The Nest: The Work/Life Balance Myth

Every time we walk into a bookstore, pick up the newspaper or tune into the radio – we are presented with a proliferation of material on work life balance. It seems the topic is being raised more and more every single day.

Every time we walk into a bookstore, pick up the newspaper or tune into the radio – we are presented with a proliferation of material on work life balance. It seems the topic is being raised more and more every single day.

But maybe I’ve missed something along the way, because to me so many people seem to have a terrible work life balance. Is this because we all spend way too much time and energy working and very little time and energy planning our lives? Or is it because the old notion we were taught about ‘compartmentalising our lives’ doesn’t actually cut it in the modern world? Or could it be that we no longer understand what ‘balance’ really is? Is it a combination of all of these factors and more? Let’s first of all have a look at the latest work life balance facts and figures:

Work/life Balance Facts and Figures

•    More than 10 percent of Australian male employees work more than 11 hours a day. •    More than 15 percent of Australian female employees report feeling “rushed and stressed”.
•    Seven out of eight Australian employees (i.e., more than 85 percent) felt life was becoming and had become more frantic.
•    85 percent of Americans say they want more time with their family and 46 percent say they want “much more”. In the UK, 36 percent say they want “much more” time with their families.
•    A recent survey of Australian fathers found that 68 percent felt they did not spend enough time with their children. 60 percent attributed this to “barriers in the workplace” (such as expectations of long working hours and inflexibility).
•    When it comes to the imbalance between work and family life, Australia – surprisingly – ranks at the bottom of the entire developed world. These numbers from Advance Australia Where? by Hugh Mackay, speak volumes: The number of workers we have doing 50+ hours a week (22 percent), number of people doing weekend work (30 percent) and the number of people in casual or temporary employment (27 percent).
•    The Australian Bureau of Statistics tells a similar grim story. Australians, on average, spend 50 hours a week at work – and that’s not even taking into account the amount of time we spend staring out the BlackBerry, tapping out emails and making work calls after hours.

I’m convinced – Work Life Balance is a myth!

The term ‘work life balance’ is a myth. And I actually believe that the term ‘work life balance’ itself sets many people up for failure because they either feel like their lives aren’t balanced, or don’t have an understanding of what balance is for them. And remember the set of scales that was so often used to depict work life balance, with work balancing on one side and life balancing tenuously on the other? Using these scales to depict work life balance again sets people up for failure because they illustrate that if work is going really well, then life tips over, and if your life is going swimmingly, then work must suffer as a result.

To fix the problem, we need to understand the problem – and to understand it, we need to get our heads around six common myths relating to work and how a change in thinking can mean a change in lifestyle for you. Busting these myths will open up entirely new ways of seeing how – and why – you work and how you can change your habits for the better.

Work Related Myths

Myth 1 – Compartmentalise your life into 8-8-8
Busted! The old notion of 8-8-8 where the academics during the mid to late 80’s told us we were meant to spend eight hours working, eight hours sleeping and eight hours on recreational and social activities is largely a thing of the past. Most people work a lot more than an eight-hour day to pay for things like mortgages, or just affording to live in some of our large cities. Try talking to anyone with young children about the 8-hour sleep thing and they’ll just laugh in your face. And who on earth has eight hours a day to recreate and socialise? Where on earth do these people live?

Myth 2 – Be polite and respond to every request
Busted! Most people are fundamentally good people, and this is one of the big problems. You see, before technology literally invaded our lives we were all taught to return every phone call, write back to every person who wrote to us, and respond to every task that came across our desks. But with the explosion of technology, viral marketing, social networking sites, overloaded inboxes and information obesity – responding to every request or distraction is a good way to stuff up daily productivity.

Myth 3 – Technology will give us more leisure time
Busted! Technology was hailed as our saviour. All of the new inventions hitting the workforce including fax machines, electronic photocopiers, personal computers and wireless applications were purportedly going to ensure we got more work done and therefore had greater leisure time. The reality is the latest batch of digital devices including iPhones, Blackberries and PDA’s keep us connected 24/7 and working longer hours than ever before.

Myth 4 – Hours worked = productivity
Busted! This myth probably annoys me more than all the rest. The notion that working an 11 or 12-hour day is great for output and efficiency. Sure, there will be some days where you need to really put in extra big days to finish projects on time, but if you’re working excessive hours day in day out, then something is clearly wrong. Most people who think hours worked = productivity are stripped right back to reality when I do a time audit on their actually daily output. Eliminate 80 percent of the emails which are a complete waste of time, subtract the endless and pointless meetings that waste hours on end, then get rid of the dozens of daily distractions and you’re left with a few hours, at the most, of productive work. Improved focus + less distractions = productivity.

Myth 5 – Great employees/managers are available 24/7
Busted! This is a great philosophy to wear you down completely. Many of us were taught the outdated mantra that to be a great manager, employee, sales rep etc. required you to be available for staff and potential clients 24/7. What a load of bollocks! This creates a lot of argument, especially when I say this to sales teams. But if your systems, succession plan and customer service levels are that poor that you have to be available for every potential phone call or walk-in – what hope have you got of building a sustainable business. Work in periods where you are available, and then take yourself off the grid and remove all distractions when you need to stick your head down and be super productive. Providing clear expectations about when you are and aren’t available avoids confrontation around this for 98 percent of the population. The other two percent are never happy so decide if you really want to waste time and energy on them.

Myth 6 – follow the leader!
Busted! Now, this one often gets me into trouble but I’m sticking to it. So many companies espouse to have a high-performance culture (which by the way is one of the most overused phrases in the corporate world) yet so many of the leaders in the organisation exhibit a low-performance behaviour pattern. Just because someone’s card says ‘boss’ or ‘senior manager’, doesn’t necessarily mean they are a great role model in the area of productivity, or have a life outside of work.

The Solution = work life integration

A ‘work life integration’ mindset is a new way of thinking where you understand that YOU ultimately have control over the majority of choices you make. For some people this may involve working extra hard for a couple of years in order to get ahead financially, or to work your way into a different role or occupation. The flip side is that you also need to take regular breaks and build in periods of restoration and renewal. So while the archaic model of 8-8-8 is thrown out the window, it is still imperative to carve out some time to recharge and keep burn out at bay. It is more about making conscious choice on the type of professional and personal life you want to live, taking the appropriate steps to achieve this and keeping a regular check on where you are heading.

Plan having a life

The key to achieving a better integration of both work and life is to start planning what you do outside of work. I know this sounds so simple, yet so many people make it oh, so complex. If most people were to spend only 1/10th of the time and energy they spend planning their business life on their personal life – they would get a totally different result outside work and have a much greater chance of leading a rich and contented life. We all spend so much time planning how to run businesses right down to KPI’s (Key Point Indicators) and performance metrics for each staff member, business unit and team. But have you actually spent much time planning the type of life you would like to have? For a lot of people the answer to this question is very little. Take some time to write down the type of life you want to live – right through to where you live, where you go on holidays and what you do to relax and unwind.

Top 5 Steps to Work Life Integration

1.    Make your vocation your vacation! We spend more waking hours at work than anywhere else so it makes good sense to love what you do. At the very least, change your mindset and learn to love what you do as this will give you the money and freedom to invest in that thing outside of work called having a life.

2.    Change the rules. If you want a different result stop doing the same things as every one around you. Cut out rubbish emails and cut right back on the time-wasting meetings. Spends large chunks of time off the grid, isolate yourself in a coffee shop, quiet room, work from home or just tell people to leave you alone for half a day so you can actually do your job. Totally revamp the way you approach your work and watch your productivity soar.

3.    Design the type of life you want to live. Give some real thought to what you want to do, compare this to where you are now, and find out what you need to do and what needs to happen to bridge the gap (if one exists). If you are in a relationship sit down with your partner and talk to them about the life you want to have together. Plan quality time together, and don’t forget to also lock in some time to yourself as well – exercise, relaxation activities and time for learning and development.

4.    Change your habits. More than 90 percent of our daily actions are habitual. Do your habits help you achieve the type of work and life that you want? Before making any interventions I get my clients to do a 7 day time audit to highlight exactly where they spend their time in an average working week. Once you capture exactly where you spend your time (and I’m assuming for most people the majority of this is at work) then do something about it – if your family, friends and passions really are important to you get off the treadmill and change the way you approach your life, now!

5.    Book a break. Book a holiday or a three-day weekend. More than 60 percent of Australia’s workforce does not take all their owed holidays. If you don’t make an effort to book a break it won’t happen. Besides, remember how refreshed you felt when you got back to work after your last break?

The process of integrating work and life together, rather than trying to have them exist in isolation, boosts your productivity and output at work and will give you a lot more motivation and opportunity to spend time with friends and family as well as more time to engage in the activities you love. Getting the mix right is really hard and requires constant time and effort. But trust me, if you work at it I guarantee you can have a great career and an amazing life as well.

The Nest: Daily Resource Balance

Have you ever finished a day and felt totally stuffed, flat and fatigued? Chances are this is happening to you on a regular basis due to you depleting your daily stress/recovery balance.

Have you ever finished a day or got to the end of a working week and felt totally stuffed, flat and fatigued? Chances are this is happening to you on a regular basis due to you depleting your daily stress/recovery balance. Science now allows us to measure resource allocation in a 24-hour time period using Heart Rate Variability (HRV). Stick with me while I get a little scientific for a minute…

Internally our body is a bit like a see- saw, controlled by the autonomic nervous system (ANS). When we manage our physiology properly the ANS maintains what is known as homeostasis (or internal balance). Scientists describe the ANS as a balancing act between the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. In layman’s terms we refer to the sympathetic nervous system as the ON button and the parasympathetic nervous system as the OFF button.

Fight or Flight: The sympathetic nervous system

Frequently referred to as the “fight or flight response”, the sympathetic nervous system is responsible for alertness and wakefulness, as well as the ability to respond to stress.

In response to stimulus (mental or physical), hormones including noradrenaline and adrenaline are released by the adrenal glands. While it is technically very difficult to measure these hormones in individuals, simple signs of sympathetic activation can be seen in individuals including: increased pupil dilation, sweating, increased heart rate and blood pressure (frequently used in lie detection testing).

Heart rate and blood pressure are probably the easiest and most reliable of these signs to clinically measure and are most frequently used by medical researchers to study human response to stress, as well as recovery from stress.

Recovery & Regeneration: The parasympathetic nervous system

If the sympathetic system is the accelerator of our internal stress response system or what makes us turn ON, the parasympathetic system is considered to be ‘the brake’ or the OFF button. The parasympathetic system’s main role is to conserve energy. One way of doing this is to slow heart rate and energy needs, particularly when we are resting or sleeping. Parasympathetic activation is dominant when we are truly resting or sleeping (provided we are getting uninterrupted, quality sleep).

Scientists have declared that today’s modern life style; the junked up, wired up caffeine fuelled society, frequently experiences an imbalance between sympathetic and parasympathetic balance. This has a tendency to make us prone to mental and physical burn out, periods of decreased mental concentration, immune imbalance and many stress related diseases including cardiovascular disease. The true long term effects of the modern wired up society we live in today will probably not be fully known for decades to come. That’s a scary thought isn’t it?

Measuring stress

Before talking about how we measure stress, let’s have a quick look at the definition. The ancient Greeks actually had two words for stress – ‘eustress’ meaning positive stress and ‘distress’ meaning negative stress. Positive stress is often associated with activities such as giving a public presentation or going out on a date. Negative stress results in you feeling overwhelmed and out of control. There are many things that can be potential sources of stress but ultimately stress comes from within you and how you react and respond to situations in your life.

So clearly, not all stress is bad. Our bodies however respond in the same way physiologically to both eustress and distress.  Capturing how much of your physiology is in the ‘stress’ zone gives a true indication of daily resource balance, or in many cases – resource imbalance.

Heart Rate Variability

There are many biological markers to measure stress balance, or imbalance, in individuals. HRV is a sensitive indicator of sympathetic/parasympathetic balance. HRV refers to the beat-to-beat alterations in heart rate when analysed by a cardiac heart rate monitor. Heart rate varies according to sympathetic and parasympathetic influence in response to stress and conversely during recovery and rest.

Through analysis of how the heart rate varies from minute to minute, it is possible to accurately measure the response to acute stress and therefore graph overall stress/recovery balance in a defined period, usually 24 hours. While complex in nature, analysis of HRV allows us to quantify degrees and duration of sympathetic activation (stress reactions) as well as detect periods of parasympathetic dominance (rest and recovery).

Getting the balance right between ON and OFF

Most scientists and researches in the field of human performance agree that in order to achieve a healthy balance between stress and recovery, accumulation of around 50 percent stress reactions in any given 24-hour period is preferable. Additionally, we should aim to ensure we get a minimum of 30 percent of the day dedicated to physiological rest.  To sustain performance over the long-term and minimize risk of overload and burnout, we should spend 1/3 of our day truly resting and regenerating and at least three quarters of this time sleeping.

Getting the balance right?

Put simply, sensory input from the environment travels through the nervous system to our brains for interpretation so that the brain can respond appropriately (sympathetic activation or parasympathetic response). Sympathetic/ parasympathetic balance is then controlled internally by secreting hormones to make bodily adjustments as needed. Again, think of this simply as the body having an internal ON and OFF button.

Controlling your environment to manipulate these complex senses is a powerful method of controlling sympathetic activity to be alert when needed to perform at your best, or promote quality recovery to recharge and physiologically recover when you can. Remember, sleep is optimal when it is quality sleep and usually quality sleep does not occur by accident.

The following are some simple, but very effective ways to help get the right balance on a daily basis between stress and recovery:

Sense	Sympathetic Activation - ON button	Parasympathetic promotion – OFF Button
Vision	Bright natural light	Low levels of light or darkness
Hearing	Use of intermittent noises Uplifting, energetic music Interesting radio talk show or podcast	Relaxing soft music or white noise (e.g. background fan) Absence of vibration noise Silence
Smell	Eucalyptus, Peppermint, Caffeirne	Lavender, rose or essential oil fragranced bath
Taste	Caffeine
Touch	Any intermittent tactile stimuli, e.g. someone touching your shoulder intermittently	Comfortable bed with fresh sheets, no creases Relaxing massage
Proprioception	Physical activity	Floating in water, long warm bath, relaxing massage
Temperature	Non-humid comfortable temperature around 22-24oC	Warm bath with essential oils or lavender Hot humid environment will make you sleepier during daytime. Comfortable but cool environment at nighttime to promote sleep.

Final Thoughts

Our bodies are not designed to run at full speed 24/7, 365 a days a year. This is why so many people are flat, frantic and fried! Use the ON button to your advantage and engage the sympathetic nervous system when you need to be super productive and get things done, both at home and at work. Just make sure you also build in strategies to help you activate the OFF button and conserve energy by utilising the parasympathetic nervous system which helps you recover and regenerate. Getting the balance right between ON and OFF will ultimately sustain performance.

The Nest: Dealing with Daily Distractions

Let me tell you what would have happened when I sat down to write this article a number of years ago, before I learned to control distractions. Open the word document and start crafting the story. Bing – email alert so immediately check emails...

Let me tell you what would have happened when I sat down to write this article a number of years ago, before I learned to control distractions. Open the word document and start crafting the story. Bing – email alert so immediately check emails, could be really important! Mario, Eggo and Deano catching up for a surf on the weekend – email back: “awesome guys, count me in…”

Back to writing document... Meep meep – text message from my wife about dinner tonight. "Looking forward to it" I respond, then back to document. Brain hurting a little (could it possibly have anything to do with the never-ending distractions?) So, decide to check share portfolio on my iPhone. Then respond to a few SMS', check the 3-day weather forecast. Bing – more emails. Deano the crazy man is in for the weekend getaway as well – great news! Now, where was I? Start reading through the article again and decide that after 25 minutes of writing it must be time for a break.

Grab a cup of coffee to try and re-focus. Then sit back down and hope that the caffeine has kicked my axons and dendrites into an orderly fashion to fire up my creative juices. Finally, into the flow of writing the article and Bing – Eggo is in too… Now, where was I again? Oh that’s right - back to the writing. Write for a few more minutes and wonder why I still haven’t heard back from Mario...

When writing documents that we actually have to think about, our minds have a subconscious filter searching for distractions to take us away from the document any time we encounter a sentence or structure that requires cognitive functioning or critical thinking. Hmmm – there must be something else to chew up my time and energy right now?

And with the explosion of business networking sites like Linked In, social utilities like Facebook and MySpace, constant RSS feeds from blogs and news sites, Google alerts sending email updates of the latest relevant Google results for topics we’re interested in, social messaging sites likes Twitter, instant messaging software like Skype, iChat and Messenger, applications to share photos like Flickr, sharing videos on Youtube, music playlists on Deezer, and sharing slideshows on SlideShare. Not to mention aggregators like Twirl, Growl or FriendFeed that send you pop up messages anytime any one of them is updated by someone in your network!

Oh, and I better keep an eye out for the auction of that surfboard I put a bid in for on eBay.

Give me your Constant Partial Attention (CPA)!

If you found yourself reading the paragraph above and saying ‘hey, that sounds like me’, then welcome to the program! In my consulting business I now spend more than 50 percent of my time working with large organisations getting them to change their bad ways, getting them to modify their behaviour and take control of the daily distractions that cripple productivity and drive people to the point of cracking.

Linda Stone, a former executive at both Microsoft and Apple, coined the term Constant Partial Attention (CPA).

CPA is when you give 20 percent focus to sending an email; 20 percent concentration to the colleague who sits next to you who is asking a question about next week’s conference; 15 percent to your mobile which is flashing a new message from your best friend about the upcoming weekend fishing trip; 5 percent on the flashing Skype icon on the bottom of your screen; another 5 percent to what you’re going to eat for lunch; 10 percent to the glamorous new staff member sitting across the other side of your cubicle; 25 percent to the overwhelming feeling of being totally overloaded and trying to do too many things at once and never really getting anything done, despite spending more than 10 hours in the office every day!

24/7 CPA = Decreased Productivity

While it may sound like it can be helpful to be able to splinter your attention, it actually leads to a drop in overall productivity – particularly if you let it take control of the manner in which you approach your working day. Have a think about the following statement: Your average day at work is interrupted every seven minutes.

That’s 60 to 70 interruptions a day. A recent study from the University of California found that in a modern office, the best you’re likely to achieve is 11 minutes of uninterrupted working time during a normal day – and it takes an average of 25 minutes to get back to the initial task you were working on.

This means that the average office worker spends about two and a half hours, every day, on distractions. Factor in emails to that equation, and you’re losing about 50 percent of your day to dealing with distractions. I’d go a step further and claim that some people fill their days with more than 80% distractions – any wonder more and more people feel over stretched and plain over done?

Constant Partial Attention means that you’re only paying partial attention – continuously. It stems from our desire – conscious or otherwise – to be connected to the ‘network’. We want to be looking for opportunity, and be ready to leap on them when we find them, at the moment that they present themselves. If you’re busy and working hard, you’re part of the system – and we’re taught to believe that this is a Good Thing. Management tends to reward people who focus on the daily distractions.

But what it leads to is a state of ‘always-on’, anywhere, anytime behaviour that involves an artificial sense of constant crisis. This is a Bad Thing.

The Multitasking Myth

The modern tech-driven workplace – which is pretty much any workplace that uses computers, the Internet or networks to connect the workers to each other – has been the source of many studies. And we’ve all heard the expression ‘multi-tasking’. In fact, we’re taught that it’s a good thing to strive for.

But recent studies have suggested that ‘multitasking’ is a misnomer – and that the brain doesn’t cope with two high-end cognitive tasks at once. It simply switches between them very rapidly. It’s only the tasks that are so ingrained that they’re almost automatic – like driving a car – that can be combined with other tasks, like thinking about a problem. Everything else, you’re simply switching back and forth.

The research shows that ‘multitasking’ is actually counter-productive. You’ll perform each action more slowly and less accurately than if you simply focus on the task at hand, roll up your sleeves and get it done. People may think otherwise, but it’s actually a physical limitation of your brain that causes it. And unless you’re able to rewire your brain, you won’t ever be able to truly multitask on the challenges of the workplace.

Even the ‘tools’ we use to help us are actually a hindrance. Beeping, buzzing and binging mobile phones, PDAs, emails and alerts disrupt our thoughts, reduce productivity and even intrude on our personal lives.

Start Multi-projecting

I know I’m at risk of sounding a bit kitsch, but the key is to stop multitasking – it just doesn’t work when you need to focus and be productive – and start running multiple projects instead. To survive in today’s rapidly moving business environment you definitely need the ability to be able to manage a number of different projects and tasks, but break the habit of trying to do them all at the same time.

Productive people, people who have the ability to sustain performance month after month, year after year, have developed the focus and discipline to be able to work on one project at a time. Sure, run multiple projects, but get into the habit of only paying attention to one project at a time. Give it your full energy and attention before moving onto the next task and watch your output go into overdrive.

The case for doing one thing at a time…

Now for some solutions! I don’t want you getting further and further into this article and feeling further and further out of control. There is a way out of the multitasking mania and 24/7 CPA. And the way out will require a totally different mind set for some people.

Chunking

It’s by no means a new concept, but for many people it’s a skill that needs to be re-learnt. Chunking is simple: you focus on completing one task at a time, or group similar tasks together. For example, if you’ve got three proposals to write, do them all at the same time, rather than writing one, then switching to something else, and going back to finish the other two. Or you could group all of your meetings from a similar geographical location together, all in one afternoon. Nail a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign to your office door or cubicle if you need to.

Prioritising

It might have been an ‘80s corporate buzzword, but it’s also an important approach to getting your working day as streamlined as you can. Taking 10 to 15 minutes at the start of each day to look over what you need to achieve and sorting it into the relevant level of prioritisation is vital. Then you can control your time more effectively by focusing on your list and avoiding distractions.

Expectations

Take the time to communicate clearly to fellow colleagues and customers about your new productivity rules. If you’re the type of person who has always responded immediately, some people will feel offended when you start taking time to reply to their demands. Explain that you are working on managing your time a lot better and even go to the detail of explaining the set periods each week when you are going to be working without distractions.

Final comment

Some of the suggestions in this article may cause a bit of tension for some readers. That’s fine. This is designed to challenge you to work smarter not harder. To do this some people are going to have to reengineer the way they work. But I guarantee after a few teething problems, if you take on the majority of the recommendations you’ll be amazed at how much control you actually can have over the way you work and the way you spend your time. Gotta fly – have a number of things I have to go and check on, I’ve got a case of CPA!

(Main source: Staying Sharp, Time Magazine, January, 2006; Hey you, pay attention, Katie Hafner, The New York Times, February 10, 2005)

The Nest: Eight Days a Week

Imagine if I could give you eight days a week? What would you spend your time doing on the eighth day? How would your life be different to what it is now? Pause for a moment and just contemplate, even daydream about what you would do on the eighth day.

Imagine if I could give you eight days a week? What would you spend your time doing on the eighth day? How would your life be different to what it is now?

Pause for a moment and just contemplate, even daydream about what you would do on the eighth day. Feel free to stop reading, grab a blank sheet of paper and jot down all of the activities you’d engage in if you had an extra day every week.

What would you do?

Welcome back. I know it’s an odd request to ask you to pause three lines into reading this article, but I really do need you to think about what you’d do on the metaphorical eighth day. Every time I do this activity in one of my corporate presentations, 99.9% of people respond with answers like: “spend time with my family or kids”, “go surfing”, “drink a glass of wine with my friends”, “have a romantic walk with my partner”, “relax and chill out”, “learn something new”, “ride my bike and have a swim in the ocean”, “read the newspaper front to back…”

To date I’ve never heard anyone reply with, “empty my inbox”, “more time in meetings”, “spend all day running from one appointment to the next”, “write more staff budgets”, or “read the company induction manual front to back…”

I am constantly amazed that the activities people want to do the most have nothing to do with money, or power, or prestige – the overwhelming number of responses have to do with changing gears, slowing down a little and connecting with the people we love and the activities that enrich us.
 
One extra day a week

The cynics are already declaring, “How on earth can you give me one extra day a week? I’m already chock full with activities now” - I don’t deny this. These days nearly everyone is busy; everyone seems to have a lot more to do and not enough time to do it in. But what I do know is that if you keep operating the same as you are right now and expecting different results, it won’t happen!

The following process has been proven with hundreds of my personal clients, and implemented in a number of Australia’s largest companies. My objective is to help you do in four days, what currently takes five. Or, if you’re really packing it in, get done in five days what currently takes you six. Here’s five strategies that I know will help boost your productivity:

•    Email School
•    Fleeting Meetings
•    Manage Energy
•    Master Mindfulness
•    Forced Isolation

Email School

Back when most of us went to school, we were taught over the years how to write a letter to someone. But most of us were never actually taught how to write an email – and as a result, many of us don’t know how to use email to be both productive and efficient. Right now it’s a massive problem considering the use of email has become so widespread, so rapidly, that most office workers spend up to three hours a day writing, receiving and sending emails.

It’s no surprise then that a lot of people feel overwhelmed by the amount of emails they have to wade through every day. If that’s you, try the following steps to take back control of your inbox – and your working day.

1.    “Chunk” your checking times: Set up your email software so that it doesn’t automatically update, and set aside two or three times a day to manually receive, read and respond to the emails you get.
2.    Ditch the pop-up alert: it’s intrusive and it kills off any continuity or flow that you have working on your major tasks for the day.
3.    Don’t play email tennis: If by the time two emails on any given subject have been sent and received and you’re still unclear about the contents, pick up the phone and call the person directly to talk about it. Old fashioned yes, but it works!
4.    Keep it Brief: It’s an email, not a novel. Make your point as efficiently as you can.
5.    Stop covering your butt: the CC and BCC (Butt Covering Colleague) are unnecessary more than 80% of the time. Get rid of the BCC and if you’re copying someone in that doesn’t need to be, you’re wasting their time and yours.
6.    Delete: Clear your junk emails regularly –delete anything you don’t need any more.
7.    Assess Importance: If something’s not urgent, you probably don’t need to email a response straight away. It may challenge your notion that you need to respond to everything ASAP, but the reality is that you should be prioritising and actually doing your job, not trying to look good or wasting hours and hours on useless emails.

Fleeting Meetings

Most workplace meetings can be classified quite simply as ego-stroking opportunities. A lot of the time, they simply exist for people to crow about what they’ve been doing all week – especially if the reality is that they’re not doing very much at all. Meetings take time – time away from your desk when you could be getting actual work done.
Don’t get me wrong – meetings are very important for clear communication and direction, especially if you’re working as part of a team. But that doesn’t mean that each meeting needs to be a two-hour epic. Keep your meetings to a schedule – and be as brief and to the point as you can. Here’s a checklist to help you with your meeting etiquette that will result in you having more hours in the week to get your work done.

1.    Agenda – Never, ever turn up to a meeting without one. It’s the road map of a successful meeting and it helps you keep it all on track.
2.    Start on time – If the meeting is scheduled for 10am, start at 10am. If someone who needs to be there isn’t on time, start without them – and they can learn the important lesson that tardiness isn’t helpful, especially when you have a deadline looming.
3.    5 to 10 at the end – Always allow five or ten minutes at the end of a meeting to talk about anything that isn’t on the agenda. If you run out of time, put them on the agenda for the next meeting, and get back to work.
4.    Chairperson – If you’re meeting with more than four other people, appoint someone as the ‘chair’ of the meeting to help steer it and keep it all on track and on time.
5.    Flip Location – if you’re meeting the same people in the same office at the same time each week, you’ll all get bored and creative thought can suffer. Mix up the location of the meeting – try a coffee shop or outside in a park. But leave the Frisbee in your desk drawer for now.
6.    Walk and Talk – A friend of mine who works for a major finance company taught me this one: every time we meet, we go for a walk around the Sydney Opera House and Botannical Gardens. We take an agenda, with enough business to discuss to match the length of our walk. We get our business done, and we’re getting exercise at the same time!
7.    Summarise – Keeping minutes of the meeting is important, it helps you to stay on target with who’s doing what and what resolutions were made.
8.    Compress – There’s no law that says a meeting needs to be an hour long. Be ruthless and make all of your meetings a maximum of 30 minutes. If you finish in 15 minutes, finish in 15 minutes and go get on with doing your job.

Engage Energy

Recent research has shown that your performance – mental and physical – can vary by as much as 25 percent depending on the time of day. It’s known as your ‘concentration curve’ and understanding it can be vital to achieving the most out of every day.
In fact, a good understanding of what I call your Energy Personality (otherwise known as your circadian rhythm) can boost your output by as much as 30 percent. A lot of people work against their natural rhythms, which can lead to fatigue and a drop in productivity. “Gazelles” are the kind of people who spring out of bed in the morning and are ready and raring to go. They’re the ‘morning people’ – and they make up 15 to 20 percent of the population. If this is you, make sure your mornings are clear of interruptions, as this is when you’ll be getting the most done. Keep your creative tasks in the morning, and the mindless, repetitive stuff (like sorting through email) for the afternoon. “Bears” on the other hand are the night owls of the population, making up about 20 percent as well. They function best in the afternoon and evening – and their best bet is to use their mornings to do low-level tasks, saving the creative work for later in the day. Bears like to burn the midnight oil – but they still need to ensure that they’re getting the right amount of sleep.

Characteristic	Gazelles	Bears
Use of alarm clock	Never	Need multiple alarm
Most productive	Late morning	Afternoon/Mid evening
Naps	Rarely	Tae regular naps
Favorite exercise time	Morning	Early evening
Mood	Decline slightly over day	Rises substantially over day
Morning behaviour	Chatty	Bearish
Evening behaviour	Out of steam	Full of beans
Caffeine use	Small cups	Large pots
Shift work capacity	Work best on day shifts	Work best on evening shifts
Arousal levels	Early morning	Late evening
Travel	More jet lag	Adapt faster to time changes
Partner report (well matched)	We like an early start	We're the last to go home

In between the Gazelle and the Bear is the Tiger – which is the rest of the population. It’s not uncommon for Tigers to be able to switch between working patterns, depending on the demands of their jobs and home lives. Tigers tend to have two high-energy periods each day – late in the morning and late in the afternoon. The key to getting the most out of each is to ensure that there’s an adequate break in the middle – a nice long lunchbreak (not drinking schooners at the pub though!) should suffice.

Master Mindfulness

Mindfulness, or presence, is all about clarity and focus. Stop making endless To-Do lists that make you feel stressed about how much you haven’t done! Instead, kick-start each day with a Will-Do list and complete what is most important. Spending ten to fifteen minutes prioritising tasks at the start of each day (or at the end of the previous day tends to work best for Bears) is a great way to get a clear picture of what really needs to be accomplished. Then control your time as much as possible and focus on your action list. Get active, not reactive! Ask the following key questions:

•    What are five things I can do today that will make the biggest difference to my job/role/organisation/sales volumes etc?
•    What do I do best? How can I stay on this and get support for/outsource the rest?
•    Is there anything that needs doing urgently that I’m better off getting someone else to do for me?
•    Am I setting up my day to maximise energy levels and boost productivity?

Forced Isolation

Have you ever noticed how much more productive you are when you don’t have constant interruptions?  Once or twice a week isolate yourself from all of the distractions and try chunking your tasks together. Chunking involves focusing on completing one task at a time, or working on similar tasks together. Make a booking in your diary for three to four hours and work in isolation and get rid of interruptions. You can achieve forced isolation by:

•    Putting a ‘Do not disturb sign’ on your door or workstation.
•    Stick headphones in your ears (even if you’re not listening to anything).
•    Work in a coffee shop or designated quiet area to avoid the constant daily distractions.
•    Work from home
•    Work in a dedicated quiet area/room

If you work from a home office, make sure you get into productive work practices by allocating set working hours (it’s all too easy to flick on the TV and start the day relaxing and then realise three hours has cruised by and deadlines are still looming). Treat the home office like a normal work environment; take lunch breaks and stick to set hours. Minimise interruptions from partners, flat mates, kids and pets when you need to be productive and get organised.  Make sure your home office is in a separate space with everything you need at your fingertips.

Time saving formula

Again, after applying this process to literally thousands of individuals, here is where you will find your extra day a week.

Activity	Average time spent	Daily saving	Weekly saving
E mail	3 hours per day	1 hour	4 to 5 hours
Meetings	2 to 3 hours per day	30 minutes	2 to 3 hours
Manage energy	N/A	Output 25 to 30%	N/A
Master mindfulness	N/A	N/A	N/A
Forced insolation	N/A	N/A	2 hours
		Total saving	8 to 10 hours

The Daily Saving is the amount of time you will save after implementing the relevant strategy. Example: The average person spends three hours or more a day on email, checking in to email school will save one hour per day or four to five hours a week. Following this strategy will save the average worker between eight to 10 hours a week – there’s your extra day!

Final Thoughts

The pace at which we work and live has accelerated at an alarming rate over the past five years, and it’s only going to get faster in the next five years. We are seeing more and more burnout, road rage, supermarket rage and even yoga rage because people are over loaded, over stretched and over done.
Stay disciplined and focus on being productive. The plan is to get a whole lot more done in less time, so you can spend the remaining time on doing activities you love – embracing that often way too elusive thing we call a ‘life’, Enjoy!

The Nest: Annual Recovery Plan

Working in elite sport for more than 15 years has taught me the importance of recovery and regeneration! The world’s best athletes and sporting teams now spend more time, more energy, more money and more resources on recovery than they do on training.

Working in elite sport for more than 15 years has taught me the importance of recovery and regeneration! The world’s best athletes and sporting teams now spend more time, more energy, more money and more resources on recovery than they do on training.

Think about the following examples:

•    Roger Federer winning 5 straight Wimbledon and 5 back to back US Open titles
•    Lance Armstrong winning the Tour de France 7 times.
•    Layne Beachley winning an unprecedented 7 world surfing titles.
•    Michael Phelps winning 8 gold medals at the Beijing Olympics.
•    The Australian cricket team maintaining global dominance for 15 years.

These examples are not flukes or flash in the pan performances. They are sustained efforts, consistent performances game upon game, championship upon championship, year upon year. All of these athletes and teams plan their recovery strategies as much, if not more, than they plan their training and competition.

Recovery strategies and staying fresh are the key to sustained performance, whether in sport, business or life.

Brett Lee: Lessons In Recovery

When I was working with the Australian cricket team a few years ago, something had become apparent after a One Day match against India. Despite coming off the back of a fantastic test series, Brett Lee was missing his usual spark with the ball. We sat down and talked about why Brett wasn’t performing at his best – and the answer wasn’t all that surprising. He simply wasn’t getting enough time to recover. He had travelled to India during the previous off-season with his manager and while Brett should have been having a break (both physical and psychological) to freshen up for the season ahead, he was busy making corporate appearances and building his profile in India. While this was great for Brett from a financial perspective – from a performance perspective it had left him flat and fatigued.

We sat down and put together a recovery plan that would allow Brett to keep playing at the desired intensity. Every day, we got him out in the sun in the morning, filled him up with a good breakfast, followed by a swim and some light stretching in the pool. We locked in time away from the game and time where he was free of business commitments in the months ahead.

After each game, we worked out some of the fundamentals to allow him to get as much rest as he could. It wasn’t long before he was slinging the leather at his 150+ kph speeds again, much to the dismay of the opposition. My work with Brett and other elite athletes led to the development of what I call the Annual Recovery Plan.

Annual Recovery Plan = 1 + 3 + 30 + 300 + 365

Holiday Or Off-Season

A recent article in the Australian Financial Review reported a Tourism Australia survey highlighting the fact that the Australian workforce collectively has more than 123 million days of accrued annual leave. This equates to roughly $33 billion worth – and close to 25 percent of all Australian workers in full time employment have more than 25 days of annual leave stacked up. We are a nation that stockpiles holidays!

This amazing figure has led experts to try to prompt Australians to take their annual leave – in the name of striking a better blend between work and life. Tourism Australia’s “No Leave, No Life” campaign is a great example.

Remember, holiday time or leisure time is time off work. Stay off the mobile and avoid the temptation to regularly check your emails. Get organized before you go on holidays so that other people can manage projects that might need attention while you’re off recharging. A proper holiday will leave you feeling totally refreshed and revitalized.

We know that it’s imperative for elite athletes to take regular time out to recover and recharge, as this not only keeps them in the sport longer, but also dramatically decreases their risk of injury and burnout. So why do we try and play a five-day ‘corporate’ test match week in, week out? And then play a grand final game on both Saturday and Sunday?

Mini breaks

Remember the movie Bridget Jones’ Diary where Bridget and Darcy escape to the English countryside for a ‘mini-break’? Well, I’d like you to try and lock in at least three of these during the year – with your partner – not Renee Zellweger!
It’s great advice – and it’s advice that I personally took a short time ago. My wife and I took a Friday off work, packed a suitcase and decided to escape the rat race for a three-day weekend. We simply drove up the coast to Nelson Bay from Sydney, leaving early on the Friday morning to avoid the traffic.

It was perfect – no computers, no phones, and most definitely nothing work-related. Just pure R&R. When I was back in the office on Monday, my wife called around 10am. “I feel so relaxed, it’s amazing,” she said. “It feels like we’ve been away for weeks!” And I felt exactly the same. With my mental batteries recharged, Monday’s workload was a breeze, because everything just felt so much clearer.

You should plan for a mini-break at least three or four times a year to reboot your system. Here’s a list of suggestions that should get your mind ticking over the kinds of things you could do to enjoy some well-earned time off.

Book a beach house, head for the mountains, tour the nearest wineries, go camping, visit friends interstate – whatever takes your fancy, as long as it’s got nothing to do with work and you are going to have plenty of time to sit, relax and unwind.

30 Weeks of 100 Recovery Points

David Misson, the former Elite Performance Manager for the Sydney Swans, introduced a recovery program to the team where the players accumulate 100 ‘recovery points’ each week, to make sure they’re okay for the next big game. Each activity is worth a certain number of points – yoga could be 30 points, a light stretch could be 10 points, a massage worth 25 points, etc – and the players have to reach their 100 point goal.

The Corporate Recovery Toolbox is a similar format designed for you, which combines indoor and outdoor activities. Your goal is just like the players for the Swans – hit 100 points each week.

Here’s a table of activities you can follow – or you can add your own.

Indoor recovery		Oudoor recovery
Massage	50 points	Relaxing swim	25 points 4
Strech/Yoga	40	BBQ/Picnic	25
Meditation	40	Golf	25
Social catch-up	25	Gardening	20
Dancing	25	Easy cicle	20
Sex	25	Slow walk	20
Warm bath	15	Sightseeing	20
Relaxing music	15	Festival	20
Reading fiction	15	Fishing	20
Go to a movie	15	Amusement park	15
Watch TV	5	Shopping	15

You’ll notice that these activities are all about taking things easy – there’s no huge score for grinding out a punishing 10km run on a hot afternoon. The idea is to give both your body and your mind the chance to rest. If you’re a fitness fanatic, you should aim to be doing these tasks as well as keeping fit – try swapping one longer run for a leisurely walk or stretching class. It’ll give your body a chance to unwind a lot better and free valuable time to think.

For thirty weeks of the year I want you to make sure you focus on recovering properly. Each week your goal is to get 100 recovery points.
 
300 nights of quality recharging sleep

The plan is to get 300 nights every year, or six nights each week, of quality sleep. Quality restorative sleep is one of the major keys to health and vitality. Research by the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research has found that fatigued workers are 3 times more likely to be absent from work and 7 times more likely to make mistakes or have an accident. Human motor performance and cognition reduce exponentially with lack of sleep. Reducing your average sleep by just one hour per night over a week-long period will result in a 20% reduction in daily alertness and ability to perform.

Ensure you are getting quality restorative sleep. This means you need to have an adequate amount of time asleep (usually 7 – 8 hours for most people), and that sleep needs to be deep and uninterrupted.

Regular sleeping time: Keep bedtime and rising time as similar as possible each day to settle your circadian rhythm. Stick with it, and it will get easier.

Draw the curtains: An uninterrupted night is required to get deep and restorative sleep. Sometimes interruptions can be out of your control, but measures such as ensuring your room is sufficiently dark will help you get to sleep and also to drift back to sleep again if you do wake up.

See the day: Serotonin is associated with mood elevation and is synthesised during the day from sunlight. It’s used at night to make melatonin, which induces sleep, so getting good amounts of natural daylight will promote better restorative sleep.

Try some milk: Milk contains an amino acid called tryptophan that the body uses to manufacture melatonin (the sleep hormone). Grandma certainly had it right when she insisted that you have a glass of milk thirty minutes before you go to bed!

Taking a bath 60 minutes before bed, using earplugs to block out excess noise and ensuring your bedroom is a comfortable temperature all night can also help. 

365 days a year – go SLOW

Every day of the year I want you to spend at least 10 or 15 minutes taking it easy. Going slow is transition time where you give your conscious mind permission to change gears and engage your subconscious thought patterns. Some people pray, others meditate, while others just sit and be mindful. Do what works for you as this is all about stimulating the relaxation response, the exact opposite of the stress response.

This is a great activity to employ before charging into your home after a busy day’s work. It is way too easy to walk through the door as corporate boy or corporate girl – still thinking about all of the deals you’ve crunched in the past 8 to 10 hours. Slowing down before you race through the door at home is a great skill to help you connect as a partner, family member, parent and friend.

SLOW activities

•    Walking at a gentle pace
•    Relaxing bath
•    Listening to quiet music (sorry … ACDC, Wolfmother and Metallica don’t count!)
•    Relaxing in the outdoors
•    Meditation
•    Sitting in a chair closing your eyes and relaxing
•    Gentle stretching
•    Floating in the ocean.

Final tip – lock it in the diary

One more thing before you race off to your next appointment. Please grab your diary – now! Sit down for 15 minutes and plan your recovery program for the next 12 months. Even better, if you are in a permanent relationship sit down with your partner and plan your next holiday and quarterly mini breaks. It’s amazing that even knowing about an upcoming getaway can help you through the crappiest of days. Lock in weekly activities to help you get regular recovery points and make yourself accountable.

Setting an annual recovery plan is a proven strategy to help busy people get through the mountain of work that we are all facing these days. We make life so much harder than it needs to be by burning ourselves out, and constantly being distracted by technology and digital devices. Maintaining the discipline and sticking to an annual recovery plan might just be the missing piece of the puzzle that helps you sustain performance and take control back of your life.

Happy recovering!