Juggling Elephants Blog

With rising fuel prices, many of us are being forced to limit trips in our vehicles and avoid unnecessary driving. In some cases, people may even have to limit spending on other items in order to pay for fuel. I have a friend who is an independent truck driver, and he has had to turn down some jobs because, in his words, "I just can't make money delivering that load." Tough times indeed.

This situation also caused me to reflect on how things would be different in my own life if I looked at my time and energy in a similar manner more often. Here are some possibilities:

• I would more consciously prioritize the tasks in my day, insuring that the ones with the greatest connection to my purpose were accomplished first.


• Because time is so valuable, I would guard against wasting a single moment.


• Before expending my energy (physical, mental or emotional) on any issue or task, I would ask if the benefit was really worth the cost. Put another way, does it help me accomplish my purpose? If the answer is no-it would not find it's way into my schedule.

Bottom line? I'd stop wasting my own resources. Good advice to myself-whether it's fuel, time or energy of any kind.

Labels: focus, planning, priorities

Ever need just a minute of humor in your day? Try http://www.funnysign.com/ or http://www.funnysigns.com/. You won't necessarily find yourself rolling on the floor with laughter, but even a chuckle may be the distraction you need when working on a really tough act.

Labels: humor

This is a trap that I have found myself completely caught in. I am working on a project on my computer and all of a sudden I hear the familiar "dah duh, dah duh" of my email box announcing that I've got mail. Curious, I stop what I am doing and checkout what has just arrived. Or even worse, a little window pops up with, "Message from Wendy". I wonder, "What does Wendy have to say?". Fifteen minutes later I am finished responding to Wendy and a few other messages that have arrived. I am now totally derailed from what I have been doing on my project.

Email is a wonderful tool but it also can be a MAJOR interrupter and time waster. Try turning the bell and popup off. If email is critical to what you do at work, schedule a consistent time (like the top of the hour) to check email. Otherwise, fight the urge to check email too often-maybe only check it 2-3 times a day. You will be surprised how your focus will increase as well as your productivity.

Labels: e-mail, focus, interruptions

Meetings are an important part of a lot of our professions. I don''t know many people who just love meetings. Sometimes they are a necessary evil. But nothing is worse than sitting in a meeting that isn't important and thinking the whole time about the huge "To Do List" back at your desk. Meetings can be costly, reduce productivity, and lower morale. Remember this the next time you have an urge to call a meeting. If the meeting is critical here are a few things to remember:

• K.I.S.S.-Keep It Short Sweetie! Have an agenda, cover the items quickly and then end it. Don’t be afraid to remove all the chairs and call a "stand up meeting." If people are not able to sit down, they will be less likely to drag out a meeting. No one will complain that a meeting ended early.
• If pulling people together requires significant travel (across campus, across town, or across country) try using technology to facilitate the meeting instead of wasting the time for the commute. There are some great tools that don't cost a lot that can facilitate conducting a meeting across distances. Instant Messaging, web conferencing, conference bridges, and team sites can be used to reduce travel costs and time.
• If you have reoccurring meetings, like a weekly staff meeting, don’t be afraid to cancel it if there aren’t a significant number of items on your agenda. Otherwise, you will find yourself "making up" things to talk about and therefore wasting time. If this occurs often, decrease the frequency of the meeting to every other week or once a month.

Managing meetings is an important strategy to managing your time. You have enough acts in your circus that need your attention without adding unnecessary meetings and travel time.

Labels: meetings, productivity

One of the areas of Juggling Elephants that sometimes raises the eyebrow of a reader is the chapter on building relationships. In that chapter we suggest (through the parable) that there is much to learn about building relationships from observing various circus acts. One of the acts is that of the animal trainer. "But my people aren't animals," you say. Of course not, but several of their techniques are completely applicable to improving the relationships we have with other humans (or that they have with us).

One key principle employed by many animal trainers is the saying, "It's never the animal's fault" when the animal fails to perform correctly. In general, it forces the animal trainer to reflect on their training of the animal to make sure they haven't forgotten something or encouraged the animal to develop the less than desirable behavior with their tactics.

What if, the next time you are disappointed with a co worker, you stopped and said to yourself, "It's not their fault. What could have caused this to happen?" You would focus on solutions to preventing the same failures again instead of simply blaming them. That would certainly lay the groundwork for a much more successful act the next time.

Labels: conflict resolution, teamwork

While the focus in the book, Juggling Elephants, is for adults, I was reminded this past week that there is a younger audience that needs the message as well. One of my daughters is preparing for three school-related competitions-all within the next two weeks. She is an awesome young lady, but in the past couple of months she has simply allowed other "good acts" to take away time she should have been using to get ready for the competitions. As a parent I should have been gently reminding her that she would have time for some of these acts AFTER the competitions were over. Now, just days before the competitions, she finds herself stressed and worried that she won't be ready.

Labels: procrastination, time management

While working on the Juggling Elephants "Train the Trainer" program, I came across a fantastic research abstract entitled The Cost of Not Paying Attention-How Interruptions Impact Knowledge Worker Productivity. Consider some of their findings:

-Unnecessary interruptions cost U.S. businesses $588 billion per year.

-Twenty-eight percent of a knowledge worker's productivity may be lost to unnecessary interruptions such as instant messaging, spam e-mail, telephone calls and the web.

The abstract offered three great solutions to minimize such losses. They were:

-Training knowledge workers to prioritize work at hand

-Providing them with discretion to turn off technology

-Separating themselves from technology to do work

Labels: interruptions, technology

There was an illuminating article in the NY Times on April 2nd entitled Tighten Your Belt, Strengthen Your Mind. It looks at the results from a research study on the use of willpower. In short, the study found that willpower is not unlimited. Use it in one area and your willpower is depleted when you choose to use it for another task requiring restraint.

Based on the study, their recommendations included using your willpower on one key area at a time, and once you achieve success with restraint in that area, work on another area.

What about your circus? Where is willpower needed to add, change or delete an act in your lineup? If you're trying to change too much at one time, you may feel like you're juggling elephants again. Read the article for more great insights into willpower.

Labels: willpower

One of my favorite songs is Live Like You Were Dying by Tim McGraw. You can click here for the lyrics. It helps me clarify my lineup when I'm trying to juggle elephants (yes, I still try from time to time).

It might be morbid but why not begin with the ultimate end in mind and write your own eulogy. What do you want to be remembered for? What do you want said and written about you? What accomplishments do you want to have achieved? Lay it out in detail. Review it on a regular basis and don't be afraid to edit, delete and add to it.

Labels: purpose

We recently had a customer of "Juggling Elephants" write to us about tips for going "all digital" with a system that would be small and compact. Here was my reply:

When it comes to calendaring I struggle like you do. I love electronics and technology. But I haven't found an electronic calendaring solution that I totally like - especially when I am away from my desk a lot. I am a visual person and like to see a layout of what is going on in my life and small PDA screens just don't do that for me. A few tips that work for me:

• I carry a paper based system with me - mainly for my calendar and for taking notes (I can't take notes fast enough on a PDA especially when I am on the phone). I use Franklin Covey's compact planner with the 2 page calendar spread - it fits in a brief case (or purse) and is easy to carry


• It is critical to have just one MASTER calendar (for me it is my planner). Everything goes in the Master calendar and then I update other calendars as necessary (the family calendar, my schedule in Outlook at work, etc.)


• In my planner I carry a quad-pen that has red, blue and black ink along with a pencil. On my paper based calendar I track the 3 rings of my circus with a different color of ink (red-relationships, blue-self, and black-work). I use the pencil for stuff that is tentative and hasn't confirmed


• I still use technology. I update my schedule in Outlook so that people that I work with know my schedule. I also like that my mobile phone will sync with my Outlook automatically and will "beep" to remind me of appointments (my planner doesn't beep). This function also mutes my mobile phone during meetings so that I don't get interrupted by an incoming call.

These ideas seem to work for me but I travel and am away from my desk a lot. If I were at my desk most of the time I think that I could go 100% digital due to the bigger screen of my computer. The key is to take planning of your circus seriously and to find a solution that works for you. A custom solution that fits your needs is probably the best answer. I have also found that talking with others and finding out what works for them has given me new ideas and increased my productivity.

Labels: calendars, technology, time management

It's happened at least two times in the past month. I return a call to someone and before I even get to hello, they abruptly say, "I can't talk right now. I'm in a meeting." The visual I get is hilarious. First, the person answering their phone while in a meeting has just disrupted the flow of the meeting-or at least distracted the individuals around them. Secondly, they have just created a less than professional situation between themselves and the person calling. I also see this same behavior while conducting some presentations.

In an actual circus you can imagine how confusing it would be if, while an act was being performed, another act barged into the same ring. No one is pleased with the chaos or confusion created by the incident.

I know there are cases of personal emergency where one needs to be readily available, but that's the purpose of Caller ID. If it's important, step out of the room. Ultimately, for the benefit of those in the meeting and as a courtesy to the person calling, maybe it's best to wait until the current act is finished before tryng to start another one in the same ring.

Labels: interruptions