John Cox

7 Habits

Everyone has probably read or at least heard of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. The book is straight forward and makes some very good cases as to how to be more effective. If you haven't read the book, then consider this an endorsement for the ideas. In my weird sense of being though, I find that there is a difference between being effective and productive.

If you do a quick look at google on the two words (Productive / Effective you will see that they have slightly different definitions. These are my two favorite:

Productive: productive and so potentially very profitable

Effective: A process that produces outputs that meet customer requirements.

I look at the definition being slightly different. One is a philosophy, while the other is a methodology. I am not an English major, so I am sure that you could argue that they are synonyms, but for a moment suspend disbelief on that argument. I am more than willing to listen to the criticism to my bad English at a later date.

I have spent the last year trying to be more productive. The reason is that I have been traveling much more than my previous job, and the time that I have at home, I would prefer to spend doing home things rather than work items. I had to become more productive as I was spending even less time with my children due to not finishing my work while on the road. I therefore came up with my own "7 Habits of Highly Productive People". Though not completely finished, it has greatly increased my family time, while reducing my stress levels as of late.

I plan on doing a blog entry on each one of these items, but for the simple overview list for those with ADD such as myself:

1. Organize your email. This is the habit that was the hardest for me to overcome. At any given time I would have hundreds of emails in my in-box which were either waiting for a reply or an action, or were already complete but kept for reference. I now save emails in customer files on my computer once action is taken and only use my mail box for actionable items. At any given time in my work email I have less than ten emails sitting in my in-box. Not only have I become more productive at answering my mail, but I feel that I have climbed out of the hole of constant work.


2. Work in serial. I started my career in the Navy as an avionics technician. I tend to think in electronic terms, and I have to admit that I don't have a better way to term this. Basically, don't multi-task. Start a project and finish a project before starting the next one. At the very least come to a stopping point. If you must do the stopping point, then set the project aside for the rest of the day. Start it back up the next day, but don't get into the juggling routines that the productivity experts seem to think is the right thing to do. What I have found when I multi-task is I do a crap job on a bunch of items, rather than the right thing the first time. When you do a crap job, you just end up doing the job again, thus limiting your productivity.


3. Turn off the cell phone. This one is going to be the hardest depending on your job, but quite frankly was the easiest for me to accomplish. I travel for a living, so my cell phone is my life line for folks to reach me. That said, remember only a few years ago cell phones were not a business requirement. Folks, customers and bosses alike, would leave you messages. Often times the messages were more concise than the conversations that you have today. You would have a single action item rather than multiple ones. You could do a good job for your boss or customer without being on-call for 24 hours.


4. Set time aside to return calls. Going hand in hand with the last habit is this one. Folks will leave you messages. Return those messages at a set time. Try to say between 10AM and 11AM in the morning and 2PM and 3PM in the afternoon is the time that I call people back. Not before, not after. I suppose there could always be exceptions to the rule due to emergencies, but to be honest with you, I haven't had to make the exception and I am on the road 100% of the time. The only reason that folks expect an immediate return call is because we train them into that behavior. You would be amazed as to how much of a time savings this becomes without much or any pushback.


5. Devote time to be non-productive. Oh, the bosses out there are going to love me for saying this. However, if you subscribe to the theory of constraints in manufacturing then you damn well better be subscribing to it in your management or execution team. Idle time is good. It means that we still have capacity to do our work and service our customers. As soon as you don't have this capacity then your customers will be suffering. Never fear though, you will regain that capacity once your customers leave you. If you have idle time, then by god, use it to refresh your mind. Read a blog. Read a trade magazine. Do anything but look at email and answer your phone (see above points).


6. Make priority lists of actionable items with due date. Set aside the first part of the day to figure out exactly what you want to accomplish. Now stick to that list. Work in serial with your priority items and finish those. Work your idle time in between your projects. If it ain't a priority, then only work on the item when you can make it into your daily function. The overall wisdom is summed up in the old saying, 'don't bite off more than you can chew'.


7. Be high maintenance. Somewhere along the line the tag, "High-Maintenance" became very negative. Good work places need their high-eminence employees as they are normally the classic type A personality (much more on this topic once I break this article out). Ensure that you have the tools to do your job. That is your responsibility. If you don't, then nag. That is also your responsibility. Nothing is a more sinking feeling than to go to a meeting and say that you could not complete your job because you didn't have this or that. Amazingly, the response from your boss will always be, "Why didn't you tell me?"

As I said above, I do intend to do an individual article on each of these habits in much more detail. If you have any habits to share, please do. By no means do I claim to be a productivity expert. What I do claim is that these habits are working very well for me. A year ago, I would not have been able to find the time to write an entry this long. It would have been titled, "The Half-Finished One Habit of a Highly Stressed Individual".

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