Hey everybody, this is Steve. Today I want to share with you six ways that you can
spend less time at work, plus, if you hang on to the end, the
killer secret that I think really transforms it all. Now, I've worked in
corporate world for more than 25 years now and I know how long the days can be.
I know what it is to work long hours, but I also know what it is to take time out
of that day, to actually reduce the amount of time that you spend there, and
to get away earlier. So the first thing is to actually plan it out before you
actually get down to the day's work. Take a piece of paper and write out the
agenda for today and go through it and figure out what are the most important
things. The second thing is to reduce, to remove, to delete things from that list,
so go through the things you listed out in your agenda for the day, remove
anything that's really not that important. Also remove anything that will
just sort itself out, if you give it time to do so. The third thing is to time box
things. That means going through what you're gonna set out to do with the day
and figure out how much time can you afford to spend on it before you have to
move on to the next thing. So if you decide that a particular task you can
only afford to spend an hour on it, then write it there: only an hour, or half an
hour, 15 minutes, whatever it is, but put some time boxes to the things that are
on your agenda so that what you're going to set out to do can fit in the day. But
of course you have to be realistic. there's no point saying that you will
spend an hour on something that you know is actually gonna take you two or
three. The fourth thing is presence. Be present with what you're doing and do it
like it matters. What I mean by this is so many of us kill time by not really
being present with what we're doing. What I mean by being present is imagine that
you are trying to read a book whilst at the same time trying to listen to a
piece of music. You actually are not present with either of them, so you might
think that you're multitasking, you might think that you're getting multiple
things done but you're actually getting
nothing done, because you're not really present with either of them. I find it's
much more efficient then rather than try and read a book and listen to a piece of
music at the same time, to do one then the other and be present with both of
them when I'm doing them. On this point about doing it like it matters
this is something that changes our relationship with things we don't like
so much. You know, there are plenty of tasks I don't like doing but if they're
there to be done and if it's time to do it, I'm gonna do it with energy and
enthusiasm and like it matters. This is something that I left my mentor Bill
Cumming, because there's nothing worse and there's nothing that kills time more
than a not being present with what you're doing, and be doing it like you
really don't want to be there, dragging your heels, not wanting to be there. Look,
if you're gonna do it, do it with energy, enthusiasm, like it matters, and be
present with it. It'll not only be finished quicker but it'll be more
satisfying too. The fifth thing is to go about your day like you have to leave at
3 o'clock. Imagine you've got a hard stop at 3 o'clock, and make that the attitude
with which you approach everything, because on a day where you really have
to leave at 3 o'clock, you're going to have much fewer interruptions. You're
going to get less involved with distractions. You're going to get less
distracted by emails, for example, which are not really relevant at the time
being, so even though you might not really have to leave at 3:00, and it's
not that you do have to leave at 3:00, but if you set about your day as if you
have to leave at 3:00, then you are going to be more ruthless with focusing on
what you need to get done. The sixth thing is to not use email when phone or
in-person options are available, because when you're in the middle of something
and you need something from somebody, and you send it out on an email, that leaves
that task hanging in the air. It's something else that you're gonna have to
come back to later. If you have the opportunity to pick up the phone and
deal with it there and then or go around to see somebody and deal with it there
and then, it's much better. t's much easier to do that and get things done
that way. Now I get it that's not always possible. Maybe the person is out of the
office, maybe the person is unavailable to you at that time, so sometimes you are
gonna have to send an email and park what you're doing, knowing you're gonna
have to come back to it later, but if you have the option to go and see that
person face-to-face or pick up the phone to them, then that's going to do a lot
better for getting things done. They're the six things but I promised you
a killer secret and here it is. I got this from a very senior executive at a
IT organization that I used to work in and that killer secret is to basically
apply exam technique to the day. Bear with me. What my mentor told me, because I
asked him how do you manage having so much to do and fit that in your working
day and still get time to go home and spend time with your kids, and he told me
this: He said I see every day like an exam. Now at first I don't mind telling
you I wasn't sure I was gonna like this metaphor, because not everybody likes
exams, but again bear with me. He said the way you gotta see it is it's
like an eight hour exam or a seven hour exam depending on what your working day
is, and each day it's like you've got a bunch of questions to answer so at the
start of the day you turn the page over and you start on question one. If you get
stuck you'd go on to question two. if you get stuck you go on to question three. if
you get time you come back to answer the questions that you couldn't answer. You
go to the questions where you know you can score the highest points first, and
then when time's up, then it's a time to close the paper knowing that you've done
the best, that you can, and remember the objective was not to get a hundred
percent, the objective was to pass. Again I know that not everybody's gonna
like the idea of every day being an exam, but I would point you away from that, and
more to the idea that it's about using an
exam technique. This idea of going to where you can score the most points
first, the idea of going to the most important questions first, the idea that
if you get stuck go on to another question, the idea that if you get time
go back and answer the previous question you were stuck on. Perhaps
the most liberating thing in this whole metaphor was this idea that the
objective is not to get a hundred percent, the objective is to pass. So
there we have it, six ways that you could spend less time at work plus the killer
secret that might transform your relationship with all of it. If this
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