Turns out writing a book takes longer than you think and takes up more time than you could ever imagine!
I’ve recently finished writing a book with Lisa Watson and Steph Hunter and it’s been wonderful experience to get my words onto paper ‘long form’. I love writing blogs that are quick to read but for anyone who enjoys writing then writing a book has to be something on your things to do list! So the book “How to Thrive in Professional Practice: A Self Care Handbook” will be out in the spring – in early May! Now that’s exciting! Available now to preorder. We talk about stress and burn out in social work and the context in which social work takes place because we’re all social workers but, to be honest, social work barely gets a mention in a lot of chapters. So it won’t matter what profession you are from what we are talking about will resonate. The reality is that all professional practice is blighted by the same problems these days. Too much to do, too little time, too few people to do it.
That means that people short change themselves by not prioritising their self-care. In professional practice and, to be honest, in all walks of life, self care is a necessity not a luxury.
So here’s the ironic thing! While writing the book on self-care my own self care took a bit of a nose dive! This means I can completely relate to people when they say, “But I don’t have time to go for a run / meditate/ eat well [delete as applicable or add your own!!]”. I didn’t lose the thread completely. My nutrition wasn’t too bad, I still did some yoga and meditation (but not a lot), and I still managed to run at least once a week.
But you see, this is the point with the model of self-care that I endorse. Life does come with its ups and downs. Your available time comes and goes. Your motivation waxes and wanes. But, if you know the golden rules you know where to get back to when you’ve ended up in the undergrowth. You won’t have completely ‘got lost’ along the way. You’ll have still done some things because once you create habits the are difficult to completely break free from. Good ones and bad ones.
So if you find you’ve lost your way a little, don’t sweat it. We all do. Make those small changes, step by step, that I talked about in the last blog and get yourself back on track. Don’t set your goals too high but do set them.
Here’s mine for the coming weeks: Have more nights per week with no alcohol than nights I have alcohol (because I do like a glass of red) Run twice a week (I already do parkrun every week so that’s just one more) Cycle once a week Meditate for 5 minutes a day Drink more water Eat exactly what I’ve been eating but smaller portion sizes
Doable? I think so! You on board 2020 is going to be great!
One of the commentators said, after the terrific England win over New Zealand in the Rugby World Cup Semi-Final (Saturday 26th October) “Game plan executed to perfection”. This comment and some other things about the game tell us a lot about being productive and getting results.
Firstly, like the commentator said, they had a plan, and once they had a plan they got on an executed their plan. No doubt they adjusted it here and there as they played but they had a plan. To be productive you musthave a plan. David Allen, productivity guru, says you can’t plan and do at the same time. The England team didn’t take the field thinking “tell you what, we’ll just work it out as we go”. No they figured it out before hand. Figured out what they were up against. Figured out what to do about it. And then did.
Figure out what you need to do. Plan how to do it. Then, and only then, do it.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi classic book ‘Flow’ develops the idea of being in the moment to the exclusion of all other things. Being prepared and focussed on the environment you are in and the job at hand so that you do your best work. In Drive by Daniel Pink, Pink builds on this idea talking about the key components that promote flow.
Mastery – You have to be a master of what you are doing. The England team are among the best rugby players in the world. They are masters. And you will be a master (or developing master at least) of what you do. Learning about, reading about, and engaging in what you do will create mastery. Immerse yourself in the knowledge in your field.
Autonomy – each player on the pitch was acting as an individual making their own decisions about whether to pass, or kick, or tackle. They are part of a team and they have the interest of the team at heart but they act with autonomy. You may work in a role where you feel you don’t have much decision making autonomy but you do have autonomy over how you work, how you structure your tasks, and your day. Figure out the autonomy you have and work with it. With autonomy comes responsibility. Responsibility to be organised and ready to do your job to the best of your ability. Just like the rugby players.
Purpose – What drives you? What motivates you? For the rugby players it’s winning the game, playing well for the team. For you it may well be doing a good job. It equally could be getting organised to get stuff done so that you can leave on time to spend time with your family. What we know is things like that – motivation that comes from within – is much more effective at motivating you than external, top down, motivation – for example just doing it because the boss told you, or working to a deadline. What motivates you from inside? Figure that out and you will be more motivated because you will have purpose.
Connectedness – You need to be connected to whatever you need to be connected to in oder to make things work. You will probably need to be connected to others. This is good for you. Working together, having others support you with what you need, and supporting others is all good for productivity and well-being. But also you need to be connected to your environment. Aware of everything yet focussed exclusively on the one thing you are doing now. The rugby players were focussed in the moment on a single task. Getting into position, passing he ball, forming the scrum. But with an awareness of the bigger picture. What was the game plan? What was the next move? What were the options? Connected to the big picture but being productive in the individual moment is essential to productivity.
So get your Game Plan on – Get Organised – Plan it and then do it
I’ve had a job to do for weeks. A report to write. I need to have it done for a meeting tomorrow. And I’ve kept putting it off! Why!? Once I got down to it I actually enjoyed writing it and it took me about an hour an a half… that was all… and now it’s done and I feel great!
Caroline Webb in her great, highly recommended book, How to Have a Good Day, says that most of the jobs we avoid are ones that have a long term benefit. This report I had to write had no short term benefit in doing it a few weeks back but now, given the meeting is tomorrow (!) it does have a short term benefit. This, Webb tells us, is an evolutionary mechanism that sees the trade off between short term and long term benefits lead to procrastination. She says “it’s easier for our brains to assess the known present than to consider the unknown future” (pg. 104) so we tend to give more priority to the here and now than to the future.
The problem with this is that it means things get left until the last minute. What if something had happened this morning that meant I couldn’t write the report. I’d have either had to stay up late (never the time to do your best work) or look unprofessional tomorrow. I say to my adult children that there are 3 things that get you to where you need to be – the first two you will recognise – inspiration and perspiration. But there’s a third – reputation – particularly in professional work where people expect you to ‘show up’ ready to go. Don’t let yourself down by not leaving enough time to get the job done so you are prepared.
Picturing the benefits, Webb goes on to say, is the way to beat procrastination. For me, in this example, the benefit would have been a job done, ticked off my list, and not waking up every day for the last week or so thinking I must do that report. What we know is having ‘open loops’, as David Allen (The Getting Things Done Methodology) calls them erodes your psychological capital. An open loop is a thing that goes round and round in your brain that gets in the way of focussing on the task in hand. So by not doing the report I have a constant nagging ‘you need to do that report’ going around in my head when I should be applying my psychological capacity to other things! This is downside of inaction.
What is useful for some larger tasks is to break them down into smaller tasks. So with regard to the report I needed to write. I needed to find the document on line and appraise what I needed to do. I needed to read some evidence that I needed to be aware of to write the report, and then I needed to write the report. A concept called “The Power of Small Wins” tells me that if I’d broken it down into steps a few things happen. The first step suddenly seems more manageable than the whole task and then when each step is completed you get a psychological buzz of satisfaction. If you leave it as one big task you only get the buzz when the task is finished. Psychological boosts at the end of each step motivate you to move onto the next step.
Easy!
So, break the task down into small steps and diary them all.
By putting them all in your diary you remove them from your brain – so they are no longer an ‘open loop’. You will get to the step in your dairy and be reminded of what to do – you don’t need to remember what to do when.
Plan a ‘pay-off’. If it’s something you really are struggling to get on with plan a treat when it’s done, or a little treat when each step gets done. Treats are good!
Consider the downside of not taking action – this may well motivate you.
Remember – we often overestimate how long something is going to take. I set aside 3 hours to write the report (it had turned into a monster in my head) and it actually only took an hour and a half! I suddenly had some free time… so I wrote this blog!
Two things done when I thought I’d only get one done! Now that’s productivity!
Here it is! Your route map to self care. My self care model (lovingly drawn for me by one of our fabulous students Anna Short). It’s simple and straightforward but it’s what you need to get sorted. And over the next few days I’ll tackle each element of the triangle in turn and then we can get on to figuring out how to organise it all!
The three things in the triangle won’t come as any surprise to you. In fact most of what I have to tell you won’t come as a huge surprise. Looking after yourself is one of those things where we all know what to do but we don’t always do it. And we don’t always fully understand the impact on us and our productivity.
So… we’ll talk about sleep, we’ll talk about exercise, and we’ll talk about nutrition. This is not to turn you into tofu eating (although I like tofu), marathon running (although I’ve ran marathons), zen like (although I like some meditation) creatures, but rather to show you how these three things interact and have a massive impact on your productivity in your job and in your home life.
Current research tells us that lack of sleep has a significant impact on the risk of us developing things like cancer or alzheimers, never mind the impact of a poor nights sleep on the next day. Your brain and your gut are connected directly by the vagus nerve and scientists are showing how the quality of what is going on in your gut directly effects your mood. And exercise has been shown to be effective in reducing levels of stress. Also, they are are interlinked….
Life is all about transitions…. it’s about starting things and ending things and moving between things. That’s what I love about life. Challenges coming to a conclusion. New challenges to explore. Yesterday saw me watch this years graduates walk across the stage to be given their award. It’s a wonderful day because the journey to a degree is not an easy one. It’s a lot of hard work. But what starting a degree does is set you out a plan. The 3 years of an undergraduate degree, or the 2 of a postgraduate degree, sets out a framework around which all other challenges hang. It absorbs you. For better or worse!
We need challenges. We need to set ourselves targets. There’s evidence that if you have a plan that you record in some way you are more likely to achieve it. That’s remarkable. Just by writing it down it’s more likely to happen.
When I turned 50 (just short of 2 years ago) I set myself a ten year plan and I wrote it down (yes! For those who know me… in my spreadsheet!) My plan was simple. That by the time I was 60 I wanted to be making all my income from writing and other freelance work. I wanted to have the luxury of not having to work for an organisation. A kind of retirement of sorts. A ‘retirement’ to me setting the agenda for the part of my life I get paid for. This was a big task because 10 years, in reality, is not a long time. So, I had to make a plan. I had to start building up my writing. I had to think about the financial impact of such a move. I had to think about the skills I had and the skills I needed to develop. I needed to take a big idea and break it down into smaller ideas, smaller steps.
This relies on a nice little metaphor that I love to use which is – How do you eat a whole elephant? One bite at a time, of course. You couldn’t possibly eat a whole elephant at once! You need to work on things incrementally and what you’ll find is that when you tick a step off your list you will get a psychological buzz and that will generate forward momentum with whatever it is you are wanting to achieve.
I find myself with a day at home today. I had a meeting cancelled this morning so now I have a whole day to myself. I’m feeling a bit anxious about some things I need to achieve over the next 6 months because at the minute I don’t have a plan. Firstly, I need to write a book! I’ve signed a contract so it has to be delivered by the end of the year! And at the minute all it is is a list of chapters with a brief outline…. and I’ve never written a book before! I need to map out how this is going to happen. So while a 10 year plan is important so are shorter term plans. Because of the way my job works it’s useful to have a 6 month plan. So today I’m going to figure out my 6 month plan. What am I going to do between now and the end of the year and how does writing a book fit into that?
I’m running the Kielder Marathon in October and I can apply the same principle. So working backwards from the date of the run I’ll figure out what mileage targets I need to hit week by week. That way, I know what I need to achieve and I’ll diary time out to do it.
And finally, for today at least, I need to figure out how to fit the work I need to do at University into my working week. So I’ll plan where the lectures are, when I’m going to prep them, who I might need to talk to and when I’ll do that, when I’m going to work on placements, and so on and so on….. right up until the end of the year.
And I guarantee by the end of the day I will feel a huge sense of relief because I’ll have a plan. As David Allen (author of Getting Things Done) says, “if you don’t control ‘it’, ‘it’ will control you.” There is concrete evidence that having a plan reduces stress both at work and at home.
Emails are great…. and they are not great! Emails allow you to ask the same thing to a number of people at the same time and get answers back quickly – that’s great! …and it can be a nightmare! How many of you get cc’d into things and wonder… “why has someone included me in this!?” For such emails there is the ‘delete’ button! Emails let you send things to people wherever you are and whatever time it is! That’s great…. and that’s not great!
Like them or loathe them they are here to stay I’d imagine though. They appear to have caught on! There are various estimates but it appears the average person at work sends and receives about 130 emails per day. In ‘Organised Mind’ Daniel Levitin tells us that even outside of work we process around 100,000 words every day! That’s remarkable. How do we manage this information overload.
Well, as David Allen, author of ‘Getting Things Done’ says….if you don’t control it, it will control you. And, as a manager I had was fond of saying, ‘you need to get ahead of it’. Steer it from the front rather than chase it.
How many are in there!?
So, how do we manage this onslaught of information, and particularly for this article, how do we manage emails. David Allen says that your Inbox is a capture tool not a storage tool. Your job on a daily basis should be to ‘get in to empty’. How many emails are in your Inbox at work? I bet for some of you it’s hundreds and once they disappear off the bottom of the screen they disappear out of your mind. ‘I emailed you about it’, ‘Don’t think I’ve seen it’, ‘It was a week or so ago’, scroll scroll scroll…. ‘oh there it is’. If your Inbox is empty, or at least down to a handful of emails, there can be nothing in there that’s more than a few hours old, or a day at most.
If your Inbox is overflowing set yourself some time aside and systematically work through it. You’ll feel great! I bet anything that’s older than a week or so can be deleted or saved somewhere. And then once you are down to a manageable amount you’ll find it easy to keep on top of them.
There’s a process you can go through to get in to empty – and it comes to us courtesy of the wonderful David Allen again! When working through your emails, take them each in turn and either ‘Do it, Delegate it, Defer it, or Delete it’.
Let’s have a look at each of them in turn. There will be some things in your Inbox that you can just ‘Do’. Here’s your chance to apply the 2 minute rule. If it’s going to take you less than two minutes to do just do it. Don’t procrastinate, don’t leave it till later… just do it. There’s a thing called the planning fallacy that leads us to overestimate how long small tasks will take and underestimate how long big tasks will take (more on that last one in a different article later). There are loads of emails you can do in two minutes. And when you have dealt with the email either save it off to a folder or delete it. You’re done with it.
The next one is ‘Delegate It’. Delegation is not a ‘down the command chain’ activity. It is merely passing something on to someone because they need to do, or you need information from them so you can do it. So you can delegate up, across, or down depending on what you need. So if you can pass it over or ask for information then do that and then file or delete the email.
Then you may need to do some work in order to respond to an email or, the email may have given you a task to work on. So you ‘Defer It’ for these ones into what Allen calls a Trusted System. We’ll talk more in another article about ‘trusted systems’ but essentially if there is something to do, put it somewhere where you will be reminded to do it. For me, if things are time and date specific they go in my calendar in a time and date slot. If something is actionable but not time and date specific it goes into my calendar as an ‘all day’ event on a day where I might be able to get to it. If something needs some thought and planning and isn’t time and date specific it goes into my master spreadsheet. Once it’s in one of those places I save or delete the email.
Finally, in this process, if something isn’t for you or of interest to you ‘Delete It’! Go on you’ll feel good!
I pick up and work through my emails twice a day. First thing on a morning and last thing on an afternoon. I sometimes have a look in the middle of the day if I have the time and I follow the methodology above. It goes like this. I work through the emails and delete the ones that I can. I then make another pass and use the 2 minute rule to do things or delegate things. This leaves me with the meaty emails that I need to defer into my trusted system. I then work through those and put what I need into my calendar or spreadsheet. And then, by that point, I will have got in to empty, safe in the knowledge that when I next look there can be nothing in there I don’t know about that’s more than few hours old. And if, for some reason, I don’t get to check them again that day, I know the next day that there is nothing in there that is more than 24 hours old. No one has been waiting on me for very long. It make you feel so good and so in control and frees up loads of psychological capital to do other things.
Note though – when I’m not actively dealing with emails my email client is shut down with notifications switched off. When I’m not doing emails, I’m not doing emails, because I’m working on other equally important things! Research by Microsoft showed that if you are working on a task and get distracted by an email it takes you up to 15 minutes to get back up to the speed on that task you were working at prior to going to check the email. That’s a huge productivity loss. So either be emailing or be not emailing. The idea of multi-tasking is a myth. Trying to write a report and answer emails as they come in will slow down your productivity in relation to both and research has shown that you will be more prone to mistakes.
Emails! They are necessary but you can manage them. Having them under control will reduce stress and allow you to focus on other tasks without worrying about what’s in there!
Start by emptying your Inbox… you’ll feel great!
Use ‘Do it, Delegate it, Defer it, Delete it’ every time you work on emails to get in to empty
Recently I got to wondering when I started setting myself big long term goals and I realised I’ve probably always done it. Most productivity commentators will tell you that you should have at least a 5 year plan. Personally I think you need a life plan! What is it you want to do, next week, next month, next year, the rest of your life!? Planning stuff and writing it down has been shown to make it more likely to happen. If you have a plan written down it sets it in your mind. You can refer back to it and when you’re ready break your plan down into manageable steps.
Let’s get excited!
Starting with think big – what is that you want to achieve. I remember my first day at college studying social work, listening to my first lecture, and thinking about her, “I want to to do what you’re doing.” And 13 years later I found myself doing just that thing. When I started being a lecturer I decided I wanted to write and here I am 7 years later writing regularly about social work and a book in the pipeline! It’s important to have a growth mind set. In her book Mindset, Dr. Carol S. Dweck tells us that people fall into two categories – those with a fixed mindset and those with growth mindset. If you have a fixed mindset you think that talent and ability is inherent. It’s something you either have or you don’t have. You think that you’re either intelligent or you not. But what Dweck shows in her book is that we can all do whatever we set our minds to. What it takes is hard work and dedication. Things aren’t easy but things are achievable if you have a plan and you apply yourself to that plan. Broadly speaking we all have the same potential, it’s our mindset that dictates what we do with that potential. So you need to think big! What do you want to achieve?
Then you break it down into small steps. Because, if you had to eat a whole elephant, the only way to do it would be one bite at a time! Those steps need to be small and achievable. By breaking things down into little steps you draw on the psychological power of small wins. Every time you complete a step you get a psychological buzz! A feel-good boost. If you don’t break things down into small tasks, firstly you won’t know where to start or what to do next. And secondly, you will only get to feel that buzz when you achieve the final goal. Write down the goal, break it down into smalls steps and write those small steps down and then start…..
And start you must! Breaking things down into small manageable steps will help you beat procrastination. But the thing when starting something is to simply do that – start it! Do something. Even if what you have to do is break down your first step into micro steps to fit into the time you have available then do that. But do something!
Make a start!
As i’m fond of saying – making a start is the hardest part! Because it is… but the reality is that once you do start you will keep going!
So here we go..…
Write down your long term or life goals Think about which of them you want to tackle first Break it down into manageable steps Write these steps down (I’d put them in my electronic calendar) And then… do the first thing.
