Becoming unstressed

In the past 9 months I went through quite an ordeal personally, that fundamentally changed my attitude towards both my commitment to my work, and equally so, my own expectations to said work. I have always considered myself an efficient worker, but looking back it is more likely that I was a hard worker, but less so an efficient one.

Many years in the project and program management game has taught me, that it does not matter if you work your ass off, if you ultimately don’t deliver. You will not get praise from your dedication if you don’t also meet the deadline. That might sound really unfair, but if we remember that we almost always have a say in what we commit to, it is actually less unfair than we might feel.

I am teaching my organization not to overcommit and to push back when they are being pressured into a corner, because they will suffer the consequences if they agree to something they don’t have the capacity for. I am by no means of the persuasion that hard work should be frowned upon, but I am very much of the persuasion that we must fight to keep our promises – even if fighting means long hours every now and then.

Because of what I went through, I decided that I would strive to work less than I have done previously, but deliver more value in less time. For me to do that, I needed to take a hard look at how I operated and find out where I could optimize. Not just for myself, but for my teams around me as well. That has resulted in beliefs that I try to work actively with every day. I have shared these beliefs in the sections below, in the hopes they could help or be of some inspiration to some of you as well. They are also good hygiene factors in any collaborative environment.

?FOCUS TIME

• Prioritize time every day for focus time (to do actual work) and aim to have +50% of your days filled with it. Meetings take up way too much time in modern organizations, and they are rarely effective or truly value adding. And we tend to forget that meetings through their very nature, is where tasks and projects are born. If we spend most of our time in meetings, when are we then supposed to execute?
• Set your phone to mute work notifications (emails, Teams, Slack etc.) after office hours. Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) never kicks in if the synchronization is still running because your brain knows that the information is right there in your pocket if you need it, but you actively need to seek it out, thus no longer invasive.
• Remember that any work above 40 hours per week reduces both quality and efficiency, and the bill comes due if you push yourself too hard for too long. It is perfectly OK to work harder one day or even weeks sometimes, but you must remember to balance it out on the other side.

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MEETINGS

• For good meetings you should create a clear agenda well in advance, align expectations before the meeting, and communicate expected / wanted outcome. People should know what they are going into, why they are invited, what they are expected to contribute with, and what value is gained from having the meeting.
• When you book meetings, leave enough free time at the end, to allow participants to get from your meeting to the next item on their agenda. My rule of thumb: Less than 60 minutes = 5 minutes free time. More than 60 minutes = 10 minutes free time.
• Favor short meetings more frequently, over longer meetings. You will notice that 15 – 20 minutes with dedicated focus often is enough to discuss relevant matters, make the necessary decisions and move on.
• Stay on point during the meeting. Appoint a driver if it isn’t you, stick to the agenda, and help bring people back, if the dialogue drift. This goes for brainstorm sessions and workshops as well.
• Aim to end meetings early if possible. The best feeling is often the 15 minutes you get, that you didn’t plan for. Never allow meetings to run over, unless all participants have available time afterwards. It is disrespectful to the participants, to make them late for their next engagement, and as the meeting facilitator it is your responsibility to ensure that the meeting progress as planned.
• Don’t allow double bookings. It might sound harsh, but I usually reject meetings scheduled on top of other items in my calendar, even focus time, unless it is very clear why the double booking should take precedence.

COMMUNICATION

• Be diligent in your communication. Only include people to whom the communication is absolutely relevant, take them out of the dialogue if their attention isn’t needed anymore, you can always add them back. Everything in between is just noise for them.
• Politely opt out of email threads that doesn’t directly involve you. It is perfectly acceptable.
• Be mindful of “To:” and “Cc:”. When information is important to someone, but you don’t require input from them, move them to Cc. If the information is no longer important to them, remove them from the dialogue.
• Unless you have a rare, good reason, you should never use “Reply all”.
• Don’t forward a long mail dialogue without taking the time to write an introduction to the new recipient, so he or she doesn’t have to educate themselves to a topic that is most often new to them.
• Don’t ask questions or assign tasks to a group, without specifying who you expect to take action.

PRIORITIES

• Set ambitions daily, work in a habit of knowing what you wish to have achieved by the end of the day and stay on point as much as possible. And stay true to the promises you make to yourself, by committing to getting the work done and minimize procrastination. I guarantee that procrastination in the workplace only increase your stress level.
• Always keep a list of the Top 5 projects / tasks you need to focus on “right now”, keep that list updated, and align with your peers. It makes daily prioritization easy because you know exactly if a given assignment aids those focus areas or not, and if they don’t, they can wait. As Andy Groove said: “More wood behind fewer arrows”.
• Focus on one thing at a time as much as possible and be sure to complete it or at least the expected part of it, don’t produce half-done results, and move on – It will only increase your workload.
• Try to have less than 10 emails in your inbox by the end of every week and set aside time every day to proficiently manage it. You owe your colleagues and customers to respond in a timely manner, and it makes life easier to get it out of the way.

I realize that much of this sounds like a boy scout agenda and I can’t guarantee that it will work for everyone. But there is satisfaction in efficiency, and I can personally attest to the fact that leisure times feel a lot more relaxing, when you are not drowning in communication, aren’t behind of tons of tasks and projects, and feeling that you cannot keep up.

By working with the principles above, I find my days to be a lot easier, my overview is better, my capacity is higher, bandwidth is broader, I am not stressed, and I am simply much happier.