We’ve spent the last few weeks talking about step 1 in CATCHsystem, which is Messaging. I hope you’ve set up your email/messaging system and it is clean and clear and helping you become better at your job and/or personal life. Step 2 in CATCHsystem is Productivity. It is perhaps the key step in the entire system, because you can have the best Messaging system around and take advantage of great Sites, Documents and Media (steps 3, 4 & 5), but if you’re not productive with them, you’re hindering yourself and others.
Let’s take a look at a chart that will help explain exactly how to be more productive, whether it’s with your email, voicemail, colleagues or family members.
At the top you’ll see the words Things in red, this signifies all the ‘things’ that come at us from different directions in life; phone calls, emails, voicemails, ringing doorbell, boss at your desk, colleagues wanting to chit chat, child asking for new soccer cleats, spouse giving you a to-do list, and so on... Things come at us. The best we can do is Gather them and deal with them appropriately. Once we have them in front of us and can deal with them, we can make a decision by asking ourselves, “Can I do something about this Thing?” I’ll tell you, the answer is either Yes or No.
If No, then we have 2 choices; we either delete it because we know it will never be needed again, or, we file it away in a good filing system because there’s a chance your colleague, boss, spouse, child, relative or neighbor could ask you about it again later. A GOOD filing system will allow you to find it where you need it, when you need it.
If Yes, then we have 3 choices to make. As we covered in the Processing your Email post, if this Thing takes less than 2 minutes or 1 step, complete it NOW! Get it done, off your plate, and out of your mind. This step is huge!! It will cut down your workload and worry load in half! In just one step. Option 2 is to Delegate. You may ask yourself, “Am I the right person to do this Thing?” If the answer is NO, Delegate the task to someone better suited than you. If you can become good at delegating tasks to others, it will continue to cut down your work and worry load. It will also make you the type of person others know for getting things done. Choice number 3 is to Defer. Defer the Thing to your calendar, turn it into a project or put it onto a ‘next action’ list. Some Things are date sensitive, so if it needs to be done on a certain day this would be a great time to use the Calendar built right into your full-featured Messaging system. If you use Gmail, an email will be sent to you on the day it’s due. You could also turn this into a project where you list all of the steps involved in completing it and get them done one at a time. Last, you could put in on a ‘next actions’ list where you have a computer document or sheet of paper that has actions that you complete when you have a few minutes of down time (ten minutes before a meeting, waiting for the bus, watching kids soccer practice, etc.). These are the actions you take when you have that feeling of, ‘What am I suppose to be doing/what should I be doing right now?’
There you have it. Being productive is a matter of understanding Workflow. We talked about Workflow in an older post and we bring it up again here because it’s the key to the entire CATCHsystem. You can use all the technology and tools you can get your hands on, but if they doesn’t help you be productive, they’re not worth it, thanks!! :)