there’s no time for vacation because you’re operating from a place of fear. You fear failure. You think that if you stop being busy, then you’ll suddenly lose your worth as a person.
If you are questioning your ability to get away from work for a week or a long weekend, it’s time to sit with your fears and think about them. Ask yourself these questions:
What do I lack faith in? Do I lack faith in the quality of my work or the ability to complete it? Do I feel unsure about my relationship with my boss or colleagues?
What assumptions have I made regarding your manager’s and company expectations for taking time off? Have I wrongly assumed that my boss will be upset if I take time off? Have I closely reviewed my company’s expectations and allowances for vacation time?
What is it costing me personally when I don’t take time off? Is my lack of rest and relaxation undermining my physical health? Is it hurting my relationships with my spouse, children, extended family or close friends? Is it taking a toll on my emotional or spiritual health to keep working without a break?
After you think about these things, it’s time to make a plan!
How to Embrace Vacation Time
Are you still feeling a bit apprehensive about taking a vacation? Are you tempted to put it off until next year? Stop right there! Let’s start slow.
My assignment to you is to take a mini vacation. Take an afternoon off, or maybe a whole day. Read a book that you’ve been wanting to read, or go to a movie with your friend or a family member. Walk around and explore your city. Go to a play. These are just a few of the many ways you can relax and rejuvenate yourself in a short amount of time. This can go a long way toward assuaging your fears about vacation!
Or, if you’re willing to go big, you can be bold and face your fear head on: plan ALL your vacations for next year.
I would encourage you to take some time and schedule your future vacations for 2019. All of them. Open your calendar and block your time off. This includes mini vacations, like a Friday afternoon on the golf course, and big ones, like that trip to Costa Rica you’ve been meaning to take with your significant other. By scheduling them now, you can ensure you have dedicated time for rest and rejuvenation. Plus, it can help you get started saving for big trips.
Remember, if you don’t get the proper rest and relaxation, you’re undermining your performance at work— and you’re also undermining your health and happiness. I want you to stop affirming busyness and making it the center of your life. Take your sights off your output for a while and focus on helping yourself thrive.
Work is infinite. There’s always more you could be doing. But, life is finite. You don’t want to go through life working every day and never taking the chance to enjoy yourself. So, go take a vacation!
The post A Fun, Relaxing Way to Boost Your Productivity! appeared first on Productivity Coaching.
April 24, 2018
Bold, Innovative Workspaces: They’re Trendy, But Are They Productive?
We’re in the midst of a renaissance. A trendy renaissance in office design where swings, picnic tables, moss-covered walls, and carpet covered bunk bed nooks are replacing the stale cubicles, sterile walls, and uncomfortable, rolling chairs.
We’re IN this renaissance because employers are starting to recognize that physical space matters not only to the quality of our work, but also our engagement. And this makes a lot of sense – we’ve always sensed that our physical location impacts our energy, mood, and spirit; why wouldn’t your workspace impact your productivity, quality of work, ability to collaborate, and, for some industries, the ability to attract and retain key talent?
But, are those spaces and those design choices sparking real productivity?
If you look past the moss on the walls and the swings suspended from ceiling tiles, there are four ‘tenets’ that guide the most innovative AND productive workspaces.
Blur the line between office and home
Americans work among the longest hours of any industrialized country in the world. According to Gallup, 21% of Americans work 50 – 59 hours per week. Most of us spend more hours at work than we do at home. So, why not design an office environment that blurs the line between office and home? To do this Noa Santos, co-founder of Homepolish, considers the activities that a person would do in the home, like entertaining, and incorporates them into the office spaces he and his team design. The result, bars in offices, large plush sofas and chairs for conversation and collaboration, and tables you might find in your breakfast room in the center of a conference room. Gone are the sterile, white walls and harsh overhead lighting.
Use space creatively
In many cities, office space is expensive. Maximizing space is essential. For example, in New York City horizontal space is a premium, so if you can go vertically, you can literally double your square footage. In this environment carpet covered bunk beds built on the walls go from a cool novelty to a functional design element that makes sense. They not only efficiently utilize vertical space, but they also provide places where people can work independently without the distractions often found in large, open collaborative spaces. If you need privacy for a team meeting, “build conference rooms on demand by using pre-fab greenhouses which can quickly be disassembled and stored,” says Santos. The goal is to create enough variety in your space so that it supports multiple types of work and collaboration.
Provide flexibility to support future growth
For start-ups, the number one concern regarding their space is growth and how their space will support their future growth. This concern is often echoed by larger, more established firms where the costs of relocating employees and office space is very expensive. As you consider your space, ask yourself what is the current and future make-up of employees? Will you double your tech team in six months or will you completely outsource your inside sales team? For Santos, this means that he and his team always suggest bars because people can stand (it is the height of a standing desk), can sit or it can be cleared for a large project meeting or a party. The goal is to create a feeling and sense of permanence but provide a working environment that is as impermanent and flexible as possible.
Support the attraction and retention of talent.
The US unemployment rate is currently at 5.4%. The labor market is tight and the attraction and retention of key talent is highly competitive. In the tech market where the unemployment rate is currently 2.3%, competition is fierce. As a result, a start-up competing for talent will use their offices as a recruiting tool. The goal is to make the office space the coolest space in this person’s life so he or she will want to spend time at work. Don’t assume that only start-ups are thinking about space this way. One of my company’s Fortune 100 clients, who leads a part of their e-commerce strategy, called to talk about their work space and how it was impacting their ability to recruit talent. This company is not located in a major urban area, so it does not have the allure of Los Angeles or New York and his team works in a large cubicle village. Needless to say, I was initially surprised by his call until I started doing a little research on the impact of space on recruiting. Space matters. Don’t overlook it as you seek to attract and retain superior talent.
Bold workspaces are designed with a keen understanding of both the people that occupy the space and the work that is performed in the space. It is this astute insight that makes bold workspaces highly productive.
April 17, 2018
Productivity Experts Share the Best and Worst Advice
Your ability to think, work and create faster, smarter and with a more innovative edge will differentiate you from your competition. Maintaining that competitive advantage requires time, patience, drive and the consistent refinement of your productivity strategies and tools.
As we approach the half-way point in the year, it is time not only time to reflect on what’s working and what’s not, but also to use that introspection to sharpen your edge and implement a new, bold, break-through strategy.
To aid you in that process, three of most perceptive, knowledgeable productivity experts today share their best – and worst – productivity advice.
Ask yourself, ‘Why am I doing this?’ Confusion and ambivalence are part of being human. “If you want to be more productive, stop and figure out what it is that you are doing and why it is important to you”, asserts Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed. Who cares how efficient you are if you don’t know where you are going? Revolt against busyness. It is nothing more than aimless activity for the sake of activity. Define the impact you want to make in the world. Then, focus your energy and effort on making that impact.
Avoid getting caught up in other people’s narratives. Are other people’s expectations unconsciously driving your actions? Who are you really trying to please? Who is really going to judge you if you don’t bring in homemade cupcakes? “Ask the tougher questions along the way”, says Schulte. Don’t lose yourself in other people’s definitions of success. Get clear on your personal definition of success. Then ruthlessly filter out anything that does not align with your definition.
Don’t say “I don’t have time.” Say, “It’s not a priority”. This is more accurate language says Laura Vanderkam, author of I Know How She Does It. “I could tell you I don’t have time to train for a marathon, but that is not true; I just don’t want to! Using this language reminds me that time is a choice. If I’m not happy about the way I’m spending my time, I probably have the ability to change it”, asserts Vanderkam. Think about where you need to start being honest with yourself and your priorities. Everything cannot be a priority. The sooner you admit this, the easier it becomes to focus on your real priorities.
Go to bed. “The true measure of productivity is the quality of your thinking each and every day”, concludes Caroline Arnold, author of Small Move, Big Change. And sleep is the best productivity enhancer. Your brain works unconsciously during the night and can help you solve problems during the day, but not if you don’t get enough sleep. The next time you choose to stay awake trolling social media, watching The Voice and returning emails, you are debiting against your leisure time on the weekend. “Life is something you have to rest up for”, concludes Arnold. Prepare for bed before settling in to watch your shows. Implement a designated time you power down all of your devices. Record your favorite shows and make the choice to watch them on your own time. Go to bed. Your life is waiting.
Small behavioral changes lead to a big impact. This sounds counterintuitive. We assume that large, significant changes require massive behavior shifts. In actuality, the opposite is true, asserts Arnold. It is the small, incremental changes that actually drive and support sustained behavior change. So if you want to tame your inbox, keep your desk organized or actually stop working before midnight reverse engineer each behavior and identify the first small step you can take to achieve success, says Arnold.
For example, I wanted to stop starting my day by checking my email. My inbox was full of everyone else’s agendas. I wanted to stop reacting and start my day by working on one of my priorities. So, when I reverse engineered my behavior, I realized I did not know what I wanted to actually do before responding to email. Now, before I leave my office each day, I write down the one task I want to accomplish before opening my inbox. Marginal behavior change is king. Keep debugging your own behavior and you will be surprised at what you can do, concludes Arnold.
These productivity experts also willingly share the worst productivity advice they had ever received.
Keep your head down and do good work. “If the people with decision making power in your company do not know what you are doing – keeping your head down and doing good work is not enough”, says Schulte. If you are part of an organization, be a part of the organization. Have a presence if you work remotely. Focus on the work, understand the life of your organization and how to be a part of it. This is not face time, office politics or butt kissing assures Schulte. Your time in the office needs to be in service of the work that you are doing.
Don’t leave work until the last thing on the list is completed. “If you come to work thinking that everything on your list should be completed by the end of the day, you will not execute smartly”, concludes Arnold. Most of our to-do list are shoulds and not real needs, nor strategic objectives. Approach the day and assume that you will not get it all done. Make smart, strategic choices at the beginning of the day.
Go into the second half of this year with a fresh perspective on what you need to do to maintain your competitive edge. Keep in mind though that this advice – the good and the bad – is only as good as what works for you or your personal productivity style. Take some time now to think about what works best for you, what strategies make sense for your productivity, what you need to do good work, and then hit the ground running.
April 10, 2018
The Future of Work is How You Choose to Automate Tasks
Automation works.
We have experienced the productivity of robots versus people in farming, manufacturing, and segments of transportation and retail over the last 100-150 years. Now, in the past 30 years, software and robots have thrived at replacing a particular kind of work: the average-wage, middle-skill, routine-heavy work, especially in manufacturing and office admin.
So, what’s next?
Nearly half of American jobs today could be automated in a decade or two according to a research paper by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne.
Now, what does all this mean for you?
As automation explodes in all sectors of industry, it creates incredible access to software that you can use to automate and delegate many of your routine heavy administrative tasks; tasks that consume significant amounts of your time and mental energy.
You only have 168 hours a week and a finite store of mental energy as well, according to research by social psychologist Roy Baumeister. And once you become mentally depleted – something that Baumeister calls ‘decision fatigue’ – you can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price. So the more choices you make throughout the day the harder each one becomes for your brain and it will eventually look for shortcuts – either recklessness or to do nothing. Neither of which are optimal choices.
Knowing what we know about the effectiveness of automation, we can conclude this: automating and delegating some of your tasks not only optimizes your time spend enabling you to allocate your time to high value tasks and projects, but also ensures that you can preserve high quality decision making, execute on tasks faster and virtually error free and avoid the black hole of procrastination.
So, where do you start? And what do you automate right now?
Consider automating tasks that have become so routine for you that you could figuratively process them in your sleep. These are the tasks that do not require full attention or really any form of attention.
Automate processes that are time consuming, boring and/or routine.
Automate tasks that don’t require human finesse like communicating with someone. Look at your existing workflow processes and determine if there are pieces of that process that could potentially be automated if the entire process cannot. For example, we use different software than our accounting software for our online credit card purchases and as a result have to import the sales data into our accounting software for reconciliation. We cannot automate the reconciliation, however, we were able to automate the importing of the data.
Now that you have decided what you want to or can automate, here are a few tools to support you in making that happen efficiently:
Zapier – This app will easily connect the web apps that you use to automate a task. For example, you can connect Evernote to other task management apps like Asana and Trello and to your Google calendar. Or you can save your PayPal sales to a Google docs spreadsheet or post new BaseCamp activity to Slack.
IfThisThenThat (IFTTT) – This is a web service that allows you to plug information in from one app to another even allowing you to create custom tasks to mirror a specific workflow. For example: “If [this thing happens on one service], then [do that on another service]”, such as “If I post a new photo to Instagram, then download it to Dropbox.” You can also use pre-made recipes. Recipes are simply pre-built tasks made by other users that you can add to your IFTTT account.
TextExpander – This tool enables you to insert fixed bits of text – called a snippet in TextExpander – by typing in short abbreviations. For example, you might create a snippet for email copy that you use repeatedly throughout your week, like responding to a request for additional information; or you might create a snippet containing the addresses and phone numbers for the top three coffee shops where you regularly meet with clients.
Pocket – There is a tremendous amount of content and new stories constantly revolving on the web; oftentimes, you’ll see a headline of an article that you’d like to read, however, you don’t have time to view or read right now. So, put articles, videos or pretty much any content that you’d like to save for later into Pocket. You can save it directly from your browser or from apps like Twitter, Flipboard, Pulse and Zite; then, when you are ready to read it you can read it from your phone, tablet or PC without an Internet connection.
Mint – This tool enables you to automatically track all your checking accounts, saving accounts, and credit cards in a central location, neatly categorizing and displaying the transactions along the way with informative graphs. And it will send reminders to alert you that a bill is due.
As you explore your workflows and look for opportunities to automate, don’t go overboard and automate tasks that bring you meaning and joy in your work and enable you to showcase and leverage your unique strengths. The best automation is strategic automation, so think strategically about where and how you can automate.
Because your time and energy are finite – and you’ll never be able to automate them. So, automate your tasks and watch your productivity soar.
