Controlling your workload

The Secret’ was quite a phenomenon during 2007, with its way of expressing the Law of Attraction (If you haven’t been touched by it yet, see its official website.)

So I’ll be trying my personal version in 2008…..how about you?

Writing down my wants for 2008 - ones which I’m willing to take action towards and believe are attainable.Then dreaming a little: how will I behave in 2009 when I have them? And getting a good sense of this; what will I see, hear and feel? How does success taste (or smell)?

Then, starting to believe I’ve achieved them already and getting the same senses and feelings now. (I do urge acting responsibly as well… e.g my values say it’s not good to spend the money I haven’t earned yet!) This is about generating the response through mind, body and behaviour, to attract the desired outcome.

(Let’s see what happens regarding doubling 2007 income!)

Of course you’ve written your goals for 2008 by now! (Haven’t you?)
New Year resolutions are typically forgotten within a very short space of time. Maybe because they’re thought about in such a short space of time. Often they’re ideals and unrealistic in a practical sense. Or they’re wishes which don’t stand up to making an effort.

Let me encourage you to think about what has gone well, and what not so well during 2007, particularly from a workload perspective. What are the lessons learned for you? Can you amalgamate all those into one overriding lesson you’ve learned this year about what you need to change about handling your personal workload. How can you turn that into a resolution (or a goal) that has more meaning for you?

If you have set goals already, how does this new goal compare in terms of meaning and priority to you?

(Yes, I’ve done this already, having been encouraged by my coach and I’ll let you know how it goes! My resolution relates to keeping things simple, following my own advice and taking action, so blogs will be shorter!)

I spoke about this engineering book, The Goal, in a previous post
To really improve one’s throughput, it is essential to see which tasks cause things to ‘pile up’. People can commonly think, when something isn’t getting done, it’s down to procrastination (or some other ‘time thief’).

Some closer analysis may be helpful! If you just don’t feel right about doing the task, could the process call for you to do something against your instinct or values? Or do you need more skills? Or are you scared of something? Or are you just giving this activity too little time in your schedule?

Assuming you’ve really got your overall goal really clear, and this task that isn’t getting done is essential to your throughput, maybe it’s time you took time out to really sort out what you need to do. Your overall performance depends on it!

Who else could do this?

How else could you do it?(What tools/skills do you need?)
What alternatives do you have?

What is this bottleneck really costing you in terms of your overall performance?

If you’re thinking there’s nothing you can do, and you’re willing to put up with your current performance, what does it say about you and your work style?

I would have to hold my hand up and say “yes” to this myself, knowing that there are some low priority things which I may well be late in doing, yet I’m not willing to give them up (maybe because it’s those I’ve placed at a higher priority that I’d have to give up on!).

It recently started to occur to me other people are not quite as aware of their own load and wonder why their peers/boss find it frustrating that a response rate can be lower than expected!

It has always felt right to me to know (and being doing) a lot of things a little rather than be a narrow expert and I’ve always loved this quote:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects”

I feel I’m doing pretty well in life according to Robert A. Heinlein , though I welcome offers to help me con a ship, will forget a couple of gruesome items, and I’m not quite ready to die yet!

When working on any one task, it’s good to be focused on it, for efficiency and success. When working with others on several tasks towards a goal, cooperation to deadlines starts to become important. Most of us have many tasks and cooperate with many different people, so the question is how to prioritise!

I once worked with someone who was fantastic at providing himself a buffer when giving status: saying he’d done X amount of work when actually he’d done X+Y. So, I endeavour to be clear about which task is my personal top priority at any one time and accept tight deadlines. As my personal priority decreases, there is an increase in buffering, and setting of others’ expectations, so my response rate lands in the right ball park!

If everyone else did this too, I’d want to work with those for whom my top priority is their top priority! Then who’d care about the number of spinning plates?
Shirley Thompson - The Desk Coach
Time Management and Motivation Specialist
Tel: 01425 480631

I was recommended to ‘understand my own psychology’ on a visualisation CD yesterday. (I don’t think the unusual summer sun had gone to my head!) What does that mean? OK, I’d love to spend more time on psychology study, but that’s not a priority! Presumably it just means the way we think about things, what makes us tick. I found it strangely encouraging that it reflected my blog title in that we are all different, unique.

If you currently feel you’re struggling, somehow not doing what you’re supposed to be doing, or just generally there’s something that’s difficult, maybe it’s just the way your brain works, what it’s used to thinking, how you formulate your opinions. Would it serve you better to think another way? Look at family, colleagues, peers, how do they deal with similar circumstances and think what you can learn from them, rather than say to yourself “I’m not like that”. We don’t always have to try hard to change our habits, to improve things; rather we can put more emphasis on our thinking.

Recently I came across an article in Psychology Today about disturbed sleep patterns. Encouragingly, it advised to relax and let the body right itself. There is a chance that your subconscious gets into the habit of thinking of the bedroom as the place to be awake!

Perhaps one view of ‘difficulty’ is that it’s the brain’s feedback control telling us to relax first of foremost. Then if we sense the existence of a bad habit, we can move to an alternate approach with more ease!

What aspects of you could it help to think differently about?

Shirley Thompson - The Desk Coach
Time Management and Motivation Specialist
Tel: 01425 480631

According to Time Line Therapy by Tad James and Wyatt Woodsmall, some people don’t like deadlines. When faced with a deadline they can set ultra early deadlines to ensure they meet a schedule. Perhaps packing your suitcase a week before you leave before your holiday?

Maybe they just refuse to be pressured by others?
I think everything needs a deadline, otherwise it’s unlikely to get done. So, I’d advise everyone to get a date on every goal or task they want to do.

Take a look at your task list; which ones have you got dates for (in your mind even if not written down)? Which are more likely to be completed?

Look at the short-term dated ones. Are they more likely to happen (and get completed on time) than the longer-term dated ones?

Can I say ‘yes’, we all need pressure to get things done?
Shirley Thompson - The Desk Coach
Time Management and Motivation Specialist
Tel: 01425 480631 Email: info@desk-coach.co.uk

I was treated today by a Chinese lady using a mixture of massage, and acupuncture. I’ve been suffering a ‘dead’ leg, for about 6 months, ‘probably caused by trapped nerve’, and wanted to take some action.

What I heard today about “balance” and “energy” and “knowing your body” made a lot of sense.  A lot more sense than any doctor, osteopath and chiropractor conversations .   And my whole body has felt quite strange, not to mention needing to sleep this afternoon.

I’ve recently started a meditation class, for the very first time, too.

It’s like I’ve joined  another world, and yet it seems a much more helpful one.

Anyone got any advice or experience to impart, to build my confidence I’ve not completely lost my ‘rational’ marbles!

Shirley Thompson - The Desk Coach
Time Management and Motivation Specialist
Tel: 01425 480631 Email: info@desk-coach.co.uk

I organise a monthly networking and coaching group in Ringwood, and  today was April’s meeting. It’s a small group, the main aim of which is to support people to develop themselves and their business, giving people time to think out loud, without being judged, yet be challenged.  Today’s meeting had an especially good vibe.

The positive feeling was no doubt due to the talk by Dinah Smith on Positive Living, a story about her personal journey from negative to positive thinking. It is an inspiring story, yet usually relegated behind a parallel story of being unwell and getting back to good health.

It made me think about my own journey, which I consider one towards taking self-responsibility and away from blaming the world. My desire to analyse does give me a challenge in being positive, when realism is more logical: what is a positive attitude in those circumstances? e.g. If my natural skills have repeatedly given a certain result, what is actually going to change it?  According to this morning’s talk, the right affirmations might; and a  little more heart than logic!  I now have some suggestions for reading, and to watch ‘The Secret’.

What are you predominantly? Positive, negative, realistic, fatalistic or what?

Shirley Thompson - The Desk Coach
Time Management and Motivation Specialist
Tel: 01425 480631 Email: info@desk-coach.co.uk

At my networking& coaching group on Monday (Ask me about B2i!) we had a discussion around ‘What is success?’. It’s interesting how we quote examples of prominent people to explain it, and stay reserved about what success means to us!

I was fascinated by a suggestion that we think about failure first and then think about the opposite: for this person, failure is more concrete, absolute, measurable and success is more abstract with an ‘infinite’ quality. That hit home to me, as I’d recently be wondering about my own expectations, were they

a. too high (unrealistic, inviting failure: infinity is definitely hard to reach!)

b. too low (not challenging enough!)

I’m really impressed with all those (really!) who can be happy about tiny steps of success, but when they apply it to me, I become rather disgruntled! What I might see as poor progress others see as progress.

Of course we cannot always be successful. (Is that a negative belief?My defence is that it’s said you have to fail to learn!) We at least recognise both success and failure, and probably a grey scale between. There are lots of things I’ve experienced success with. Somehow I think failures are more interesting, though certainly more painful to experience! I’d like to think we all get our share of both, and a lot of the time we’re somewhere in the middle.

Where are you on this scale?

If you’re not where you want to be, are you taking action? If at any time success is being a little elusive, I’ve decided to say I’m at ’striving’ rather than ’struggling’ on the scale. That to me means some forward movement. What other words would you put on the scale apart from success, failure and striving?

Shirley Thompson - The Desk Coach
Time Management and Motivation Specialist
Tel: 01425 480631  Email: info@desk-coach.co.uk

Style might be a very subjective phenomenon, from the perspective of whether people like it or not. But you may well be able to gauge it’s success in terms of your performance, for which we usually give ourselves measurable targets.

If you have to impress people, then your style will be assessed by others, whether it’s when getting noticed in the first place, encouraging them to listen to you or maintaining their respect for as long as you need. How do you measure your success at impressing people? Perhaps the number of emails you receive after a networking meeting, the number of comments on a blog ( ) or the longevity of your client relationships?

We usually think of skills and performance, but skills can be learned. If I use personal style as a metaphor, I can acquire (learn or pay for) the skills to choose clothes and haircut that suit me best, but I’ll end up with a visual image that’s ‘me’. Similarly in communications, I can learn how to build rapport with people, but others will recognise my natural conversational style.

If you have to get something done, then your style, as well as your skills, will influence your approach, your priorities, your attention to detail, the focus you give to your customers’ requirements, the chance you’ll leave it to the last minute to do, how you deal with customers and suppliers……..the list is endless.

As a one-man business owner, your style often sets the tone for your business: your marketing, your systems. Sometimes we contract out work, and need to know our own style, if it is not to be compromised by subcontractors. Marketing people might call this branding: how can you decide your brand without really knowing yourself first? It could become a veneer that is going to be hard to live up to!

As companies grow, brand seems to evolve to what the customers expect and it’s easier to market and measure through customer feedback. Yet not all employees have the same style (or should I say values); how might career performance correlate to (mis)match in styles?