What Successful People Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day

By Kevin Purdy  August 22, 2012 www.fastcompany.com

 

 

How much does the first hour of every day matter? As it turns out, a lot. It can be the hour you see everything clearly, get one real thing done, and focus on the human side of work rather than your task list.                                       

Remember when you used to have a period at the beginning of every day to think about your schedule, catch up with friends, maybe knock out a few tasks? It was called home room, and it went away after high school. But many successful people schedule themselves a kind of grown-up home room every day. You should too.

The first hour of the workday goes a bit differently for Craig Newmark of Craigslist, David Karp of Tumblr, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, career writer (and Fast Company blogger) Brian Tracy, and others, and they’ll tell you it makes a big difference. Here are the first items on their daily to-do list.

Don’t Check Your Email for the First Hour. Seriously. Stop That.

Tumblr founder David Karp will “try hard” not to check his email until 9:30 or 10 a.m., according to an Inc. profile of him. “Reading e-mails at home never feels good or productive,” Karp said. “If something urgently needs my attention, someone will call or text me.”
Not all of us can roll into the office whenever our Vespa happens to get us there, but most of us with jobs that don’t require constant on-call awareness can trade e-mail for organization and single-focus work. It’s an idea that serves as the title of Julie Morgenstern’s work management book Never Check Email In The Morning, and it’s a fine strategy for leaving the office with the feeling that, even on the most over-booked days, you got at least one real thing done.
If you need to make sure the most important messages from select people come through instantly, AwayFind can monitor your inbox and get your attention when something notable arrives. Otherwise, it’s a gradual but rewarding process of training interruptors and coworkers not to expect instantaneous morning response to anything they send in your off-hours.

Gain Awareness, Be Grateful

One smart, simple question on curated Q & A site Quora asked “How do the most successful people start their day?”. The most popular response came from a devotee of Tony Robbins, the self-help guru who pitched the power of mindful first-hour rituals long before we all had little computers next to our beds.
Robbins suggests setting up an “Hour of Power,” “30 Minutes to Thrive,” or at least “Fifteen Minutes to Fulfillment.” Part of it involves light exercise, part of it involves motivational incantations, but the most accessible piece involves 10 minutes of thinking of everything you’re grateful for: in yourself, among your family and friends, in your career, and the like. After that, visualize “everything you want in your life as if you had it today.”
Robbins offers the “Hour of Power” segment of his Ultimate Edge series as a free audio stream (here’s the direct MP3 download). Blogger Mike McGrath also wrote a concise summary of the Hour of Power). You can be sure that at least some of the more driven people you’ve met in your career are working on Robbins’ plan.

Do the Big, Shoulder-Sagging Stuff First

Brian Tracy’s classic time-management book Eat That Frog gets its title from a Mark Twain saying that, if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, you’ve got it behind you for the rest of the day, and nothing else looks so bad. Gina Trapani explained it well in a video for her Work Smart series). Combine that with the concept of getting one thing done before you wade into email, and you’ve got a day-to-day system in place. Here’s how to force yourself to stick to it:

Choose Your Frog

"Choose your frog, and write it down on a piece of paper that you'll see when you arrive back at your desk in the morning, Tripani advises."If you can, gather together the material you'll need to get it done and have that out, too."
One benefit to tackling that terrible, weighty thing you don’t want to do first thing in the morning is that you get some space from the other people involved in that thing--the people who often make the thing more complicated and frustrating. Without their literal or figurative eyes over your shoulder, the terrible thing often feels less complex, and you can get more done.

Ask Yourself If You’re Doing What You Want to Do

Feeling unfulfilled at work shouldn’t be something you realize months too late, or even years. Consider making an earnest attempt every morning at what the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs told a graduating class at Stanford to do:

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

“Customer Service” (or Your Own Equivalent)

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark answered the first hour question succinctly: “Customer service.” He went on to explain (or expand) that he also worked on current projects, services for military families and veterans, and protecting voting rights. But customer service is what Newmark does every single day at Craigslist, responding to user complaints and smiting scammers and spammers. He almost certainly has bigger fish he could pitch in on every day, but Newmark says customers service “anchors me to reality.”
Your own version of customer service might be keeping in touch with contacts from year-ago projects, checking in with coworkers you don’t regularly interact with, asking questions of mentors, and just generally handling the human side of work that quickly gets lost between task list items. But do your customer service on the regular, and you’ll have a more reliable roster of helpers when the time comes.



6 Leadership Styles, And When You Should Use Them

www.fastcompany.com 05-29-2012

Taking a team from ordinary to extraordinary means understanding and embracing the difference between management and leadership. According to writer and consultant Peter Drucker, "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."

Manager and leader are two completely different roles, although we often use the terms interchangeably. Managers are facilitators of their team members’ success. They ensure that their people have everything they need to be productive and successful; that they’re well trained, happy and have minimal roadblocks in their path; that they’re being groomed for the next level; that they are recognized for great performance and coached through their challenges.

Conversely, a leader can be anyone on the team who has a particular talent, who is creatively thinking out of the box and has a great idea, who has experience in a certain aspect of the business or project that can prove useful to the manager and the team. A leader leads based on strengths, not titles.
The best managers consistently allow different leaders to emerge and inspire their teammates (and themselves!) to the next level.

When you’re dealing with ongoing challenges and changes, and you’re in uncharted territory with no means of knowing what comes next, no one can be expected to have all the answers or rule the team with an iron fist based solely on the title on their business card. It just doesn’t work for day-to-day operations. Sometimes a project is a long series of obstacles and opportunities coming at you at high speed, and you need every ounce of your collective hearts and minds and skill sets to get through it.
This is why the military style of top-down leadership is never effective in the fast-paced world of adventure racing or, for that matter, our daily lives (which is really one big, long adventure, hopefully!). I truly believe in Tom Peters’s observation that the best leaders don’t create followers; they create more leaders. When we share leadership, we’re all a heck of a lot smarter, more nimble and more capable in the long run, especially when that long run is fraught with unknown and unforeseen challenges.

Change leadership styles
Not only do the greatest teammates allow different leaders to consistently emerge based on their strengths, but also they realize that leadership can and should be situational, depending on the needs of the team. Sometimes a teammate needs a warm hug. Sometimes the team needs a visionary, a new style of coaching, someone to lead the way or even, on occasion, a kick in the bike shorts. For that reason, great leaders choose their leadership style like a golfer chooses his or her club, with a calculated analysis of the matter at hand, the end goal and the best tool for the job.
My favorite study on the subject of kinetic leadership is Daniel Goleman’s Leadership That Gets Results, a landmark 2000 Harvard Business Review study. Goleman and his team completed a three-year study with over 3,000 middle-level managers. Their goal was to uncover specific leadership behaviors and determine their effect on the corporate climate and each leadership style’s effect on bottom-line profitability.
The research discovered that a manager’s leadership style was responsible for 30% of the company’s bottom-line profitability! That’s far too much to ignore. Imagine how much money and effort a company spends on new processes, efficiencies, and cost-cutting methods in an effort to add even one percent to bottom-line profitability, and compare that to simply inspiring managers to be more kinetic with their leadership styles. It’s a no-brainer.

Here are the six leadership styles Goleman uncovered among the managers he studied, as well as a brief analysis of the effects of each style on the corporate climate:

1. The pacesetting leader expects and models excellence and self-direction. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Do as I do, now.” The pacesetting style works best when the team is already motivated and skilled, and the leader needs quick results. Used extensively, however, this style can overwhelm team members and squelch innovation.
   
2. The authoritative leader mobilizes the team toward a common vision and focuses on end goals, leaving the means up to each individual. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Come with me.” The authoritative style works best when the team needs a new vision because circumstances have changed, or when explicit guidance is not required. Authoritative leaders inspire an entrepreneurial spirit and vibrant enthusiasm for the mission. It is not the best fit when the leader is working with a team of experts who know more than him or her.
   
3. The affiliative leader works to create emotional bonds that bring a feeling of bonding and belonging to the organization. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “People come first.” The affiliative style works best in times of stress, when teammates need to heal from a trauma, or when the team needs to rebuild trust. This style should not be used exclusively, because a sole reliance on praise and nurturing can foster mediocre performance and a lack of direction.
   
4. The coaching leader develops people for the future. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Try this.” The coaching style works best when the leader wants to help teammates build lasting personal strengths that make them more successful overall. It is least effective when teammates are defiant and unwilling to change or learn, or if the leader lacks proficiency.
   
5. The coercive leader demands immediate compliance. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Do what I tell you.” The coercive style is most effective in times of crisis, such as in a company turnaround or a takeover attempt, or during an actual emergency like a tornado or a fire. This style can also help control a problem teammate when everything else has failed. However, it should be avoided in almost every other case because it can alienate people and stifle flexibility and inventiveness.
   
6. The democratic leader builds consensus through participation. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “What do you think?” The democratic style is most effective when the leader needs the team to buy into or have ownership of a decision, plan, or goal, or if he or she is uncertain and needs fresh ideas from qualified teammates. It is not the best choice in an emergency situation, when time is of the essence for another reason or when teammates are not informed enough to offer sufficient guidance to the leader.

Bottom line? If you take two cups of authoritative leadership, one cup of democratic, coaching, and affiliative leadership, and a dash of pacesetting and coercive leadership “to taste,” and you lead based on need in a way that elevates and inspires your team, you’ve got an excellent recipe for long-term leadership success with every team in your life.



Robyn Benincasa is a two-time Adventure Racing World Champion, two-time Guinness World Record distance kayaker, a full-time firefighter, and author of the new book, HOW WINNING WORKS: 8 Essential Leadership Lessons from the Toughest Teams on Earth, from which this article is excerpted. (Harlequin Nonfiction, June 2012)

Jim Collins: Good to Great in 10 Steps

Kimberly Weisul May 7, 2012 www.inc.com

Management guru Jim Collins asks entrepreneurs to do 10 things that will dramatically improve their companies. What are you waiting for?
Researcher and management guru Jim Collins has authored or co-authored six books, including Good to Great and Built to Last. On his web site there are 48 articles written or co-written by him. But speaking at the Womens Presidents Organization’s annual conference last week in Atlanta, Collins boiled it all down. Do these 10 things, he said, to dramatically improve your company.

1. Download the diagnostic tool at jimcollins.com, and do the exercises with your team. Yes, I thought this was self-serving at first. Then I looked it, considered that it’s free and doesn't require you to sign up for anything, and immediately saw his point.

2. Get the right people in the key seats. This comes from Collins’ famous observation that building a company is like driving a bus. You need a driver, but you also need the right people in all the key seats. So, says Collins, figure out how many key seats you have, and make a plan that will make sure you get all the key seats filled by the end of the year.

3. Once a quarter, have a brutal facts meeting. Be careful about who you include in this meeting. You will be discussing just the brutal facts. This is not the time to express opinions or strategize. Repeat: Only discuss the brutal facts.

4. Set a 15 to 25-year big, hairy audacious goal (BHAG). This is a goal that is concrete enough, and ambitious enough, to guide your company’s progress for years. Collins writes that “With his very first dime store in 1945, Sam Walton set the BHAG to ‘make my little Newport store the best, most profitable in Arkansas within five years.’ He continued to set BHAGs, which continued to get larger and more audacious, as his company grew.

5. Commit to a “20-mile march” that you will bring you to your big hairy audacious goal. Collins makes the analogy to someone who is trying to walk across the county. The best approach, says Collins, is to attempt to travel the same distance every day. If you’re on a 2-mile march, says Collins, you don’t bolt 30 miles ahead when the weather is good. You go 20 miles. When the weather is bad, you can’t sit inside and complain – you still have make 20 miles.

What does this have to do with entrepreneurship? In his research, Collins found that companies that perform consistently do much better than those that do spectacularly one year and are feeble the next. That’s because if you overextend in good years, when opportunity appears to be everywhere, you may not have the resources to get through the lousy years. The 20-mile march is a metaphor for the milestone that you can reach day-in and day-out.

6. Place at least one really big bet in the next three years, based on having fired bullets first. No entrepreneur has unlimited resources, just as no small army has unlimited gunpowder (this metaphor may be dated, but you get the point). The best use of limited gunpowder, or resources, says Collins, is to fire bullets to ensure that your aim is calibrated properly and that you can indeed hit your target. Only when you’re sure of your ability to hit your target should you load lots of gunpowder into a cannonball and fire away. “Fire bullets to calibrate. Fire cannonballs to go big,” says Collins.

7. Practice productive paranoia. Collins says he fondly refers to his entrepreneurial subjects as PNFs, or paranoid neurotic freaks. “Successful companies have three to ten times the cash on their balance sheets as their peers even when they are very small,” says Collins. Or as one of the CEOs he studied said to him, “We’re very proud of the fact that we’ve predicted 11 of the past three recessions.”

How exactly can one practice productive paranoia? Collins recommends making a plan that will allow you to go for an entire year with no revenues, and still survive.

8. Get a high return on your next luck event. Collins says that both great and mediocre companies encounter the same amount of luck, good and bad. What matters, he says, is how well they’re able to capitalize on it. Collins refers to this as ‘return on luck.’ “How are you doing on luck?” he asks. “Have you turned your bad-luck events into a big part of what makes your company great? Are you squandering your good-luck events?”

9. Make a to-do list. “If you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any,” says Collins. For every major ‘to-do’ on your list, you should have a corresponding item that you will stop doing. The 'stop-doing' list.

10. Commit to a set of core values that you will want to build your enterprise on, without changing them, for 100 years.

Why Being A Meaner Boss Will Help Your Company--And Make Your Employees Happy

BY Denis Wilson | 04-13-2012 www.fastcompany.com

Everybody likes to be liked. And unless you’re the type of boss who revels in tyranny, it’s only natural to seek the favor of your underlings. But there’s a big difference between engaging with employees and fawning over them.

In an era when the virtues of a collegial and collaborative environment are widely espoused, there’s guilt associated with being a strong-handed boss. Managers are often afraid to pull rank for fear they’ll fall out of grace with their reports and spoil team camaraderie if they’re not nice. “So many leaders, supervisors, and bosses suffer from a nice-guy conflict,” says Bruce Tulgand, author of It's Okay to Be the Boss: The Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming the Manager Your Employees Need. “Managers are afraid that people will think they’re a jerk.”

Quite frankly, being nice is overrated. In fact, a 2011 study, "Do Nice Guys--and Gals--Really Finish Last?" posits that disagreeable people are more successful. The study, which appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, showed that disagreeable people (especially men) earn more money and are perceived as better leaders. The research has too often been used to draw the conclusion that being mean is a good thing, says study co-author Beth A. Livingston of Cornell University. Which isn’t necessarily the case. Rather, the lesson here is that some people could stand to be less nice.
“Disagreeableness is a multifaceted trait,” says Livingston. Less agreeable people are generally “people who don’t really care what you think.” Unconcerned with stepping on toes or being unpopular, they cut a clear path to the brass ring and make more decisive leaders--which is especially important because building consensus often doesn't translate to success.

Let the performance be the arbiter—unless you’re running a commune.

One HR exec at a tech company tells the story of acquiring a startup with a culture that was so consensus-driven that they couldn't decide on which features to cut in order to keep projects on schedule and budget. “Products were delayed, but according to them they had the ‘best culture’ in the world,” he says.
Less-agreeable people are also more likely to advocate for themselves and for others--a huge part of being a leader. A moderately disagreeable person might have the attitude, “I’m not going to step on people willy-nilly, but I’m not going to let people step on me, either,” says Livingston.

Nice people tend to be too considerate and afraid to initiate structure, which can be trouble for a startup trying to establish itself as a legitimate business. Livingston cited Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg as a good example of someone who realized that if he wanted to continue as the creative, likable boss in flip-flops, he needed to have a bad cop around to bust some heads. “He hired [Sheryl Sandberg] from Google, and she whipped everybody into shape. They were pretty chaotic before that.”

Even in these kindler, more collaborative times, someone has to set priorities, pull the plug on an unprofitable project, or fire someone who’s not pulling his weight. If the reins lay in your hands, here are some tips to help you tighten your hold without being labeled a meanie.

Don’t Be Weak
Many bosses are reluctant managers because they’re afraid to come off as jerks, says Tulgan. “Really, if employees think a boss is a jerk, it’s when they’re too weak.” Weakling managers don’t take the time to manage on a daily basis. They let small problems build up into big problems. They pretend to be friends, but when things go south they show their true colors. And the only time they own their authority is when they’re angry with someone. “Be brave enough to own your authority before things go wrong,” says Tulgan.

Work it Out“Don’t fall for the myth of the natural leader,” says Tulgan. “If you want to be in good shape, you have to train every day.” Talk to people one-on-one, understand what their problems are, and remind them of how their role fits into the greater mission at hand. The big mistake that managers make, says Tulgan, is waiting until they have to give bad news or make a hard decision to start managing. They haven’t laid the groundwork. “If the only time you manage is when you have bad news, then every time they see you coming they’ll say ‘Oh no, here he comes.’”

Build StructureStructure is not a dirty word to employees. In many cases, they crave it. Philadelphia-based knowledge network startup, Quewey, recently brought on a CEO and the organizational changes have been welcomed by the group. “We realized that we needed a pointed decision maker,” says Michael Magill, of Quewey's business development and finance. “A lot of day-to-day decisions come up that don’t seem like big decisions, but they really mold your strategy. At a certain point, younger workers will begin to wonder who is responsible for managing the overall direction, message, and strategy of a business.” Magill says that having a defined leader has helped people understand their roles, set the founder's vision in sight, streamline processes, and increase delegation. And projects that would have otherwise remained in the brainstorming stage actually see action.

Monitor PerformanceManagers sometimes struggle with rewarding employees, fearing that others will feel passed over, like when giving out raises or offering a better office space. “Let the performance be the arbiter--unless you’re running a commune,” says Tulgan. If you keep close track of each person’s performance and what’s going on with the team, decisions will be respected. Tulgan says that leaders need to also show employees that they will help them earn promotions and find success.

Separate Wheat From The ChaffThe same goes for firing someone who’s dragging down the team. If you’re talking with your team every day and making clear what takes priority and what should be back-burnered, reports will have a clear sense of what needs to be done and you’ll know who’s delivering and who’s not. And don’t assume chopping a few heads will be received poorly by the high-performers. Says Tulgan: “Usually what managers find is that employees say, 'What took you so long?'" Low performers take up money that might otherwise be available for a raise, and they undermine teamwork. Good workers recognize this.

Share InformationSome managers try to keep too much information too close to their chest. Then when the axe comes down, folks are shocked and angered--and you come off as mean and callous. By explaining the facts up front, you’ll save a lot of heartache. For example, “If we delay this project, none of us will see our annual bonus.” Employees will respond to your transparency and know what lays ahead.

Hold Yourself ResponsibleTake ownership for bad news. If the news is a result of your own poor business decisions, take the blame, says Tulgan. “I’m gonna take a bullet, but we’re all gonna suffer.” If the news is based on a decision from above, don’t just blame it on the guys at corporate. “That undermines everybody’s confidence in the organization and the chain of command. Because that’s your source of authority, it weakens you.” Explain the business decisions that were made, and how it will affect the company.

Great customer service starts with 7 letters

Michael Hess www.cbsnews.com March 28, 2012

There is no shortage of advice, opinion, theory and technology around the practice of customer service. Some of it good, much of it not. But none of it -- none of it -- will result in a truly exceptional customer service environment if it isn't built around one simple word: Empathy.


No matter what procedures, processes, people or tools you put in place, empathy -- the ability to identify with and understand somebody else's feelings or difficulties -- is a quality without which superior customer service simply can't exist.

If you Google "customer service best practices," it returns about 13 million results. Tack the word "empathy" onto the same search and the results drop by 95%, to 700,000. By no means a scientific study or conclusion, but I think telling.

Customer service empathy can be boiled down to five simple questions:

• How does the person I'm trying to help feel?
• How would I feel if I were that person?
• No matter the request or the "rules," is there something I can/should do to help?
• What would I expect to be done for me if the roles were reversed?
• In the end, what would make this customer satisfied or (better yet) happy, and is there any reason I can't do it or find someone who can?

With these five questions and the right attitude, you need little else to be a customer service superstar. They cannot be replaced with a 700-page handbook or multi-million dollar CRM system.

Empathy is often ignored or lost when companies start to get excessively clever and complex. Things like NIA (Next Issue Avoidance), ASA (Average Speed of Answer), KPI (Key Performance Indicators), and any number of other acronyms and metrics dehumanize a very human interaction. Articles, white papers and corporate guidelines often read like satire to anyone who is truly passionate about customers. They are full of buzz terms and grandiose technical language, focused very much on operational performance and "ROI," and very rarely focused on the person around whom all of this complexity revolves. It's akin to having a conversation about someone who's standing in the room but ignoring the fact that she's there.

Companies get so caught up in their systems and investments that they lose sight of the fact that genuine empathy can obviate the need for much of it, or at a minimum certainly simplify it. "Eyes on the prize," as it were.

I expect to get the usual flack from the people who work hard in these highly structured, analytical environments and think that my approach to service is quaint and unrealistic. That's OK. Their jobs -- and entire departments, businesses and industries -- revolve around systematizing service, I understand that. And of course I realize that in all areas of business there need to be steps, measurements, and controls in place (and the bigger the organization the more may be needed). But today's customer service standard-bearers have proven that process should only be built on a basic, human-focused foundation, and when it comes to serving humans, empathy is the best place to start.

Michael Hess is founder and CEO of Skooba Design, and also serves as an advisor to other entrepreneurs. He is "obsessed to the point of insanity" with customer service. Read the philosophies that make Michael and Skooba Design tick here.

The No-Hour Workweek: Reinventing Employee Expectations For The Modern Economy

by: Jon Stein, www.fastcoexist.com  March 28, 2012

The 9 to 5 is dead, but we’re still harnessing workers with its outdated strictures. Happy workers are more healthy and more creative, so it’s time to start giving our workers the leeway to be happy (because otherwise they work all the time). The secret: Treat them like people.

A University of Southern California researcher, Alexandra Michel, recently reported on the disastrous effects of the highly stressful work environment of investment banking, citing insomnia, alcoholism, heart palpitations, eating disorders, and explosive tempers among the health hazards of the job. These toxic working habits are not sustainable for the individual or the company. Nor, evidently, do they produce good business practices.

The poster child of bad corporate culture, banks may be the worst culprit, but they’re not the only ones fostering negative working environments. A study by Gallup-Healthways found that nearly one third of all Americans, across all ages and income levels, were unhappy or unmotivated by their careers. That’s no way for us to work, or to live.

What is a Good Job?

There’s a noticeable shift in what people value most in their careers. The New York Times studied key words in a sample of commencement speeches last year. The words “world” and “love” showed up far more often than “money” and “success.”
Is the old adage that there’s more to life than money finally sinking in? It seems there’s a nostalgic desire to return to the good old days, where people worked 9 to 5, never on weekends, consumed less, and had ample time for their families and friends.
Because that’s not going to happen, HR departments are considering dozens of ways to make their people happier and healthier, shorter working weeks, unlimited vacation days, uplifting working environments, and new policies to address core needs.
These are worthy ideas, but alone they fail to address some crucial transformations in the world around us. Technology has irrevocably changed the way we conduct business and live our lives. The 9 to 5 is dead and work is ubiquitous. We need to create new models accordingly.

The Startup Conundrum

When I founded Betterment, a better way to save and invest for what’s most important in life, my mission was to reinvent an old, broken process for the 21st century. The goal encompasses all aspects of the company: from the product itself and how we interact with customers, to the values with which we conduct business, and--most importantly--to how we nurture our team.
Startups are notorious for long hours, hard work, and high pressure. Technology means we’re permanently plugged in. Encouraging shorter hours sounds great in theory, but in reality it would likely just look good on paper. Everyone would still work all the time.
In designing a working environment that would bring out the best qualities in our team, we had to come up with a model to satisfy the demands of a startup while balancing the needs of individuals.

The “No-Hour” Workweek

The No-Hour Workweek means our team is constantly in contact. Two-thirds of our team takes customer calls on weekends, and our development team frequently works into the wee hours of the morning. We monitor social media, catch up on emails, and work on projects at night and over the weekends, and we’re constantly attending industry and networking events.
The No-Hour Workweek also means that our team members can come in at 8, 12, or not at all if they’d prefer to work remotely. It means they can work at the times they’re most productive, make family gatherings, attend to personal commitments, leave early for travel or yoga or drinks with friends.
We have tremendous respect for weekends and personal time. To balance the inevitable overtime, we take away traditional time restrictions. Our people get to lead the lives they want and be treated as the adults they are, and we get a kick-ass team that loves to work.
To be successful and to prevent it from turning into the All-Hour Workweek, the No-Hour Workweek needs a framework in place:

1. Respect: Being connected 24/7 does not mean you place unrealistic demands on each other. If something is urgent, we treat it as such, but we don’t expect an immediate response on every item. We’ve hired people that respect each other and work as a team. They understand how to balance the priorities of our business with the various commitments and needs of their colleagues. Without this understanding, the No-Hour Workweek would spiral out of control.
2. Focus: In a startup there is always more to do. Each individual needs to understand his or her immediate priorities and what we expect of them. With our guidance, they come up with specific, measurable goals to be reviewed every three months (and more frequently when necessary). It provides autonomy in the role and helps us work towards a common goal.
3. Environment: It’s still important to foster team morale. Friday team lunches, regular happy hours, ping-pong tournaments, and a choice of workstations (couch, kitchen, nap-room, or desk), create a positive and cohesive work environment for our team. Despite all their options, our full team is in the office 95% of the time because they enjoy working here.
4. Leisure time: The expectation to switch on whenever needed means encouraging employees to switch off just as frequently. We are a team of entrepreneurs, and we all know the best ideas are inspired away from the desk. Time is finite; energy is not. Rest and recuperation are the best way to boost energy levels. More energy means more creativity. More creativity means better work. And that’s a good outcome for everyone, and the world.

10 Steps to Getting More Done in Your Day

Barry Moltz www.openforum.com March 19, 2012

Every day, your to-do list seems to grow. And in this business climate of information overload and constant interruptions, it has become increasingly difficult for small business owners to get anything accomplished. Not to mention, instead of technology increasing your productivity, it often seems to weigh you down. How are you supposed be proud of what was accomplished today and not just be frustrated?
Here are 10 steps to getting more done in a single day. (After you get your cup of coffee, of course.)
1. Do not start the day by checking e-mail, voice messsages or social media feeds. This will suck you in a direction you do not want to go, and is the surest way to get your day off to a bad start.
2. Start by completing two things on your list that must get done today. Do the hard or unpleasant stuff first. Make sure whatever the tasks are, they will have a significant impact on your business and are part of the critical path to other business goals and objectives.
3. Make decisions and take action. Procrastination never pays off, so make the tough decisions first. Say "no" more often than you say "yes", and don’t even think about saying “maybe.”
4. Deal with every e-mail once. Read an e-mail and take action on it now. Don't save it for later or leave it in your inbox. File it in the appropriate subfolder if it is needed for later reference.
5. Focus on doing one thing at a time. Believe it or not, multitasking can cause brain damage. The brain actually doesn’t do multiple things at one time, but instead just switches very quickly. This does not improve your overall productivity.
6. Control distractions. Turn off the e-mail and social media notifications, beeps, ringtones and visits to your office. If you need to use a software tool that turns off your access to the Internet, install it. Limit or rotate the information you read.
7. Stay off the Internet, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter unless you have a plan. This is the fastest way to kill your productivity since you can drift on these sites forever. Know why you are using these tools and how it will help your business, and always set a time limit for this activity.
8. Do not enter a meeting without a written agenda and a stop time. And in some meetings, have everyone remain standing. Document action items and assignments, and end early if you can.
9. Delegate to others. Improving your productivity means utilizing the other people in your organization to take full responsibility for their own tasks. Unless you set up an assigned hierarchy, you will always be stuck with all the tasks.
10. Recharge. If technology would have its way, most small business owners would work 24/7. Set a time limit on work and ensure there are place in your life which are an oasis so you can recharge daily.

The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time

by: Steve Tobak blogs.hbr.org March14, 2012

Why is it that between 25 and 50 per cent of people report feeling overwhelmed or burned out at work?
It's not just the number of hours we're working, but also the fact that we spend too many continuous hours juggling too many things at the same time.
What we've lost, above all, are stopping points, finish lines and boundaries. Technology has blurred them beyond recognition. Wherever we go, our work follows us, on our digital devices, ever insistent and intrusive. It's like an itch we can't resist scratching, even though scratching invariably makes it worse.
Tell the truth: Do you answer email during conference calls (and sometimes even during calls with one other person)? Do you bring your laptop to meetings and then pretend you're taking notes while you surf the net? Do you eat lunch at your desk? Do you make calls while you're driving, and even send the occasional text, even though you know you shouldn't?
The biggest cost — assuming you don't crash — is to your productivity. In part, that's a simple consequence of splitting your attention, so that you're partially engaged in multiple activities but rarely fully engaged in any one. In part, it's because when you switch away from a primary task to do something else, you're increasing the time it takes to finish that task by an average of 25 per cent.
But most insidiously, it's because if you're always doing something, you're relentlessly burning down your available reservoir of energy over the course of every day, so you have less available with every passing hour.
I know this from my own experience. I get two to three times as much writing accomplished when I focus without interruption for a designated period of time and then take a real break, away from my desk. The best way for an organization to fuel higher productivity and more innovative thinking is to strongly encourage finite periods of absorbed focus, as well as shorter periods of real renewal.
If you're a manager, here are three policies worth promoting:
1. Maintain meeting discipline. Schedule meetings for 45 minutes, rather than an hour or longer, so participants can stay focused, take time afterward to reflect on what's been discussed, and recover before the next obligation. Start all meetings at a precise time, end at a precise time, and insist that all digital devices be turned off throughout the meeting.
2. Stop demanding or expecting instant responsiveness at every moment of the day. It forces your people into reactive mode, fractures their attention, and makes it difficult for them to sustain attention on their priorities. Let them turn off their email at certain times. If it's urgent, you can call them — but that won't happen very often.
3. Encourage renewal. Create at least one time during the day when you encourage your people to stop working and take a break. Offer a midafternoon class in yoga, or meditation, organize a group walk or workout, or consider creating a renewal room where people can relax, or take a nap.

It's also up to individuals to set their own boundaries. Consider these three behaviors for yourself:
1. Do the most important thing first in the morning, preferably without interruption, for 60 to 90 minutes, with a clear start and stop time. If possible, work in a private space during this period, or with sound-reducing earphones. Finally, resist every impulse to distraction, knowing that you have a designated stopping point. The more absorbed you can get, the more productive you'll be. When you're done, take at least a few minutes to renew.
2. Establish regular, scheduled times to think more long term, creatively, or strategically. If you don't, you'll constantly succumb to the tyranny of the urgent. Also, find a different environment in which to do this activity — preferably one that's relaxed and conducive to open-ended thinking.
3. Take real and regular vacations. Real means that when you're off, you're truly disconnecting from work. Regular means several times a year if possible, even if some are only two or three days added to a weekend. The research strongly suggests that you'll be far healthier if you take all of your vacation time, and more productive overall.
A single principle lies at the heart of all these suggestions. When you're engaged at work, fully engage, for defined periods of time. When you're renewing, truly renew. Make waves. Stop living your life in the gray zone.

The Illusion Of Competence: Multitasking Our Way To Mediocrity

Date: March 1st, 2012  by William Stinnett Ph.D. L.E.T. Master Trainer GordonTraining International

“Excuse me, I have to take this call.

I will be back to this article on multitasking right after I check my e-mails, see what updates I have on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and Yelp, and order those materials for my upcoming team-building workshop, decide on which airfare is best for the trip, see what that “beeping” is, check to see if the laundry is done, and listen to my daughter explain how she just has to go to another all-night party with her friends.” No problem, right? “Now, where was I? Oh, yeah! The article on multitasking! Or was it team-building? And what about that new phone that lets me download my apps faster than ever? And that little, online TV news feed in the upper corner of my computer that is keeping me constantly up-to-date on world events.”
We don’t, technically, ever really “multitask.” We switch back and forth between multiple tasks. The faster we are able to do that, the more it seems like multitasking. Does the ability to do that, however, translate into more productivity or greater efficiency? The overwhelming conclusions from scientific research indicate “no.” In fact, most studies report a decline in effectiveness on most tasks when people try to multitask. As with most skills, some people are better at “multitasking” than others. But, overall, even those who are best at it perform worse than people who attempt the same tasks without the distractions encountered with multitasking. The danger of trying to do too many things at once is, of course, less when the tasks are relatively simple and have few consequences (walking and chewing gum). But, as the complexity of the task increases and the stakes become higher (making important business decisions, driving a car), the “multitasking deficit” becomes increasingly treacherous. Some of the consequences include:

• Poor recall. People simply do not remember as much or as accurately. Information “learned” while multitasking is often forgotten or recalled incorrectly. Much of this research was done on college students preparing for exams but also has considerable application to leaders in the workplace.

• Longer time to complete tasks. It may seem counter-intuitive but multitasking actually slows people down. It takes longer to get things done. A mundane example comes from an experiment in which people were asked to perform two tasks: the first, count to 10 as fast a possible, the second, recite the alphabet from “A” to “J” as quickly as possible. Each task typically requires about two seconds. So, a person can perform both tasks in about four seconds. Next, they were asked to switch between tasks (A1, B2, C3, D4, etc.). The time to complete the task increased tremendously (15 to 30 seconds or more). There is, apparently, a certain amount of time that the brain needs for “switching.” When you leave one task, then come back to it later, it takes the brain a little time to readjust. Those little bits of time add up and when you are constantly switching back and forth, it can add considerably to the amount of time devoted to each task as well as the total. Bottlenecks are created. This is, essentially, the same thing that happens to your computer when you have too many windows open at the same time. The time required for “switching” eventually accumulates to the point that the computer slooooooooowwwwwwws dooowwwwn and eventually you have to reboot.

• Less ability to understand concepts. In some experiments, participants performed relatively well on tasks while multitasking but failed to understand the task fully. They were less able to use the information that they had “learned.” “In 2006 a team of scholars led by Karin Foerde, reported on an experiment suggesting that distraction during learning can be harmful, even if the distraction doesn’t seem to injure students’ immediate performance on their tasks….Their “weather forecasts” [their performance] under distraction were roughly as accurate as they were during the other three trials. But when they were asked afterward to describe the general probabilistic rules for that trial…, they did much worse than they did after the undistracted trials. Foerde and her colleagues argue that when the subjects were distracted, they learned the weather rules through a half-conscious system of “habit memory,” and that when they were undistracted, they encoded the weather rules through what is known as the declarative-memory system—information that is encoded in declarative memory is more flexible—that is, people are more likely to be able to draw analogies and extrapolate from it.

• More easily distracted by new, incoming information. If you saw an animated movie called “Up,” there was a talking dog who could carry on a conversation with considerable skill until distracted. In the middle of the conversation, he would suddenly say, “Squirrel!” When he returned to the conversation, he would be on a completely different subject. The same thing happens at work. During a meeting, the cell phone beeps or a new e-mail comes in on the laptop or iPad (“Squirrel”) and suddenly everyone is off on a new tangent. The original thread of the conversation is lost. The team must start over.

• Younger people who multitask a lot are no better at it than those who don’t. (Carrier, L Mark, Cheever, Nancy A, Rosen, Larry D, Benitez, Sandra, & Chang, Jennifer (2009). “Multitasking across generations: Multitasking choices and difficulty ratings in three generations of Americans”, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 25, p483–489). Even though young, multitaskers believe that they are superior at doing many things at once, the evidence does not support that confidence. Clifford Nass, Eval Ophir, and Anthony Wagner in a classic study done at Stanford say, “We kept looking for what they’re [high multitaskers] better at, and we didn’t find it.” They say that heavy multitaskers not only are not as efficient as low multitaskers at almost everything, but they are possibly doing long term damage to their cognitive ability. They are actually becoming less capable of filtering out distracting, non-useful information than low multitaskers.

All of these ideas point to an organizational culture where there is less thinking, less understanding, less attention to detail, less mindfulness, and, ultimately, less productivity. Like many “new” things, multitasking seems desirable until it is better understood. Who wouldn’t want to get more things done in less time? But, like many gimmicks, multitasking doesn’t really deliver on its promise.
What, then, do we do with all of these devices that “help” us get more done. Like all technology, the utility of the tools depends on our ability to use them properly. Any parent who has watched his or her teenager do homework in front of the TV with the iPod attached and texting her friends at the same time understands that something has to change. Any facilitator who has tried to conduct a workshop while the participants are checking their e-mails and responding to “urgent” text messages understands that there must be a better way. There have been many articles written that give pretty good advice.

Some of the time-tested “truths” are summarized below. If you really want to get things done and produce good quality work, here are a few thoughts:

• Do one thing at a time. This doesn’t mean that if you have a project that requires twenty hours to complete that you need to work twenty hours straight. Break the task down into smaller chunks of a few minutes or a couple of hours and stay focused for that time. If it’s an article you are writing, finish gathering all of the reference material or complete the opening paragraph, etc. But, don’t stop and check your e-mail until that segment is done.

• Eliminate distractions. Don’t have the news going in the background. Don’t be carrying on a conversation with a new hire. Don’t write while you have the phone stuck to your ear. Close the door. Wear the sound reducing earphones.

• Rest occasionally. One of the reasons multitasking doesn’t work is that the brain has no time to recover. The brain is an organ that uses energy. It takes it at least a few seconds to refresh after intense usage. Sometimes even thirty seconds can go a long way toward preparing you for the next task.

• Eat right. Exercise. Etc. All of the things we have learned about fitness apply to the healthy functioning of the brain. The evidence suggests that too much multitasking not only lowers our productivity but actually reduces our IQ.

As the leader of your team, don’t encourage people to multitask. If they are going away to a training workshop, make sure that their work is covered by someone else. Don’t call them on the cell phone or send “emergency” e-mails. Don’t pull people out of meetings to ‘trouble-shoot” another project. Encourage them to plan ahead so that work doesn’t pile up. Don’t reward team members for doing a lot of things at once. When they come to you, listen to them and only to them. Don’t send the wrong signals by half listening and half checking your e-mails. Don’t make heroes of team members who work 70 hours a week. They are probably not getting any more work done than the team members who work 40 hours but set priorities and concentrate on the one or two most important things every day. It is also probable that the 70-hour-a-week team member may not be exercising the best judgment. Set the example. Learn to say “no” to new assignments once in a while. Don’t try to do everything and certainly don’t try to do it all at once.
You should also avoid the temptation to pack your leadership training with every topic you can possibly imagine. “Hey, let’s add a module on work-life balance. Great. Let’s add another one on benchmarking. Don’t forget networking and social media. We can work them all in and do it in a half-day.”
The workplace is becoming increasingly complex. In a way, the idea that we need to concentrate on fewer things at once seems counterintuitive. Shouldn’t we learn to think in more complex ways? It is seductive to believe that we will gain an “edge” by being able to do more things at once. But, so far, the evidence does not support that idea. No one knows if, in the future, we will learn to think about more than one thing at a time or at least reduce the “switching time” to near zero. But, there is nothing in the current research that indicates that as a real possibility. Human beings are just not designed that way.
© 2012 William Stinnett, Ph.D., L.E.T. Master Trainer for Gordon Training International

There Is No Career Ladder

Priscilla Claman Feb 14, 2012 www.blogs.hbr.org

Reaching the apex of the career ladder by gradually getting promoted to the top is a thing of the past.   From my experience as a career coach, career ladders in most organizations have not existed for at least fifteen years.
Career ladders are an artifact of the Mad Men era, when you signed onto an organization at age 21, followed the rules, were incrementally promoted, and retired with a gold watch.
But those days are long gone. Career ladders died out during the late 1980s and early 1990s, when over 85% of Fortune 1000 American companies downsized their white-collar workforce.* Downsizing has only escalated from there, however in the 80s and 90s the lost jobs were not in manufacturing but white-collar jobs, including management jobs. As companies thinned out, those leadership positions disappeared — and most haven't come back since.
In that period at General Electric, for example, engineers hired right out of school went through a career development process which included managerial training. Over time, the company began to bulge with managers. Jack Welch laid off thousands, "de-layering," as some people called it. With those managers gone, most "next steps" in the career ladder moved two or three rungs out of reach.
So despite their near extinction, why do we still believe in career ladders? Truthfully, intentionally or not, we are still promising traditional careers. There may not be an easy next step for every person in want of promotion. I know of a company that went through an extensive talent management process, which notified, feted, and gave "stretch assignments" to top talent. Four months later, a third of them were laid off in a reorganization.
It doesn't help that managers are predisposed to keep the best employees in their current positions, which promotes stability in an organization. That's one reason so many companies don't allow people to transfer easily to other jobs without their managers' permission.
There are better ways to think about career moves. Try these tips for diverting your attention from the next step up.
Look laterally for career moves. Don't think of job descriptions as much as job families, or groups of jobs that have something in common. For example if you are a financial analyst, consider other analyst positions in your company, perhaps in market research or sales. It's easier to move within a company where you are a known factor. Horizontal experience can also broaden your skills, which improves your chances of moving up.
Prove you can handle a promotion. Volunteer to help your manager with components of her job and learn to do them well. For example, offer to help interview job candidates, train and coach new people, and give them performance feedback. Your progress should automatically make you a candidate for the next manager job.
Grow your skills to grow your job. Seek out and take advantage of opportunities when they appear, and actively exceed expectations. For example, I once worked with Heidi, a medical assistant, who was charged with scheduling training for a new technology at a major hospital. The doctors were impossible to schedule, so she learned the new systems cold and trained the doctors one-on-one. It wasn't long before she was promoted and given the opportunity of a career in information technology.
It's a different world. But if a world without career ladders allows you to take charge of your own career, then it is a far better one.

*Wayne F. Casco. "Downsizing: what do we know? What have we learned?", The Academy of Management Executive, Vol.7 No.1 (Feb., 1991), p.95

Priscilla Claman is president of Career Strategies, Inc., a Boston-based firm offering career coaching to individuals and career management services to organizations.

Why to-do lists set you up for failure

Dave Johnson (MoneyWatch)  www.cbsnews.com January 30, 2012

You've probably seen advice about why it's a great idea to maintain a rolling to-do list of projects -- big and small -- that you need to get done. Some efficiency experts recommend writing a to-do list each morning, in which you meticulously transfer incomplete to-dos from the old list to the new one every day. You might have noticed that this system doesn't work very well, and you probably just assumed that it's your own fault. But according to the Harvard Business Review, it's not you. In a nutshell, the entire system is flawed, and simply sets you up for failure.

Harvard Business Review cites several key problems with rolling to-do lists. Here are some of the most compelling:

The paradox of choice. Psychologist Barry Schwartz has written extensively about the paradox of choice -- when faced with too many options, people feel overwhelmed and respond poorly. A to-do list is a veritable smorgasbord of choices.

Heterogeneous complexity. Moreover, your to-do list invariably contains a mixture of big projects and small ones, hard ones and easy ones. Consequently, you choose the short and easy tasks almost without fail, since there's a much stronger payoff. The other tasks never get done.

Heterogeneous priority. Likewise, your to-do list is filled with tasks of varying priority. There's little doubt that you tend to do the highest priority tasks up front, and push off the rest until circumstances raise their priority as a consequence.

So what's the alternative?

Harvard Business Review recommends "living in your calendar." In other words, don't maintain a to-do list, but rather schedule these tasks right into your Outlook calendar, around your other commitments, while also accounting for the time you'll need to deal with brushfires and other unexpected priorities. This serves, in part, as a sort of commitment device, which is akin to positioning your army with its back to a river so there's no possibility of retreat from the enemy.

Melodramatic? Perhaps. But it's also likely to be more effective than that dog-eared to-do list you always carry around, but never complete.

10 Things Great Managers Do

(MoneyWatch) August 18, 2011Steve Tobak www.cbsnews.com

There's all sorts of rhetoric about what good bosses should and shouldn't do these days. I guess that's a good thing.
Unfortunately, most of it's pretty basic, generic fluff that sort of blends together after a while.
Even worse, a lot of it's, well, utopian. It panders to what employees want to hear instead of giving truly practical and insightful advice on what makes a manager effective in the real world where business is everything and everything's on the line.

This list is different. It's different because, to derive it, I went back in time to the best characteristics of the best CEOs (primarily) I've worked for and with over the past 30 years. It's based entirely on my own experience with executives who made a real difference at extraordinary companies.

Some were big, some were small, but all were successful in their respective markets, primarily because of the attributes of these CEOs. Each anecdote taught me a critical lesson that advanced my career and helped me to be a better leader. Hope you get as much out of reading it as I did living it.

10 Things Great Managers Do

Maintain your cool and sense of humor, especially during a crisis. When our biggest customer - and I mean big - thought I leaked a front-page story to the press, I offered to resign to save the relationship. My boss, a great CEO, gave me a serious look, like he was thinking about it, and said, "You're not getting off that easy." Then he broke into a big smile.

Tell subordinates when they're shooting themselves in the foot. Sometimes I can be pretty intimidating and I've had CEOs who shied away from giving it to me straight when my emotions got the better of me. Not this one guy. We'd be in a heated meeting and he'd quietly take me aside and read me the riot act. He was so genuine about it that it always opened my eyes and helped me to achieve perspective.

Be the boss, but behave like a peer. I've worked with loads of CEOs who let their egos get the better of them. They act like they're better than everyone else, are distant and emotionally detached, or flaunt their knowledge and power. That kind of behavior diminishes leaders, makes them seem small, and keeps them from really connecting with people. They're not always the most successful, but the most admired CEOs I know are genuinely humble.

Let your guard down and really be yourself outside of work. You know, teambuilding is so overrated. All you really need to do outside of work to build a cohesive team is break some bread, have some drinks, relax, let your guard down, and be a regular human being. When you get to be really confident, you can be that way all the time. That's the mark of a great leader.

Stand behind and make big bets on people you believe in. One CEO would constantly challenge you and your thinking to the point of being abusive. But once he trusted and believed in you, he put his full weight behind you 100 percent to help you succeed. He'd stand up for you even when he wasn't sure what the heck you were up to. And he'd give you new functional responsibilities - something up-and-coming execs need to grow. Okay, he wasn't perfect, but who is?

Complement your subordinate's weaknesses. I often say it's every employee's job to complement her boss's weaknesses. The only reason that's even doable is because we've all only got one boss. But I actually had a CEO who did that with each and every one of his staff. For example, I'm more of a big picture strategy guy and he would really hold my feet to the fire by tracking my commitments. It felt like micromanaging at first, but I eventually realized it helped me to be a more effective and strengthened the entire management team.

Compliment your employee's strengths. It takes a strong, confident leader to go out on a limb and tell an employee what they're great at. Why? I don't know, but I suspect it's hard for alpha males that primarily inhabit executive offices. Anyway, it's important because we can't always see ourselves objectively. Twenty years ago a CEO identified how effectively I cut through a boatload of BS to reach unique solutions to tough problems. Today, that's what I do for a living.

Teach the toughest, most painful lessons you've ever learned. As a young manager at Texas Instruments, I once asked my boss's boss for advice about a promotion I didn't get. He told me a candid story about the hardest lesson he'd ever learned, the reason he was stuck in his job. He made himself indispensible and didn't groom his replacement. It was painful for him to share, but it opened my eyes and made a huge difference in my career.

Do the right thing. Just about everyone says it, but I've only known one CEO who both preached and practiced it to the point where it became a big part of the company culture. You'd walk the halls and hear people say it all the time. He meant two things by it. When he said it to you, it meant he trusted you to do just that. He also meant it regardless of status quo or consequences. He had extraordinary faith in that phrase. Now I do too.

Do what has to be done, no matter what. It's a rare executive who jumps on a plane at a moment's notice to close a deal or gives an impromptu presentation when a potential investor shows up unexpectedly. It's even more rare when he does it without asking questions or hemming and hawing about it. He just does what has to be done. That kind of drive and focus on the business is relatively common with entrepreneurs in high-tech startups. And it's the mark of a great manager who will find success, that's for sure.

You're probably not as busy as you say you are

Jan 30, 2012 (MoneyWatch) by Michael Hess www.cbsnews.com

"Sorry, I've just been so busy."

"I've been too swamped to get around to it."

"I don't even have a minute to breathe."

"There's just not enough time in the day."

We hear -- and most of us use -- exasperated claims like this every day. But in general, it's a fiction. Most of us are not "too busy"; few of us have the "full plate" we think or say we have. These are excuses we make either because we genuinely have ourselves convinced that we don't have time or we simply don't want to do something.

Most people make the time for what they want to do, even at the expense of time needed for what they have to do, and there's plenty of data to support that assertion. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' exhaustive American Time Use Survey is the authoritative repository of such data, and other sources, including Pew Research and the Mendelsohn Affluent Survey, further corroborate.

Our time use has been studied and broken down in every conceivable way. But a salient conclusion is that -- irrespective of education or income -- as a population we aren't as consumed with work as we might have ourselves and others believe. We have plenty of discretionary time: We spend a quarter to a third of our waking hours on non-work related activities, and that doesn't include time spent doing personal stuff while at work. (Come on, you know you do.) Just a few interesting tidbits from the latest stats:

-- Working parents, who are usually (and understandably) at the top of the list of people who claim to "have no time," spend only one hour less on leisure activities per day than do those without the same child-care concerns.

-- People making $100,000 or more spend far more time web surfing and consuming other media than do those making less.

-- Everyone (statistically speaking) watches at least 2-3 hours of TV per day. That's 10% of our 24 hour daily gift of time, and a much higher percentage if you measure it only against the time we're awake. There are countless books, articles and blog posts saying that "successful people don't watch TV." But statistically, they do. And that's OK... there's nothing wrong with shutting your brain off for a while.

-- People who earn $1,200 or more per week do not work more, on average, than those who earn $540 per week.

-- Self-employed people (which, of course, includes most of us who own businesses) do not work more hours, on average, than wage or salary workers.*

*I do take exception to that last one, as most owners are always thinking (or obsessing) about their businesses, and to me -- and most small business people I know -- at least some of that time legitimately counts as work. In fact, sometimes it's the hardest and most stressful work.

I'm like any number of other small business owners out there. My day starts at 5:30 or 6 a.m. with news and e-mails. (I do squeeze exercise in there.) I don't leave the office for lunch. From dinner until 11 pm or later, there's more on-and-off catch-up work, overseas calls and e-mails. By my count I'm owed at least 30 weeks of unused vacation since starting my business. Lots of stress, four-hour sleep nights, yada yada. Woe is me.

So, if you were to ask me about my schedule, I'd say the things we all say: I am buried ... I can't catch up ... I don't know when I could possibly get around to it. I am way too busy.

But the fact is, also like other owners, one of the main reasons I work for myself is to have control of my time, and though I have certainly made sacrifices (I definitely wouldn't want to calculate my actual hourly wage), I find a way to do most of the things I want to do. Whether it's my leisure passions -- sailboat racing, skiing and yoga, if anyone's asking -- going to my kids' various events, or even watching guilty-pleasure TV (Shark Tank rules!), I somehow squeeze it into my unsqueezable schedule. So do you, and you, and you.

I'm by no means suggesting that people shouldn't relax, read, vegetate, travel or do whatever else they want with their time -- life is for living. But next time you blow out that overwhelmed sigh or tell someone (or yourself) that you can't do something because you're "too busy," think about whether that's a fact or just a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like moving into a bigger house, we tend to fill the space we have.

By definition, we are indeed using every second of every hour of our lives. We are working, sleeping, eating, playing, relaxing or doing nothing. So being "too busy" comes down to defining how we spend our time, not the certitude that it's all spent.

At the end of the day (or the beginning, or the middle), most of us have the time to do things we say we can't

by Robin Sharma rscomnewsletter@aweber.com January 16, 2011

I'm sitting on an airplane thinking about what the best performers and most successful people do to continually outperform everyone around them.

As we enter what I hope will be the single best year of your life yet, I've come up with 35 Tips that I invite you to concentrate on. Share these tips, reflect on then, post them where you can see them - and allow them to infuse your mindset:

Remember that the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your thoughts.

1. Keep the promises you make to others - and to yourself. 
2. The project that most scares you is the project you need to do first. 
3. Small daily improvements are the key to staggering long-term results. 
4. Stop being busy being busy. This New Year, clean out the distractions from your work+life and devote to a monomaniacal focus on the few things that matter.
5. Read "The War of Art". 
6. Watch "The Fighter". 
7. In a world where technology is causing some of us to forget how to act human, become the politest person you know. 
8. Remember that all great ideas were first ridiculed. 
9. Remember that critics are dreamers gone scared. 
10. Be "Apple-Like" in your obsession with getting the details right. 
11. Take 60 minutes every weekend to craft a blueprint for the coming seven days. As Saul Bellow once said: "A plan relieves you of the torment of choice."
12. Release your need to be liked this New Year. You can't be a visionary if you long to be liked. 
13. Disrupt or be disrupted. 
14. Hire a personal trainer to get you into the best shape of your life. Superstars focus on the value they receive versus the cost of the service.
15. Give your teammates, customers and family one of the greatest gifts of all: the gift of your attention (and presence).
16. Every morning ask yourself: "How may I best serve the most people?" 
17. Every night ask yourself: "What 5 good things happened to me this day?" 
18. Don't waste your most valuable hours (the morning) doing low value work. 
19. Leave every project you touch at work better than you found it. 
20. Your job is not just to work. Your job is to leave a trail of leaders behind you. 
21. A job is not "just a job". Every job is a gorgeous vehicle to express your gifts and talents - and to model exceptionalism for all around you.
22. Fears unfaced become your limits. 
23. Get up at 5 am and take 60 minutes to prepare your mind, body, emotions and spirit to be remarkable during the hours that follow. Being a superstar is not the domain of the gifted but the prepared.
24. Write love letters to your family. 
25. Smile at strangers. 
26. Drink more water. 
27. Keep a journal. Your life's story is worth recording. 
28. Do more than you're paid to do and do work that leaves your teammates breathless. 
29. Leave your ego at the door every morning. 
30. Set 5 daily goals every morning. These small wins will lead to nearly 2000 little victories by the end of the year.
31. Say "please" and "thank you". 
32. Remember the secret to happiness is doing work that matters and being an instrument of service. 
33. Don't be the richest person in the graveyard. Health is wealth. 
34. Life's short. The greatest risk is risk-less living. And settling for average.

I genuinely wish you the best year of your life.

Stay Great.

Robin