7 Ways To Spring-Clean Your Schedule
by Lisa Bodell for Forbes
Infinite to-do list? On Zoom every day? Constantly chasing inbox zero? You’re in good company. Less than 60% of our workday is being spent productively, according to a recent poll from software-giant Atlassian. As the author of Why Simple Wins and CEO of an accelerated-learning company, I’ve seen firsthand how easily people can confuse busywork for valuable work.
For instance, the Monthly Operating Report (M.O.R.) is a long-standing task produced by one of my clients in the publishing industry. It requires data from multiple business units and devours hundreds of employee hours annually. Yet the team members who compile the monthly report are unclear why the document is important or how it’s utilized.
One month, the employee responsible for delivering the completed report to leadership decided to conduct an experiment. Instead of emailing it to the usual suspects, she simply saved it to her desktop. For her, the test of the M.O.R.’s value would be determined by whether anyone actually asked to see it. And when no one did, it became clear that she and her colleagues had been wasting their time.
Thanks to one brave employee, the M.O.R. no longer exists at that publishing company. But time-sucks just like the M.O.R. exist at nearly every organization — and they’ll remain until someone successfully challenges the status quo. To set healthy boundaries around your own time this Spring, experiment with one or more of the tactics below.
1. Say no to energy drains. While Zoom fatigue is real, avoiding video meetings in the age of COVID isn’t an option for many of us. Other energy-sucks, however, are within our power to decline. Consider deleting any social network app that gives you FOMO or tempts you into wasting time. You can also borrow a page from productivity guru, Tim Ferriss, and politely say no to strangers who want to “pick your brain” or make other claims on your time.
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