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Jason Womack

Articles on:4 Ways of finding Focus4 Managing Distractions4 Collaborating with Others

on making your best better!

• Jason Womack • Stephen Smith • Jasmine Grimm • Laura Stack • Michael Hyatt • Graham Allcott • Leo Babauta • Michael Sliwinski •

Our Focus Just Got Better

From the Editor

By Michael Sliwinski, Editor

W elcome to the newest, 12th is-sue of your favorite productiv-ity magazine. This time I had

the pleasure of interviewing Jason Wom-ack, the author of his just–released book “Your Best Just Got Better”, a former Getting Things Done (GTD) coach and a fantastic positive guy.

We talked about productivity, fitness, improving our skills and getting better at what we do, plain and simple.

To achieve that, we need to focus in 2012 on what we do best, I need to fo-cus on enabling my recently–grown team of Nozbe–ninjas to develop an even bet-ter productivity tool for you guys (on all mobile and desktop devices possible) and you need to focus on your stuff, too!

That’s why this issue’s theme has become: Focus. Jasmine Grimm talks about how she can focus better with-out a smartphone (I can’t live without my iPhone, but I still like her tips), Stephen

! Links: Michael on Twitter | Michael’s Blog

Smith explains his “focused” email sys-tem (I’m also a big fan of the inbox–zero approach), Laura Stack explains how to remain focused and still “babysit” others, I also talk about how splitting a day into two parts helps me focus and Graham Allcott takes it even further with his ad-vice. As always Michael Hyatt shows how he deals with stressful moments and Leo Babauta just says that to remain focused, you can always walk away from stuff that is not for you.

All in all, we had great fun compiling this issue and I en-courage you to get Jason Womack’s new book: “Your Best Just Got Better” to learn how to build on your strengths and focus on what you’re really good at.

Yours productively,

Michael Sliwinski

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Productive! Magazinewww.ProductiveMagazine.com

Sponsor:www.Nozbe.com

Your Online tool for Getting Things Done – available in your computer browser, mobile phone and on your iPhone.

Chief Editor:Michael Sliwinski

Technical Editor:Piotr Wozniak

Technical Advisor:Maciej Budzich

Editorial Team:Lori Anderson

Delfina Gerbert

James Tonn

Tribute:Marc Orchant (1957–2007)The Productive! Magazine is dedicated to the memory of a productivity guru, great blogger and a very close friend, Marc Orchant who passed away on 9th December 2007.

All articles are copyright © by their respective authors.

Productive! Magazine is copyright © by Michael Sliwinski.

Getting Things Done® and GTD® are the registered

trademarks of the David Allen Company.

04 Michael Sliwinski

How Our Best Can Get Better! Interview with Jason Womack

10 Stephen Smith

Inbox–Zero Made Easy

12 Jasmine Grimm

How to Manage Without a Smart Phone

13 Laura Stack

Tracking Down People for Follow–Ups, Answers and Reminders

16 Michael Hyatt

When You Feel Overwhelmed by Your Workload

18 Michael Sliwinski

Benefits of Splitting a Day

19 Graham Allcott

Making space: My New Productivity Rules of the Road

22 Michael Sliwinski

Productive! Show Videos

23 Leo Babauta

Be able to walk away

Table of contents

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On Getting Better,Getting Your Support System Betterand Achieving Better Results

Interview with Jason Womack by Michael Sliwinski

How Our Best Can Get Better!

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Jason: Almost every time. One of my cli-ents is an international bank and their spokesperson is Roger Federer, the tennis player. On one of the presentations I saw Roger talking about tennis players: do they find a coach to help them find what their weaknesses are and make those stronger or find a coach to find what their strengths are and make that better?

He said, and I will always remem-ber this, Michael: “if you work on your weaknesses you might be an all around good tennis player but you won’t be dangerous, unless you work on your strengths’”.

And maybe “dangerous” is not the right word, it’s “extremely powerful”.

I know when I’m on stage and I’m speaking to a room of recently promot-ed managers and they are about to take on a much bigger team and we are dis-cussing the culture, values and train-

ing... and where I’m dangerous is where I can pull out my experiences and pres-ent that in my style. “Your Best Just Got Better” might not be doing things ex-tremely differently, but it maybe is do-ing what comes naturally to you but a lit-tle bit more.

Michael: That’s true. I think in this whole world right now we focus too much on the negativity instead of focusing on positiv-ity. Just focus on the good things… and you can build up on that and not just focus on the bad things and just start whining.Jason: Benjamin Zander wrote a book called “The Art of Possibility”. Actual-ly he tells the story that his wife wrote it and she has let him put his name on the cover :-)

Michael Sliwinski: Welcome Jason! Glad I get to talk about productivity with such an experienced person as yourself. Thanks for doing that!Jason Womack: You know, Michael, I have been in this game for almost 15 years. I was a high school teacher in the 1990’s and I was always trying to get more from time. Time management and time blocking. I remember that it really start-ed going downhill when I started train-ing to sleep 4 hours a night. This is when I knew something had to change. It just wasn’t sustainable.

Michael: I had a friend who tried to do that as well. In the long run the body is just tired.Jason: We are not built for it. Now what I do is partner with organizations, specif-ically with their talent development and learning management divisions and we create seminars and workshops on pro-ductivity, time management and more and more we are talking about internal mobility. That is how we take the best that they are hiring and instead of train-ing them to leave, we want to train their staff to grow.

Michael: I have recently read your arti-cle about the fact that when people hire other people, sometimes overqualified, you just have to communicate well with them, what their expectations are, right?Jason: I believe so. And there are so ma-ny hidden factors. Right now we have four generations working together in a workplace. I have a good friend who works at a Macy’s department store, and she shared with me that in holiday season they do temporary hiring, they are going to have 18, 19, 20–year olds and on the other side they’ve got peo-ple who are past their retirement age, but they still like working. So you have this range of 20 to let’s call it 65 and just the mind set of all of those people. So in my newest book: “Your Best Just Got

Better” one of the things that I explore is just people’s mindset that they bring into a productive day.

Michael: The title of your book is quite challenging, because how can your best be better?Jason: It’s a question I hope more peo-ple will ask me. What I do in the book is go through three areas. First we are talking about working smart, then we talk about thinking big and then we talk about making more. What we found in my research is that those three things happen in that order.

Someone who is setting a big goal, who wants to think big... but has their inbox out of control, has their things all over the place, has their mind full with everything… that is if they are not work-ing smart, they just can’t think big. It’s not mentally or physically possible.

„Your Best Just Got Better” was the ti-tle of my blog going back 7 years, I never had an idea it would become a book one day, just the people who I was spend-ing my time with quite frankly were the best. And again, you know this, people who are the best continually go back for re–education, they go back for training, they go back for coaching.

Michael: Sometimes you do find peo-ple who are the best, but when you look at them from the side, you can see how much they can improve. And then with the small things, like you’ve said, when you have them clean their inbox, or some other small improvements like that they are surprised by how much more they can do, right?

People who are the best continually go back for re–education, they go back for training, they go back for coaching...

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Michael: Jason, before this new book of yours you had the other one “The Positive Promise Doctrine” that you wrote with your father, right?Jason: That was a fun project. You know, my father and I, we see each other phys-ically half a dozen times a year, we talk quite often and he is a very success-ful CEO. He was the CEO of the Sharp-er Image, an American based company that was global, then he ran a garden supply company called Smith & Hawkin, and then he ran a manufacturing compa-ny producing those big massage chairs you see in the airports.

In that book he talks about the neg-ative spiral that we can sometimes find ourselves in. And I remember, Michael, when I was reading on your blog way back when you took on Nozbe as your thing and you talked about tens of things that were on your mind all the time. You know, one of those tens of things can start that negative spiral and can actu-ally overwhelm everything!

What Benjamin says, and what I echo is: “I don’t need to change and be a pos-itive thinker but I do need to practice positive focus”. And those two things are different.

So he has experience over the past 20 years, has been running 150 to 400 mil-lion dollar companies... while my experi-ence over the past 20 years has been in the classroom, either in a public class-room or in a corporate classroom, look-ing at how people receive those man-dates from above. And so we have those two experiences almost at the opposite sides. Making the decisions and helping people implement the decisions. So we wrote a short guide book on what hap-pens when people say and do what they say they were going to do.

Michael: Jason, tell us a bit more about yourself, please. Like for example you were with the David Allen Company and then you’ve decided to go on your own. What happened there?Jason: It goes back to couple of things that we’ve talked about so far. I started off as a junior high school teacher and then I went to high school. And while

“if you work on your weaknesses you might be an all around good tennis player but you won’t be dangerous, unless you work on your strengths’”.

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I was going through that process, I start-ed studying time management. Frank-lin Covey... I got a PalmPilot in 1997 and then I met David Allen who was doing his seminar called “Managing Actions and Projects” and I went to that seminar in late 1997, 1998, 1999. In 1999 David and I had a conversation and I created a class for my high school students on productivity.

We’ve called it “Pathfinders: Actions and Ambitions Management for Teens”. And my thinking was, you know there are those 16 and 17 years olds I was teach-ing, and they had a lot of energy, they had a lot of enthusiasm, they were get-ting a lot of information and so I wanted to create something that would put all that together. It went really well, I can tell you stories about that, but the next thing that happened was that David’s book was coming out. The Getting Things Do-ne. So I’ve joined up as a facilitator of the seminars and a coach and over the next 5 years I’ve presented 400 GTD semi-nars around the world.

I was a senior trainer with that firm and then what wound up happening is I be-came much more interested in the pro-cess of performance independent of a tool. On one side it was very liberating, because I could walk into a client’s office

and we could be very open and free about how do we solve this performance and productivity problem, on the other side there needs to be, and I found this, some foundations, some system that they use.

So over the past 5 years I’ve partnered with about half a dozen large compa-nies around the world. Recently I was in Zurich and the month before that I was

in United Kingdom and I’ve worked in Amsterdam, I’ve worked in Belgium and it’s been a wild experience of showing up, meeting clients, where they are to find out what they need and staying in touch. Someone asked me: “Jason what is your business plan?”. Well, my 3 step business plan: show up, do good work, stay in touch.

Michael: I’ve read somewhere, that 80% of success is showing up.Jason: And what we can do, and one of the things I teach is underneath each of those three ideas are several indicators. Showing up: showing up on time, show-ing up prepared, showing up cultural-ly aware, showing up demographically aware... you know I’ve done seminars in

Doing one thing is like “doing nothing” to me.

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...just like your favoriteProductivity Application

Productive! Magazine – like Wired Magazinenow also available as a native iPad app!

Founder of The Jason

Womack Company,

an advisor to leaders

worldwide and author

dedicated to helping

individual contributors,

entrepreneurs and executives work effectively

and efficiently so they have the time, energy

and focus to achieve more in work and in life.

! Jason Womack

different communities where I was the only one like me in the room.

Michael: When you start something new it takes lots of energy from you because you love it so much and there is so much passion behind it. So how do you balance your family life...Jason: Absolutely. Thanks goodness for what I call “team Jason”. Team Jason is this small cadre of people who, they get me, they understand me, they support me, but I think most importantly they push me. What I have done, I have sur-rounded myself by people who under-stand that I’m here for a big purpose and they don’t give me a hard time.

What I mean by that is when I tell some people about how much I do and what I do, one of the 1st things some people say is: “oh my goodness when do you relax, or don’t you ever do noth-ing?”, because of that question I’m writ-ing a manifesto, about the difference between doing nothing and doing one thing. And it is very subtle when you change those letters around, but doing one thing is like doing nothing to me.

Other things that I do to keep myself engaged, I was doing triathlon during the summer, I train 10 months a year with a plan and then October and No-vember each year are my off months. But that always gives me something to perform towards and I would encourage anybody: because I race every month from April until September, every 30 days I have a race, I always have a next thing to train towards. And I think that is sig-nificant, especially, with those of us who

have jobs or careers or lives that are al-ways on.

I work with parents and spouses and they are going to be a parent for the rest of their life. So being able to chunk that down and say here is the next mile-stone, an achievement, call it a goal, but by having that next thing in sight… not long time away... but in sight, I think it is critical to high performance and pro-ductivity.

Michael: I have been having some is-sues last year when I couldn’t find time to do physical training, and I got chubby and I got disillusioned and it was really bad. And then when a friend of mine who is a professional athlete helped me out, gave me these small goals then sudden-ly, after one year I lost almost 20 pounds, I feel just a lot better and then I get this energy and I have this thing to also look forward to. I want to do a triathlon one day as well.Jason: Way to go Michael! You know, I believe we all should make sure we’ve got three things: one – surround yourself by people who understand you, support you, that will push on you, that will en-courage you. The second one is: look at the physical sustainability, environment… companies are talking about CSR, “cor-porate social responsibility”… I’m look-ing at ISR, “individual social responsibil-ity”. If I don’t rest, if I don’t take care of my body I’m just not fun to be around and I know that. And then I think the third one would be to clarify your “so that”. Call it “purpose”, call it “reason”, call it your “why”. In my book, in one of the chapters, I explore this concept of “so that” and when I clarify that, when I un-

derstand that, things just seem to show up to support me in that direction.

Michael: Also people tend to make those imaginary goals like: “I’m gonna lose 20 lbs in one year”. What they should be do-ing is having those smaller, actionable things to look forward every month just like you said. People are afraid to take these baby steps, because they are afraid they might succeed. This is something I have been talking to people about be-cause once you get more organized you feel a little bit lost, because then you sudden-ly know how much time you actually have.

When you are not organized you are like: “I’m going to be fine, I’m gonna go with the flow”... but when you are more organized, you get your inbox to zero and then you know how much time everything takes and then you start realizing that “maybe doing this is not really realistic for tomorrow", you start to understand your physical boundaries.Jason: Exactly! Many of the things you have just said I’m exploring in detail in several chapters of my book. You and I are on the same page. a

My 3 step business plan: show up, do good work, stay in touch.

“I don’t need to change and be a positive thinker but I do need to practice positive focus”.

! Links: Jason on Twitter | Jason’s Book

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Nozbe web app syncs with native iPad and iPhone apps... and Evernote!

...just like your favoriteProductivity Application

Productive! Magazine – like Wired Magazinenow also available as a native iPad app!

Inbox–Zero Made EasyI was on the phone recently with a friend and he was complaining about all of the crazy emails that he gets. The other day I was talking to a client that I ran into at the grocery store and I asked her if she had seen the email I sent her the day before, as she hadn’t responded. She said no, because her email in–box was so full she couldn’t find anything.

Today, Tomorrow or Later is a method of prioritizing your tasks, actions and inputs.

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By Stephen Smith

Y esterday I received a reply to an email I had sent to a colleague three weeks ago, she was apol-

ogizing for being so late but the mes-sage I sent had “gotten lost” in her email program.

Are you seeing a trend here? It used to take me upwards of two hours to go through all of my emails and get to “in–box zero”, mainly because I manage so many email accounts. But I applied the Today, Tomorrow or Later model to my email, added a couple of filters and now I can breeze through my email commu-nications in just a few minutes. Let me show you how.

Today, Tomorrow or LaterTTL is a method of prioritizing your tasks, actions and inputs. The essentials are as follows:

You create 3 folders in your email In-box, labeled “Today”, “Tomorrow” and “Later”.

Each email that you receive gets prior-itized according to its importance: ! Is this something that must be han-

dled Today?! Is this something that can be handled

Tomorrow (or Soon)?! Is this something that can be dealt

with Later?

Move it to the appropriate folder.

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If the email is something that some-one else should take care of, forward it to them with a brief note and a due date. Tag the original email with “Delegated”, the name of the person it was delegat-ed to, and the Due Date. Then move it to the appropriate folder.

If the email is about something that you do not need to act on – then file it, archive it or delete it. If, like me, you receive email notifications from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or other Social Net-works, then create individual folders for each of these types of notifications and set up a filter to automatically move the incoming messages to the appropriate folder. Then you can deal with all of these at whatever time is best for you to do so.

If you receive any emails from sites that you have subscribed to set up a fil-ter to move them to a “Subscriptions” folder automatically. This is fantastical-ly important! I can’t stress enough how much easier your life will be if you fil-ter out all of these messages from mer-chants that you may have given your email address to. You may even wish to create sub–folders for this category of email, to separate the merchant–sub-scriptions from news and information subscriptions. This way you can pro-cess all of these at once when it is con-venient for you.

Your email folder tree should look something like this:

• Inbox• Today• Tomorrow• Later• Delegated• Subscriptions• Social Media  – Twitter – Facebook – YouTube• Archives – 2011 – 2012

Once you have set this up you are in business and should be able to process your Inbox in a short time each day.

Step OneEach day when you decide to first open your email client, click on the “Tomor-row” folder first. Decide which, if any of these email messages need to get act-ed upon Today, and move them to the “Today” folder.

Step TwoGo to your Inbox and process the new messages according to the TTL formula. Your Social Media notifications should already be in their proper folders. If there are any new subscriptions move those emails and add a filter to catch them the next time.

Step ThreeOpen your “Today” folder and start work-ing on those emails. Delete or Archive them when you are done with each one.

Repeat this process each time that you open your email client. Your role will determine how often that is. Some peo-ple can check email two or three times a day, some need to keep it open all the time. Some people can get by on-ly checking a couple of times a week, it all depends on you.

Closing outAt the end of your last email process-ing session of the day, open the “Later” folder and look at those emails again. Are there any that you should move to “Today” or “Tomorrow”? Do it.

Then double–check the “Tomorrow” folder: are there any messages in there

that you can act on today? If so, move them to the “Today” folder.

Finally, check your “Subscriptions” folder: are there any messages in there that you really aren’t going to read? De-lete them.

Dealing with Subscription OverloadIf you find that your “Subscriptions” fold-er fills rapidly with hundreds of emails you may want to reconsider all of the alerts and notifications that you are sub-scribed to. This can be the number one reason that people suffer from “email overload” – all of the alerts and sales and special offers that you receive when you give your email address to a merchant or when you buy something online.

You may even consider “purging” this folder once every 3–6 months, by un-subscribing from email alerts and no-tifications that you don’t find useful or valuable.

Getting to In–box ZeroThis simple structure can be a Godsend for those of you that find you’re over-whelmed by emails flooding into your mailbox. Soon you will be able to pro-cess the important things in your email in just a few minutes a day. a

You may want to reconsider all of the alerts and notifications that you are subscribed to.

Stephen P. Smi th

is a marketing and

productivity consul-

tant who lives in New

Hampshire, USA and

enjoys, reading, hik-

ing, fishing and camping.

! Stephen Smith

! Links: Stephen on Twitter | Stephen’s Website

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neously – because of their assumption of reciprocity – it began to damage my relationships. 

I found that my texting life was like a chimpanzee grooming session – send-ing little grunt–like messages back and forth with people, only ever establishing the fact that we like liked one another. My relationships weren’t deep. In fact, there were just more of them bound by tiny weak bonds formed in a tiny keyboard.

But when I tossed that beast to the curb, I created uproar. People were in-credulous. They thought I had lost my mind. How could I get rid of such a thing? How will I ever get anything done? 

Perhaps, and I’m only exaggerating to clarify, this is what Greek philosopher Era-tosthenes felt like when he was like, “You know guys, I don’t think the world is flat”. 

It’s not like getting rid of the smart phone magically eliminated my email, my phone and my sense of responsibili-ty. Quite the contrary, it caused me to re-spect it more.

It made it so I’d have to sit down and work, and focus on one project at a time, for a period of time and then move on to

How to Manage Without a Smart PhoneI suppose I’m busy like you, yet I get through life without the crutch of a smart phone.

By Jasmine Grimm

M any of you might think that state-ment is blasphemous. But for me, it’s been critical to my pro-

ductivity. I’m not lazy. I’m not out of touch with blogs, social media and all things savvy on the Interwebs. In fact, I’m cer-tified in it. I’m a 20–something woman who’s busy working on a start–up and working full time at a digital magazine that I started from the ground up. I make time to turn pit bulls into therapy dogs, volun-teer at hospice and with youth. I make time for Crossfit, Krav Maga, Marine Corp martial arts and Jiu–jitsu. 

But for me, I found when I ditched my cell phone I was able to get a hell of a lot more done in the day than when I had that pesky little bugger dinging at me all hours of the day and night.

You see I kicked that sucker to the curb because my friends were abusing it. I’d get drunken texts in the middle of the night. Someone would send me a mes-sage and if I didn’t respond instanta-

the next project. It made me more orga-nized because I wasn’t constantly being interrupted, moving haphazardly through tasks because of constant interruption. I focus more. I’m present when I’m with someone instead of texting someone who isn’t around. I call someone and they have my undivided attention. I show respect. I do one thing at a time.

So how do I get it all done without the smart phone?

It’s pretty simple. There’s a time for ev-erything. ! A time to tweet. ! A time to Facebook. ! A time to email.! A time to respond to emails.! A time to call.! A time to work.! A time to break from work.! A time to be with family.! A time to volunteer.! And a time to rest.

What do workers like me gain from all of this toil? I’ll get everything done in due time and on time. I don’t have to set my-self up for failure. I don’t have to be con-stantly interrupted and I have all the time in the world to eat, drink and find satis-faction in my toil.

And that’s how I stay productive. a

Jasmine Grimm’s con-

tent has appeared in

numerous media out-

lets including reprints

at Harvard University

and National Geo-

graphic Television and Film. She founded Ru-

by, Inc. a personalize styling business that helps

women realize their worth is far above rubies

by boosting their confidence, saving them time

and money and teaching them how to dress

for their body types.

! Jasmine Grimm

It made me more organized because I wasn’t constantly being interrupted.

! Links: Jasmine on Twitter | Ruby, Inc. Website

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Tracking Down People for Follow–Ups,

Answers and Reminders

Modern business protocols often require high levels of teamwork in order to achieve the company’s goals. More than ever, workers interact like cogs in a machine, and most of us have to mesh with lots of other cogs in order to get our work done. Fair enough, assuming everything runs smoothly.

By Laura Stack

B ut as we all know, human beings don’t always work together with mechanical efficiency. Occasion-

ally, things get caught up in the meta-phorical gears, causing work to slow – or even stop. 

This might happen, for instance, if someone doesn’t get a piece of infor-mation to you when you need it. Simi-

larly, if a supplier can’t provide a certain part or computer program, you may be stuck waiting. And if a project needs ap-proval to proceed, and you don’t have it, then find yourself at someone else’s mercy. If these people don’t follow up in a timely fashion, you can forget to keep in touch with them, putting you further behind.

Whatever the cause, these bottlenecks make your workflow uneven at best, and may even cause it to grind to a halt.

Clearly, you want to minimize such oc-currences, but you can’t count on anyone else to keep your workflow machine in good repair, either. So how do you grease the gears? By setting up a reminder sys-tem – basically a babysitting mechanism – a schema that helps you get the answers, approvals, and resources you need when you need them. That way, you can always track down all the people you depend on to keep you active, and urge them along as necessary.

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If an individual blocks your progress repeatedly, for whatever reason, you have two choices for dealing with the person. If necessary, you can attempt to find a work – around that bypasses them altogether. If you go that route, try to avoid conflict and leave going over their head as a last resort. Otherwise, try the direct approach: simply ask, politely, “What can I do to help get this done?” 

When confronted this way, most peo-ple respond in one of two ways: either with anger (a reflection of the attitude that caused the bottleneck in the first place) or with complaints about the factors actually causing the bottleneck. In the latter case, immediately offer to pitch in and help them clear the blockage. You may find that you only have to implement a minor proce-dural change or requisition a new piece of equipment to set things right. So don’t hesitate to take a helping hand, if doing so can eliminate further problems for you. 

Realize that you can’t clear every de-pendency in your workflow process, es-pecially if you lack direct control over the people involved. Just deal with those you can, accept the ones you can’t, and move on. While you don’t want to forget about them, you don’t want to worry, either.

A Tickle for Your ThoughtsIn addition to streamlining your depen-dencies, you’ll need to set up a system to remind you when to follow up with them. You can approach this task in ma-ny different ways: for example, you might use a chalkboard or whiteboard to track your follow–ups and reminders, or cre-ate a simple Excel spreadsheet that you check periodically. It doesn’t matter what method you choose, as long as it keeps

corporate hierarchy) or trickle down the chain of command from above. 

Like it or not, you often have to de-pend on others for answers to ques-tions, for approval or sign–off on work already done, for buy–in on projects or strategies, or simply to put work on your plate. Even though you have little con-trol over these bottlenecks, you can’t just sit there and wait. So let’s look at a few ways you can smooth your work-flow and maximize productivity even in the face of such frustrations.

Streamline Your DependenciesWhile you can’t eliminate all the depen-dencies constraining your productivi-ty, you can certainly eliminate some of them and make the rest easier to deal with. First of all, always make sure that the lines of communication remain wide open between you and the other per-son, and do your best to communicate with crystal clarity. Don’t beat around the bush, hem and haw, or couch your re-quirements in vague terms. Provide spe-cific details up front, to limit the possi-bility of misunderstanding. 

Once you’ve told your dependency exactly what you require and when you need it, work on getting buy–in on both points. This commits the person to ac-tion and helps solidify the deadline in their mind, so it has more urgency. In addition, express your willingness to work with them if something comes up that might threaten the integrity of your deadline. In all your dealings, be po-lite but firm and try not to badger.  Get an estimated completion date to com-mit to action and move on to the next bottleneck.

Breaking Through BottlenecksHave you ever been driving along on the highway and hit a traffic bottleneck where an accident or construction nar-rowed several lanes down to one? You can go from zooming along at a steady 60 miles per hour to a near–standstill in seconds. No matter how efficiently ev-eryone drives, your progress inevitably slows down.

This can happen in the workplace as well, but you can’t allow such bottle-necks to hamper you for long if you ex-pect to maximize your personal produc-tivity. Immediately analyze the cause of any workflow “traffic jam” that occurs. If you find you create the bottleneck your-self through your own behavior or from a breakdown in a process or system, then jump right in and take steps to clear it. Sure, it may require some hard work; but if you can take care of the matter, then do so without hesitation.

However, not all bottlenecks lie within your purview. Dependencies – blockages you have little or no direct control over–may also hinder your progress. 

Dependencies occur when you have to wait for others to do their jobs before you can move on to the next step in your own workflow. Sometimes they emerge from below, from end users or subor-dinates. More often, however, depen-dencies arise from lateral sources (co–workers at roughly your own level in the

If a project needs approval to proceed, and you don’t have it, then find yourself at someone else’s mercy.

Always make sure that the lines of communication remain wide open between you and the other person.

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nity while implementing your babysitting system does make the inevitable clash-es less common. 

Adventures in BabysittingHowever you arrange things, your bab-ysitting system should not only remind you to track people down when you need to, but also ensure you can track them down, no matter what. Like it or not, you have no choice but to take re-sponsibility not just for your own actions, but for the actions of the people you in-teract with professionally as well – at least to the extent that their actions af-fect your workflow process. 

No matter how well–intentioned, most people soon lose track of you and your issues in the daily struggle to handle their own...unless you make a sincere ef-fort to remind them otherwise. So if you value your productivity, keep an eye on your dependencies, and don’t let them forget about what they owe you. a

betical is best), update regularly, and can condense it into a portable form. You can always invest in the latest contact man-agement software and schedule calls from there. Or maybe a paper contact list works better for you. You can always upload everyone’s business cards into a capture service like Evernote, which includes OCR (optical character recog-nition) capabilities that make it easy to search for the info you need.

Cautionary TipsIf poorly handled, your babysitting sys-tem can morph into a nagging sys-tem: an annoyance to your co–workers that generates resentment and actually slows down your workflow. If misused

with subordinates, it can easily turn into a micromanagement system that quash-es individuality and kills productivity.

So don’t overdo it. Schedule remind-ers for basic mileposts and important re-quirements, not minor details. Never set a reminder just to bug someone in the middle of the task. When you do track down someone for a reminder or to ask a question, and they respond less posi-tively than you hoped or expected, don’t bother them incessantly without giving them time to get the work done or find out what you need to know. Just check back occasionally, trying to be politely persis-tent (within reason). If they refuse to re-spond, you may have to go around them or over their head to get what you need.

While you can’t avoid occasional-ly bumping heads with other people, treating them with politeness and dig-

you on your toes and “tickles” your brain, providing timely, reliable reminders about specific tasks, goals, and other informa-tion you need to see to at specific times. 

Many people favor the classic tick-ler file: a series of individual cards, files, or folders that rotate through a chrono-logical paper filing system. Most paper ticklers use the simple “43 folders” ap-proach. You can easily translate the tick-ler file concept into electronic formats. Spend a little time exploring your email client to discover how it handles remind-ers and notifications; this should take no more than a few minutes. There are al-so free services around the web that of-fer “deferred” email sending (on specif-ic dates and times).

Contact ManagementEven the best reminder system is use-less if you can’t track down the people you need to buttonhole. Therefore, your babysitting system also requires a sec-ond component: a detailed contact list. Collect every last bit of contact data you can for each of your co–workers and col-leagues: office phone number, cell phone number(s), email address(es), office or cubical number, physical address, their assistant’s contact info (if they have an assistant), even their IM address. Link that to their office manager’s contact information, just in case you can’t find them in any other way. 

Once you have all that contact info in hand, track it in some form of contact management list, whether paper or elec-tronic. You don’t need anything fancy, as long you make it easy to search (alpha-

Realize that you can’t clear every dependency in your workflow process, especially if you lack direct control over the people involved.

Schedule reminders for basic mileposts and important requirements, not minor details.

Laura Stack is a per-

sonal productivity ex-

pert, author, and pro-

fessional speaker

(now president of the

National Speakers As-

sociation). She’s the president of The Produc-

tivity Pro®, Inc.

! Laura Stack

! Links: Laura on Twitter | The Productivity Pro®, Inc.

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When You Feel Overwhelmed by Your Workload

I often write and speak on workload management. But even I occasionally get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of requests and assignments. I’m in such a state right now.

By Michael Hyatt

I recently had an overwhelming week: I attended board meetings for three different companies (two were out

of town); spoke publicly five times; and reviewed the copy–edited manuscript for my new book. That doesn’t even count the 669 emails I received. No wonder I felt overwhelmed!

But I’ll bet your life is no different. The reality is all of us have more work than we can possibly do. When you add to this the demands of regular exercise, family, church, civic duties, and some semblance of a social life, it becomes impossible.

Here are six things you can do to cope. Trust me, I am preaching to myself!

1 Acknowledge you can’t do it all. The idea that you will eventually get caught up is a myth. It’s impossible.

You have more work than you can reason-ably expect to get done. And unfortunate-ly, your workload is not static. Even now, while you are reading this post, your inbox is filling up with fresh new tasks.

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2 Accept the fact some things won’t get done at all. This flows from the first item. You have to make

peace with the fact that you must leave some things undone–for the sake of your own sanity.

3 Practice workload triage. On the battlefield, medics have to de-cide where to apply their limited

resources. They can’t help everyone. Ac-cording to Dictionary.com, triage is: “the process of sorting victims, as of a battle or disaster, to determine medical priority in order to increase the number of survivors”.

Some patients will survive without medical care. Some won’t survive even if they have medical care. Triage means ignoring these two groups and focus-ing on those that will only survive with medical care.

You must know which things you can safely ignore and which things demand your intervention.

4 Categorize your tasks by priority. In my view, this is the one thing missing from David Allen’s sys-

tem. It assumes all tasks are equal. Or to say it another way, you can only de-cide a task’s relative priority in the mo-ment. This doesn’t work for me. I end up with scores of tasks I must review every day. My eyes glaze over, and I fall prey to what Charles Ummel calls the Tyran-ny of the Urgent.

Instead, I like the Franklin–Covey method of assigning a priority tag to each task:

A – urgent and importantB – important but not urgentC – urgent but not importantD – not urgent or important

Michae l Hy a t t i s

the Chairman (and

ex–CEO) of Thom-

as Nelson, the larg-

est Christian publish-

ing company in the

world. Michael has written four books, one

of which landed on the New York Times best-

seller list. Since resigning from active execu-

tive role in Thomas Nelson, Michael has been

having a great success as professional blog-

ger and speaker.

! Michael Hyatt

I personally categorize each task with one of these tags. At the begin-ning of each day, I focus on my A’s first. If I get those done, I move to the B’s, then the C’s.

5 Practice intentional neglect. Ma-ny people practice the opposite–unintentional neglect. They for-

get to do something or they are late in meeting their deadlines. They don’t like this behavior and neither do those who are counting on them, but this inevita-bly happens if you don’t practice inten-tional neglect. You must decide in ad-vance you will not do category D tasks. They are neither urgent nor important. They are simply not worthy of your time or attention.

“But”, you may ask, “what about tasks I don’t think are important but someone else does?”. Great question. Let me give you an example.

When I was a CEO, my Board some-times asked me to do something I thought was a waste of time. I didn’t regard it as important. But, because I served at their pleasure – and wanted to keep my job! – I re–categorized it in my mind as important. Sometimes, it is a simple matter of re–framing the task.

On the other hand, I recently received a lunch request from a man who is an acquaintance. He is looking for a job and

wanted to discuss career possibilities in the publishing industry. This is no doubt important to him and possibly urgent. For me it is neither, so I declined.

The bottom line is you must learn to say “no” to the unimportant tasks, so you can say “yes” to the important tasks and actually get them done.

6 Do the next most important thing next. Multi–tasking is a myth. You really can’t do more than one

thing at a time – at least more than one thing that requires focused attention. So get your list of priorities, do the most im-portant thing first, then move to the next item and work down your list.

For today, I have six things I’d like to accomplish: one of them is an A, four are Bs, and one is a C. I’m starting at the top and working down the list. a

The reality is all of us have more work than we can possibly do

The bottom line is you must learn to say “no” to the unimportant tasks, so you can say “yes” to the important tasks and actually get them done.

! Links: Michael on Twitter | Michael’s Blog

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I split my day into two different halves. In the morning I focus on creating stuff and only after 12 pm I start replying to emails and responding to everybody. It’s been working very good for me.

Benefits of Splitting a Day

By Michael Sliwinski

Mornings are just for meRunning a company requires lots of my time and I can find myself replying to emails all day long. By dividing my time to morning time and afternoon time I can focus to create and set strategy from my company in the morning. I really need that time for myself.

This way I can concentrate and work free of any interruptions – write, sketch, draw, plan, brainstorm... and I’m guaran-teed to get things done this way. I try to get my three main rocks (three most im-portant tasks for the day) done by noon.

Afternoons are for people – especially my teamFirst I reply to my team. I make sure ev-eryone gets some feedback from me. I try not to fail at this but at times when I’m very busy folks need to be patient with me. I hate it when I don’t have the time to get back to my team and test things they’re working on. That’s why I focus on this first.

Meetings come in the afternoon, tooFollowing this rule I schedule meetings (ususally Skype calls) between 12 and 4 pm (with exceptions for my American friends as I live in Europe).

@mail and @phone contextsThe rest of the day I spend replying to email and calling people and taking phone calls. Actually phone is still a pret-ty powerful tool. I call people up if I want an answer fast. I don’t mind interrupting people at this time with my phone call as I assume everyone’s like me and has al-ready done their most important things for the day :-)

Working standing vs working sittingThe noon also usually changes my work-ing style – in the mornings I’m working standing and at noon I take my laptop, get a cup of coffee and go sit on a ter-race or in the living room. This way I can benefit from sitting nicely and start re-plying to people :-)

The benefit of splitting the day is FOCUSThat’s the most important thing – split-ting the day in two gives me focus and time to work. I love it. Running a com-pany of 12 (as of today) requires lots of attention and can come down to constant emailing and responding to others” requests. When I split my day I have the time for me and I’m con-strained to responding to folks only for half of the day.

This approach reminds me of a story about a CEO I read that when he showed up in the office he’d have his door closed until noon... and would open the door shortly after to signal to his teammates that now they can approach him. I do the same... only as we have no office, I just don’t reply to email, skype or any other form of communication. :-) a

Michael Sliwinski is

your chief editor of

the Productive! Mag-

azine and a host of

the magazine’s Pro-

ductive! Show. Every

day he’s trying to help people get more do-

ne with his web application Nozbe – now also

available as a native Android, iPhone and iPad

app, as well as for a desktop PC and a Mac.

! Michael Sliwinski

By dividing my time to morning time and afternoon time I can focus to create and set strategy from my company in the morning.

! Links: Michael on Twitter | Michael’s Blog

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I’d like to share with you my new rules for life and work. Like most things that increase productivity, the changes I’ve made are not rocket science: they’re really common sense principles that are just not commonly applied.

By Graham Allcott

S omeone said to me on twitter re-cently that they had no problem thinking productively, the problem

was in the doing. Doing things different-ly involves conscious effort and can use up valuable energy. As humans, we often struggle with change. That is, of course, until you embed those changes to be-come brilliant new habits. Indeed, as Ar-istotle once said “Excellence is not an act, but a habit”.

Why do I need rules?I have no boss. This, for me, is danger-ous. My natural style is that I hate detail, I follow my instincts not always what’s best for me, I hate feeling boxed in and I get distracted easily. It’s what’s new, what’s fun and what’s more exciting than what I really need to be doing. So for me, a set of rules that I can instinctively fol-low helps me to embed new and pro-ductive habits. I sussed this out a few years ago and I’d been tinkering with my own rules ever since. But I think some-where along the line I got a bit stuck in my ways and let bad habits develop.

I’m only about 2 weeks into this new routine, with its new rules, but already I’ve started to feel profound productivity benefits. Your new rules might not need to be as drastic as this, but hopefully you can take some inspiration.

Rule 1: “Do less”I’m going into ruthless overdrive to re-duce what I commit to. This has been really hard. Last year I was sitting on 3 charity trustee boards and was al-so involved in a couple of other start–ups. I’ve now resigned from 2 of those 3 boards. Both are organisations that

Making space: My New Productivity Rules of the Road

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I love deeply. One I helped set up from scratch, I’ve been there 6 years, we’ve had loads of successes, we’ve changed lives and it feels so much a part of me. But sometimes it’s just time to let go. Change is a natural thing, to be cele-brated not feared. The other one I always said would be a short–term trustee role, to help them get a board established, get funding coming in and increase the profile. It feels like they’re miles ahead of schedule now and no longer need me but also I’m leaving just as we get to enjoy that success. I’ll miss the parties, but I don’t get involved in these things for parties and awards, I get involved to add value and create impact. So I’m moving on.

I’m so used to spreading myself thin-ly and working on a hundred things at a time that it feels intuitively very strange to just be creating space, not knowing exactly what will fill it. But it feels like the right thing to do and I’m following my hunches.

Rule 2: “Only 2 London days a month”I’m limiting my trips to London that do not involve me running workshops there to two days a month. This saves on tiring travel time and introduces some scar-city into my decision–making about where I spend my time and attention: So if you ask me for a coffee in London and I come back suggesting a phone call instead, it’s not that I don’t love you, it’s just me honing in on keeping my focus.

Rule 3: “Starting well”I’ve never really been a morning person (particularly if I’m already generally feel-

ing tired), but this rule is designed to gently nudge me in that direction. 7am – 9am is now for four specific things:! Meditation! Gym/exercise! Hearty breakfasts! Consuming limited information of my

own choosing: Twitter, Facebook, news and of course the football gos-sip column on the BBC website.

Making sure I give myself time to wake up, fuel–up and warm–up is important to ensuring the success of rule 4!

Rule 4: “9am – 1pm is Big Rock time”This is the big one. At 9am, I no lon-ger go to the office. I’m home alone – and I “go dark”. One of the key traits of a productivity ninja is stealth. So I lie low, keep off everyone else’s radar and re-ally focus. 9am until 1pm is my time to tackle the difficult stuff, the detail stuff that needs full attention and the stuff that is ruined by distractions. For me, this is Excel spreadsheets, writing, think-ing, workshop planning, PowerPoint cre-ation, ANYTHING related to finance and a few other bits and pieces. These are my “big rocks”, as described in the sto-ry Steven Covey tells in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”.

My internet connection is on a time–switch, so at 9am it switches itself off. The world outside the window no lon-ger exists. No emails, no twitter, no po-tential web–surfing.

You’d be surprised how hard this is to keep to – both mentally and practi-cally. It’s always really tempting to get sucked back in and in the early days of trying this, before I really started to see

the pay–offs, I cheated by using my trav-el dongle to cunningly break my own rule. Practically, it’s hard too because you can get online in so many different ways – yes, my home wifi is my main route onto the internet, but I have the aforementioned travel dongle, I have 3G on my iPad, (crap) 3G on my Blackber-ry and there are even neighbours with open wifi connections that zone in and out of my range. It’s actually quite hard to choose not to be connected. Socio-logically, I can see a future where not only will it be hard to be offline, but it might also be viewed as suspicious (“why would you NOT want to be con-nected?”).

My phone is on silent during this time, too. I have voicemail and I can still see who’s calling, but I leave it un–answered for the most part. I recently used a ma-jor price comparison website to change my car insurance and despite unticking every box, the bastards sold my phone number to all and sundry (I’m pretty con-vinced illegally but I have no proof so won’t name them! Lesson learned). So working like this in the last 2 weeks has probably saved me 20 minutes of actual interruption time and an hour or two of recovery time from these interruptions by me missing those unnecessary, un-wanted, unrequested calls.

The only exception to my phone call rule is the team’s 9.40 “Daily Huddle”. This is a useful, 15 minute interruption because it allows me to cover off any ur-gent office issues very quickly and effi-ciently – and my hope and expectation is that both I and the team will prepare for this even more so now that we know it’s the only opportunity we have to speak until 2pm.

Rule 5: “Lunch is not for wimps”I’m pretty good at making sure I eat throughout the day, but the idea here is to take a full hour for lunch, really to try and switch out of work mode. This

For me, a set of rules that I can instinctively follow helps me to embed new and productive habits.

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Graham specializes in

personal organizational

systems, strategies to

deal with the informa-

tion overload and “ac-

tion management”.

A naturally “too strategic to be organized” person

who has trained himself to be productive through-

out the development of personal work–flow sys-

tems and developing the power of good habits.

! Graham Allcott

is surprisingly hard. I remember leaving my CEO job and starting consulting at a place where they took a full hour for lunch. On the first day, I called my wife and said “Help! I really don’t know what to do with an hour for lunch”. It’s not some-thing I’m used to, but I’m trying to stick to it. Some days I win, some days I lose. Ninjas are human, not superheroes.

Rule 6: “Office time is for the office, not for me”I realised that last year, the office was no longer working for me. I mean, obviously the people in the office were, but some-how it was no longer a place that I could personally rely on to give me the focus I needed. And there are still things within Think Productive that only I can do and I can’t delegate to others, so until that changes (and I’m working on it!), I need a new strategy. So whilst I plan to cov-er off all of my big rocks in the morning, I also proactively plan to “do” very little in the office. I go to the office not to do my work, but to help the team do theirs. My job from 2–5pm is really just to be available. So my office time is meetings (see rule 7!), processing my email, being available and helping out.

Rule 7: “Don’t meet, do”I’m cutting down on meetings. I realised at the end of last year we were devel-oping a tendency towards short but un-necessary meetings in the office. We have 3 or 4 regular recurring meetings that are really useful, but beyond these, most requests for meetings are really just a symptom of me or others delay-

ing decisions, or us as a team not being clear on who “owns” a particular project or has the autonomy to just take action. I think a lot of this bad habit developed because I was tired during the autumn and wasn’t on top form to make more ruthless and decisive decisions. So my new rule is to say no to meetings and ensure we find another way.

Rule 8: “Be kind to myself”OK, so here’s where I hold my hands up. I just wrote a book about the importance of recovery in managing your attention, the importance of good periods of rest in managing your energy and the impor-tance of sleep in managing your body. In the last few years, I haven’t been par-ticularly good at any of this stuff. I’m not good at taking breaks. I’m literally rest-less. So now I’m structuring my days to provide variety, sticking to Think Produc-tive’s 4 day working weeks (giving me most Fridays off) and resisting the temp-tation to do anything resembling work at weekends (except weekly reviews if I’m on the train to Aston Villa games).

Rule 9: “Consume less”I’ve always been pretty good at avoid-ing the consumerist cycle of instant grat-ification, debt, misery, instant gratifica-tion, repeat. But there’s still a huge load of things in my flat that I don’t need and I’ve been clearing them out and making my local charity shop VERY happy in re-cent weeks. But my “consume less” rule is also about information consumption: I haven’t bought a newspaper this year, I’ve turned off my news radio, I’m keeping

! Links: Graham on Twitter | Think Productive!

Twitter to a minimum (but definitely NOT setting up automated tweets – please, will people stop doing that!), I don’t think I’ve seen an hour of TV this year. I’m being conscious of what I’m ignoring instead of falling into the trap of endless informa-tion consumption and potential low–val-ue distraction. I’m keeping things simple. Ignorance is indeed bliss.

Rule 10: “Make space”Our attention is limited. Everything we do, everything we consume, everything we own, everything we commit to, ev-erything we put our attention on all takes us away from something else. Every de-cision a compromise. Many of the rules above are really about making space – more time, more attention, more energy, more focus. We need space to think, to breathe and to create. We need space to make things happen.

I’m making space and those are my new rules of the road. So if you tried to contact me this morning and haven’t heard back from me yet… well, now you know why. I am indeed deliberately ig-noring you. I’ll be getting back to you later and I’m sure the world won’t end in the meantime. Just please don’t take it personally.

I’m making the space I need to create things. And I’m not going to start apol-ogising for that. a

Everything we do, everything we consume, everything we own, everything we commit to, everything we put our attention on all takes us away from something else.

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Standing, Jotting and Getting Better!

I’m still standing!Aren’t you sitting too much? In

the office, in the car, at home af-

ter work? Have you ever consid-

ered standing while working? I have

been working standing these last

two months and I love it. 

Jason Womack full interviewHere’s the full video interview

I did with Jason for this issue of

the magazine. Even if you’ve read

the interview I still encourage you

to watch us exchange ideas with

Jason.

By Michael Sliwinski

Paper Pad for quick jottingA simple thing but changes the way

I work dramatically – paper pad with

a pen always handy next to my

computer – to make sure nothing

stays on his conscious mind.

As always, here are the three new (and very short) Productive! Show videos to help, inspire, and motivate you to get even more done.

Productive! Show Videos

! Links: Browse all the past episodes of the Productive! Magazine Show

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wood floors and a huge kitchen, you now have a weakness. You will give away pre-cious life hours and savings to get it. Someone else who knows that those things aren’t absolutely necessary can walk away, and not need to spend so much money (and thus work hours) on that kind of house.

If you are convinced that you need Starbucks grande lattes every day, or an iPhone or iPad, or an SUV or Cooper Mini or BMW… you are in the weak posi-tion, because you can’t give it up. Some-one else might know that those aren’t es-sential to happiness, and can walk away.

If you know that the man who is treat-ing you badly (but who you just know will change someday, because, you know, he loves you) isn’t necessary for you to be happy, you can walk away. If you know that you can be happy alone, and that you need no one to make you happy, you can walk away.

If you know that there’s almost noth-ing you can’t walk away from, you can save yourself tons of money. Years of time. Mountains of headaches and heart-aches. Boatloads of suffering.

You don’t need to walk away from ev-erything, but you should know that you can. And when the cost of the deal is too great, too dear… walk away. a

By Leo Babauta

T hose who can walk away from the negotiation – legitimately walk away, not just make a show of it –

are in the strongest position. Those who are convinced they need to make the deal are in the weakest position.

This is true of negotiating when you’re buying a car, closing the sale of your new home, haggling in a foreign flea market,

or trying to get a raise. It’s also true of anything in life.

Know that there’s almost nothing you can’t walk away from.

If you are convinced you need a nice house with a walk–in closet and hard-

Productive! Show Videos

In any kind of negotiation, your ability to walk away is your strongest tool.

Be able to walk away

Those who are convinced they need to make the deal are in the weakest position.

If you know that there’s almost nothing you can’t walk away from, you can save yourself tons of money.

Leo Babauta lives in

San Francisco and is

married with six kids.

He’s a wri ter and

a runner and a veg-

etarian and he loves

writing blogs: “Zen Habits” and “Minimalism”.

He’s a published author of a bestselling book

“Power of Less”.

! Leo Babauta

! Links: Leo on Twitter | Leo’s Blog: Minimalist

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