Influencer Series: Sean O'Rourke

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SeanO’Rourke is the president of Syzygy 3, Inc., a technology consulting and services firm headquartered in New York City. Working in various elements of technology for almost 20 years, Sean has developed a keen appreciation for the costs and benefits of emerging IT solutions, and how both impact small and mid-sized businesses. In this interview, The Distracted Executive speaks with O'Rourke about efficiency, priorities and what he considers to be a "productive distraction."

The Distracted Executive: What would you say is your biggest distraction when you are working these days, and what are you doing to address it?

Sean O'Rourke: Client calls/emails and the Internet! Given the nature of our business – technology consulting, services, and support – client calls/emails requesting support or to discuss their IT are rarely scheduled. Every one of our clients’ businesses runs on their installed technology, which means an IT hiccup becomes a disruptive event for their business. So when the email or call comes, it has to be addressed (and resolved) as quickly as possible. Whatever else I may have planned for the day or want to do – except for scheduled meetings – takes a backseat when a client requires immediate attention. While client contacts are an unplanned disruption, I’ve turned the Internet into a planned distraction. There’s a lot going on in our industry and the world in general, so staying informed is an important requirement. Plus, I like to read and learn new things as often as possible. Starting about 18 months ago, I developed a schedule by which every workday, while I’m in the office, I work straight through for 90-120 minutes and then taken a 10-minute break to read something online. Doesn’t matter what it’s about; this is a mental break to do something that refreshes my brain. Plus, that reading turns into Tweets, a Facebook post (on our corporate page), or fodder for our next blog posting. It’s a productive distraction.

TDE: What has become your greatest challenge around managing time? What is your very best practice for being as efficient as you are?

SO:Saying no is and has always been the biggest time management obstacle. As a small business owner, you get this niggling voice in the back of your head that says if you decline a networking event, or a 1-on-1 meeting, or some other opportunity to meet people, then you’re passing up your next big prospect/opportunity. It’s the paranoia of the “what if”. No matter how successful your business, I think the ability to say no has the greatest impact on how you manage your schedule. To me, the calendar – electronic or paper – is the key to time management. My business and personal time revolves around what I put in my calendar. There has been many a time where I’ve told people, “If it’s not in my calendar, then it doesn’t exist.” (Sounds tongue-in-cheek, but it’s not.) Primarily, the calendar keeps me on point in terms of what I need to accomplish each day, which includes all in-person meetings/events. It also helps folks in my company and family to keep track of what I’m doing, where I’ll be, and what is available to squeeze into my schedule.

TDE: Prioritizing. Everything seems important or urgent these days. How do you efficiently navigate your to-do list without hindering your success?

SO: Strictly from a work perspective, whatever generates revenue gets prioritized. From there, it’s broken into work that requires my immediate attention (support/project work) vs. those that have a little more lead time (prospect calls/emails, writing proposals/quotes). Everything else is secondary and gets scheduled based on due date or when there are openings in my calendar.

TDE: How are you impacted by interruptions during the day? What is your #1 tip for dealing with them?

SO: Distractions are inevitable, and in some cases, necessary. That said, unless you have the discipline to work with virtual blinders on, I would suggest figuring out your distraction triggers and minimizing those. Silence your cell phone, and turn it over so you can’t see the display. Turn off email notifications (sounds, icons, etc.) on your computer. Put your office phone on "do not disturb." Don’t open your Internet browser(s). These are the most common we see, but whatever yours might be, there are ways to minimize them, and maximize your attention span.

TDE: As an entrepreneur and very successful business owner, what is the greatest challenge in your business today and what are you doing to address it?

SO: Consistent growth of the business, which includes revenue, employees, efficiencies, new offerings and a myriad of other elements. We started the company in 2004, so we’re a mature small business. And while we take pride in our laurels, we don’t think they’re enough. There’s more we want to accomplish, so finding ways to further the business so as to accomplish these new goals is the primary challenge we face on a day-to-day basis.

A special thanks to Sean for a great interview and his ability to be open and “tell it like it is.”

I know for a fact that he does terrific work and hope that my readers will check Syzygy 3, Inc. out when it comes to their IT needs. They are an amazing resource.

In the meantime, as always, have a productive day!

Coach Nancy

ADHD in Today's Workplace

Tips to manage the tsunami and stay on top of your game!

I feel compelled to talk about ADHD (which I'll use interchangeably with ADD) and how we as adults are impacted at work. Why? Because all of my clients are adults who are challenged and struggling with the onslaught, and I don't believe that enough of us are talking about/dealing head on with this.

ADHD is often unrecognized and/or not accepted or tolerated in corporate America and wreaking havoc in the workplace today from the mailroom to the boardroom. Think about unexplained absences, difficulty carrying out assigned tasks or inconsistent performance and follow through. It is costing billions of dollars annually in lost income, lost productivity, medical costs and retraining. So whether you are a CEO, HR professional, small business owner, hedge fund manager, VP of Sales, Harvard MBA or just plain working for/with/around an ADD boss, manager or employee, chances are you are behaviorally dealing with the consequences of ADHD at work in yourself or someone you work with. Amazing as it is, nearly 12 million people don't even know they have ADHD. One of them may work for you. Or, one of them MAY BE YOU!

It is no secret. The onslaught of responsibilities, information, distractions and ongoing interruptions puts us as ADD Adults in a particularly vulnerable, challenging and precarious spot.

Why? Because work life is becoming increasingly faster, as competing demands are escalating at a dizzying paces, tolerance levels for error are zero, and expectations to efficiently and masterfully execute so many tasks simultaneously are the norm. As a result, many of us are feeling out of control, stressed to the max, scattered, anxious, and not particularly competent or effective in the jobs we are doing. We are being stretched beyond what we are capable of stretching (or comfortably, that is). Most of our time is spent just trying to catch up and get organized or cross things off of the never-ending To-Do list, when we haven’t yet quite mastered the skills required to do it on a basic level in the first place. This is often stressing a system whose internal structure isn’t “built” to contain the pressure. Having said all of that, fortunately or unfortunately, the work environment isn’t going to conform to our needs any time soon. We will each have to take responsibility in the midst of the storm.

Why are we, in particular, at risk? Our natural tendencies and inclinations have always been to be impulsive amidst the external swirl of information and demands placed on us at work. We often move at a lightning fast pace, not even stopping to think or consider the fact that the human brain simply does not have the bandwidth to process the data points bombarding it every single second. So we get highly distracted and don’t show up on time. Or we get fired because we get too overwhelmed to do what we have to do on the job. We are naturally like magnets attracting information, new ideas, people, places and endless possibilities and unlike magnets in that we have a hard time sticking or completing. The fact is that for a non-ADD person, modern life is challenging at best. But for those of us who are dealing with ADD traits and tendencies on top of it, the overwhelm is magnified exponentially and the potential consequences that much greater.

So what are we going to do about all of this? The answer is simple but not easy. Every one of us has to figure out what works for himself/herself. It is an individualized approach, and at the end of the day, it all boils down to one thing (in my experience of hundreds of hours spent coaching business professionals over the past 10 years). And that is, having the organizational skills in place to manage time and task. Sometimes it manifests in email (I have had clients with 3,000 and no clue how to even begin to make sense of it) to those with no calendar/planner or clue as to how to use one, to To-Do lists with 85-185 things on it on any given day. Many of us don’t realize that until we learn the skills required to get organized and stay organized, the probability of not being overwhelmed and feeling out of control is slim to none. Even though we have different degrees of challenge, we also experience many of the same challenges, and the good news is that the solutions are universal as well!

5 Simple Tips for Starting to Manage the Tsunami

PAUSE

You literally have to PLAN (pause) to PLAN: you can’t plan on the fly. You need to STOP amidst the external/internal swirl of information to designate an appointment on your calendar for when you are going to plan and commit to it as if it was a meeting with your boss (except you are the boss).

PRIORITIZE

Always note due dates and time sensitivities first when looking at an overwhelming To-Do list and deciding what to do next. That is what you do first. Duh! It will then become clear as to where you will start and what steps you need to take next and after that and after that.

PROCESS

Once you have mapped out all of the tasks, you will have an idea of how long any given project should take. Remember to add the x factor (it will probably take at least 25% more time than you think you need). And remember: before you leave one task, even if it isn’t completed, think of what the next step will be when you get back to it.

PLAN

Routinely make/consolidate lists of what you have to do (in no order). The key is to consolidate them into ONE so as not to have forty lists and sticky notes all over the place. From there, you can more easily start to break things down into small steps and ask yourself “When am I going to do XY or Z”? At least you see the whole landscape.

PRACTICE

Never ever leave home without your calendar! This means actually looking at it every day and using it as if it were a living document. It will become your best friend and source of peace of mind, and most importantly, the first step to having a productive, purposeful life is really developing the ability to routinely STOP, THINK and THINK THROUGH.

Bottom line is: the tsunami isn't stopping anytime soon as far as I can tell.

We are each responsible for our own intervention and making the small, simple (not always easy) changes that will yield big dividends in the productivity department.

Game on!

Coach Nancy

Influencer Series: Nathan Zeldes

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Nathan Zeldes is a globally-recognized thought leader in the search for improved knowledge worker productivity. After a 26 year career as a manager and principal engineer at Intel Corporation, he now helps organizations solve core problems at the intersection of technology and human behavior. Nathan has been working on email overload for 18 years and is a founder of the Information Overload Research Group, which he chairs. The Distracted Executive was excited to sit down with Zeldes to talk prioritizing, time management and the greatest challenges he faces today.

The Distracted Executive: What are the biggest distractions that you deal with every day at work? What is your go-to solution?

Nathan Zeldes: I'd say incoming email, with its demand on my attention. My solution is to practice what I preach: my #1 info overload coping tip has always been to set a daily time slot where I clean my inbox in batch mode, rather than responding to each message as it comes in. To that end I have all "You've got mail" alerts turned off on both my desktop and handheld. As it happens, my mind is most creative in the morning, so I reserve an hour or two in the afternoon for this email session. Of course this is not 100% rigid - I do check my inbox first thing in the morning to see if anything urgent had come in overnight that may affect my day's priorities. But on the whole I stick to this arrangement and reap the benefits of concentrated thinking/creating time for hours at a stretch.

TDE: What is information overload costing us these days?

NZ: Well, the last data I saw from Basex says close to a Trillion dollars a year in the U.S. alone. But that's just the cost to employees in paid work time. As individuals, we suffer incalculable harm in stress, reduced creativity and damage to family relations.

TDE: Please give my readers your #1 tip for stopping email overload.

NZ: I recently published a guide to all the solutions to information overload I'm aware of, and it came to 164 (and counting, for the next edition). I can share one tip that I've invented years ago at Intel and that I (and many others) use daily: the "5 weeks folder". Here goes: Set up a folder called "Five Weeks" that deletes its content automatically after five weeks. Use it as a repository for messages you're unsure about, such as that email you want to delete, but you're not sure if the sender might call you tomorrow and ask about it. If, when screening your Inbox, you hesitate for more than 2 seconds about deleting a message, put it into “Five Weeks” and forget it! This simple method speeds up inbox processing considerably, because it does away with the procrastination and doubt that slow down outright deletion: anything thrown into the folder can, after all, be recovered for five full weeks.

TDE: How do you deal with interruptions all day long?

NZ: Primarily by batching work time together. As I noted, I work best in the morning, so I devote the entire morning to concentrated work (and one coffee break). I try to defer any interrupting tasks to the afternoon, when I can address them also in one batch.

TDE: Prioritizing. Everything seems important or urgent these days. How do you efficiently navigate your to-do list and calendar?

NZ: By devoting time to important things in order of importance, but also handling the necessary but less important things in order of arrival, older first. That way they are sure to eventually get done, instead of flopping at the bottom of the list forever.

TDE: You manage people and work with some people who are all over the place. How do you deal with someone who is very distracted and not giving you what you need?

NZ: With kind firmness (or is it firm kindness?). I know how to form emails that get attention, and I send people reminders they eventually can't ignore.

TDE: As an entrepreneur, what is the greatest challenge in your business today, and what are you doing to address it?

NZ: Perhaps it's balancing serving my clients and securing new ones. The latter requires active networking and content production, which is time consuming, so it's a fine balancing act. I can't pretend to have a perfect solution for this conflict - I just make sure to be doing both activities and adjust to the demands of both.

You can learn more about Zeldes, and purchase his IO solution Guide here. 

Overloaded is No Joke!

I love facts. Here are some of my favorites from Basex, a research firm focusing on issues companies face as they navigate our information overloaded world.

According to Basex, information has become the great leveler of society and business. In 2010, Information Overload cost the U.S. economy almost one trillion dollars!

• A minimum of 28 billion hours are lost each year to IO in the United States.

• Reading and processing just 100 email messages can occupy over half of a worker's day!

• It takes five minutes to get back on track after a 30-second interruption.

• For every 100 people who are unnecessarily copied on an email, eight hours are lost. Do the math.

• 58% of government workers spend half of the workday filing, deleting or sorting information at a cost of almost $31 billion dollars annually.

• 66% of workers feel they don't have enough time to get all of their work done (I think this is probably very conservative!)

• 94% of those surveyed at some point felt overwhelmed by information to the point of incapacitation.

• Information Overload has caused people to lose their ability to manage thoughts and ideas, contemplate and even reason and think. (I always say that thinking is a lost art form.)

And this is just for starters!

I think you get the idea.

The good news is that there are solutions and ways of slowly but surely attacking the problem. The first step is recognizing that this is potentially a problem for you personally and your company/work environment professionally. The second and maybe even more difficult step is asking for help.

Do what you can to have a productive day! And get in touch with me at nancy@nancysnell.com if you want to have a conversation.

Warmly,

Coach Nancy

It's called a Brain Dump, and It Works Every Time!

I always do a brain dump when I am feeling overwhelmed with a project, or there are too many ideas or commitments in my head. The reality is that it doesn't take as long as I tell myself it will take, and in fact, it saves time and lots of unnecessary anxiety. I was working with a client yesterday. She is a VP of Sales and Marketing for a prestigious television station. She was feeling overwhelmed. She was getting ready to go on vacation and had much to tie up and plan before she left; both personally and professionally.

We talked strategy and specifics, and I still sensed that she was not getting the relief she needed. I asked her how she was feeling at that point in the conversation. She said "still very overwhelmed and anxious. Can't see or imagine how I am going to get everything done."

Bingo! Brain dump time! Works every time.

I had her get out a piece of paper and pen, and write down everything that was spinning around in her head. In no particular order. Just pen to paper. (Yes. The old fashioned simple things still work great.)

Here is what happened: She got immediate relief and actually said "This isn't as bad as I thought."

She suddenly felt in control as the moving pieces stopped moving in her head. She had had so much going on in there and was working hard to keep track of it all. She even planned to write it down but didn't have time! Thought it would take too long. By writing it down and looking at it, her mind could no longer make it worse than it was (reality) .

Here are a few steps to take when you feel overwhelmed and stopped or have no idea where to start:

1. Grab a piece of paper and pen. Or could even be "Evernote" or whatever electronic device you use. I personally like the pen to paper approach. Why? Because it is a fact that when we write, we are more engaged with the material.

2. Start writing everything buzzing around in there... in no particular order! Get it all in one place.

3. Then, organize the list a bit. Look at MUST-DO's, etc.

4. Review the list. Does it really all need to be done? Are there things you can skip for now?

5. Get out your calendar and make decisions about when you will do what.

Try it sometime. It really works. You might be pleasantly surprised by the result.

Have a productive, brain dump-kinda day!

Coach Nancy