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Do You Hit Snooze?

5 Surprising Insights It Tells You About You

It’s a workday, the alarm rings. What do you do?

Shut it off, and immediately get up? Hit snooze once, twice, maybe more?

If you feel like hitting snooze, I can relate. This entry is prompted by a compelling desire I had this morning to hit the snooze. But I’m flying to Portland today to deliver a two-day seminar on “Habits of Highly Successful People.”

First, how ironic would it be if I hit snooze, given my topic?

Second, I promised myself a long time ago, I wouldn’t have the first act of a business day be procrastinating something (like getting up.)

Now let’s look into some surprising insights that hitting the snooze button may tell you about yourself.

1. Commitment phobic

You may have had grand visions for your morning. You’re going to get up early, go for a quick run, jot a card to a friend, or write down your goals.

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Leaders: Time Wasters Are Costing You What?! That Can’t Be Right

As a leader, you’ve experienced unique demands on your time and resources.

Let’s take a closer look at the impact of people wasting time at work and what you can do about it.

If you like seeing how the numbers play out, keep reading. If you’d like to skip ahead to the solutions, including 5 quick tips for what you can do about that, click here for the checklist “When Time Is Tight”.

In highly competitive markets, your company cannot afford employees who waste a lot of time. And yet, over 62% of employees admit to wasting between one hour to OVER three hours every day.

Depending on how many employees on your team, and their salaries, your company could be wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars by paying for time that’s wasted!

It’s time to be more aware of what weak time management is costing.

Imagine what it would mean if you could redirect all of your employees’ wasted time into valuable projects.

What’s wasted time costing your team’?

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Stress and Time Management is Harder Because of THIS Myth

Multitasking, The Myth That Keeps on Going

The myth that causes more work and worry

 “List your strengths.” Many of my seminars on Time and Stress Management begin with this request.

Sadly, far too many people write down that they multitask well.

“Multitasking is good” (or even possible) is the myth that causes more work and worry.

You’re not actually doing two things at once at work when you believe you’re multitasking. You’re task switching. Big difference.

And the difference costs you brain power, energy and work quality.

What multitasking might look like

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This $400,000 Idea Is What Savvy Executives Use for Time Management

Time and money blowing awayAs a leader, you’re busy and the stakes are too high for you and the people you lead to be on a busywork treadmill with your attention too fractured to focus.

Here’s a simple, yet powerful way to take control of your time and energy starting today.

Lack of focus could derail a promising career

Kayla first became client when her Director at a leading healthcare company enrolled his entire team in one to one coaching with me.

“Kayla is a great leader,” Mike said. “She’s personable, clearly cares about our members and has a positive attitude. The biggest thing Kayla needs help with is keeping her commitments.”

Mike continued, “Kayla’s direct reports have shared with me that she comes late, misses, or constantly reschedules her meetings with them. I’m concerned if this doesn’t change, she may actually derail her career.”

You’re too important to be distracted

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Healthcare Leaders: 5 Ways to Get Focused Fast

How to get and keep your own attention

How to Capture and Keep Your Attention

In the healthcare industry, expectations are going up at the same time resources are not.

It’s more important that ever for you and those you lead to be able to use your valuable resource of attention.

Great news, you can actually train yourself to harness your attention and stay on task.

Here are five ways you can get focused fast so more of the right things get done.Start to finish

  1. Start to finish
  2. Count down
  3. Time it right
  4. Break it up
  5. Schedule it 

    1. Start to finish.

It’s important that you break up your tasks into chunks that you can start and finish during the course of the day.

As you work, think, “start to finish.” You’re work on that task isn’t done until that small piece is done. Have a bias towards action, and completion.

One of the biggest reasons you leave work feeling stressed and unsatisfied with your work, in spite of the fact

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How Leaders Can Build (or Re-build) Trust

4 Do’s and a Don’t”

three figures showing trustAs a leader, you know how important it is to be able to guide your team through the turbulence that comes with constant change and uncertainty.

To positively influence them, they must be able to trust you.

 

Case Study
For a real world example of how a leader regained her team’s trust, click here.

Make sure your trustworthiness is on a solid foundation with this quick checklist.

This checklist benefits you if you are:

  • Just promoted to lead people who were your peers
  • On the wrong foot with your team and you need a course correction
  • An outside hire, new to the team
  • Low on credibility owing to a series of mistakes
  • A well-respected leader always looking for useful tips for yourself and your team

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Leaders, Learn from a Magician’s Mistake and Limiting Beliefs

A world famous magician and master showman,

Harry Houdini advertised many of his shows himself.

He did this by setting up shows in local jails.

Before coming into town, he contacted the local officials to put on his demonstration in a jail and invited local reports and photographers to capture the drama and excitement on paper and film.

Houdini would have himself locked in the jail cell, shackled in handcuffs, wearing not much more than a mischievous smile.

The consummate showman, Houdini would make a grand show of the task of freeing himself from his shackles, unlocking the cell door, and escaping at the final moment on the countdown clock.

Once freed to excited applause, he let the crowd and reporters know which in which theater he’d be performing even more exciting feats than these.

Because of this show, Houdini routinely played to packed houses.

Then, the unthinkable happened.

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Leaders, Guilt Can Be Good

“Can you help me get over guilt?”

asked Rita, an RN and a Remote Clinical Care Manager during our phone in coaching session. Rita continued, “I start work early, I work through lunch, I work late, and I still feel guilty. What do I do to not feel guilty?”

How easy it would be if guilt were like a light you could just switch off when you wanted to.

When I was in college, my first car was my Dad’s ’67 Volkswagen. I was happy to have a free car, because I was working full time to put myself through school, and I was happy not to have a car payment on top of college expenses.

One day, the check oil light went on in my little Bug. I had no idea what that light meant and all I could think of was “Great! Like I have the money to pay for this!”

I was telling my friends about this when one of the guys says, “You know there’s a fuse for that.”

“A what?” I said.

“A fuse,” he answered. “All you have to do is go where the fuse is and pull it, and boom! The light goes out.”

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Leadership Lessons from Apollo 13

What happened on Apollo 13 wasn’t supposed to happen.

apollo spacecraft rocketLaunched from the Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970, Apollo 13 and her three astronauts’ mission was to be the United States’ third lunar landing.

Three days into their journey to the moon, an explosion on board the spacecraft drastically cut their oxygen supply and electrical power.

Immediately after seeing that the original mission was impossible, Flight Director Gene Kranz changed the mission from lunar landing to the safe return of Apollo 13’s three astronauts.

As carbon dioxide reached dangerous level, ground control had to quickly invent a new way to make the command module’s square filters work in the lunar module’s round receptacles.

They had to figure out how to fit a square peg into a round hole.

If you’ve had a chance to see Ron Howard’s film about this riveting, real life drama, this is the scene where a lead engineer brings his team together and dumps onto the table in front of them a box full of the tools and resources aboard the spacecraft.

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1% is Leads to Big Wins

Leaders: Want BIG improvements in your department and on your team?

Think small.

 

leader Tour de France race Dave Brailsford did. And it paid off in a HUGE way.

In 2010, Brailsford took over as the new General Manager and Performance Director for Team Sky, Great Britain’s cycling team.

Team Sky had never won the Tour de France. Brailsford had a plan to change that.

Change everything by 1%, and Team Sky would win the Tour de France in five years.

They didn’t win in five years. They won in less than three!

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Business Owners and Execs – Need more leaders?

5 Ways to Get Talent On-Hand to Step Up to Leadership

Bottom line up front:Leadership Talent Potential

  1. Recognize what stops people from applying for promotion
  2. Sponsor high potentials
  3. Be real – but relatable
  4. Support “growth mindset”
  5. Ditch that “impossible dream” job description.

 

As “The Employee Performance Optimizer,” I’m often asked by business owners and execs for help in developing high potentials. A frequently asked question is “How do I fill future leadership positions?”

Your most cost effective, time sensitive answer is: Start from where you are right now. Cultivate the talent you have on hand, and give them the support they need to move up into leadership positions in your company.

Here are 5 ways to get your talent on-hand to step up to the challenge of leadership.

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Boost Productivity and Focus

Regain energy, power and focus with these 5 tips

Boost your focus and productivity.Want to regain energy, power and focus?

Get your mojo back and boost your productivity at the same time by applying these five tips.

Crystal Clear Pre-cap: (Spoiler alert: Bottom line up front, details follow.)

  1. Bring just enough energy and intensity to the task.
  2. Listen to your guilt, don’t just try to make it go away.
  3. Stop “throwing good money after bad.”
  4. Allow sufficient recovery. Key word: sufficient.
  5. Have realistic expectations. 

    Add your own best practices in the comments!#1. Bring just enough energy and intensity to the task.

Of course, like all responsible people, you start each workday with a short, prioritized success list. If you don’t yet do this, is now a good time to start that proven success habit

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