Three Ways to Save Time

Over the past few months, I’ve implemented three new practices that have helped me save time.  They’re not my ideas.  They either come from David Allen’s Making it All Work or Scott Belsky’s Making Ideas Happen.  The strategies are as follows:

1. Kick email’s butt.

Email has been kicking my butt for the past three years at least.  I’d say I’ve spent between 15 and 20 hours a week trying to keep up with email during that time, and to be honest, I’ve hated the experience.  Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for and enjoy almost all the emails I get, but I hate the feeling of falling behind and watching my inbox fill up with more and more stuff.  Then it is doubly troubling to feel buried under email, and I have spent way too much time trying to catch up and apologizing for my late replies.  In fact, I’ve gone several month’s in a row, many times, never getting to the zen-like purity of an empty inbox.

For the past three week’s though, I’ve been kicking email’s butt.  I spend no more than 2 hours a day on it, often much less, and I have an empty inbox almost every day. 

What I do now is simple. I just do my email in order from the top to the bottom everyday at a certain time.  No matter what the email asks of me, I never skip it. Now I just deal with whatever is in my box, in the order I see it, as quickly as I can.

 

This simple strategy means that I am much more efficient. My replies are usually quite short, four sentences or less, and I don’t spend as much time thinking about what I’ve received.  I just deal with it, and fire it off.  My goal each time I sit down to do email, and I set aside specific times, usually at the end of the day, is to clean out the inbox, no matter what.  This also mean that I forward tasks on to others who might be able to respond better than I—sorry if you’ve gotten one of these emails, by the way.  Whenever I can forward it on, now, I do, and I ask the person receiving the email to cc me on their reply so I know that it has been done.

My replies may not be as detailed and well-thought through as they used to be, but I think people prefer a quick response to a more detailed response that arrives too late to be used.  What’s more, I love the look of an empty inbox.

2. Keep a physical inbox and clear it out once a week.

This is a David Allen idea.  I now have two physical inboxes (one at home and one at KU), and whenever I receive a bill, a form, a request that requires a written response, or some similar task, I toss it into my inbox.  Stuff for my KU work, I put in the inbox at KU. Stuff for my company, The Instructional Coaching Group, or for my personal life, I toss into the inbox at home.  I also put notes to myself into the box, listing mechanical little tasks that I have to do, like, “update my iPod with the new Josh Ritter CD,” or “write thank you letter to Fred.”

Then, once a week, usually Sunday afternoon at home, and Monday afternoon at KU, I deal with everything in the box.  Just like my email, I start at the top and power through until I’m done. 

I like doing this for two reasons.  First, I stay on top of tasks, which feels great.  Second, I stay focused on creative tasks when I’m doing them.  Now, when I am doing something like writing or developing a presentation, and some kind of mechanical task shows up like a bill to be paid, I don’t feel the need to deal with it right away. I just put it in the inbox and get back to being creative.

The way I think when I am writing or doing some other creative act, is not the way I think when I am paying bills or writing to get a refund from United Airlines for a cancelled flight.  By putting tasks in the inbox right when I get them, I’m able to stay in the creative way of thinking without letting the task derail me.  Then when I clear the inbox, I can do it with gusto.

3. File notes by month, not topic. 

I have a confession. I have been terrible about filing my notes after meetings.  Usually, I write notes, and they pile up on my desk or on the top of a filing cabinet.  Then, if I need them, I can’t find them.  Well, Scott Belsky taught me a whole new way to file and I love it.

What I now do is simply date my notes and put them into a folder labeled with the current month.  I file them chronologically.  Then, if I need the notes, I go back to my calendar, find what month I was meeting on the topic I need notes for, and pull out the file to get the notes. The method is quick, efficient, and there are no more piles of paper lying around my desk.

 

These are three simple methods, but they have been incredibly helpful to me.  When my email fills up, when I lose notes, or when tasks go undone, I can feel my energy draining out of me.  These simply practices free up a lot of time, and they keep the energy drain from happening. They may not work for you, but they have really worked for me.

So what do you do?  If you’ve got a strategy that works for you, please share it. Don’t be a hoarder!  We want to know. Thanks to my new techniques, I’ll also probably have to time to try them out.

Mickey Hay's Comments on Level 3 Listening

The Experience of Level III Listening

We’ve all had experience of Level I listening.  A lot of the conversations we have at work are indicative of Level I listening and this is entirely appropriate.  At this level, we may be engaged in hearing what the other person is saying, but our thoughts are self-focused.  For example, you may have a certain agenda in the conversation and you’re trying to get information.  As the other person answers your questions and makes additional comments, you’re extracting only the information that is useful for your own purposes.  In other words, you evaluate everything you hear in terms of “what’s in this for me to use?”  You may not hear everything that is said because you’re only focused on what you need to know.

Level II listening puts the focus more firmly on the other person.  Often we listen at this level when we’re trying to do some problem-solving with the other person.  At level II, your awareness is heightened.  You want to make sure you fully understand what the other person is trying to say, and to do that, you attend to non-verbal cues.  You may feel a lot of empathy, so that if the person tears up, you find your own eyes becoming moist.  If the person is sharing some upsetting information, you may feel outrage for them.  You mirror the person back to them and feel very much as though the two of you are connected through the conversation.  You’re very aware of yourself, however, and while you still have your own agenda, it’s a shared agenda with the other person.  And you’re mindful of your responses so as to be as helpful, understanding, and creative-thinking as possible.

Level III is a very different experience.  I’ve not only experienced it during some of my most memorable coaching sessions, I’ve heard it described by others who engaged in this deep level of communication.  Perhaps the best way for me to describe Level III listening is to share comments I’ve heard in which it was apparent that the listener was in a state of true communion with the speaker.

 “I found myself speaking words I hadn’t thought about before they left my mouth.  And what I said seemed to be the exact thing he needed to hear.”

“It was as if someone else was speaking through me.  I knew that my job was to stay open to what the person was telling me but also to what I was supposed to tell her in response.” 

“Some of the things I said in response to him were so insightful and brilliant!  I hadn’t realized that I had those thoughts before I articulated them.” 

Level III listening opens channels between you and your mentee that allows for an inner or greater intelligence to shine through.  It’s almost as though there’s a third person in the conversation—someone who knows what the person needs to hear and can articulate it in such a way that the message provides insight.  When you’re engaged in Level III listening, you don’t think or worry about what to say.  And if nothing comes to mind for you to say, you’re perfectly comfortable being silent until something does.  You may hold a question in your mind as you wait for something to occur to you to say—something like “What does the person need to hear from me?”  After the conversation is over, you feel remarkably refreshed and satisfied, knowing that you were 100% present to the person and therefore the most effective you could have been.  Your mentee continues to garner greater insight from your comments well after the session is over. 

Level III listening is most appropriate in a mentoring relationship.  It provides you and your mentee with an opportunity that most conversations you conduct at work do not—an opportunity to give yourself over to another person’s agenda with the knowledge that you are just the right person to do so.  It is truly the most rewarding aspect of mentoring, and one that you will want to experience with everyone you mentor.