30 minute reads sample chapter

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e-BOOK SERIES! INTRODUCING the FREE eChapters from all five books

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You're half an hour away from a pain-free working life.• Brand new series of short form e-books• Each can be read in just 30 minutes!• Covering core business skills and problems to make your work-life more productive, less painful and more successfulSo why not fill your dead time with some upskilling?Each e-book contains 10 short, sharp and to-the point chapters, finishing with an ‘Action Plan’ with clear, super-structured, super-easy steps to nomore pain!

TRANSCRIPT

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e-BOOKSERIES!INTRODUCING the

FREE eChapters from all five books

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•Brandnewseriesofshortforme-books

•Eachcanbereadinjust30minutes!

•Coveringcorebusinessskillsandproblemstomakeyourwork-lifemoreproductive,lesspainfulandmoresuccessful

So why not fill your dead time with some up-skilling?

Eache-bookcontains10short,sharpandto-the-pointchapters,finishingwithan‘ActionPlan’withclear,super-structured,super-easystepstonomorepain!

YOU’RE halF aN hOUR awaY FROm a paIN FREE wORKING lIFE!

Buy today from your favourite e-bookshopwww.wiley.com/go/30MinuteReads

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Pleasefeelfreetopostthis

sampleronyourblogorwebsite,oremailittoanyonefedupwith

aboringcommute!Thankyou.

Extractedfrom30 Minute Reads: The business skills collectionpublishedin2014byCapstonePublishing,TheAtrium,SouthernGate,Chichester,WestSussex,PO198SQ.UK.Phone+44(0)1243779777

Copyright©2014NicholasBate

AllRightsReserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedinaretrieval

systemortransmittedinanyformorbyanymeans,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,

recording,scanningorotherwise,exceptunderthetermsoftheCopyright,Designsand

PatentsAct1988orunderthetermsofalicenceissuedbytheCopyrightLicensingAgency,

90TottenhamCourtRoad,London,W1T4LP,UK,withoutthepermissioninwritingofthe

Publisher.RequeststothePublishershouldbeaddressedtothePermissionsDepartment,

JohnWiley&SonsLtd,TheAtrium,SouthernGate,Chichester,WestSussex,PO198SQ,

England,[email protected].

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Contents

1 Back to Basics

2 Hang On. Who’s in Charge Here?

3 The Big Breakthrough: Find Your Zone

4 Multiple Breakthroughs

5 We Need To Talk

6 Admit It, You’re an E-holic

7 Fix It! Overcoming Obstacles

8 Great Work Practices

9 Great Home Routines

10 Your Action Plan

About the Author

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Back to Basics

The Challenge

It came from nowhere. It started small and was once restricted to work and a computer. Now it is a big – very big – part of our lives and accessible anywhere

and everywhere, even the remotest part of our honey-moon holiday in Vietnam. And yet we would be very unusual if our organization had any kind of email eti-quette. It would be surprising if we had received any real instruction at school or college on how to cope in The World of the Digital Interrupt. And we might instruct our children in their “Ps and Qs” but what guid-ance can we – should we – give in a world in which their social life, peer recognition and much academic work seems to revolve around the digital connection?

So let’s start our conquest of email, which at its best is life enhancing and at its worst is soul destroying. Let’s get back to basics in order to make sure we can go home email free.

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The Detail

What’s email good for?At work, email is brilliant for fast, responsive around-the-globe connections. It’s good for distributing facts and relaying anything structured, such as an agenda or a plan. It’s good for summaries, checklists and prepara-tion notes. It’s good when you don’t want to disturb a person now, require a full conversation from somebody or are seeking any kind of feedback. In essence, it’s good for facts.

In our personal lives, it’s great for connection, sharing plans and photos, and for making arrangements hap-pen. And doing it now and on the move and across the world.

What’s it not so good at?At work, it’s not easy to see the full story from an email, as you have to be prepared to write a novel to cover all the nuances: it is thus SO easy to be not understood. It’s particularly tricky at handling feelings and emotion unless you are a Mills & Boon novelist. It’s always there, it never goes away and it’s never done. It’s ALWAYS nagging. In essence it’s poor on emotions and where things are not at all clear-cut.

At home, curiosity for the ping and/or the buzz can become an addiction, quick and easy communication can become the norm and can replace slow and deep. The fleeting experience and buzz of a Facebook posting can take us away from the most important of our

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relationships and stop us spending decent time, for example, with one of our children.

Why and how is it screwing us up?It’s screwing us up because there is no absolute with email. One could easily argue the case to give up smoking or to moderate alcohol. But where’s the line with the ‘digital interrupt’ (a term we will use to cover everything such as email, text, Twitter, Facebook interrupts)? No, it needs a bit of discretion, some intelligence and balance. Lose any one of the three and we get stressed, feel we have no life of our own and the value of our “real” job (which for few of us is just answering email) plummets. Putting it bluntly: it screws us up.

The Story

Jon works for an international company, which is based in the UK but he heads up the Netherlands operation. He and his family moved out there a couple of years ago. His per-sonal motto: have Blackberry, will travel. In fact he has a Blackberry for work and an iPhone for personal family and friends. It is rare that one of the devices is not in one hand. In meeting rooms the machines sit on the table in front of him, blinking. In coffee shops they are shuffled as he starts another quest for email zero. His chiropractor has warned him that he is developing SPN or “Smart Phone Neck” caused by a tendency to stand, sit and work holding the neck per-manently at the optimum viewing angle for the small screen. Sadly, though, not such a perfect angle for a healthy spine and thus his nervous system.

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Jon is ambitious and doing well, but at a cost. His health is nowhere as good at it should be for a 32 year old. He always feels stressed. His relationship with his wife of eight years is severely strained and he feels he never has time in the eve-nings with his two young children. He knows much of it is to do with email. But what’s to be done? The world revolves around it now?

Jon is a good guy: we’re going to give him some serious help. He’ll be back in Section 3.

The Q&A

Isn’t it down to an organization to put in place some kind of “email etiquette”?It’s worth hoping. It’s certainly worth lobbying. People do work in different ways, are at different stages in their lives and projects. However, probably some fundamen-tals such as no emails at the weekend are worth lobbying for. More later.

I’m willing to go with many of your ideas. In fact I want to make the changes you are detailing. But how on earth do I get my kids to stop staring at screens all the time?More later. Much more later. But remember the power of example. However important you are, you do not need to answer email at meal times. If your children are young, start with the power of example e.g. no technol-ogy at the family meal.

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The Solution

1. Get back to basics. Understand what it’s good for. And what it’s not.

2. It’s down to you to get the changes you seek, but that’s OK as that is 100% under your control.

3. There is a range of simple strategies and tactics to help you and you are going to pursue those now.

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Contents

1 Boosting Your Physical and Mental Energy

2 Meditation: Relaxing Your Mind

3 Exercise for Boundless Energy

4 Nutrition for a Healthy Body

5 Blissful Sleep

6 “Hands-On”

7 Understand the Journey

8 Group Connect

9 Switch Your Perspective

10 Your Action Plan

About the Author

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Boosting Your Physical and Mental Energy

The Challenge

“Having energy” can appear elusive and complicated. We certainly remember a time when we had loads and we can still

have our great days. Holidays do help but too often we simply come down with the flu. An extra coffee is OK in a meeting but one in the evening spoils our sleep. We don’t allow the kids cola, so why do we knock it back several times a day to try and keep alert? And sometimes we’d like to push back on a daft idea in the marketing meeting but to be honest we simply can’t be bothered. Yes, that mental buzz and that physical drive seem horribly elusive.

In this first section, let’s simplify the concept and under-stand how it can be within your grasp.

The Detail

Firstly, the two kinds of energy, mental and physical, are interrelated. So the good news is that anything you can do to improve physical will help mental and vice versa.

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And for each kind of energy, there are four main drivers or initiators of great energy.

Firstly, physical – the drivers or components of great physical energy are:

1. Sleep. Ask your family doctor what’s the biggest worry for which his/her patients seek help and they will reveal that it is “TATT” or “tired all the time” syndrome. And that’s because for an increasing number of us, sleep is not doing what it’s meant to, i.e., taking a pleasantly tired body, allowing it to drop into that wonderful state called sleep for around eight hours and waking up totally refreshed and ready to face an exciting brand new day. Instead, sleep has become a troubled, low-quality experience, which seems increasingly problematic as we get older and/or take on more responsibility. We’re going to show you how to get great sleep, consistently. And thus boost your daily energy reserves.

2. Exercise. This won’t surprise you. You know how fitness not only gives you strength and stamina, but also helps you feel good. But there are so many challenges: finding the time, the possible expense of a gym and/or pool and not least, the “pain” of getting fit again. We’ll show you how to overcome every one of those apparent problems and much more easily than you might currently suspect.

3. Diet. Most of us would probably agree that too much alcohol the evening before an important

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busy day is not a wise move. But if alcohol is the most obvious one, what else affects your energy? What does boost your energy without “cheating”? (A coffee, as you will see, is an example of a cheat. Nothing wrong with that so long as you are aware.)

4. Meditation. Time out. Increasingly recognized as critical in a world of interrupt, distraction and too little time to just “be”. We show you a simple form of meditation and answer all of your questions. From “I have no time with my young children” to “you won’t catch me doing something as weird as that”. It will also be revealed that meditation is a particularly powerful energy booster in that it not only helps you to feel physically better, but men-tally, too. So it really does bridge the two approaches.

Each of these processes supports the other; just a little moderate exercise will help your sleep. With sound sleep you find it easier to resist junk food. A balanced, integrated approach is far better than going overboard on any of these. We have all met people obsessed with one particular approach, be it running or a certain food or the latest yoga. A healthy, well body will provide stacks of energy and it’s pretty straightforward. We’ll actually look at these in the order Meditation, Diet, Exercise and Sleep and will refer to the “MEDS” approach.

And mental – the drivers or components of great mental energy are:

1. Switch perspective. We’re naturally going to talk about stress and you’ll be aware of how much harm

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it can do to your mental energy i.e., your focus and will and simple sense of perspective. However, there is a powerful tool, which is often intuitive but with practice can save you so much heartache and that is to switch your perspective, to change your per-ception. Thus: it’s the biggest argument ever with your girlfriend about mismanaged finances (debili-tating) or it’s an opportunity to sort out your shared money and responsibilities and start saving for the future (enlivening). Mmm . . . powerful! But perhaps you are thinking, it’s not as easy as that though is it? Stick with us.

2. Hands on, brain off. One of the many attrac-tions of alcohol is that at the end of a demanding day we can “get out of our head”. More and more of us do spend our days in our head. Staring at screens and PowerPoint slides. Handling email. Huddled in meetings. Reading the Metro or a book on our iPad mini on the tube. It was never meant to be so. We’re a mind-body creature. We love the physical side of things: we need to bake more bread! Seriously? Sort of; much more coming up about how getting more physical paradoxically gives us more mental energy.

3. Understand the bigger picture. It’s tiring when you feel you are merely a cog in a machine. You become dulled: you commute, you drink coffee, you go to the gym. But what’s it all about? We need a bigger picture. No – you need your bigger picture because when you do, you’ll fully come alive. TBC!

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4. Group connect. A friend or two. A lover maybe. Possibly some family. A listening ear, a sympathetic word, a supportive hug . . . these are the people who put things in proportion; keep you grounded; help you get through the tricky times. Everybody needs to connect. More in a later section.

Again, each of these processes supports the other: some “hands-on”, e.g., baking bread can help keep your mind from overworking and generating extra anxiety. With some work on your bigger career goals you will find you are much calmer about the coming re-org at work. And again, a balanced, integrated approach is far better than going overboard on any of these: ruthlessly setting goals which MUST be hit for every aspect of your life will simply set stress levels soaring rather than what you had hoped. We’ll actually look at these in the order Hands, Understand, Group connect and Switch and will refer to the “HUGS” approach.

MEDS will support HUGS and vice versa. If you do a little on each of the eight directions there is no reason why you cannot get the healthy reserves of energy you seek. And if any particular aspect is having a hard time, e.g., there is a newborn in the house and sleep in under-standably broken, then the other strands of MEDS and HUGS will compensate.

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The Story

Marcus is tired. He’s tired of life. Tired of his job. Tired of his teenage kids. But most of all he’s tired of feeling tired. And he doesn’t know what’s wrong. He remembers himself as a graduate trainee starting out some fifteen years ago in corporate banking as someone who could drink anyone under the table and still do a stunning pitch and win the deal at 9:00 am the next morning. But no longer. Life is about air-ports, email, PowerPoint and quarterly reviews. And his demanding teenagers; did he mention those? Er, yes he’s married. Sort of.

Marcus is tired. Sometimes he can hardly get out of the busi-ness lounge chair, join the conference call on time or be bothered to celebrate his own birthday. Oh, what he would give for some serious energy.

But we’re going to help.

The Q&A

You haven’t mentioned illness at all. Surely that affects your energy?You are right of course. What we can say is that if you follow the strategies we will talk about in MEDS and HUGS you’ll have more energy to fight such illness. And if you do go down with the flu, you’ll bounce back up more quickly.

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Of course when you are ill the main thing is to respect that illness and if you feel tired, then that is for a reason: the body seeks rest, so rest!

The Solution

1. Decide that you are going to get your energy back.2. Or increase it.3. Or make it more consistent.4. Be willing to tackle both the mental side.5. And the physical.6. Start.

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Contents

1 Why Present?

2 Structure

3 Why You Should Create a Storyboard

4 Become a Good Storyteller

5 Slides: Less is More

6 Gaining Confidence

7 Challenges

8 The Other Presentations

9 Media: What Else is Available?

10 Your Action Plan

About the Author

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Give Great Presentations

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Why Present?

The Challenge

Modern presenting has developed a well-run formula: open PowerPoint and start typing the words you are going to say into a series of

frames, which will become slides. Add features and a picture or two. Run through the timing a few times and hey presto: you have your presentation. Present the slides by using them as if they were an auto-prompt and at the end make the slide deck available as necessary.

It’s OK. It’s rarely better than that. It’s often really dire. And it’s actually not presenting. It’s a “read-along”. Presenting has increasingly become about the slide deck. We need to remind ourselves that slides or videos or guest speakers or anything we might throw into the mix should not detract from what is our message?

Mmm: let’s just think about why we are trying to present?

The Detail

We present to get something to happen. The nature of putting a body of people in a room and somebody (the

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presenter, the facilitator) guiding them through to con-clusions can be remarkably powerful. Nothing else can do it. An executive summary can’t. Nor an email. Nor a video, however exciting. No, put a good presenter in a room and you are much more likely to get the action you seek. And if you throw in a great presenta-tion too, then you are on to a winner.

Action? Yes: to buy the product or approve the head-count. Or sign off the health and safety regulation. A presentation is intended to create and to get action. If you are running a training module, you want people to change: there is always an action. If there isn’t an action then – you’ve guessed it – why are you wasting the valu-able time of all these good people? Just send them the information and be done with it.

But a presentation motivates. It can cajole. It answers questions, overcomes fear, ensures that there is real buy-in. It’s perfect. So long as it is done well. Because a poor presentation does more harm than good: the dull-ness, the boredom, the confusion, the poor handling of questions becomes associated with the message you are trying to put across. So decision-makers reject a very good proposal because it was badly presented, for example.

And where does the power of a presentation come from? Eyeball-to-eyeball connection, from words that are said, from pace and from connection. And thus we get to the heart of the matter that slides, and in particular the slide deck, can destroy all of that if we are not careful. And that’s why, as we get into this process of helping you

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become an even better presenter and help you create an even better presentation, we will be very wary of the slide and the slide deck.

Slides have several problems:

• They encourage reading: it takes a strong speaker to wrest the attention away from the written word. And so you are no longer in control.

• They encourage data overload. What does an audi-ence participant do? Listen to the speaker, read the words . . .?

• They remove joined-up thinking and replace it with a series of bullets. PowerPoint slides have become increasingly attractive as they allow a series of words to be thrown at a screen. But rarely is much attention given to how such words are connected or fully explained. The bullets look good, they look definitive until they are given closer study . . .

• They quickly replace communication with content. And most critically, instead of a presenter con-centrating on how he/she will get the message across, he/she becomes distracted by PowerPoint features.

• They are everywhere and because so many people have experienced such poor sessions, they are a little wary as they settle down to yours.

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The Story

Sam hated giving presentations and she hated attending them. Nobody at her firm seemed to talk any more. They wrote and circulated slide decks. She sat through endless meetings, which in themselves were not that organized but they were excruciating because of poor planning and rapidly thrown together slides. She had been suspicious for a long time that there was a better way and had even managed to book herself on the company’s Presentation Skills course but was shocked to discover that all they did was design bigger and brighter PowerPoints.

The thinking in this section was all a bit of an epiphany. Things were going to change.

The Q&A

My company loves slide decks. How am I going to persuade my company to change its way of thinking?Your company, their company, everybody’s company! They’re all at it. A suggestion is to start small. Try a team meeting without everything on PowerPoint (we’re going to show you how). Notice how everyone is more engaged and comments are much more favourable at the end of the meeting. Start small. Drop a few slides. Notice the positive reaction. We’re going to give you lots of help and ideas.

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But surely slide decks are also a great record of the presentation? Lose the slides and you lose the handouts . . .Well, we will debate later whether a slide deck is a great record. Just briefly, have you noticed how because of their bullet nature many slides don’t really make much sense after the event? We’ll show you how to create a much more powerful record.

The Solution

1. Look afresh at the purpose of presenting.2. And thus look afresh at the approach to

presenting.

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Contents

1 The Decision Process

2 Tools to Decision Making 1: Data and evidence

3 Tools to Decision Making 2: Analysis

4 Tools to Decision Making 3: Brainstorm and incubation

5 Tools to Decision Making 4: Boosting creativity

6 Tools to Decision Making 5: Take action

7 Decisions at Work 1: Teamwork

8 Decisions at Work 2: Persuading, convincing and selling

9 Decisions at Home

10 Your Action Plan

About the Author

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Make Better Decisions More Often

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The Decision Process

The Challenge

Most of us never really think about how we make a decision. If we were challenged we might mutter something about looking at “pros”

and “cons” and perhaps “thinking about it for a while”. Maybe add something about not rushing “an important decision”. It sounds logical. And yet many of us know that some of the biggest decisions in our lives such as finally buying a flat, deciding who we might spend the rest of our life with or to become a police officer was a “gut” decision. And is that so bad?

Let’s understand the decision-making process. Then we can get better at it!

The Detail

Making a decision will generally go through these five stages:

1. The data/evidence stage. This is the stage that kicks off the decision-making process. It might be proactive or reactive. You need facts, you need

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evidence if you are going to make a decision. How can you choose your next job if you do not know what is important to you and/or you know nothing about the organization? If either of those areas is weak you are likely to make a bad decision. How can you be improving the diet of your children if you know nothing about nutrition and/or little about the content/background of the food you are buying? Some data is proactive, i.e., you go out and get it: data on the best creative writing course or nicest Scottish island for your holiday. This is espe-cially true in business, of course: what data do you have on your competitor’s product margins? Some data is reactive and the slow accumulation of that data prompts a decision. No longer can you get into your favourite jeans, your 6-year-old daughter is increasingly disliking school, your franchisees are defecting to a competitor: you need to make some decisions.

2. The analysis stage. Good. Now you have some facts. Your competitor’s margins are not as high as you thought. The Isle of Mull seems to be well liked by those with young children, probably overall Spanish is most appreciated by international employers seeking a second language. Once you have your facts you can then begin to do some analysis in preparation for your decision. Which raises the issue of decision criteria. You want a new carpet for your main living room. You can get all the facts you like on prices, quality and colours. But you cannot proceed unless you have some criteria which might be: (1) it must be very hard wearing

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(2) it must be a dark colour as you have toddlers spilling things all the time (3) it must be from a fair trade supplier. OK, now you are starting to get to serious decision time. You have criteria. And you have facts. Let’s see how they match.

3. The incubation stage. Most decisions are better quality if they have a period of reflection or incuba-tion. Of course some decisions can be made now and thousands of every day decisions and the occa-sional emergency decision do need to be made now. But the power of the brain when allowed to digest the meeting of criteria and data can throw up some interesting possibilities. Let’s forget the carpet and have a wooden floor. For large decisions and certainly most business decisions it is critical to allow reflec-tion time.

4. The creativity stage. Certainly if you wish to be creative with your thinking, then incubation is crucial. There is no doubt we can all be creative under pressure. And a speed approach to a decision can actually expose enlightening ideas. But overall, creativity is more likely to be guaranteed through this process. And through creativity, a better deci-sion. But apart from allowing time, how do you encourage creativity?

5. The action stage. There is no more. You have the facts, you have the criteria, you did your reflection. And you were creative. Now you must realize a deci-sion is not a decision until you take an action. How easy it is to say “I will get fit”. Very. Some might

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say you have made a decision, others might argue not until you do something. We will argue the latter!

The Story

Kozue had a lot of challenges in her life at the moment. Born in Tokyo but currently living in London with her English boyfriend, at age 27 she felt she needed to sort out her career (working as a graphic designer doing really boring end-of-the-food-chain logos and stuff), needed to sort out her love life (she and her boyfriend were not getting on well) and she really, really wanted to get her furniture business (now that she was passionate about) off the ground. And crikey, she needed to stress a lot less.

But at the moment she either couldn’t make a decision or seemed only to make an appalling one.

She was keen to learn more.

The Q&A

So is there a perfect “formula” to better decision making?Perhaps formula is too strong a word. Perhaps strategy or even methodology is a better word. Follow these steps and you are likely to have a better decision.

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You did allude to it – the gut-based decision – but then seemed to forget about it and concentrate on the logical side. I don’t think I have made a “logical” decision in my life. But I am really happy with pretty well all the choices I have made.We’re with you. We all know decisions involve the emotional side as well as the logical side. The strategy outlined above attempts to use the best of both. Logic and emotion. Left brain and right brain. Read on: you’ll see!

The Solution

There are five stages to a great decision:

1. Data. You need facts. They may come proactively or reactively.

2. Analysis. You need criteria so that you can “filter” the facts.

3. Incubation. A bit of reflection normally ensures a better decision.

4. Creativity. This is needed to generate alternate, perhaps more powerful, solutions.

5. Action. A decision is not a decision without an action.

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Contents

1 The Philosophy

2 Decide Your Bigger Picture

3 Set Your Compass

4 Make the Right Stuff Happen

5 Being More Productive at Work

6 Getting Things Done Despite People

7 Getting Things Done in a Virtual World

8 Being More Productive at Home

9 Paradoxical Productivity

10 Your Action Plan

About the Author

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Boost Your Productivity

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The Philosophy

The Challenge

No, please don’t skip this section! The word “philosophy” is perhaps a little daunting espe-cially when you were just seeking some simple,

pragmatic methods of getting more done, reducing the torrent of email and having some quality time with the children during the working week. The latter – practical tips – we will definitely, absolutely provide. And soon. But if you truly, deeply want to achieve – or return to – a state of peak productivity where you are achieving what you want to achieve, living the life you wish to live and not feeling exhausted doing it, a bit of philosophy is important. Go on: it’s not so bad. You’ll see!

No? Really, no? Then skip to Section 4 where you will find practical tips galore. But please, do come back to this section when you have been reassured that such practical help is provided. This is the section that will ultimately allow you to understand where the real breakthrough in your personal productivity will be made.

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The Detail

Philosophy? Yes, because there are some deeper ques-tions we need to answer:

What do you mean by productivity?Most begin to look at the field of “time management” and question their productivity because of overload: they find they simply cannot keep up with assignments and tasks without digging into their personal time and although they are willing to do that for a while, the consequent cost for quality of output, their most impor-tant relationships and their health increasingly becomes something they are not willing to accept. And much time management advice attempts to solve such chal-lenges with “quick fix” tips, which rarely solve the true dilemma: the problem simply keeps coming back. We do want to solve it once and for all and it does require a robust answer to “what do you really mean by productivity?”

Thus: are you considering the bigger questions?Because clearly at one level “being productive” is doing what you are paid to do if you are an employee. Or suc-cessfully running your business if you are self-employed. However that is only one dimension; in a simpler world it was reasonably straightforward to consider it in that way. But in the New World of Work – to which we are all exposed – of severe competition, 24 by 7 working and increasingly less distinction between “home” and “work” there are other implications we need to ponder, such as: Where is your career going? And how are you maintaining important friendships? And looking after

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your health? And managing your finances, not just for now, but also for the future? Perhaps if you are deliver-ing on your quarterly targets you are being efficient (getting things done). But if you have become ill in the process you have not necessarily been effective (getting the right things done).

Do you know that it’s pretty easy but it will require you to “be different”?Much of time management “methodology” was first created in that simpler world. A world where we did less multi-tasking, where we had far fewer interrupts and putting it more bluntly our expectations of what we might do and achieve were much lower. But such approaches are no longer powerful enough: we need something that works for our very different lifestyles. And here’s the tough bit: to be truly productive we will have to say “no” to a lot of things; we will have to address the digital dilemma of a world which floods into our brain at every opportunity. We will need to recog-nize that productivity is as much about our personal wellness as it is about our willingness to create a great list.

Thus, you are “productive” if:

• You hit your work goals, as that is what you are paid to do . . .

• but at the same time you maintain your health . . .

• and in particular, stress is at a minimum.

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• You have a longer-term picture of where your career is going: you have set your

• Personal Compass with its consideration of all aspects of your life: relationships, future finances, simply having fun . . . .

• You are not just efficient (i.e., getting things done) but also

• effective (getting the right things done).

• And the approaches you use to being productive are not only

• “top down”, i.e., consideration of the “big picture” Personal Compass but also

• “bottom up”, i.e., the day-to-day practicalities, for example, of running a family.

• You are feeling good, and

• you are contributing to your business and your community.

The Story

Things had not been at all easy for Karl since 2008. He and his family lived in Detroit, Michigan, USA and he had always been the main “bread-winner”. But from a well-paid job in the automotive industry he had been effectively

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downsized to a job that was well below his skill level and, particularly worryingly, had no real prospects of promotion or a secure career. And this with three growing children and college fees looming. There had been no family holiday for the last four years, the household food budget was really straining at the seams and the house needed significant repairs. Karl and his wife, Barbara, had always been pretty organized: there was a family board in the kitchen with the kids’ timetables, general shopping list and a list of repairs to be done on the house. But it struck them that they were really not thinking deeply or creatively enough: they had to do something to get out of this rut. They were both frustrated that they seemed to have no time to think about what they really wanted or how to get what they needed. In fact, perhaps they could be a lot more productive.

We’ll return to Karl and his family in future sections.

The Q&A

To be honest I’ve never been that brilliant at “time management”. Isn’t this “philosophy” just going to make it even more complicated?Bear with us: it’ll ultimately make it simpler. Guaranteed!

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Isn’t that story about Karl and Barbara more to do with how they can become successful?And that’s the point. Real productivity is not just about a well-managed diary, a well-listed Moleskine notebook and a well-categorized inbox. It is about getting the success you want, otherwise you simply become a machine managing lists.

The Solution

1. In a very demanding New World of Work, being “productive” is no longer just about a well-man-aged list.

2. It is about your philosophy of how you will cope in an ever-more demanding world!

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aBOUT ThE aUThORNicholas BateisathoughtleaderinPersonalExcellence.Heistheauthorof15booksonthesubjectincludingYou, Only BetterandHow to be Brilliant.Nicholasrunsaconsultancyspecialisingincreatinglong-termleadershipcompetitiveadvantageforhighprofileclients.HeisalsoalectureratWarwickUniversityBusinessSchool.

Also available by Nicholas Bate:

www.nicholasbate.typepad.com

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