Every advisor would like to get more done in less time – and many look to moving to a paperless office and to other breakthroughs in technology in order to do just that. But a recent conversation with an advisor who has seen a dramatic increase in productivity in 2015 reminded me that to increase your productivity, it’s the small changes that matter.
Five small changes
This conversation was with a veteran advisor named Susan who, at the end of last year, felt stalled in terms of moving her business forward. As a result, at a November conference she sought out several successful advisors to talk about what they were doing and spent the Christmas holidays reading books and articles on what it takes to increase efficiency. As a result, she made five changes to her daily routine. While none of these changes taken on their own were earth shattering, cumulatively they’ve had a dramatic impact on her productivity and her mood when she goes into the office each morning.
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Here were the changes that she made:
- Before leaving each day, she writes down the first three things to do the next morning.
- She checks emails and returns non-urgent phone calls every 90 minutes.
- Before calling clients or walking into meetings, she writes down the key goals for those calls and meetings.
- She divides her schedule into 90-minute time blocks.
- After each 90-minute time block, she takes a 20-minute break to walk outside.
Getting momentum to start your day
One of the ideas that helped Susan came from my article, The Hour That Drives Your Day. That article picked up on Do the Hard Things First, a book by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. In this book, Bloomberg argues that you should begin your day by tackling the most important and daunting tasks like calling a difficult client or having a tough conversation with a staff member. Bloomberg says such tasks have been allowed to drag out and now hang over you like a dark cloud, sucking up energy and enthusiasm. My article suggested that before leaving the office advisors should write down the two or three most important things they need to do the next morning, and when they arrive, nothing should be allowed to distract them from acting on those priorities.
Susan told me that she was skeptical at first but since she began doing this, she has been astonished at how good it feels to have those difficult conversations behind her. As a result, she feels energized and her motivation and enthusiasm level gets a boost that lasts through the morning.
Limiting time on emails
Another change she made was to create a new habit for checking emails. A new book by psychologist Daniel Levitin, The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, had a huge impact on her. In that book, Levitin summarized research on the impact of multi-tasking and frequent switching between tasks. Levitin argued that people don’t understand the cost of switching between tasks. Every time you shift from one task to another, you release stress hormones and burn glucose. That’s why three hours at your desk during a normal work day – shifting from one short meeting to the next, responding to calls and switching between tasks – will leave you exhausted and less productive than that same three hours of focused activity on a Sunday afternoon.
One of the most common traps is the Pavlovian response of abandoning what you’re working on to check emails every time a bell indicates one has arrived. Levitin urges us to turn the sound on our computers off and to get into the routine of checking emails every 90 minutes. Susan gave that approach a try: “While it was odd at first, within a few days I found it amazingly liberating to be able to focus on the task at hand, knowing that I would be checking emails in 30 or 45 minutes. Having made the change, I will never go back to constantly checking emails every time a new one comes in.”
Here’s an excerpt from Levitin’s book on the cost of multi-tasking:
[There are] metabolic costs [for] multitasking, such as reading e-mail and talking on the phone at the same time, or social networking while reading a book. It takes more energy to shift your attention from task to task. It takes less energy to focus. That means that people who organize their time in a way that allows them to focus are not only going to get more done, but they'll be less tired and less neuro-chemically depleted after doing it. Daydreaming also takes less energy than multitasking. And the natural intuitive see-saw between focusing and daydreaming helps to recalibrate and restore the brain. Multitasking does not.
Perhaps most important, multitasking by definition disrupts the kind of sustained thought usually necessary for problem solving and for creativity. Gloria Mark, professor of informatics at UC Irvine, explains that multitasking is bad for innovation. 'Ten and a half minutes on one project,' she says, 'is not enough time to think in-depth about anything.' Creative solutions often arise from allowing a sequence of altercations between dedicated focus and daydreaming.
Writing down key goals
Another small change that Susan made related to writing down key goals for calls and meetings with clients and prospects. Before each call and meeting, she writes down two objectives. First, she writes down one that will make the client and prospect better off if they act on it, and then she writes down one objective that will advance her business.
Here’s what she said about that change:
Of course I always had objectives going into calls and meetings, but it never occurred to me to write them down. By taking 30 seconds to write down the key goals I want to achieve, I’ve found myself more focused and more successful in achieving those outcomes.
Working in 90-minute time blocks
Susan took one other piece of advice from Daniel Levitin’s book. Levitin points to research showing a steep drop in productivity at any task after 90 minutes and advocates taking a short break after every 90 minutes of concentrated work. Susan acted on that advice and went one step further.
During her 20-minute morning and afternoon breaks, she walks to a nearby park and will either go for a relaxing stroll or simply sit on a bench and enjoy the sunshine.
I’ve been astounded at how energized I feel after those short breaks outside – my only regret is that I didn’t do this years ago.
Susan’s experience was supported by a recent New York Times article titled How Walking in Nature Changes Your Brain. You can read more about Daniel Levitin’s research at Why the Way You Work Destroys Productivity. And earlier this year, the Harvard Business Review canvassed contributors and readers for ideas on working more effectively. You can read the results at What Everyone Needs to Know to Be More Productive.
Dan Richards conducts programs to help advisors gain and retain clients and is an award winning faculty member in the MBA program at the University of Toronto. To see more of his written commentaries, go to www.danrichards.com.
Read more articles by Dan Richards
Every advisor would like to get more done in less time – and many look to moving to a paperless office and to other breakthroughs in technology in order to do just that. But a recent conversation with an advisor who has seen a dramatic increase in productivity in 2015 reminded me that to increase your productivity, it’s the small changes that matter.
