Search results for: “productivity”

What can your workplace learn from this guy?

Business is about results, processes, achievement, success, goals and profits.

Festivals, such as the carnivals in Rio and the Caribbean and other celebrations worldwide, are about music, dance, arts, self-expression, roots, traditions and fun.

So businesses couldn’t possibly learn anything from festivals, could they?

My Bahamian friend Roosevelt Finlayson is here to tell you that not only can workplaces learn from festivals and carnivals – it’s also good for innovation, team work and the bottom line. He’s been studying carnivals for a long time and, yes, his job does involve going to places like Rio, New Orleans, Barbados, Trinidad and cologne to study and participate in their festivals. The lucky bastard :o)

He’s also been applying those insights to various organizations, and now The Global Intelligencer has picked up on it and written an article about his work. From the article:

“Finally there is a philosophy that can be used in the workplace that brings together productivity, a positive work ethic and an environment that the associates will enjoy. Festival in the Workplace has brought together the need to blend the personal needs of employees to attain self-satisfaction as well as the critical activity to achieve excellence for the employer and the customer.”

Check the article out – it’s good reading.

In my opinion, there are many aspects of carnivals that we could introduce in our workplaces that would create more happiness at work. And no, I’m not talking about making ugly co-workers wear masks :o)

What people often forget about carnivals is, that while the actual parade or performance looks fun, a lot of very hard work goes into it. In fact, Roosevelt started his work when he noticed that while many Bahamians seem to dislike their jobs and always do as little as possible, they would work very hard to prepare for the annual Junkanoo celebration.

And according to Roosevelt, this work goes so well because in a festival:

• Everyone is equal
• Everyone learns from everyone else
• People want to be there
• People work hard without being told
• People care about the end result

Doesn’t that sound like a fairly good work culture to you?

So – as I blogged about yesterday, emails have been piling up in my inbox to the tune of 200 unanswered emails, some of them – I kid you not – from way back in Februrary.

I really wanted to get down to an empty inbox, but lately when I sat down at my computer to get it done… I didn’t. I looked at that mountain of mail, many of which I really should’ve responded to long ago and felt really bad about, and kinda gave up in advance.

And this is where I could choose between two approaches. There’s the “Just get it done” approach. This means ignoring how much it sucks and just doing it anyway. Knuckling under, putting my nose to the grindstone and my shoulder to the wheel and some other body part to some other part of machinery and answer those darn emails.

Or I could ask myself the following question: How can I make it fun? How can I answer those emails in a way that feels effortless and makes me happy?

Being the Chief Happiness Officer, I couldn’t really go for the former option so I was forced to try to make it fun. I asked for advice on the blog yesterday and got some really good input.

After thinking about it I designed a strategy – and got all of my emails answered in less than a day. That also includes the 50 or so emails that came in during the day.

So without further ado, here’s the strategy that worked for me:
1: Accept myself
First of all, I stopped wasting time berating myself for getting into this situation. If there’s one thing experience has taught me it’s that I’m the kinda person who lets a mess build and then cleans it all up at once.

I know that other people ar way more organized and get stuff done as they go (the bastards!) – but I’m just not one of them and I’m not going to waste time beating myself up over it.

I’m a lazy person – and this is not a problem, it’s a huge advantage.

2: Track and publish the number of unanswered emails
I published the number of unanswered emails and kept updating it during the day. This meant that I could see progress all the time. Your inbox looks pretty much the same with 100 emails in it as with 200. Keeping track of the number meant I knew I was getting results.

Also publishing the number kept me going a few times when I felt like quitting because I reminded myself how cool it would be to end the day with 0 unanswered emails – AND brag about it here :o)

3: Move tasks to my todo-list
But possibly the single most important thing I did was use my todo-list. If answering an email required me to perform a more serious task, I’d put the task on my todo-list and answer the email saying when I would get back with the actual information.

This allowed me to stay in the flow of answering emails, without getting sidetracked by writing documents etc.

4: Get out of the house

And of course I went to my favorite café. But I always do that when I need to get work done.

5: Use snippets
I also used a tip from Michiel Trimpe who suggested using email snippets that can easily be inserted into an email. Specifically, I used the following text a lot:

I apologize for taking so long to reply to your mail – I’ve been drowning in email lately :o)

6: Don’t be afraid to say no (Updated)
I almost forgot this one: Making sure to say no, when no is the answer. I get a lot of invitations, links, ideas, proposals, etc. Most of them are very good, but some are just not suitable for me.

I’ve been training myself to “just say no”. In a polite way, of course :o)

One tactic I considered, but didn’t use
I did think about declaring email bankruptcy as George suggested but I decided that would be cheating :o)

The upshot

The result of all of this was that I spent a nice, fun, productive day doing a task that I’d been dreading. A lot. For a long time.

The key, for me at least, is that I didn’t ask myself how I could get the job done the fastest or the most efficiently – my focus was on making it fun and pleasant. If I can do that, I know I can get the job done and I think that aspect is missing from most of the productivity systems and advice out there, which is focused entirely too much on the mechanics of productivity.

Make a task fun four yourself and you will be productive.

Your take

What about you? How do you take tasks you’ve been putting of for way too long and make them fun? I’m not talking about how you get them done – but how you do it so that you enjoy yourself? Got any great ideas? Please write a comment!

Related:

• How to procrastinate effectively
• The cult of overwork
• Top 10 reasons why happiness at work is the ultimate productivity booster

The Happy at Work Manifesto is now live at ChangeThis.

The manifesto is a declaration of principles and intentions for those of us who have decided, that we want to be happy at work.

It’s for everyone who thinks we should stopped putting up with unhappy workplaces, bad bosses and unpleasant working conditions. It’s for those of us who know that unhappiness at work is not a minor annoyance; that it can make us despondent, cynical and negative and worst case, make us sick or kill us.

It’s a manifesto for people who want to be happy at work, to get more energy, drive, fun, good experiences, creativity, productivity and success. Who know that this is how we must work from now on – with happiness!

Read the Happy at Work Manifesto here.

If you like it, please forward it to others who may also enjoy it – or need it :o) There’s a “Send This” button on the ChangeThis page you can use to pass it on.

I think we’ve all experienced how getting too little sleep makes us tired and crabby. So it can hardly be a good thing that:

• 8 out of 10 Americans report at least one negative professional side-effect of getting a poor night’s sleep
• Only 27 percent of Americans get the recommended eight hours of sleep each work night
• 17 percent of Americans only get 5 hours of sleep Monday through Friday (Studies show that getting only 5 hours of sleep per night for a week induces an impairment level equal to a blood alcohol level of 0.1 percent.)
• Of the overwhelming majority of workers suffering from sleep deprivation, 44 percent say they experience bad moods and unfriendliness

It’s a classic dilemma: We want to get more work done, so we work longer hours and sleep less. This in turn makes us less efficient at work, so we work even longer hours and sleep even less and, boom, you have a negative spiral going.

Also, spending your work day being tired and irritable is not exactly the recipe for happiness at work :o) What good is it to make your day an hour or two longer by sleeping less, if losing that sleep means you can’t really enjoy your day?

The Better Sleep Council has some very specific tips on how you can increase productivity by getting the sleep you need, including:

1. Pay your sleep debt. It’s important to schedule 8 hours of sleep each night (7.5 to 8.5 is optimal) and maintain a regular sleep and wake schedule, even on the weekend.
2. Bedroom business. Use your bedroom for sleep and sex only.
3. Kick the caffeine habit. Avoid tea, coffee and soft drinks close to bedtime.

Or maybe the solution is different for you. According to a new movement called the B-Society, some people are just not made to function optimally early in the morning. Even if they do get 8 hours of sleep, they only really kick into gear around 10 in the morning, and businesses should cater to these people also.

The first Danish company has just been b-certified, meaning they acknowledge that this is how some people work, and structure their jobs accordingly.

To me this is just common sense. Few business really need every employee to show op around the same time and could they just as easily leave this up to the individual employee, so they can decide what works best for them.

That will certainly make them happier at work!

Related:

• The Cult of Overwork
• The top 5 myths about workplace stress

A radio producer felt oppressed because her boss was constantly stealing her food –- right off her desk. So she made some candy out of EX-Lax, the chocolate flavored laxative, and left it on her desk. As usual, he ate them without permission. When she told this thief what was in the candy, “he was not happy.??? (Source).

What do you do, when you’re treated badly or unfairly at work? Do you go along to get along? Get even? Something else?

More and more people seek revenge at work when slighted. The number of retaliation charges has nearly doubled over the last eight years and more than 27% of all harassment and discrimination claims currently filed contain a claim for retaliation (source).

But while getting even may feel good for a moment, is it really a good idea? From a business perspective, the answer turns out to be no.

I was recently at an international conference on positive psychology arranged by the Center for Applied Positive Psychology, and among the many fascinating people I met there was Sarah Warner.

Sarah presented a research project that demonstrates that workplaces with a culture of forgiveness had:

1. Lower levels of interpersonal conflict and stress
2. Higher levels of productivity

Apparently, revenge creates stress and lowers productivity, whereas a culture of forgiveness makes a company more efficient and more profitable. So forgiveness is good for business. Cool!

I’ve had a chance to interview Sarah about her fascinating project, and about why companies need to work on their ability to forgive people’s missteps.

Sarah, please tell us a little about yourself
I am an undergraduate student at Luther College, a university in the United States and I graduate this month! I have conducted research through my university on the topics of workplace forgiveness, interpersonal stress, productivity, and health. I recently presented a poster of my research at the First Applied Positive Psychology Conference, University of Warwick, UK.

How did you come to choose workplace forgiveness as a topic for your study?
Looking at the “other side” of the issue was interesting to me. By the other side I mean looking at forgiveness as opposed to revenge, which is emphasized most by many researchers. I wanted my study to be applicable to the real world, which is why I used a real, live workplace for my research. There is a misconception that forgiveness has no place in the business world and I wanted to show that this is far from the truth.

What kind of workers participated in the study?
The workers who participated in my research were employees at a manufacturing firm. Most of the employees at this workplace were in a factory environment, with the others in an office setting.

How exactly does forgiveness affect interpersonal relationships?
Interpersonal stress was found to mediate (act as the “middleman”) in the relationship between forgiveness and health/productivity outcomes. This means that forgiveness is related to health (both physical and mental) and productivity through the variable of interpersonal stress. In fact, the results of my study suggest that up to 40% of the relationship is accounted for by interpersonal stress. Also, forgiveness alone was strongly correlated to health and productivity.

Did anything in your results surprise you?
The strength of the results was the most surprising aspect of the study. I had predicted that this relationship would exist but the extent to which
it exists was surprising. Forgiveness is related to many of the things that organizations are worried about today: Productivity problems, health insurance costs, etc. Organizations should think twice before they write-off forgiveness as having no importance in the workplace.

What’s next? What are some of the questions we still need answers to?
Because this study was one of the first to examine this relationship, more research would be helpful to confirm its strength. Looking at different
types of workplaces and organizations in other countries would also be a great next step. The interesting question, especially in the business
world, is how forgiveness can save an organization money (through increasing productivity, decreasing healthcare costs, etc.). When the discussion turns to saving money, organizations start to listen a bit more.

Have you ever sought revenge on someone? Or are you the forgiving type? :o)
Well, that is a fair question! I have to say that I am generally the forgiving type. Like most people, I have held grudges in the past against people who have hurt me. While it is hard at times, I try not to do to this anymore. It seems that when a person holds a grudge, it really ends up hurting them the most, not the person they are holding the grudge against. I believe this to be true, which is part of the reason I am so interested in this field of research.

A great big thank you to Sarah.

If you have any questions for her, write a comment, and she’s promised to answer.