How to Bundle our Mental Activities Ensuring Higher Productivity
If we dream of pursuing limitless opportunities and potential we must learn how to embrace the setting of boundaries. These guard against unwarranted interruptions to the tasks at hand and allow us to compartmentalize different aspects of our lives. This way you can attain the very best level of quality within each compartment.
What we are talking about is the importance of bundling our mental activities. There are a number of staple work interruptions that suck your time away, sap your energy and keep you day dreaming and away from the work at your desk.
These can be ‘drop-by’ visits from other employees, incoming phone calls (both internal and external), incessant internal emails between co-workers during work hours; and endless personal phone calls from the children and spouses of employees.
As an employer, you need to help them realize that when they are at work, they are there to work! It is not a case of just turning up and putting in the hours, half heartedly wasting away the day in order to collect the pay check at the end of the month. Hard work benefits everyone.
Work Hard and Play Hard!
I am of the view that you should work hard and then play hard. Away from work you should enjoy yourself to the fullest. Whether that is spending quiet time with your family and recharging your batteries, or going out and burning the candle at both ends. All I expect from my staff is that come work time they are fully prepared, both mentally and physically. Be presentable! Two pet peeves of mine are holes in jeans and the wet hair from a morning shower dripping onto an employee’s collar. Get yourself right mentally and the work value will follow.
At work turn up on time, work as hard as you can from minute one until the end of each day and ensure that you are adding value to the company!
That is one of the biggest truths you need to get through to your staff. Employees have to be educated that in order for them to make more money, they have to show the employer how they add more value to the company!
So, how can you do that? You can begin by compartmentalizing your work life and embracing the concept of ‘Living life by Appointment’.
An example of this is a company’s bills. Most businesses need to pay their bills every two weeks and allot an approximate time in order to complete this task accordingly.
The Key Points for an Allotted Session of Work:
- Set an appointment with the people who need to be involved with the said task.
- Show up on time and prepare your area (Keep the coffee away from important documents!).
- Be mentally prepared to handle your portion of the task.
- Notify all other team members (that are not involved with the appointment) that the meeting is going into session.
Once you have ‘Gone into Session’ there can be no interruptions unless of a critical nature and somebody is injured! In all seriousness, you have to set boundaries to all members of the session in order to focus their attentions and complete the task to a satisfactory level and on time.
In this example we are paying the bills. Here’s how it works:
- Have the courage to restrict all small talk that is irrelevant to the appointment (There’s plenty of time for that on your lunch break).
- Do not accept walk in, or calls from other employees.
- Set to the task at hand. We are in the appointment for an hour, so focus your efforts and energies on the task alone, and complete the paying of company bills.
A final point:
If you decide to take a walk, then go for a walk. Maybe take an Ipod to listen to some music, or stay alone with your thoughts. Don’t talk on your cell phone about work the entire time.
Equally, if you have arranged some quiet time in order to think out and process a problem, embrace that time. If you need to relax and evaluate your own spiritual connectedness with forces beyond the human element, take that time out.
If you have arranged a meeting with a client in a restaurant, REALLY BE THERE with them. Do not pick up your cell phone and interrupt the meeting.
The fact is that human beings do not multi-task efficiently. If you can compartmentalize your life you can produce the highest quality one moment at a time, one thought at a time. This way you produce your best work, your best thoughts and there will be no need for multi-tasking to finish projects that have been interrupted.
OBSERVE YOUR BEHAVIOR OVER THE NEXT 3 DAYS AND TRY TO ‘BE WHERE YOU ARE’. EVALUATE AND ASK YOURSELF ‘HOW AM I DOING?’
Peace, Love and Gumbo~
Marvin LeBlanc LUTCF, CNP
