It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.
Month: November 2021
It is easy, in the onrush of life, to become a reactor: to respond to everything that comes up, the moment it comes up, and give it your undivided attention until the next thing comes up. This is, of course, a recipe for madness.
Having an inbox and processing it in a systematic way can help you gain back some of that control. But once you’ve processed out your inbox and listed all the tasks you need to get cracking on, you still have to figure out what to do the very next instant. This is why setting priorities is so important.
This article explains the three basic approaches to setting priorities, each of which suits different kinds of personalities. The first is for procrastinators, people who put off unpleasant tasks. The second is for people who thrive on accomplishment, who need a stream of small victories to get through the day. And the third is for the more analytic types, who need to know that they’re working on the objectively most important thing possible at this moment.
- Eat a Frog
There’s an old saying to the effect that if you wake up in the morning and eat a live frog, you can go through the day knowing that the worst thing that can possibly happen to you that day has already passed. In other words, the day can only get better.
The idea here is that you tackle the biggest, hardest, and least appealing task first thing every day, so you can move through the rest of the day knowing that the worst has already passed.
- Move Big Rocks
Maybe you are not a procrastinator so much as a fiddler, someone who fills her or his time fussing over little tasks. You are busy busy busy all the time, but somehow, nothing important ever seems to get done.
You can fill the time you have in a day up with meaningless little busy-work tasks, leaving no room for the big stuff, or you can do the big stuff first, then the smaller stuff, and finally fill in the spare moments with the useless stuff. To put it into practice, sit down tonight before you go to bed and write down the three most important tasks you have to get done tomorrow.
In the morning, take out your list and attack the first “Big Rock”. Work on it until it’s done or you can’t make any further progress. Then move on to the second, and then the third. Once you’ve finished them all, you can start in with the little stuff, knowing you’ve made good progress on all the big stuff.
- Covey Quadrants
If you just cannot relax unless you absolutely know you are working on the most important thing you could be working on at every instant, Stephen Covey’s quadrant system might be for you.
Covey suggests you divide a piece of paper into four sections, drawing a line across and a line from top to bottom. Into each of those quadrants, you put your tasks according to whether they are:
I.Important and Urgent
II.Important and Not Urgent
III.Not Important but Urgent
IV.Not Important and Not Urgent
The quadrant III and IV stuff is where we get bogged down in the trivial. Although some of this stuff might have some social value, if it interferes with your ability to do the things that are important to you, they need to go.
Quadrant I and II are the tasks that are important to us. If you are really on top of your time management, you can minimize Q1 tasks, but you can never eliminate them: these things all demand immediate action and are rarely planned for.
You would like to spend as much time as possible in Quadrant II, plugging away at tasks that are important with plenty of time to really get into them and do the best possible job. This is the stuff that the QIII and QIV stuff takes time away from, so after you’ve plotted out your tasks on the Covey quadrant grid, according to your own sense of what’s important and what isn’t, work as much as possible on items in Quadrant II (and Quadrant I tasks when they arise).
It’s only after you’ve stepped outside your comfort zone that you begin to change, grow, and transform.
Image Source: Pixabay – mohamed_hassan
Whether you’re a team leader, an entrepreneur, or in some similar position of authority, delegation is going to be a major key to maximizing your productivity and keeping yourself sane during tight deadlines or large workloads.
Delegating is not always easy, and the process is not always clear-cut, but the sooner you start, the sooner you will develop the expertise to do it effectively. Here you will find seven delegation strategies to increases your organization’s efficiency:
- Learn to let go: the biggest problem most new bosses and leaders face is the inability to let go of their own work. Start small, delegating only the smallest tasks, and gradually work your way up. Get to know your team better and improve the trust among you and your co-workers.
- Establish a firm priority system: start developing a priority system for tasks, creating at least four categories, according to the degree of effort a task requires and the degree of skill. The highest-skilled category should contain tasks that you keep on your own plate, while those in the lower-skilled categories can be assigned to others. Establishing a firm priority system will help you understand the nature of your tasks and delegate efficiently.
- Play to your workers’ strengths: as a leader, you will have to learn the subtleties of your teammates. When delegating, take a look at your team and assign tasks to whoever has the greatest number of relevant skills for that task. It seems like an obvious choice, but too many leaders delegate to whoever has the lightest workload or is the most convenient.
- Always include instructions: even if the task process seems obvious to you, make sure to include instructions with each task you delegate. If you have specific preferences for how the assignment will be carried out, include that information. If you have a strict deadline or milestones, you need to be clear about them. Including details and straightforward instructions from the get-go will avoid most communication gaps and will allow your tasks to be executed effectively.
- Don’t be afraid to teach new skills: though the assignment of your first few tasks will take more time than it will save you (since you will need to train your chosen employee), consider it as an investment. By transferring those skills, you will be opening the door to assigning all similar tasks to that individual in the future, ultimately saving more time than you spent teaching.
- Trust, but verify: once a task is delegated, trust your teammate to execute it on his or her own terms. This will allow the person to tackle the work the way he or she feels is best. However, do not be afraid to occasionally step in and verify that the task is moving along as planned.
- Use feedback loops to improve delegation moving forward: feedback is the most important part of the delegation process, and it works both ways. If your workers have done well with a task you assigned, let them know by publicly thanking them and offering genuine praise. If they have fallen short, do not be afraid to give them some constructive criticism. On the other hand, invite your workers to share their thoughts on how you are delegating.
Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.
Image Source: Pixabay – Cocoparisienne
In 2011, a group of researchers conducted a scientific study to find an impossible result: that listening to certain songs can make you younger. So how did they do it?
According to this TED Talk, the answer lies in a statistical method scientists often use to try to figure out whether their results mean something or if they are random noise. Here is the method: you should calculate the possibility (p-value) to achieve randomly the expected result (null hypothesis). If that possibility is below 5%, normally it is considered significant, meaning that there is enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis (the fact you are examining).
Though p-values are commonly used by both researchers and journals to evaluate scientific results, they’re really confusing, even for many scientists. That is partly because all a p-value actually tells us is the probability of getting a certain result, assuming the null hypothesis is true. Even though a p-value does not directly state the probability that the results are due to random chance, it usually gives a reliable indication.
Weekends don’t count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless.
Image Source: Pixabay – JillWellington
While email is intended to facilitate communication, it sometimes becomes a counter-productive tool because we spend so much time managing our emails.
This article provides 8 useful tips to improve email management:
- Prioritize 20% emails; Defer 80% ones
Not all emails are the same. According to the 80/20 rule, 20% of inputs are responsible for 80% of the outputs in any situation. Hence, to be effective, we should focus on 20% inputs that lead to 80% outputs. Likewise, we should focus on 20% high value emails that lead to maximum output. Give your 20% emails high priority.
- Realize you don’t need to reply to every mail
Despite what you think, you don’t need to reply to every mail. Sometimes, no reply after a certain time period can be considered a reply in itself too. Reply if it helps, but if the costs of replying don’t outweigh the benefits, then maybe it’s not worth worrying about it.
- Create template replies if you often send similar replies
If you look through your sent folder, you’ll probably find a trend in things you reply to. Try to elaborate and use templates that you have written beforehand. As you reply, customize them accordingly to fit the needs of the original mail. This will saved you huge amounts of time.
- Structure your mails into categories
Folders (or labels, if you use gmail) are there to help you organize your mails. Firstly, use a relevant naming system to what you’re doing. Secondly, use hierarchy structure. Using filters to automatically organize mail into folders works wonders.
- Use filters
Filters are tools that help you sort out the mail automatically when it gets into your mail. There are 2 basic things are required for a filter: the term to look out for and the action to apply if the term is matched. Depending on what filter it is, the mail will be automatically sorted into a respective folder / archived.
- Use the 1-minute rule when replying
If it takes within 1 minute to reply, reply to it immediately and archive it. Don’t let it sit in your mail box for ages. It’s going to take even more effort letting it hover around your mind and being constantly reminded that you need to reply.
- Set a limit to the time you spend in the inbox
Limit the overall time you spend in your inbox. See how long you take to process, read, reply, and sort through your mail. Then ask yourself how much of that time is well-spent.
- Unsubscribe from things you don’t read
In your cruising around the web, you probably sign up for a fair share of newsletters and feeds on impulse which you lose interest in afterward. If you find yourself repeatedly deleting the mail from your subscriptions, it’s a cue that you should just unsubscribe immediately.
The Diplo calendar 2021 realized by Stefano Baldi reveals some lesser known places in Italy and presents a selection of quotes referred to the role music in our everyday life.
Here is the selected quotation for the month of November:
Music can change the world because it can change people
Image source: Pixabay (CC0)
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