The 28 Hour Workday (Part II) Managing your time and email. Productivity Doing more in less time.

. E823-LED
Susan Schreitmueller Susan Schreitmueller/Dallas/IBM@IBMUS

Abstract - Do you have a REDTIDE of unread emails? Is your inbox a stress-inducing collection of emails that you plan to 'get-round-to?' This session is an updated version of last year's popular 28 Hour Workday requested and presented 19 times from last year's TLE. It focuses on techniques to effectively handle notes, calendaring and sametime with a special emphasis on automation and new features. We will cover message marking, automated responses, quick rules, ST automation, phone automation, stationary and lots of other time-saving tools. Position yourself to do more with less: handle your time, your correspondence and therefore your productivity more effectively. Manage email with the 1 - 2 punch. Techniques for getting out of and staying out of email jail. Do It Once - then automate! - New features that will save time. Managing Your Calendar - instead of letting it manage YOU! Do More - in Less Time. Index Terms productivity, professional development, growth, career expertise, email INTRODUCTION We are all challenged to do more with less. We must accomplish more but with fewer people, fewer dollars and each minute of our day must be used wisely. Kenneth Patton said it best By labor we can find food and water, but all of our labor will not find for us another hour1. Therefore we must innovate and automate, extending our reach and doing the things that are most valuable to our clients, to our company, to our teams and for ourselves. Rather than simply working more hours or trying to achieve the 28-hour workday2, we should strive to do things more efficiently and drive our productivity higher just as we would utilization on our systems. Five ways that we might become more effective are to: Prioritize time so that time is spent wisely and productivity is maximized Become more efficient at handling emails: touch it once, handle fewer emails and automate Minimize multi-tasking which might seem to get more done but which actually adds more time to tasks due to task reintegration penalties Do it once then automate! Take the time to automate and utilize productivity tools Be a better communicator on email, on sametime, and in person BODY There are a few serious time wasters and productivity-stealers (not to mention stressors) that we will concentrate on here. This is not to say there are not many others, but lets not boil the ocean. Prioritization It is vital for us to spend time on the right things. With so little time and reduced resources, we must concentrate on doing the right things putting clients, IBM values, team priorities first. It is necessary for us to prioritize our careers and growth as well however. Too often, the excuse that we were too busy

2008 Technical Leadership Exchange

interferes with putting together a certification package, writing an abstract for TLE, or simply gaining think time which is critical to our success and that of IBM. Task Reintegration Penalties (or the ping-pong effect) Many studies have focused on the amount of time that it takes to reintegrate oneself into a task at hand when interrupted3. Simply put, your mind is like a computer only slower, in that when we context switch from one task to another time is spent finding the cache line and reading in the material that we must know to pick up the task. By ping-ponging back and forth between sametime, notes and a technical paper, we may waste as much as an extra minute each time to regain our train of thought. If it was a 2 minute email to begin with, this is 50% time wasted. It is better to put aside the time to attend to emails or sametime than to bounce back and forth. Likewise, consider the interruption time when you simply ping someone with your high priority interrupt when it could be so easily answered sans interruption in a note. Consider privacy lists on sametime, instead of perpetual Do Not Disturbs, and having regular hours where you are available to the outside world other than your management chain and team. Ensure Meetings are Effective and Efficient Consider a meeting, or worse yet a series of meetings with 3 executives, 10 staff members and 7 other people. The computation for how much money is wasted by being just 6 minutes late or drifting off to attend to sametime or notes instead of being IN the meeting. 6 minutes is a total of 2 hours time when multiplied by 20. Even worse, if there is no agenda, no outcome or no follow-through on actions. That could be as much as 1200 hours of IBM time wasted. It has been my observation that even with to-dos assigned there is little follow-up on the action items. All too often the meeting is about reporting an issue and not about driving to root cause and actions! There should be an agenda. It must be flexible and realistic. Meetings should be action and results oriented. Avoid meetings that recur, dont accomplish anything and where you are not driven to be an active participant because of what you bring to the table or what you learn. Ensure you are the right person to attend, or if not select the RIGHT delegate. If you delegate a meeting to someone, ensure YOU prepare them. Dont ask the meeting leader to recap everything (they may have 20 other delegates). Help the meeting leader avoid stacking resources bringing multiple people with the same role to the meeting. Start on time and END on time. This may seem trite but consider the example above of wasted time. Consider ending 5 or 10 mins. early to ensure the participants start to-dos. When to-dos are assigned, have a project manager or the meeting leader, mark follow-ups on the calendar for each to-do. All too often, to-dos are assigned but follow-thru isnt.

Do it once then AUTOMATE! Well talk more about email automation in detail, but automation cannot be minimized as a technique to extend your reach and do more with less. Any time you can avoid typing the same information over and over or answering the same question take the time to automate. This includes, but is not limited to: Programming buttons to automatically type your conference call-in, your admin information, anything that you repeatedly answer4. Putting useful information on your closing greeting including your (or your admins) contact information, your timezone, what your URL is, and other good information Creating a frequently asked questions page or URL and pointing to it on your close

2008 Technical Leadership Exchange

 EMAIL

Using either quick responses or abbreviation expansion to minimize typing (see Sametime plugins on preferences) Use stationary (in notes New Note using Stationary) when certain groups routinely need the same types of information Try thinkbox and routinely check TAP (Technology Adopters Program) for new opportunities to collaborate and automate

Ahhh, here is the heart of the matter! Try the one-two punch! Instead of leaving a redtide of unread emails in your inbox to stress you at the beginning, middle and end of each day, handle your emails and file them immediately. 1) Touch emails once if at all possible. Delete it if it doesnt pertain to you. If you can do it in 2)TWO minutes and you are the right person to handle it, do it immediately. If you cannot, estimate the time it will take you to complete it and go to your calendar (right click and turn the email into a calendar entry) and block off the appropriate amount of time. If you DONT have the time trust me, it will not magically appear. Delegate it to the right person and then delete it after a follow-up entry. Practice good email etiquette:
DO Keep emails short and succinct Put the most important information at the top Keep subject titles clear and relevant Bring up the important threads if there is a long chain of emails Use automatic spell-checking (after all it IS a computer!) Mark with colors or italics most important information, requested actions or dates/times Use EOM (end of message) in subject header when the email subject is complete and can be read and deleted USE Attachment tools, archive, and message marking Use embedded slides that are large and unweidly and do not lend themselves to attachment tool automation Repeatedly forward mailing list information to others instead, send them the sign-up information Forward or reply with a subject that is not indicative of the message contained. DONT Copy your manager on each and every email (they know you are busy trust me Copy everyone on the cc list with your THANKS to the responder! Forward HUGE necessary! attachments unless absolutely

SHOUT or use excessive exclamations

CONCLUSION

We always seem to make the time to work harder, but we rarely slow down enough to work SMARTER. With a focus on productivity and time-savers we can all do more with less. Have fun with the new tools!

URLs
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/4438.html On email overload

2008 Technical Leadership Exchange

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4490997 On email overload http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4958831 On work interruptions http://groups.google.com/group/gtd-for-lotus-notes Getting Things done excellent website for productivity

ACKNOWLEDGMENT I would like to thank those who have attended my sessions who have generously shared their hints, tips and techniques. I cannot name them all, but if you have passed it on and paid it forward thank you. I would like to extend a special note of thanks to Janet Warton and Phil Stauskas who taught me the importance of mentoring and having a good mentor. They raised my awareness of the PLTE / TLE conferences and how to learn as much in the halls as in the sessions. They are truly the unsung heroes of technical vitality. REFERENCES
[1] Patton, Kenneth, time quotes http://wisdomquotes.com/cat_time.html [2] Schreitmueller, Susan K. "The 28-hour Workday Managing your inbox and sametime", 2007 Anaheim TLE, session MET-230, http://podweb1.atlanta.ibm.com/tm6/crossprofession/index.html [3] Taking Control of Your Time, Harvard Business School Management Series [4] Schreitmueller, Susan K. "The 28-hour Workday Managing your inbox and sametime", 2008 Orlando TLE, session E823-LED

2008 Technical Leadership Exchange