Second, plan your days and organize your work so that you create blocks or chunks of time to work on completing major tasks.
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Use your ingenuity to find ways to take time from other activities and consolidate this time into blocks of a minimum of 60 to 90 minutes each.
Because of the time it takes you to settle into a task, it is usually not possible for most people to accomplish meaningful tasks in less than 60-90 minute periods. By meaningful tasks, I am referring to creative work such as reports and proposals, as well as meetings and discussions with and about people and projects. Almost all important tasks require unbroken periods of time where total concentration is possible.
You cannot rush important conversations, discussions or negotiations. You need blocks of time. To be able to concentrate your attention, you must become creative in finding these blocks of time. There are many ways to accomplish this.
Early to Bed, Early to Rise
One very effective technique is to work at home in the morning for an extended period, before you go into work. You are usually fresher and more capable of concentrated effort first thing in the morning than at any other time during the day.
For example, you can go to bed early and get up at 5:00 am. Start work immediately and work without interruptions for three or four hours before going into the office. You will be amazed at how much you get done in these unbroken, uninterrupted chunks of time, early in the day, when you are rested and at your best.
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It is amazing how many great men and women practice this way of working.
Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “The sun has never caught me in my bed.”
When you get up and get going early, you can get the equivalent of an entire day’s work done before the normal working day even begins. If you work from 5:00 am to 8:00 am, and then go to work, you will soon be on top of all your major tasks. Everything else you get done during the day will be a bonus.
Work without Interruptions
Many companies in large cities will often rent an apartment near the office and furnish it with desks, chairs and office supplies so that executives can go there and work without interruption away from the telephone and drop-in visitors. This dramatically increases their productivity, especially when they are working on important tasks and projects that have to be done on a specific schedule, and completed by a certain deadline.
The very fact that you know that you will not be interrupted enables you to concentrate better and produce more. If you are working at home, you should disconnect your telephone so that no calls can get through to you.
Working without interruption for long periods is an extraordinarily powerful way to increase your output and get more and better results.
Start Earlier, Work Harder, Stay Later
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There is another simple technique that you can use to double your productivity and to accelerate your results.
First, go into the office one hour earlier, before the workday begins. By leaving home early and getting into the office early, you will avoid most of the traffic. Since there is no one there to interrupt you, you can get started immediately. Often you can clear up an entire day’s work in that one hour.
Second, develop the habit of working straight through your lunch hour when almost everyone else has left the office. There is no law that says that you have to go for lunch when everyone else goes. There is no law that says that you have to eat lunch from twelve to one each day. You can take your lunch hour before 12 o’clock or after 1 o’clock. In both cases, there will be no crowds or delays. You can eat quickly and be back at work with very little downtime. You can get in and out faster and you will get better service.
Third, stay in the office and work one extra hour after everyone goes home.
This is one of the best ways for busy people to stay on top of their jobs.
During that uninterrupted hour, which as you know, is worth three hours during the day, you can clear up all your responsibilities, write your reports, dictate your correspondence and plan the next day in detail. The key is to take those 60-90 minute chunks of time and work without interruption.
Close the door, unplug the telephone, put your head down and work without stopping.
The Paradox of Work
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The paradox is that “You can’t get any work done at work.” Fully 75% of time in any work environment is spent in conversation and discussions with other people. There are never-ending distractions, interruptions and telephone calls. As much as 50% of working time in any environment is taken up with idle chitchat among coworkers as they go back and forth throughout the day.
If you start one hour early, work through lunch, and stay one hour later, you will add three hours of productive time to your workday. You will, in effect, double your productivity, performance and output. Your results will skyrocket. You will get vastly more done than the other people who work at regular hours. You will be so far ahead of your coworkers that people will be amazed at how much you get done.
Hard, sustained, concentrated effort is essential to high productivity and the successful achievement of anything worthwhile. Every great accomplishment in human history is preceded by an extended period of concentrated effort, for a long, long time, sometimes for months, or even years. Your job is to create these chunks of time.
Minimize Idle Conversation
One of the great time-wasters, or time-savers, depending upon how you handle them, is conversations and discussions with coworkers and staff.
Since conversation and interaction are inevitable and unavoidable, the way you handle discussions can have a substantial impact on your overall productivity and results.
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When you have a meeting with someone, arrange your office and organize your time so that you concentrate single-mindedly on that person during the meeting. Do not allow the conversation to go off on tangents. Listen intently to the other person when they speak and resist the temptation to digress from the topic being discussed.
The very act of listening with intense concentration dramatically reduces the amount of time that it takes a person to communicate their full message. It is amazing how much time is wasted or lost because of continuous digression from the subject, or distractions, such as a ringing phone or people walking in. The more you can control these, the less time it will take you to have a high quality conversation that achieves the results you desire.
Develop a Compulsion to Closure
There is something in the human brain that thrills to any completed task.
One of the most important habits you develop is that of closure, or completion. Set specific deadlines for yourself and use them as a “forcing system’ that enables you to concentrate single-mindedly on that task.
Discipline yourself to do one thing at a time, and then to complete that one task before you begin something else.
Each time you satisfy your brain’s needs for closure, it releases endorphins into your bloodstream. These endorphins give you a sense of happiness and well-being. They increase your energy and creativity. They improve your personality and make you feel good about yourself. Disciplining yourself to 147
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complete important tasks improves the overall quality of your life, and dramatically increases your productivity.
Reward Yourself Regularly
One of the ways that you can condition yourself for task completion is to set up a structure of rewards for each thing that you do. Just as they train animals by giving them a sugar cube or a biscuit when they perform a particular trick, you can condition yourself by giving yourself a little reward each time you complete part of a task. You can then give yourself a large reward for the completion of the total job.
Psychologists have found that 85% of your motivation to engage in a particular action is determined by the benefit that you anticipate enjoying as the result of taking that action. When you set up a reward system for yourself, you motivate yourself both consciously and subconsciously to continue working without distraction toward task completion.
Share the Rewards
When you need the cooperation and understanding of members of your family, while you are working on a big task, or completing a major assignment, discuss and agree upon a reward for the entire family when the job is done. It can be something as simple as going to a movie or out for dinner. It can be a vacation or a trip to Disneyland. When everyone knows that there is a reward at the end of the road, the people around you will be 148