Keys to creating a stress-free environment

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be

useful or believe to be beautiful ~ William Morris, writer/designer

            Many people struggle at work to juggle the large amount of email and paperwork that plague them. In my book Work Smart, Not Hard!, I teach the secrets to being happy and stress-free every single day.

Just as important as avoiding clutter and the feeling of being overwhelmed at work, the home should be sweet, pleasant, and stress free! 

*Touch mail once! Go through mail daily and toss out junk. Separate out magazines and reading material and place in a designated area. Open bills, organize them by date, and file them in a PEND system: PEND = Put an End to Needless Distraction ™

*What is a PEND System? It is the organized person’s secret weapon of clutter control and time management! Purchase a large plastic bin and place in it 1-31 manila file folders representing the current month and 11 additional folders representing the remaining months. This is an action-dated system that houses any item that needs action on a future date. Items to consider are birthday cards, invitations, bills to be paid, renewal notices, plane tickets, and itineraries. Don’t leave them in stacks and piles in the kitchen or on the dining room table. The PEND system adopts the out of sight, out-of-mind theory that keeps clutter at bay and the mind worry free. The only thing to worry about is checking it on a daily basis! 

*Pay bills online. For all bills that recur each month, set them up to be paid automatically. For all other bills, use the PEND system to spread them out by due date and go online rather than write checks and envelopes, purchase and use stamps, and find a place to mail them.

            *Keep a master grocery list. Make a master grocery list that contains all items normally purchased separated by area of the store, i.e. dairy, produce. Make photocopies and keep one on the refrigerator each week. Circle or highlight items as you run out of them, and at the end of the week, a good portion of the grocery list will be complete.

*Keep common areas clutter free. Allow each family member a “messy” place in the house, but in exchange, insist that the common areas of the house are tidied up after every use. Designate laundry deposits in each individual’s room and/or in the laundry room separated by whites, colors, darks. Have a place in the kitchen for kids to place items needing attention such as report cards, field trip, and sports forms.

*Write things down. Keep a notepad and pen handy on each level of the home. When a thought or idea comes to mind, jot it down while it is fresh or the thought will be gone, idea lost and/or the task left undone.

Want to be happy at work? Read Work Smart, Not Hard! Want to be happy at home? Use the above tips and live a happy, productive and stress-free life which will keep the mind sane, the body healthy, and the spirit creative.

The bee is praised. The mosquito is swatted.”

Mary O’Connor, Author/Poet

The person who works smart is on flow.  They are calm, relaxed, confident, accountable and pleasant to be around.  They know that the amount of work they are faced with in any given day does not matter as their smart practices will keep it flowing and they will outperform their hard-working counterparts every single time!

The person who works hard is putting forth an enormous amount of effort.  They are stressed, scattered, do not meet deadlines, are unresponsive and generally not very pleasant to be around.  They believe that by working long hours and skipping lunches, all while sighing heavily when anyone asks how they are doing, is commendable and shows that they are dedicated “hard” working employees.

Which do you want to be?

In order to measure whether you are working smart or working hard, ask yourself a few questions.  Do you find yourself rushing about and performing tasks in a hasty manner?  Do you believe that the faster you go, the more work you will accomplish?  Do you think that you will receive recognition for all of the long hours you put in?  If you answered yes, think about it this way.  The faster you go, the more prone you are to errors and the more you will find yourself unfocused by trying to take multi-tasking to a new level.  We have all stubbed our toes, bumped our knees and spilled our coffee on our keyboards which are signs telling us to slow down and regroup.  Do you know that employers judge employees on the results they get, not the number of hours they work to get the results or the angst they show on their hard-working faces? 

Wouldn’t you prefer to be the smart working individual who is pleasant to be around, works regular business hours yet confidently meets or exceeds project quality and deadlines?

Here are a few tips.

First, consider knocking out big projects that use the most brain power early in the day and saving less important tasks for later in the day when energy levels are lower.  Or if you are not a morning person, you may be more effective by handling mundane tasks first thing as you rev up for your peak performing time of the day.

Continually re-prioritize work throughout the day as it becomes evident that other tasks have become more important.  Understand when you need to turn away visitors, turn off your phone and email, roll up your sleeves and get totally focused when the urgent project is stretching you beyond your comfort zone.  Seek the advice of a co-worker if you know there is a better way to tackle a task but your creativity is blocked.  Accomplish a big project by dividing it into its parts and coordinating the whole effort.  Know when to take a break, eat a snack or take a walk around the office before returning to complete a daunting task.  Save information from past projects to be used in similar projects so as not to reinvent the wheel.  Do one thing really, really well versus many things half way.  Avoid distractions and stay on task.  Be proactive, not reactive.  Anticipate what lies ahead and follow your intuition. 

Finally, think from the end before you start at the beginning.  Visualize the outcome of your task or project and then backtrack and go through the steps necessary to reach the goal as visualized in an efficient manner. 

Smart people know that change is good!  Incorporate these tips and stop struggling!

Conflict is not all bad and circumstances do arise in daily business that you must face.  The reason you avoid it is because you are ill equipped to deal with the situation without a great deal of struggle.  But confrontation arising out of conflict is really what you are trying to stay away from, not the conflict itself.  And all you need is a plan!

1.         Look at your basic communication skills for dealing with conflict and the past history of your reaction when faced with confrontation.  You will likely find that one of the biggest barriers to a successful conflict resolution plan is listening blocks.  Fully listening to what the other person is saying – not just their words, but their body language, is essential.  You will then know when they are withholding information that will prove quite useful and you can ask pointed questions to get a grasp of the entire situation before proceeding. 

2.         Make sure your questions ultimately get to the root of how the individual is feeling.  Are they angry, frustrated, scared, overwhelmed, in need of encouragement?  Continue dialogue until you get to the bottom line.

3.         Improve your word choices – use words that show that you do not think the situation it is about you but, rather, about them.  Let them know immediately that you are interested in resolving the situation and keep the focus on their position. 

4.         Seek to understand before seeking to be understood.  Increase your empathy by truly feeling what it would be like to be in the other person’s shoes at that moment.  Don’t give the matter some thought.  Give it some feel.

5.         Come up with a plan on how you can reach a resolution together and follow up regularly to make sure the situation is in fact resolved.  Offer communication parameters and make agreements to guard against a similar conflict in the future.   The goal is that the other person comes out of the conflict with the feeling that you care about them, that you care about the issue and that you seek closure so you can both move on. 

If the conflict is with an employee, use these steps towards resolution and then take the opportunity to assist them with their own conflict resolution plan.  Find areas where you can assist them in the implementation. 

If the problem is with a client, look for ways to change internal processes that will alleviate the issue going forward, and remember that the client is always right, no matter what. 

If the conflict is with a co-worker, be the bigger person and allow him or her to be right.  Making the other right does not make you wrong.  But by making the other person wrong, you both lose.  Invest in other people and it will pay you back tenfold.

Be proactive.  Keep your ears open for potential conflict and find ways to nip it before it becomes an actual conflict.  You cannot always avoid it, but you can head it off before it becomes confrontation.

Listen, analyze, act and then LISTEN and LISTEN again.

of logic, but creatures of emotion.”

Dale Carnegie, author/speaker

Effective communication is the key to success in any thing you do.  Whether you are communicating internally or externally, with clients, subordinates or colleagues, it is imperative to make sure you are clear, concise, kind and considerate.

An email is a business correspondence and needs to be treated as such.  It is also a permanent document and one that can be easily forwarded to hundreds of people.

Having to read an email that is full of typographical errors, slang and/or acronyms is painful.  It is important to draft your email correspondence as if you are writing a letter on company stationary or an internal memorandum.  Proper use of the subject line, greeting, body of the email and closing are necessary.  Spell check does not replace proofreading as it is not very effective in picking up grammatical and punctuation errors.

Equally as important is the message the reader receives.  Because an email can easily be misconstrued as to its meaning and tone, it is important to take the time to construct it so that a clear, friendly message is sent.  Using all capital letters is considered raising your voice; using acronyms and all lower case letters is considered juvenile and unprofessional.  Not having the proper greeting and closing is considered rude.  People can form all kinds of opinions of you from your email exchanges without you even being aware.

            The best way to determine whether your communication sets the proper tone and provides complete information is to proofread it as if you are the recipient.  Putting yourself in the receiver’s shoes for a minute and allowing yourself to think about the message and feel its tone will allow you to construct better emails.  In addition, think about whether you have any questions after reading it.  The goal is always that the reader has no additional questions after reading your email so you can avoid multiple exchanges in an attempt to clarify what you could have already set forth in the initial communication.

            Other email pitfalls to AVOID are:

·     Sending the email to the wrong person or not including all parties.  If you are drafting a lengthy email, leave the To: section blank until just before you are ready to send and then carefully include the proper individuals.

·     Forgetting to attach the attachment.  As soon as you refer to an attachment, go ahead and attach it at that point rather than waiting until you complete your draft which increases the likelihood of forgetting.

·     Including information in an email that you would not want anyone but the recipient to see.  Remember that email can be forwarded to anyone.  Leave editorial and unpleasant comments out as you do not know where your email could likely land and the written word cannot be retracted.

·     Sending an email while angry.  Use the 24 hour rule.  Draft your email and then let it sit as a draft until your cooler head prevails.  There is a very good likelihood that you will re-draft it the next day.  Otherwise, you may find an equally angry email waiting for you.

Email is a great tool and time saver.  It can be your best friend or worst enemy.  Use these tips to make it your ally.

ability to ask for help.”

Donald Keough, former President of Coca-Cola.

Do you find yourself overwhelmed at work on a regular basis?  Do you find it difficult to strike a work/home life balance because work leaves you feeling worn out and unable to fulfill your personal obligations?  What about having fun – enjoying your free time – have you forgotten how?

The stress that you are experiencing is common in today’s society where everything is instantaneous.  Long gone are the days where you had to wait for the mail; when you were completely unavailable to clients and colleagues on evenings, weekends and vacations because there were no cell phones, Blackberries ™ or laptops.

Today’s professionals are plagued with the chaos of clutter that continues to grow with each email and piece of paper mounting in in-boxes throughout the day.  The pile grows because decisions must be made quickly and when you encounter bottlenecks, it becomes unmanageable and creates extreme stress.  Eventually frustration festers and exhaustion sets in until you hit major meltdown.

While for some of us this is an occasional scenario, for many, the pace kept in order to stay afloat immobilizes an otherwise productive life.  And it does not stop at work; it seeps into your personal time and eventually becomes a way of life.  You do not know differently as you have no contrast, i.e. uptime and downtime.  It is all uptime.

So, with the complexity and speed of the workplace today, it is no wonder many of us find ourselves with never-ending “to do” lists, mountains of paper or electronic information and constant demands on our time and energy.  Since this is not going to change any time soon, simplifying your work environment is key.

You have a sense of what being organized looks like as you have friends and co-workers who have homes or offices that appear neat and calm.  Those same individuals never forget birthdays, never arrive late for appointments and never act frazzled.  Yet you fear filing papers and files away because you may never find them again or remember what projects are outstanding.  So, you surround yourself with them so you will feel secure.  But are you?

Being organized is necessary in order to make other goals attainable and I am going to make it easy for you.  I started using the time management tools contained in my book, Work Smart, Not Hard!, 25 years ago when I was a legal secretary.  As I fine-tuned them over the years, I continued to be promoted and have ultimately achieved the position of Chief Operating Officer of a very successful company.

If you have allowed the overabundance of your choices or habits of collection to paralyze your life, I urge you to read the book.  If you are overwhelmed, or just looking for ways to become more productive, adopting some or all of the tools in this book may be just what you have been looking for. 

Here’s to your success!