Work Pacing

Reset Your Pace

Consider where you are right now on the path of your career (or careers). You have probably spent hours thinking about the approaches to productivity you take, as well as the goals you plan, work toward, and achieve. Most likely, every day you begin by following the same habits and routines (i.e., your pace) that have become comfortable for you over the past few years. To reset the pace, you need to look at three areas:

1. What do you do to manage the time you have? To hold your pace, you must study your workflow habits and find ways to work smarter and more effectively with the time you have. You must think about when you work, how you work, and what you need to be as efficient as possible.

2. How do you use tools and technology to help you get things done? You need to understand the tools of productivity that are available to you. By learning something about productivity technology, the processes you follow, and the organizational tools you can use, you may find you’re saving time, getting more done faster, and working at a more easily sustainable pace than you have in the past.

3. When do you relax and rejuvenate, to reset the pace? Resting and resetting doesn’t just happen. And scheduling a vacation or sleeping in one morning a weekend may not be enough rest and relaxation for you to completely reengage in what you’re doing.

To survive and thrive, you need to be productive with consistency, professionalism, and excellence. The old time management tricks no longer give you the help you need. Rewriting your to-do list takes up precious minutes each morning. Getting less sleep each night isn’t healthy. And, certainly, watching the clock won’t help you get things done. There is a famous saying that “practice makes perfect.” Parents, teachers, and coaches said it about many of our activities; I, on my part, tried to learn to play the guitar, practiced basketball, and took art classes. Though I never quite reached a level of perfection in any of those efforts, I did achieve a feeling of comfort with them. I could go through the motions, even though I knew I wasn’t going to make a career out of any of these endeavors.

What I know: Practice doesn’t always make perfect, but repeating something over and over again will eventually make it seem normal and feel comfortable.

Reaching your GOAL

Just Keep Moving

When you clearly identify an objective goal (perhaps your Ideal Day!), you automatically begin to make things better, and you can continue moving in a positive direction. When you think about where you are going, talk about your dreams, write goals, and reflect on your efforts, you make significant progress. Focusing on a specific direction is important for two reasons: (1) You’ll notice more opportunities, while (2) you narrow your focus. The more you can see the direction in which you are heading, the easier it will be to collect ideas and information to get you closer to achieving the results you’re after. Remember the words of Abraham Lincoln: “A goal properly set is halfway reached.”

But how do you pick, manage, and celebrate the “right” goals, whether they are personal or professional, short term or long term? Surely you have heard that one way to be effective is to set goals that are SMART: Specific, Meaningful, Actionable, Realistic, and Timely. However, that doesn’t work for everyone. It’s too easy to make excuses for, to “explain away,” not reaching goals and objectives. Here are the “goal-stoppers” heard all too often:

But, what if goal-setting doesn’t work? Do you know someone who has said this? Generally, it happens when people set the bar too high, taking on goals that are too big to begin with. They take something on, work on it, stress about it, think about it, work on it some more, only to realize that for some reason (and they usually have several to share with you!), they won’t be able to “just do it.” They won’t be able to finish what they started.

Won’t setting a goal limit my opportunities? Other times, people claim they prefer the serendipity of achievement; that is, by not picking anything too specific to work toward, they keep themselves open to living life in the moment and taking advantage of what shows up, as it shows up. “Sure I’d like to know about that next promotion, if it’s ever offered. If not, it’s okay; something else will show up.” That was a comment I heard from a participant in an open seminar I presented at a not-for-profit organization.

There is a middle ground, fortunately. For those of you who have set goals in the past and not achieved them, it’s time to start anew. And for those of you who enjoy the surprises life has to offer, I encourage you to keep on working and living that way. Just realize that to make your best better there will be some things you’ll want to do starting now.

Better work

Focus on Making Your Best Better

In this part about work, outlined in detail the three steps—concepts that are crucial to a focus on making your best better:

1. Set a goal. A goal goes a long way toward making more things possible. A clear outcome helps form a structure, clarifying the destination while making obvious the direction to go in. Once you have set a clear path to achieving a goal, it will be easier to say no to things that take you off-course.

2. Be consistent. Consistency is key to personal and career success. If you can repeat positive, valuable behaviors, develop routines that build upon each other and that generate and enhance momentum, you will demonstrate your trustworthiness to everyone you work with and around.

3. Take action. Action is necessary to achieve your goals. To get from where you are to where you want to be, you must plan and take specific action steps directly related to the goal.

Now it’s time to stop and ask yourself, “How do I apply these three concepts to my own work and life experiences?” As you continue reading, make notes of how you think you identify your goals, how you plan for consistency, and how you take deliberate action toward achieving your desired outcomes.

Understand the Impact of Your Style of Working

Your individual role in making your best better requires that you: (1) know the way you work and get things done, and (2) constantly ensure that you are aligned with the way you work and get things done.

There’s a simple question you can ask to distinguish your own working style: Are you a verb person or a noun person? To help you answer that, it’s best to have a list with more than 30 things that need your attention. Now look at the first (or sometimes, only) word of each item on the list. Is it a noun or is it a verb?

There’s no right or wrong way to write a list. I find that although everyone will switch between nouns and verbs here and there, the very real data is there for you to see in your own hand; some people tend to choose nouns over verbs; others prefer verbs to nouns. As you clarify the ways you can work smarter, consider the distinction between the two.