A Single Step
Many years ago I took an excellent time management course for lawyers that was put on by our local Continuing Legal Education Society. The instructor had many good tips on how to manage a busy lawyer’s day. I went back to my office filled with enthusiasm that finally I was going to feel a sense of control over my life. I diligently experimented with many of the suggestions from the course. However, despite my best efforts, I did not manage to successfully implement a single one of the instructor’s recommendations.
My assistant was less than pleased when I tried to delegate more work to her already busy desk. Whenever I blocked off time in my calendar to focus on larger projects, someone more senior always wanted me in a meeting. My attempt to control interruptions seemed like trying to hold back the tide.
After a month of struggling to implement my list of time management suggestions, I gave up and felt like a failure – doomed to a life of unending overwhelm.
I think this experience is not uncommon when we want to make a significant change in our life. We start out with the best of intentions – we make valiant attempts to change – we meet resistance or our experiment is not successful – and we give up.
My observation when people want to make a change is that we often take on too much change at once. Most people can only manage one new routine or focus on one goal at a time. The goal itself often has to be broken down into many discreet steps so that it can successfully completed. When we have successfully mastered one step – which can take a number of different attempts to find the best solution – then we can move onto another step towards our bigger goal.
It’s like learning to improve one’s golf game. It’s challenging enough to adjust to the new grip without also having to remember to keep our head up, lengthen the arc of our carry-through swing and change the position of our feet. Until we are comfortable with one change in how we hold our body, it’s difficult to institute all four new changes at once.
I have also observed that there is great power in making a single improvement even if that change is very small. This is especially true when we want to make a very big change in our life – such as feeling less overwhelmed at work. As the Chinese philosopher Lao T’se said, “ The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
We simply have to begin the longer journey by starting somewhere and succeeding with one small step. The small step might be identifying one thing in your day that causes you stress and experimenting with ways to eliminate it.
When I was working as a young in-house counsel, I asked a more senior lawyer how I could feel more in control of my day. He observed that I often arrived for meetings on time but rushed and harried, as I was almost late. I hated arriving early, as this seemed a waste of valuable time waiting for the meeting to start. I realized, however, that giving myself 10 extra minutes was not only a huge reduction in stress but I appeared less flustered to my colleagues. This one change had a big impact on reducing stress throughout my day.
Eliminating small stressful moments in our day can add up to a feeling of being more in control of our life.
Taking just one 10-minute break a day to walk around the block and clear our minds and move our bodies has been shown to greatly improve focus and productivity.
Drinking one glass of water instead of a third cup of coffee gives us more energy.
Designating one day a week to leave the office by 6pm if your regular exit time is 8 o’clock. Proving that you can get out of the office early one day a week is practice for leaving at a reasonable time more days a week.
Booking one day each spring to attend your child’s school fieldtrip if you find you are never connecting with the school (or your daughter) enough. You will remember those single school days long after you have forgotten the files you were working on that week.
The power of taking a single step shows us how much easier change can be and often leads to taking more steps that results in bigger and better change. One small step is like practicing for a bigger change. We dip our toe into the water and find that taking the plunge is easier than we thought.
My small time management step of arriving early for meetings instead of just in time was not (and is still not) always successful. However, the reduction in feeling rushed and harried most of the time continues to have a hugely positive impact on my day.
When we take one small step, it encourages us to take all the steps that will lead us on that thousand-mile journey. If we could only remember how thrilled we were as toddlers when we took that first step in learning to walk. This year make a new year’s resolution to take a small step.
I often say that change is easy; deciding to is hard. That’s because we all know that we need to make changes to improve our lives. However, the inertia of the status quo is a very powerful force to overcome when the moment to effect those changes arrives. My personal and professional experience is that small change is, indeed, the most effective strategy for accomplishing all types of goals, so I applaud your words of wisdom above.
You’ve made some good lifestyle recommendations here for how to achieve a greater sense of work/life balance. In my work with clients – individuals, groups and organizations – I focus my effort on small changes that you can make to “how” you work to regain a similar sense of command. Here are my top three:
1. Turn Your New Message Alerts Off & Batch Process. “You’ve got mail!” ushered in the Internet age, but little did we know that a daily avalanche of e-mail, texts, and posts would ensue. These micro-interruptions, which occur on average about 100 times each working day, are destroying our ability to get things done and audibly and visually increasing our stress level throughout the day. Turn these alerts off and check your e-mail Inbox and text screens periodically – every 15 minutes if necessary. If you do, you’ll find a sense of calm and quiet returning to your day.
2. Create a Designated Workspace. Piles, lists, papers and the like create distraction when located on or near where you’re trying to work. That’s because humans have 120 degrees of peripheral vision. Even though most of your focus is on the task at hand, some small percentage of that focus is processing the fact that you have all this other work to do too. Small distraction increase stress. Simply wipe the desktop clear of all things except the one thing you need to work on right now. You’ll be more focused and get more done.
3. Do One Thing at a Time. We don’t need esteemed institutions of higher learning like Stanford University to tell us that people don’t multi-task very well. Just try having a conversation with someone who is also checking their e-mail. You’ll readily see that doing one thing at a time is far more efficient and effective. This discipline of picking up and working on one thing at a time is more critical today than ever before. We all choose how distracted we want to be every time we start/stop working on a task. Remember, there’s a huge difference between activity (rushing about) and productivity (getting things done). I give yourself a fighting chance for striving to do only one thing at a time.
I repeat these three suggestions at every opportunity because they make a nice group of interrelated small changes. Effected in the order listed results in a quieter work environment that promoted an increase level of focus. The quieter you can be – mentally and physically – and the more focus you can achieve, the higher your productivity. Getting more done not only frees up more of your time, it also drives a greater sense of accomplish and satisfaction.