This is eighth characteristic of the 9 Characteristics of a Productivity Ninja….
In our list of the characteristics to aspire to be, one that underpins and strengthens so many of the others is preparedness. Zen like calm in the heat of the battle is only possible if you’re well prepared. Agility is only possible if you’re starting from a position of being prepared and ready to react immediately. And you’re only ready to be ruthless if you’ve got the energy. Being prepared is about practical preparation as well as mental preparation.
A weapon-savvy Ninja knows the added sense of control they feel when tackling a problem or project with the right tools. There used to be a time when being organised, focussing on the stationery or the geeky apps was considered nerdy or uncool. Well, the time has come to unleash your inner geek.
It’s time to maintain practical systems that will mean you’re always prepared to tackle whatever comes your way. It may seem less cool than just ‘going with the flow’, but there is power in stocking up on stationery, power in investing time in the right systems and power in attacking your work from the position of being well prepared.
As well as being physically well prepared, we need to be mentally well prepared too. This of course means mindfulness, but it also means looking after our most precious resource: our own attention and energy. As such, we need time to be off duty too. Perhaps being off duty involves a long Facebook binge or surfing crap on the internet. Perhaps it involves going out with friends or taking time to focus your attention onto something completely different (or onto nothing at all).
Many people are pressured by their bosses to stay late in the office. I have talked to a lot of people who say that even though no one feels like there’s anything to do, let alone feels ready to do anything, they still stay – for about five minutes after the boss has gone home. If you’re in a job where you’re under this kind of peer pressure, it needs to change. We’ll work on that together. As for your boss, well, perhaps buying them a copy of this book would be a start!
‘Crunching’ is a term that means buckling down, eyes on the deadline or conscious of the busy period ahead. It means not looking after yourself and not coming up for air. Crunching is a great short-term tactic when the going gets tough. But studies show that sustained periods of ‘crunch’ only lead to diminishing returns. In the film Wall Street, Gordon Gecko, played brilliantly by Michael Douglas, uttered the now legendary phrase, “Lunch is for wimps”. It stuck in the collective consciousness and you’ll still hear it used to this day. Well, lunch is not for wimps. But preparedness is for Ninjas.
Preparedness leads to magic it’s difficult to say why taking lunch or short breaks during the working day always brings you so quickly back to ruthless focus and your ‘A’ game. It just happens that way. Periods of rest are vital for preparedness. Next time you spend any meaningful length of time during the hours of nine to five not working and move your attention onto something completely different, just watch what happens; I’ll bet that on that day, you’ll get more done, not less. It’s like a magical little secret.
Different shifts in gear seem to work for different people, but it’s as much in the body as in the mind. A five-minute blast of fresh air is infinitely more effective than ten minutes screwing about on the internet with your work still open in the background. The trick is to find the thing that works for you. As we look more at managing your attention and momentum later in the book, we will revisit this very unusual but startlingly effective secret.
Subscribe to Think Productive’s free Time Management newsletters Click here to subscribe. Think Productive offer time management training courses to help you be a Productivity Ninja.
This is characteristic 6 of the 9 characteristics of becoming a Productivity Ninja….
A Ninja needs to be light on their feet, able to respond with deftness to new opportunities or threats. Anything that requires a lot of shifting of thinking, quick reactions and decisions will of course need our proactive attention. And as we know, this is a finite resource. Our ability to react quickly and appropriately to new challenges really comes down to two things:
1. Our own mental ‘reserves’ or capacity to spend more of our days in proactive attention mode without getting tired. People do this temporarily through the use of caffeine or other stimulants, which is fine to an extent and in the short-term, but we need to think more sustainably than that;
2. Our ability to bring in other resources to aid this process – other people, more time and better technology. Keeping light on our feet.
Just as when we talked about tools we said there was a need to focus on these in the ‘fallow periods’ in order that we’re most agile when the going gets tough, the same process is true of developing our ‘response-ability’. There are some important steps we can take on a day-to-day basis to do this:
If we need to react, we need to be ready. Under-commit, don’t over-commit your diary: it’s always very tempting to bite off more than we can chew. At the start of the week or month, keep space and time in your calendar, ready and able to be filled by stuff you don’t know exists yet. That might sound obvious, but one look at how packed your own schedule is in the next few days will prove that it’s much easier said than done. This clear space in the diary is truly your ‘response-ability’.
Grown into, don’t grow out of: with any organising system you use, think one step ahead and develop systems far in advance of the capacity you need. For example, if you’re going to have an upsurge in business and new clients coming on board, managing client contact information on a scruffy Excel spreadsheet that’s bursting at the seams will slow you down at the crucial point.
Investing the time before you need to into developing a super-hot database will seem unproductive at the time, but is actually the smarter move. In London, the Victorians built the sewers and tube lines to be ten times the required capacity. People complain about the tube system now, forgetting how ahead of its time it really was and how wise they were to think so far ahead in terms of the additional capacity requirements. All I can say is, thank goodness they did that for the sewers!
Spotting an opportunity or threat, wherever it arrives from In order to react and respond well, we need strategic vision. We need to spot opportunity even when it knocks very softly at the door and see threats coming whilst they’re still relatively in the distance. Again, this takes some preparation and research and there are some useful shortcuts to use. Networking, for example, is a great way to keep your ear to the ground.
Different people will have a different policy on networking, but broadly I set out to tick off these criteria, in this order:
1. Am I likely to meet interesting and useful people?
2. Is this person remarkable? Do they have something to say, or a good track record, or good enthusiasm? (If not, move on – there’s nothing to see here!)
3. Can this person tell me something that informs my work and broadens my strategic sense?
4. Can we work together on something?
5. Is there an obvious win-win here that takes half the effort of the conversation itself?
Only when I get to number five do I commit. Often we get carried away with possibility, but delivery is another matter, so only pursue those that in conversation appear to be the ‘no-brainers’.
I hope you have enjoyed this article on improving productivity by developing the ninja skill of agility. Got any more time management training tips? Please feel free to share them below!
