Spend Some Quality Time

at the Office

© 1998 Chris Miksanek

Forget about the Franklins, Day-Timers, and PIMs. Our time management system is the only one guaranteed to increase productivity!

Publication history:

Originally published in Datamation Magazine

September, 1998

Reprint rights available

contact me:

chris@miksanek.com

    Remember when the proverbial 9-to-5 gig actually meant you started at nine and left at five? Today, you literally need to put in fourteen hours to accomplish what you used to do in eight.

   Why? We've become a society of time-wasters. Cripes, when the audio version of Milo O. Frank's bestseller, How to Get Your Point Across in 30 Seconds or Less, runs 60 minutes it's time to stop and take inventory.  

   What happened? Technology. You know, that thing that was supposed to make us more productive; well, it's actually dragging us down. For example, back in 1984 we merrily pecked away on DOS XTs updating project schedules in the primeval DisplayWrite. Life was simple, there was plenty of ozone, and the IBM guys still wore white shirts.  

   Then came multitasking, something that was supposed to make our computers more productive, ergo, make us more productive. The reality, however, was the direct opposite. Whereas in the past, staff could execute only one application, like a word-processor or spreadsheet, multitasking permitted them to execute several concurrently. Sales of BattleChess and Leisure Suit Larry boomed.  

   And the trend continues today where the average 233MHz workstation has at least a 19" monitor, 5 gig of disk space, 64 meg of memory, and a 24x CD-ROM that plays anything from Don Giovanni to Don Henley (but seldom anything with actual data on it). Even requests for sound cards by AS/400 RPG programmers are routinely approved when all they really needed was a 5250 terminal emulator.  

   But technology alone is not to blame for this productivity decline. Urban sprawl is a co-conspirator.  

   When we're not wasting hours flipping-off slower moving vehicles on tranquil spring morning commutes, we're telecommuting, i.e., sitting in on a conference call with the phone on mute and practicing the harmonica. (See the August 1998 Over the Edge column, "The extended enterprise: Facilitate it or nip it in the bud?")  

   According to the Gardener Group -- a consortium of lawn care professionals not to be confused with the Stamford, Connecticut guys--the average worker is 50% less productive today than twenty years ago. "The wee hours of the morning have always been the most productive of the day," Gardener's Merl Jusik says. "In this new order, we've turned those once-productive hours into waste. But like the process of composting," he says, "we can transform that waste into something useful. In this case, we can recover the lost productivity by effective implementation of time management."  

   Simply put, if we can reclaim the hours up through and including lunch which were taken from us by the empty promise of technology and suburban utopia, we can double our productivity.  

Primping
   Getting ready for the day is one of our most vain and wasteful chores. Believe it or not, cologne (the fragrance, not the town in Germany) was introduced to save time. It allowed people to forego the effort of bathing. Showering and spritzing is redundant. Slap on some Hai Karate or Lady Stetson and get out of the bathroom. Don't bother shaving or curling your hair, your office PC has a multi-outlet surge protector. Use it--it's one place where multitasking at your workstation really does translate into productivity.  

   And if you were thinking of pressing your slacks or running the wrinkle-guard over your dress, you're wasting time. In the dense fog of sexual harassment paranoia we work in these days, you're not allowed to complement a co-worker's choice of skirt anyway, even if it is your boss, Mr. Murdoch. So why not wear what you're comfortable in: the same sweatpants and Pink Floyd t-shirt you slept in.  

   Now jump in your Passat and congratulate yourself. You've just reclaimed 45 minutes of your day.  

Commuting
   But don't stop there. In fact, don't stop at all. Let's see, a 32-mile drive to work takes 50 minutes at an average speed of 35-45 MPH. If you travel at 115 MPH you can cut your commute time down to 15 minutes, recovering a full half-hour (and another in the evening). Remember, those school speed zones apply only when children are present.  

    Downside: multitasking at 100+ MPH is dicey. It's not a good time, for instance, to give yourself an insulin injection or pop in your contact lenses, especially if the roads are riddled by pot-holes.  

   There are other commute strategies to employ, as well. If you're driving something big and funky like the old Partridge Family bus or a lime green funeral hearse and laying on the horn the entire time, you'll be surprised at how many people move out of your way. This allows you to move swiftly among them.  

Phonemail
   The first thing you notice in the morning is the red light on your telephone (or that the cleaning staff rifled through your desk and took some of your pennies).  

   Phonemail was supposed to make us all productive. It meant we could get rid of the telephone operator and dozens of those while-you-were-out notepads. Instead, it's fostered little more than frustration. Two words sum it all up: phone tag.  

   If someone calls you and you're not there, let them try again...and again... and again. After all, they called you. Why should you hassle trying to get back to them to see what they wanted in the first place? Nine times out of ten they either forget by the time you connect or they found the answer elsewhere.  

   Here's what we need to do: get rid of phonemail altogether.  

   Office policy may prohibit you from totally disabling your voice mail, but you can discourage callers. For example, here are two extremely effective greetings:

• "I'm away from desk right now. Your call is important to me, so leave your name and number and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks." [Now, squeeze your nose to make another voice and add...] "This mailbox is full and is not accepting any more messages." Or,

• [Again, with the nose-squeeze] "Your call cannot be completed. Please check the number and re-dial."

(continued next column)

E-mail
    E-mail is the absolute bane of productivity.  

   You'll find three types of e-mail greeting you each morning:

• cc:s 70%, according to the Gardener Group,

• SPAM -- offers of free passwords to see illicit GIFs of people photocopying their hinnies at office parties, pyramid-scheme solicitations (e.g., "make $1000 a day formatting diskettes in your own home,") etc... -- 29%, and,

• real mail addressed to you 1% at best.

   Want to cut your morning email processing time down from an average of an hour and a half to five minutes? Ignore the SPAM (it's faster than complaining) and ignore the cc:s. If it was important it would be addressed directly to you, not just sent as something you might be interested in.

   See that delete key on your keyboard? Guess what it's for. It's for reclaiming unproductive time. Use it.  

Lunch
   Lunch time's approaching and you're probably tempted to simply work through it. Big mistake. While it's a noble intention (the road to you-know-where is paved with them), it's a time waster.

    Consider this all-too-common scenario: you're updating your status report and a fork-full of your microwave Oriental-vegetable-rice-noodle-marinara-lean-choice dinner falls onto your keyboard. In desperation, you try to flush it out with a Diet Caffeine-free Classic Coke, but that just makes the keysss ssssstickey. You put an emergency call to your sssssupport center and three dayssss later you get a new keyboard.  

   Alternative: Instead of taking an hour to drive somewhere for lunch... put the pedal to the metal and hit that drive-through at 155 MPH (call ahead and have exact change).

   Sure youre eating your taco supreme in the car, but you just reduced your lunch hour down to ten minutes. Viva Gordidas!  

Afternoon Delight
    We've neutralized the ill effects of technology and urban sprawl.  

    Now lets go for it. The whole enchilada.  

   Why be satisfied reducing the 14-hour work day to eight. Let's get it down to the 7.5 hours we're actually paid for. We can squeeze additional time out of our afternoon tasks, too:

• Be proactive: too often we see trees when looking at Miss Forrest's legs, or something like that. Anyway, the most obvious is often the most overlooked. Don't defer any task--however menial--that will just take longer when put off. Example: clean your coffee mug in the afternoon instead of the morning and you pick up a half-hour each Monday morning not having to sand-blast the left-over java that's turned into a chemistry experiment over the weekend.

• Status reports: change the date on last week's and "cc" it to your staff and superiors. If they're hip to our email filtering, they won't read it, anyway.

• Five year plan: tee-hee. I just put that one in for a laugh. Is anyone doing these anymore now that we've reduced the average CIO half-life to 20 months?

• Decisions: why agonize over the details. C'mon, your finger's not on the button. Put it in perspective. Why suffer analysis paralysis when there are so many executive aids out there to help you make a decision and move on? Flipping a coin and/or consulting the Magic 8-Ball are two methodologies shared by, believe it or not, Warren Buffett and Larry Ellison. Sure there may be more than one way to skin a cat, but one way's really all you need when there are more pressing matters. Put a stake in the ground and forge ahead.

• Project Overkill. "Lets do it right so we don't have to do it again." That's a beautiful modus operandi for mission critical apps, but admit it, sometimes this quality and best practices thing gets way out of hand. For example, the Gardener Group found that 12% of Y2K projects included in their requirements, the ability to support 5-digit years. They probably added support for the Aztec calendar and the "Star Date" system, too.

Time Off For Good Behavior
    So what will you do with all this extra time? Who should benefit from this windfall?  

You could certainly use this newfound bounty of free time to schedule a few additional staff meetings, but that makes about as much sense as a hernia transplant.  

   We started out saying that technology has made it possible for us to accomplish our 8-hour workday in 14 hours. The scarce hours of the day, those after dinner and before Conan, are what we affectionately call "quality time." Those are the hours we spend with our spouses, significant others, or, if you're really serious about making the best use of your time, both of those people.  

    Well, here's today's lesson: quality time is for the office, not for your family. Get to work, do your job, and get the hell out of there.  

    Oh, yeah, and take a shower and put on some decent clothes before dinner, these are the people you love, remember.