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.
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This is characteristic 7 of the 9 characteristics of becoming a Productivity Ninja….
Our minds are our most important tool. Being emotionally intelligent and self-aware are important for so many reasons, not least because they equip you to take action. For instance, a lot of the things that make up the Ninja mindset, such as remaining calm, being ruthless and pushing the boundaries by being unorthodox, aren’t easy. In fact, in many ways they go against our evolutionary design.
Our brains have evolved a lot since we were monkeys, but one thing has hardly changed: the lizard brain. A term popularised by Seth Godin in his brilliant book Linchpin, this part of our brain still remembers what it was like to need to survive, to blend in, to not make a fuss. In fact, the worst thing for the lizard brain to think would be that whatever we’re doing makes us stand out. Standing out from the crowd in evolutionary terms meant you’d get picked off by a predator and this is exactly how the lizard brain still thinks!
Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art is a revealing and personal account of his battles as a writer against what he calls ‘the resistance’. The resistance is a mindset, usually developed by the lizard brain, but characterised by stress, anxiety, fear of failure, fear of success and a whole host of other emotions that whir around our brains and tell us to stand still. “Stop. Don’t do it. It’s risky. Do it how others do it because that’s what we know is already accepted behaviour. Innovation and unorthodoxy is a crazy idea. Creativity is just wrong.” Your job as a Ninja is to silence those thought processes as much as possible.
This sounds easy but it’s not – mainly because they’re often so quiet that you don’t even realise they need silencing at all. Pay close attention to yourself and your gut instincts, but also objectively observe your productivity, noticing which tasks you’re drawn to and repelled by. You don’t need to be a psychologist or a counsellor to understand your own thinking, but you do need to pay close attention to it.
Many people will tell you that allowing time and space to listen to your emotions, listen to your heart and just be mindful is either a waste of time or somehow ‘hippy psychobabble’. The Ninja knows differently – knows that it’s all about perception and there’s a greater force inside of us that we can channel towards fulfilment, success and changing the world.
A bad day can be as much about what’s going on in your head as what’s going on in the office. Those that regularly practice or have even tried some form of mediation will know of its benefits. In fact, meditation can help sharpen all of the other aspects of the Ninja mindset we’ve just discussed.
I take a wide definition of meditation here that includes sitting quietly staring at a beautiful view, praying, free writing and other creativity pursuits, Yoga, walking (if the purpose is to walk, not to arrive!) and many other things. Again, the aim is to promote Zen-like calm and be focussed and fully present in your work.
As well as taking the time to listen to our own thoughts and emotions, active and effective listening is at the heart of great meetings and collaborative work. Listening to objections and hearing only feedback and connection rather than criticism and opposition is a crucial skill, too.
Productivity and mindfulness go together like peanut butter and jelly. Yesterday is history tomorrow is a mystery and the action is in the present. Think Productive time management training courses focus on the moment enabling you to get your inbox to zero.
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!
The Unorthodox Productivity Ninja
“How would Nelson Mandela tackle this?”
This is characteristic 5 of the 9 characteristics of becoming a Productivity Ninja….
What’s important is the end result. It doesn’t matter if you use the conventional route to get there or find an easier path. Just because a seasoned professional tells you something needs to take 16 hours, doesn’t make it true. Be willing to question everything. It’s important to be on constant lookout for every opportunity to take advantage of progress and innovation and do things more easily because the chances are, a lot of the people around you stopped doing that long ago.
They just do things the old way and they’re happy not to change it too much. We must avoid getting stuck in a rut and doing things less efficiently than we could, at all costs. Don’t be afraid to stand out when the time is right. Doing things differently is risky, even when we’ve got a good hunch that we’ve got a better way of doing things. But this isn’t about chasing glory (although we’ll reluctantly and graciously accept it when it comes along); it’s about doing things in a better way and the satisfaction that comes from pushing boundaries to improve the process and increase productivity.
Pushing boundaries is easier when you’re not really pushing boundaries. This is one of the Ninja secrets. The exact problem you face at work today is a problem that someone in another industry faced yesterday and that someone else will face tomorrow. So just as we can model decision-making, we can also model innovation from elsewhere.
Injecting some fresh thinking into a situation and trying to see the problem through the lens of someone in a completely different area of work can be a useful technique.
If, for example, you’re looking to communicate more creatively, why not ask yourself, “How would an advertising agency do this?” or, “How would Nelson Mandela tackle this?”, or if you need more method in amongst the madness, ask how a surgeon or engineer would approach the task. And, if you know people who do those kinds of jobs, call them up and ask for their perspective. You’ll be surprised how effective this kind of modelling can be. Genuinely pushing boundaries is exciting, but can be a lot more time-consuming and takes a lot more effort than simple modelling. Innovation in one industry or job role can be the status quo somewhere else and vice versa.
An obsession with unorthodoxy and innovation also means ditching some of the foolish creations of the ego: never be afraid or embarrassed or too proud to ask for advice, even if that means you needing to show weakness. And never resist an opportunity to learn something new from a trusted source. Modelling the success of others is crucial.
Mentoring is a great way to do this: take advice from those who have travelled the road you’re setting out on, avoid making the mistakes they themselves made, and shortcut to success. Along with mentors, think about your ‘partners-in-crime’. Who are the people travelling a similar road at the same time as you? Chances are, they all have mentors too and are learning equally important things.
Never be afraid to share your learning with others as you’ll be amazed at the priceless lessons you get back in return. Sometimes we resist such collaborative approaches because we believe, like some kind of superhero, that there is some added virtue in achieving things on our own or in being competitive. Remember, the only thing that matters is whether you get there; no one cares how.
Whilst certain rules are worth upholding – and there are certain rules that would get you fired if you broke them – a Productivity Ninja approaches work with the mindset to focus on the end result first and work back from there.
Questioning of rules, especially in relation to bureaucracy, is a great skill. Remember that if the risk of serious repercussions is limited, it’s usually easier to apologise than to ask permission. There are times when we just need to show some leadership and crack on. Don’t be afraid to rip up the rulebook, especially if you can trash some tired old bureaucracy along the way.
This is an edited extract from How to be a Productivity Ninja. Read more buy the book….
“Joining a Facebook group about productivity is like buying a chair about jogging.” - Merlin Mann
This is Characteristic 3 of the 9 Characteristics of a Productivity Ninja….
Using the right tools makes Productivity Ninjas more effective. There are a range of tools out there to help keep us on top of our game. There are two broad types of tools that the Productivity Ninja needs to have in their armoury:
Choosing what to use and when, and being aware of the capabilities of each are key to success. Tools need to give us confidence and ensure that through their productive use, we’re rarely interrupted by our own ineptitude.
As our decisions get more complex, our need for tools to assist our thinking becomes more apparent. Strategic planning processes or line management feedback situations are often where we first encounter such tools, but their value is still underestimated. There are a broad range of such thinking tools and frameworks that have been created to help make our lives easier and our decision-making better.
From Microsoft Outlook and iPhone apps to the humble stapler, there are so many ways to be organised. The trick is to get to a very good level of organisation rather than an excellent or mediocre level; this ensures that the time spent on getting organised receives the optimum payoff in increased productivity, rather than becoming a drain on our time and an unwelcome and unnecessary distraction.
Tools are there to help us get things done, but our obsession with them can occasionally become a distraction. There are some great productivity websites out there – often created or led by influential and insightful thinkers – like Merlin Mann’s http://www.43folders.com and Leo Babauta’s www.zenhabits.net, but whilst we do need to keep up with technology and innovation to the extent that it increases our productivity, we also need to be hyper-conscious that this is in itself ‘dead time’, away from the completion of our priority tasks and projects.
I worry when I hear someone talk about their productivity purely and exclusively in the context of which new iPhone productivity app they’ve just downloaded. These tools assist our thinking and organising: they don’t replace the need for it. Worse still, it’s not uncommon for people to retype all their projects and actions from one piece of software to another under the oft-mistaken premise that they’re increasing their productivity by 5% by doing this. No, that’s just a day of procrastination.
At the heart of the way of the Productivity Ninja is improving our ability to make decisions. By challenging ourselves to continually improve and innovate, the quality, quantity and speed of our decisions will increase. Remember that informed and clear decision-making is our aim. Thinking tools help boost our mental agility, but so does the right information.
Twitter and Facebook are fantastic tools for throwing out questions or issues to a group of trusted friends and colleagues: it’s so valuable getting a second, third, fourth and fifth opinion on something. It’s amazing how much time and mental energy you’ll save. But equally, don’t be afraid to think independently and draw your own conclusions when your instinct tells you to
If you liked this article, please bookmark it on del.icio.us or vote for it on Digg! Graham Allcott is the founder of Think Productive a Productivity company that specializes in time management training courses. He tweets at @grahamallcott
“Begin with the end in mind.”– Stephen Covey
This is the second in a series of posts defining the Characteristics of a Productivity Ninja….
As well as needing to make more and better decisions, we need to be choosy, processing information to sort the wheat from the chaff and the big opportunities from the even bigger ones. Ruthlessness isn’t just about how we process information, it’s also about our ability to protect our time and attention, focussing only on the things that add the greatest impact, even at the expense of other things that are ‘worth doing’.
With abundance of information such a problem, being choosy is the only way. It goes against the western, protestant work ethic culture that we’re so familiar with to decide not to do things, but that’s exactly what we must do. Being much choosier about what we say “Yes” to is an important skill – and learning to say “No” to ourselves means not biting off more than we can chew. If you do get into situations where you’ve bitten off more than you can chew (and I do this regularly,by the way!), it’s about realising that renegotiating your commitments to yourself and others is better than burning yourself out trying to meet them all.
Picture this. You’re in a meeting that you thought you were attending purely to contribute to, and the meeting discussion begins to come around to some decisions and commitments about actions people could take at the end of the
meeting. There’s a particular set of actions that you’re renowned for being good at, and just as it’s mentioned, several pairs of eyes turn and focus on you. Saying “No” to others is tricky. It requires steely resolve, a ruthless streak and some great tactics so that you come out smelling of roses.
Our attention – particularly that proactive attention when we’re most alert, in flow and on top of our game – is arguably our most precious resource. It needs to be nurtured and valued. At the same time, there are a million interruptions out there: emails, phone calls, thoughts, stress, colleagues, social media, the next big crisis, the next big thing.
We often like to be distracted because it’s the perfect excuse for procrastination and thinking less. Facebook or Twitter win over the report we’re supposed to be finishing simply because it’s easier to be in those places, having conversations, than it is to get into the difficult thinking we’re supposed to be engaged in.
Using the 80-20 rule, we can start to recognise that not all of what we do creates an equal amountof impact. 20% of what we do accounts for 80% of the impact. Often, there’s a temptation to aim for perfection. In some areas of our work, this perfection is healthy and even necessary but in other cases, it can be avoided and the impact on the final result hardly even noticed. So we need to be ruthless in our planning. What are we trying to achieve? Has someone else solved this problem before? Could we beg, borrow or steal?
I hope you enjoyed this article on increasing productivity by developing the ninja skill of ruthlessness. If you have any other time management tips, please feel free to share them below!
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