Take Control: Time to Work

If there is any common thread to most of what I obsess about these days it is how to get anything started; let alone finished. I only get good work done in large blocks of uninterrupted time and experience great difficulty explaining this. I get reactions in the form of facial expressions or sounds from the phone ranging from "hmm I thought you were so smart", "how weird", "where'd this chick come from?" or [silence].

I regularly read and highly recommend the 43 folders blog. Merlin's really got me now. Read on:

For about 6 months, I've been working on this Total Personal and Life Productivity System (to be named sometime before I publish the course). About a week ago, I visited Neal Stephenson's (among the top of my fav authors) personal web page to see what he might be working on next. I came upon a curious note ["Why I am a Bad Correspondent"] that captured my attention and caused me to forget to check for that which I originally went to the site. I read it, contemplated, and then forgot about it until I read Merlin's post from his series entitled "Making Time to Make." He starts out with a commentary on Stephenson's note.

Merlin's third installment of "Making Time to Make" is my focus in this post. Call it my new Mantra (although those who know me, know I have a new Mantra for every time I loose my keys).

Important Excerpts

Merlin's eloquent, humorous and on-spot summary of "Why I am a Bad Correspondent": "The point, from my perspective, is that Stephenson possesses the man-sized pant stones to declare precisely what the people who enjoy his work should expect from him....[He] essentially said, “Listen, gang, here’s what I’m going to make for you: novels.” And then, he went back to typing. To working. On work."

My summary of Merlin's nine recommendations to reclaim your time to work:

• Clarify your needs

  Think about and then create the environment you need in order to easily access large blocks of uninterrupted work time.
  

  Merlin's "Step Zero" is to clear out insidious, obvious and any other activity causing distraction from your work.

• Define “OFF”

  Define your availability. When you are "off" make sure you are really separated from the world, without distraction and/or drama, for the duration you require to get your work done.

• Draw your line

  Communicate, preferably somewhere in your FAQ, email responder, or other automated method, when, where and how you are available. OR NOT available. My favorite: Merlin writes "Google. Tell people about this amazing new thing called “Google.” Apparently, it’s a service that helps people find all kinds of information without sending a single email. Handy." By golly, I could have used that one just yesterday....

• Be honest

  For every one of us, there are at least dozens of individuals that may have the expectation that our time is their time. When someone is demanding more interaction with you than you can reasonably justify, you need to recognize it quickly, communicate it clearly, and get back to work. There are great examples in Merlin's article, including a Wookie story.

• Let bits drop

  A follow-on of the previous tenet, with specificity regarding defining requests of your attention that do not require a response. For example an email responses. Do you want to spend your time responding to every email in your inbox, or do you want to get work done? Recommendation here is that rather than respond with a "not interested at this time" or "no" (which can be fodder for salespeople and marketers), just don't. Drop it.

• Be courageous

  I say "Be Ruthless." Those dozens that don't understand and are not on your VIP list are not worthy of your time; drop them [see "Let bits drop" above].

• But! Also remember to be cool

  Make exceptions in cases where you can make a really cool connection. If you can respond to some requests, prioritize by choosing young folks. They need our mentor ship and encouragement.

• Identify and engage your high-value targets

  Your VIP's. Your special circle of colleagues, friends and possibly family. Create special ways for them to communicate with you easily. It could be a Grand Central number or Skype account ( I use these), a VIP only email address (I recommend gmail), and a VIP only instant messenger account.

• Respect others

  You do want it to be very easy to do business with you, in your automated responses and your communications [see "Draw Your Line" above] be polite and respectful of human feelings. A quote I heard recently: "The foot you step on today may be attached to the ass you kiss someday". (I'll edit with the source as soon as I recall) Additionally, the person on the receiving end of a carelessly worded response may have just received a pink slip, been served, or lost a close pet or human to cancer.

• Work. work, work.

  Explanation not needed. If you've read this far, you know. Get your work out there and recognized, and make it great.

Thank you, Merlin Mann, author of many fantastic works including Inbox: Zero.

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