Weathering a New Season for Productivity

Now that we are almost 10 full weeks into actively protecting ourselves from COVID-19, I know it’s continually difficult to find peace and happiness, particularly as the world is ever-changing around us.

The anxiety remains high as the future is unclear. Similarly, although “stay at home" initially sounded like it wouldn't be too difficult, it turns out that social distancing can be majorly challenging. As the world starts transitioning into this timeframe where we re-enter elements of our economy that have been slowed by fighting this disease while still trying to minimize the negative effects this dreadful disease for which there is no treatment or vaccine, I realize the emotional rollercoaster will continue, including fear, anxiety, excitement, stress, hopefulness, hopelessness and more. 

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This period of uncertainty and fluidity has really brought me back to my core values for boosting productivity:
🌻 𝗢𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳 𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗲. You are doing the best you can in the most extenuating of circumstances. If you’re working remotely, you are not a “work from home” employee; instead, you are at home trying to work amidst serious stress.
🧘🏻‍♀️ 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗴𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗳𝗹𝗲𝘅𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲. The more we roll with all the ups and downs of schedule changes, the better.
👩🏻‍💻 𝗔𝗶𝗺 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀. There is plenty of grief to go around, whether that's grief for a loved one, grief for a job lost, grief for plans changed or something else, and the emotional rollercoaster is distracting, taking energy from desired results. Things now are exhausting. It’s okay to expect less productivity than would be considered normal.
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TAKE ACTION - While implementing these big-picture steps, there are a few tactics to adopt that can be super helpful:
1️⃣ Visualize what matters most to you, committing time to those priorities. We must know our goals to get there.
2️⃣ Internalize the belief that we all deserve joy, putting things on your calendar that bring happiness while staying at home. Maybe that's scheduling virtual hangouts with friends, achieving milestones with work goals, enjoying a tasty meal via takeout from a locally-owned small business, finding an organizational break-through for a troubling area of your home, self-care or something specific to your unique interests. Decide what you need and creatively go after it.
3️⃣ Create structure. Protect your designated workspace, whether that's a corner of the living room that you've partitioned off with painter's tape or an actual office. Have a morning routine that sets you up for success, including an effort to get dressed in such a way that you feel better about yourself. Set breaks throughout the day for movement, eating and staying hydrated. Find tools for capturing tasks, time commitments and information, culling the details together so they can be better organized and make using those details easier. Establish an evening routine that is calming and creates a foundation for the next day's success, expressing gratitude and celebrating what went right that day.
4️⃣ Determine what will hold you accountable. Do you need a carrot to work toward or something negative to avoid?
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This season is not normal, but there are still ways to thrive. Even if it’s only 5 minutes of deep breathing each day, taking a tiny bit of time to invest in your own well-being can go a long way toward cultivating the lives we want. What action can you take today for which your future self will be grateful?

Ways to Keep Productivity Soaring Throughout the Summer Season

With the hours of daylight super long this time of year, it's the perfect time to take steps toward boosting productivity as you enjoy this sensational season...

List out your goals. It's only by knowing what you want to accomplish that you can best integrate all elements of your life for your greatest fulfillment and summer productivity. Therefore, take a few moments to jot down all your must-do activities, projects and tasks for this season. Think of it like a bucket list but take into account your goals for work, home, society as well as your self-care via mind, body and spirit. Once everything is culled into one place, it'll be so much easier to assign time for each and work through your checklist.

Calendar the craziness! Line up calendars for the months of July, August and September on your wall so you can see everything at a glance. These might be wall-hanging paper or dry-erase calendars; the key is to have all three months visible at once. Then, add vacation details for you and your team members, holiday celebrations, impending deadlines and personal or family commitments, including swim meets and camp registrations alike. Include all elements of your life, considering a different color for each bucket. When you know what is coming, you can more proactively invest your time in achieving all of your desired results for each area of life and address "all the things" that matter most for the life you want to craft to achieve your highest priorities.

Establish your non-negotiables from the get-go. As summer schedules tend to become a little more erratic than normal, you and your team need to know which items have less flexibility than others. For me, I absolutely must maintain my weekly strategy session and daily wrap-up, but the good habits that keep each individual on track productively will vary from person to person. Do you expect your team members to have certain hours during which they always work in the office rather than operate remotely? Is there an expectation for how team members should request vacation time or notify the rest of the team about a hiccup related to impending deadlines, which can be especially vital with varying schedules for summer vacations? This would be a good time to communicate leadership's expectations to everyone. Be as clear, concise and transparent as you can. Then, when looking at your personal commitments, which can't be shifted as they help you energize, stay centered and maintain some semblance of sanity? Make sure those are highlighted on the calendars you've hung on your wall and communicate their importance to those who can help you keep them scheduled. Is it getting outside daily or going to the pool? Maybe it's a daily yoga session or movement? Whatever you need, be sure to ask for and commit to those fuel sources.

Focus your efforts on individual activities or tasks, not projects. It's not possible to check a project off your to-do list in one sitting. "Plan a party" is not a single action item; instead, there are many actions that make up that project. As you are mapping out the next three months, take time to break larger goals into smaller, bite-sized action items that can be completed as individual tasks. Make sure these are actions that move you forward with regards to goals in the areas of your life that matter most, avoiding the "shoulds" so you focus on your priorities. Start each task with a verb so as to fuel action, break each task down to as simple of a function as possible, estimate how long each action item will take to complete so you readily know those tasks taking 10 or 30 minutes, and assign a deadline for each task's completion. It is only in the instances that we assign a "when" for each "what" to be accomplished that we get more done so move your "someday" tasks to a specific date and time. Your future self will thank you for this emphasis on crafting the life you want to live.

Invest some time to reflect inward. With erratic schedules during summer, many companies have fewer meetings that would otherwise be held at normal intervals; this can be the ideal time to review and reset some of your organization's key elements. When was the last time your team updated its mission, vision, values, goals, processes and workspace organization? If it has been awhile, block out time during the dog days of summer to look them over, adjust as needed and, thereby, boost productivity for what really matters most. Maybe you'll want to freshen up clients' experiences, update what messages you are conveying across all mediums and put yourself in the client's shoes. Further, this can be an ideal time for a personal audit, where you assess what you have learned and achieved thus far this year, what priorities need attention in the coming months and what "someday" actions need to be scheduled so they move from to-do to done. Do your goals for work, home, community or self-care need to be adjusted, and how can you realign your actions to focus on achieving each?

Make time for fun and frivolity. If you block out time to truly enjoy the season, you'll be less distracted by what you are missing when you are focusing intently on getting things done. Brainstorm what cool things you can do to dive into summer enjoyment; then, once you've blocked off time for those activities, your mind will be less likely to drift from working towards wondering when you'll actually be able to celebrate summer fun. Plus, when you are taking time to enjoy all this season offers, you can truly take a break from everything else since you've planned for when those other goals will be addressed, boosting productivity overall.

What steps can you take today to get the ball rolling? With whom can you partner to hold each other accountable in creating your plan and, then, following through on that plan, even as things might need to be tweaked and your flexibility might get tested?

Knowing Where You're Headed Helps in Getting There

At times, it seems like the world is conspiring against anyone's attempts at productivity. You sit down at your computer to work on a major project, and your mind wanders to all the things you've forgotten to address; you see a pop-up notifying you of a new email, and an alert appears on your smartphone that someone liked your photo on Facebook. The phone begins ringing. Then, someone appears at your office door in a panic and needing your help. How can anyone actually get anything done?!?

When you know where you're headed, you are better enabled to get there. If you create a strategy each week for how to best address what matters most, you have a clear, meaningful path for achieving your priority goals. To make this work, it's important to utilize your weekly strategy as a protective barrier, warding off time stealers and others' priorities, like your own personal suit of armor.

With a weekly strategy, you know which tasks, communications, time commitments and development opportunities focus on your priorities, fueling achievement of your goals. If you don't use this strategy to protect yourself from the world's distractions and conflicting priorities, it's easy to get swept up in reactionary measures, losing vision of what matters most.

Stop getting swept up in what's urgent but unimportant. Stop reacting. Start using your weekly strategy to proactively invest in what's important. Grow confident that you can consistently work toward your priority goals by wearing your protective barrior.

How do you utilize your weekly strategy to ward off time stealers and others' priorities? Have you ever considered how your strategy can protect you from deviating away from what matters most?

Music Matters

Retailers have been integrating music into marketing campaigns for years to drive behavior, boost consideration and fuel sales. There is a great deal of research about how music affects our moods while driving, particularly for teenage drivers. Researchers have found that time feels like it is moving more quickly while we listen to music, and there is even a book named The Psychology of Music, written by Diana Deutsch, which can be purchased from here. It goes without saying that, yes, music does matter!

Yet, the reach and influence of music's abilities do not stop there. Music can be a very powerful addition to your productivity toolbox. Depending on the type of music you are listening to at any given time, music can help you accomplish all of the following:

- Set the mood

- Motivate behavior

- Stop procrastination

- Drive focus and concentration

- Energize

- Fuel performance

- Calm our spirits

When you are looking to plow through a daunting task, increase the challenge of your workout or recuperate from a stressful day, turn on a song that will help you achieve your desired results. If you are seeking inspiration, Lifehack offers "30 Inspirational Songs that Keep You Motivated for Life" or you can do a quick Google search for "music to ____" and insert what you are attempting.

Is music currently one of the tools in your productivity toolbox? If not, how can you utilize music to drive results?

Limit Distractions to Boost Productivity

According to Time Magazine, 50% of American employees say they work for only 15 minutes before becoming distracted while 53% of those same American employees report wasting more than an hour a day because of disruptions. Likewise, a typical office worker gets only 11 minutes between each interruption while it takes up to 25 minutes to return to the original task after an interruption. Wow... Makes it challenging to get any work done, right?!?

As you jumpstart your productivity at the beginning of this new calendar year, take action to limit your distractions. Here are a few steps you can take to limit distractions:

- Whether you prefer Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn or Pinterest, set a timer for how long you will use social media. You can easily use the timer on your mobile device, a kitchen timer or one of the many options from Time Timer.

- Turn off the pings and dings for notifications. Each time you get a social media notification, a preview for a newly received email or an alert of a new text message received, that is an unnecessary distraction; eliminating those allows you to take control over your tech tools and choose to check for those new messages when it works best in your schedule.

- Send your phone directly to voicemail as needed. When you are in a meeting, you do not take time to answer every call that comes in. Think about working on tasks and priority projects in a similar way, holding off answering those requests for your time and energy until after the task at hand has been completed. Plus, turning off the ringtone removes another distraction.

- Consider working remotely at times. Research shows that working in a coffeeshop can be excellent for getting more done because any conversations around you or noises in the store become background noise and drown out distractions.

- Employ tech tools to block distracting sites temporarily. For example, at KeepMeOut's site, you tell it the site to be avoided and in what timeframe to warn you if you visit it more than once. LeechBlock is an extension for the Firefox web browser that lets you block whichever sites you deem to be time-wasting for you. Nanny for Google Chrome is added to your Chrome browser for blocking specific URLs on set days for more than what you tell it is the max number of minutes you can visit that website. SelfControl is a free Mac application to help you avoid distracting websites while StayFocused is another tool to add to your Chrome browser for limiting the amount of time you can spend on time-wasting websites. Choose whichever best meets your unique needs!

What tactics do you utilize currently to limit distractions? Which of those I have listed here can you add to your productivity toolbox for greater results?