​Learning to recognize unproductive worry will help you eliminate stress that you are manufacturing for reasons you can’t control.

When you find yourself worried about something, ask yourself:
1. Are you worrying about something that doesn’t have an answer?
2. Are you making up a chain of events?
3. Are you looking for the perfect outcome?
4. Do you feel like you overlooked something?
5. Are you trying to control everything?
 
In this episode, we talk about how to identify unproductive worry and turn it into productive worry by taking a few simple steps.

Have you ever had a bad day, where it seemed like each little thing that happened pushed you further and further toward the edge of the cliff and then eventually – BAM – you were over the edge?

Its happened to all of us. But, what I’ve noticed is that some people reach that edge much more quickly than others. Some people are able to recover much more quickly than others.
Why is that?

I believe that it partially has to do with the amount of reserve the person has.

Here is a simple example:
You have $32 to your name. When the car all of a sudden stops starting and you find out it will cost $500 to fix it, that is a lot of stress. You had no reserve – in this case, of money – to be able to handle the stress.

If, instead, you had $,1000 in the bank and you had the same issue – it may still be stressful, but it doesn’t send  you over the edge. You had a bigger reserve, which means that your better able to deal with the stress of the event as well as recover from it.

​The idea of reserve doesn’t just apply to money. You also need a reserve of:

• Time
• Space
• Relationships

​Listen to our episode on creating a North Start List

​Each of us has a set of processes that we follow every day in order to accomplish our job. The longer you are in your job, the more proficient you get at each process. But, you can be the most proficient person at the process, and it could still be a problem.
Why?
Each process is a part of a bigger system. No matter how efficient each process is, if it doesn't work well within the system that it is a part of, there could still be problems.
You are more valuable to your company if you can look at the system as a whole rather than just your process within the system.
 
Systems are typically:
· Cross functional (cross departmental)
· Made up of many processes
· Spanning many different disciplines
 
The best way for you to improve your understanding of a system is to look at a process that you are a part of and then look backward to determine the processes that impact you and look forward to determine the processes that you impact. 

​Time blocking is a time management method where you put blocks of time on your calendar in order to make sure you can get things done. It seems pretty obvious and straight forward, yet most people don’t do it. We let the urgent, non-important things get in the way of the non-urgent, important things.

The process is simple: when you have something you need to get done by a certain deadline, back up from the deadline, and block time on your calendar to work on it. If you think it is going to take 8 hours to complete, block 8 hours of time on your calendar. It doesn’t have to be one 8 hour block. It could be eight 1 hour blocks, but the key is to make sure you’ve blocked enough time in advance of your deadline to get it done.
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Then, you’ve got to honor the blocked time. You can’t snooze or ignore it and spend your time replying to emails. You’ve blocked the time for something that is important, so take care of the important item you have planned, and let the non-urgent stuff wait until later. 

Annual Reviews are universally dreaded. There are some good reasons for that, but one of the areas that you can really impact is to reduce the amount of time it takes for you to write your self-review. Our process documents your accomplishments each month so that at the end of the year, you’ve already got a list of everything you accomplished. No need to try and remember back to what you did last February.
 
Step 1: Put time on your calendar for the end of each month to do the review. By blocking out the time, you’ll 1) have a monthly reminder to document what you did that month and 2) already have the time allocated to getting it done.
Step 2: Document your accomplishments each month. Don’t worry about if they are significant or not – you can determine that at the end of the year.
Step 3: At the end of the year, review all of the accomplishments you documented and determine the best way to summarize them in your review.

• Many of the accomplishments will become examples that support a specific objective
• Some of the accomplishments will not be included in the review at all
• Some of the accomplishments will be an objective of their own
• Some of the accomplishments will be basic expectations – your ‘day job’ and may not get called out in an annual review, but it is important that you list them since you will want to be able to show your manager that you met baseline expectations.

​We all love to hate change. But, I believe that change gets a bad wrap because you actually accept a lot of change with absolutely no drama. But, you don’t remember those situations because they weren’t really painful. So, you don’t give yourself credit for accepting all of those changes. When there is a change you struggle with, you remember it. Over time, you forget the changes you accepted easily and remember the changes you didn’t and come to the conclusion that you aren’t good with change.
 
When a change is coming your way, determine where you fall on the scale of change reaction:

What happens when you are toward the total freak-out side of the scale? Here are some things to keep in mind:
Change comes from your concern about the impacts of the change – you need to spend some time thinking about what answers you need in order to get comfortable with your new normal.
 
Recognize the stress that you are feeling – Stress begets stress. Once you recognize that your reaction to this change is stressful, you’ll begin to calm down, which will allow you to start to think through the change rationally.
 
You are in charge of your reaction - Taking control of your reaction means you are going to be more productive. 

This is the 6th and final episode in a series on productivity. Go to episode 1.

Do you let email drag you through your day? If you start your day by opening email, then the answer is likely YES! Letting email drag you through your day means that you are prioritizing those emails over all your other work. Everything on your to-do list. Everything on your project list. Everything on your someday maybe list. Is email that important? Unless your job description is to reply to emails (maybe you are a support person and tickets come in through email), then the answer is NO. You have made the choice to make email a priority. I know it sounds harsh, but that’s my job here – to be honest with you.
In order to be as productive as you can be, you need to approach email as you would any other input into your to do list. Set aside time each day to go through your email and process it. By process it, I mean, give it a category and take the appropriate action based on your system. As a reminder, the categories are:

1. 1. It can be dealt with quickly
2. 2. It will take time or multiple steps
3. 3. It can be delegated
4. 4. It is not right for now – ‘someday/maybe’
5. 5. It is reference material

If it can be dealt with quickly – then deal with it and move on. If it will take time – how do you feed that into your project list? You need to think of email as another input that can be scheduled into your productivity system rather than something that happens to you.
If you’d like a workbook that will walk you through this process step-by-step, sign up for our newsletter here.

This is the 5th episode in a series on productivity. Go to episode 1.
We’ve done all the groundwork and now we are ready to build a productivity system that will work for you. We know that productivity isn’t a one-size-fits-all proposition. You need a system that fits with your lifestyle, and we are ready to pull it all together this week. You’ve got all of the building blocks:
Your North Start List - to help you keep your priorities front and center
Your Time Bound Activities  – to help you be in the right place at the right time, prepared
Your Categorized To Do List  – so that you know what type of task you are dealing with
What do you have to do this week (time bound)? What do you need to do this week to stay in alignment with your North Star list? How are you going to deal with the items that can be dealt with quickly? Where will you track those items that are going to take time? What kind of a system do you need to track reference materials. What can you delegate? How will you track your Someday/Maybe list? You are going to spend time this week answering all of these questions. 
If you’d like a free copy of my system, I’d love to share it with you. 

This is the 4th episode in a series on productivity. Go to episode 1.

One of the things that all human beings have in common is that we all have a To Do List. We can let it overwhelm us, or we can take the reigns and manage it ourselves. An easy mistake people make is to confuse non-important tasks with important tasks. This is something that naturally happens. Day-to-day things come up, and at the moment, they feel important and then before we know it, we’ve gotten to the end of the week and we realize that we didn’t get the things done that needed to be done. We’ve let what is in front of us direct us.

That is why we are creating a productivity system that allows you to manage the day-to-day while also keeping an eye on your most important priorities. When you have a system, you are able to confidently say NO to the day-to-day attention grabbers knowing that you would otherwise be addressing them to the detriment of your highest priorities.

Now that you have your To Do List (if not, go back and listen to episode 3), it is time to categorize them. By categorizing them, you will be able to come up with a system for addressing each category. You’ll find the basis of this concept in David Allen’s book Getting Things Done.

The categories are:
1. It can be dealt with quickly
2. It will take time or multiple steps
3. It can be delegated
4. It is not right for now – ‘someday/maybe’
5. It is reference material
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If you’d like a workbook that will walk you through this process step-by-step, sign up for our newsletter here.

Go to Episode 5

This is the 3rd episode in a series on productivity. Go to episode 1.

We are taking the process of creating a productivity system step-by-step in this 6 part series. The step that we cover in today’s episode is to get a full inventory of your To Do List put together in one place. It is a little bit overwhelming because you’ve probably got a list of 100 things you need to get done if you really think about it. But, in order to create a system that works for you, that you can really trust, you need to know what all of the items are.

Your To-Do List changes every day. So, creating this list isn’t a 1-time deal. Once you’ve got the list created, you will need to keep adding to it while we spend time over the next few weeks to create your system.

Set aside an hour, find a quiet place, turn off your phone, and for heaven’s sake, be somewhere that you can’t access the internet. Get out a piece of paper and start writing down your To Do List.
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If you’d like a workbook that will walk you through this process step-by-step, sign up for our newsletter here.

​Go to Episode 4