Activities are never neutral

Some activities of long duration can have very little consequence. Some activities of short duration can have huge consequences. The most important thing to recognize about activities is that they are never neutral. They either enhance or detract from our lives by changing the quality for better or for worse. The following statements illustrate this point:

• Activities that align with what we value give us a greater sense of satisfaction than those that don’t.
• Activities creatively arranged in a sequence can culminate in the achievement of a desired outcome or goal.
• Negative activities repeated over and over again can erode our well-being.
• Positive activities repeated over and over again can make us stronger and improve our well-being.
• Activities repeated over and over again become habits. Habits can be our greatest servants or our worst masters.
• When we choose to do certain activities we simultaneously exclude other activities. It’s about choice.
• We can change the quality of our life simply by changing activities.
• Focus permits us to fully experience an activity.
• The day’s productivity is determined by the activities we choose and those we refuse.
• We live and die with our choice of activities.

For more about activities, download the first two chapter of our time management book, Attack Your Day! Before It Attacks you.

Don’t Wish Your Time Away

This is often what my Mother said to me when I wished I was a little older, out of school, or had challenges behind me.  From experience, I later learned she was right.  Whether we have a fixation on future time or past time, the result is the same.  We miss the good things about our present time.

The skill of focusing on and living in the present is one way to cherish time.  Unfortunately, it is not practiced by many until they are older and see their time running out.  Look for the good in your garden of today’s time.  It’s there to be relished.

Use color to deal with interruptions and distractions

Technology has changed the way we communication. Gone are the days of face-to-face meetings, one-on-one dialogue. Here comes the email, text message, social dialogue, and instant message.

Technology has created time compression, we operate faster today then ever before.  We are expected to do more with less in the same amount of time.  So we have to become master editor of some voicemail, some email, distractions, and all interruptions.

Want to increase your staff’s communication and productivity? Simply color your choices.

Red means STOP. Go do this activity now.  Needs to be done in 0-3hrs.

Green means GO. Do as many green activities as possible. When a green interruption occurs, schedule it. The deliverable or completion time is the end of the day or within 24hrs.

Yellow means CAUTION. These are the activities on our master task list.  We use yellow as a staging color, we look at yellow activities once each day and they either become green and get scheduled as an activity on our to-do list or they become gray, our last color.

Gray means NO. We use the color gray to identify time wasters. We never schedule gray, it’s a waste of time.

Color your communication; it’s a time saver.  Try this and watch your stress go down and your productivity go up, way up.

Tip: Ask yourself this question when an activity occurs.

• What color is this interruption?
• What color is this email?
• What color is this call?
• What color is this activity?
• What color is this person?

It’s time to live in color.

Technology has changed the way we communication. Gone are the days of face-to-face meetings, one-on-one dialogue. Here comes the email, text message, social dialogue, and instant message.

Technology has created time compression, we operate faster today then ever before.  We are expected to do more with less in the same amount of time.  So we have to become master editor of some voicemail, some email, distractions, and all interruptions.

Want to increase your staff’s communication and productivity? Simply color your choices.

Red means STOP. Go do this activity now.  Needs to be done in 0-3hrs.

Green means GO. Do as many green activities as possible. When a green interruption occurs, schedule it. The deliverable or completion time is the end of the day or within 24hrs.

Yellow means CAUTION. These are the activities on our master task list.  We use yellow as a staging color, we look at yellow activities once each day and they either become green and get scheduled as an activity on our to-do list or they become gray, our last color.

Gray means NO. We use the color gray to identify time wasters. We never schedule gray, it’s a waste of time.

Color your communication; it’s a time saver.  Try this and watch your stress go down and your productivity go up, way up.

Tip: Ask yourself this question when an activity occurs.

• What color is this interruption?
• What color is this email?
• What color is this call?
• What color is this activity?
• What color is this person?

It’s time to live in color.

Choosing Activities

Choosing is the number one skill of activity management and it is critical to maximizing your performance and productivity.

An activity is anything that we do, it is a task that has been delegated by a boss, a customer request, eating, exercising, making a phone call, email, text message, Facebook, it’s even a thought or emotion that we feel inside.

• Activities drive productivity.
• Activities give us energy or steel energy.
• Activities can propel us forward towards our goals.
• Some activities have high payoff, low payoff and most have no payoff.

As activity managers we have to decipher the encryption code of activities as they’re presented to us as interruptions or distractions.  To do this we employ the ritual of asking this question. What color is it?  Doing this will help us:

• Maintain focus throughout the day
• Use logic not emotion in decision making
• Uncover the real urgencies
• And can help us reschedule unnecessary interruptions

The key is to identify the importance of the activity immediately when it’s presented.  To do this we are going use the metaphor of a traffic light and color our choices.  Using color is fast; it doesn’t require paper and a pen, just our brain.   This gives us flexibility no matter where we are.

So we are going to use the color RED to stand for things that are vital and urgent.  This means stop what you are doing and go take care of this right now.

GREEN means GO.  This is where we want to spend the majority of our day, on green events that have high payoff in our work and personal life.  Green activities do not require an immediate response; in other words they are not urgent.

YELLOW activities also don’t require immediate attention but have some degree of value.  YELLOW means to use caution.   Many yellow activities come to us wrapped in the context of artificial urgency, like when a co-worker drops in and claims they need your help right now.

GRAY activities are a complete waste of time.  We use the color gray to remind us to stay away from activities that have NO value.

The payoff for being skillful at choosing and refusing is HUGE. It’s one of the most important survival skills in modern organizations. Below is a partial list of activities based on feedback from our Facebook fans and what color I would personally give them.  Now these are given by way of example only, you decide how to color your choices.  Add to the list.  What activities are you doing today?

RED ACTIVITIES

Urgent request from a boss

Customer complaint

Internet is down

Out of milk

Filling gas tank

Paying bill due today

Prospecting call

Reschedule appointment

Expense report

Sick employee

Equipment breakdown

Accident

Sick child

GREEN ACTIVITIES

Daily planning

Gym

Running

Yoga, meditation

Grocery shopping

Time with family

Paying bills

Brushing teeth

Processing email

Laundry

Reading

Research for job

Project planning

Writing marketing plan

Creative for ad campaign

Cycling

Sales call

Writing proposal

Client meeting

Write blog post

Swimming

Calling a friend

Make dinner reservations

Buy airline ticket

House cleaning

Kids to school

Cooking

Kids to sports activity

Coffee with friends

Massage

Carpool (2x)

Piano lessons

Showering

Ironing

Homework

Shovel snow

Cleaning dishes

Taking out trash

Call mom

Feed pets

YELLOW ACTIVITIES

Forwarded Email

Upload photos

Facebook

Buy birthday gift

Monday night football

GRAY ACTIVITIES

Office Gossip

To much television

Surfing the Internet to long

Forwarded email from friends

Blank spaces of time

Doing nothing

You can begin today to color your activity choices. You’ll make great choices that way and it’s easy! You’ll always know when to stop, when to go, when to say no, and when to say no. For more information on the skill of choosing refer to our time management book Attack Your Day! Before It Attacks You. Download the first two chapters.

Three deadly planning mistakes

Choosing Activities

Choosing is the number one skill of activity management and it is critical to maximizing your performance and productivity.

An activity is anything that we do. It’s a task that’s been delegated by a boss, a customer request, eating, exercising, making a phone call, email, text message, even a thought or emotion that we feel inside.

• Activities drive productivity.
• Activities give us energy or steel energy.
• Activities can propel us forward towards our goals.
• Some activities have high payoff, low payoff and most have no payoff.

We are all activity managers! That’s what we do, we process activities all day long. As activity managers we have to decipher the encryption code of activities as they’re presented to us.  Consider applying the 8 second ritual.  When you employ the 8-second ritual, you will:

• Maintain focus
• Use logic not emotion in decision making
• Uncover the real urgencies
• And can reschedule the interruptions

The key is to identify the importance of the activity in 8-seconds then decide how to handle it.  To unravel the importance of activities we color our choices!

Red stands for things that are vital; requires immediate attention. Green are vital but not urgent, this is where we want to invest the majority of our time. Yellow activities don’t require immediate attention and are not usually value added activities but they have some degree of value.  Finally the color gray. Gray stands for activities that are a waste of time.

Give it 8 seconds today and color your choices.  For more on choosing, you’ll learn more in the first chapter of our book Attack Your Day!