Work smart, not just hard

Hard work is something every organisation appreciates. But at times hard work becomes a matter of concern. Understanding the difference between hard work and smart work aids in achieving success at a faster pace…

“The ability of people to work hard, with emotional drive and concentration to achieve success is a wonderful thing. On the other hand, just like with all other good things, anything in excess can be harmful. Excessive hard work often turns people into workaholics, said Deepak Lamba, president, Times Centre For Learning & Times Conferences Ltd.

How is hard work dangerous?

The term “workaholic” has a bad connotation. If a person becomes so involved with work that it is an addiction that obliterates family obligations and even responsibility for one’s physical and mental health, then it is detrimental. Experts believe that working hard to earn a living must not be seen as a good thing if it means enduring long hours of drudgery and away from one’s family and friends.

Lamba believes that putting in hard work with a definite aim and an underlying reason is essential to sustain it on a long term. If one genuinely enjoys the kind of work one is involved in the hard work becomes meaningful and satisfying. “Humans need intermittent breaks to not only gather energy but also to end monotony. So, hard work becomes a gift if it is coupled with smart work. Merely working hard without a definite strategy or putting in hard work at things one does not enjoy, can leave one frustrated and exhausted,” he said.

The side effects

Workaholism is just another type of an addiction. It doesn’t look as dangerous or self-destructive as other life-threatening addictions but it is a threat to the overall well-being of an individual.

Repercussions of excessive hard work at a stretch may cause:

• Stress
• Anxiety
• Insomnia
• Inefficiency
• Damage to family and personal life
• Loss of wisdom               

The cure

The key is self-introspection and control. Some effective measures include:

Create rules: Set rules for yourself. Take measurable steps to avoid working on weekends. Set aside some time for fun. Spend time with family and friends everyday

Time-out: Take time-out from work. Even in office, take a walk, do some stretching or participate in casual conversations with colleagues to refresh yourself. Pick up a hobby that contrasts with the kind of work you do.

Get over that guilt: This is probably the most important step. Don’t feel guilty when you are not working. You deserve that time off from work.

Lamba believes that if you have been consistently working hard and yet unable to achieve the right results and satisfaction, then may be the nature of work is not best suited to your skills and abilities. He suggested that one should self-introspect and figure out the issue. “Life involves larger responsibilities, passions and goals and one should not lose sight of this. Hard work should be used as a tool to achieve this and not a means in itself,” he concluded.​

Apeksha Kaushik, TimesJobs.com Bureau

How to supercharge team productivity

By Guest Contributor in Career Management, September 12, 2013, 5:25 AM PST

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Introducing or restoring productivity starts with providing the right tools, empowering employees to take control of their workload, a shift in corporate culture, and best practice implementation. 

Productivity is a problem. Every year, lack of efficient communication, endless meetings and wasted time cost U.S. businesses billions of dollars. Yet, increasing productivity remains one of the greatest, most elusive challenges of the modern enterprise—everyone talks about it, but few know how to actually be more productive.

The problem isn’t that we don’t want to be more productive; it’s that how we work is fatally flawed. The tools we have at our disposal add to the problem. Often the “fix” or “hack” we use to solve one productivity problem actually creates an even bigger hurdle. In fact, even technology that’s supposed to help, like email, instead creates a whole new challenge. Each year,unnecessary emails cost employers $1,800 per employee, while companies lose between $2,100 and $4,100 annually per employee due to poorly written communications.

Added together, lack of productivity in all forms means that 60 percent or less of the time we spend at work is actually productive.

Introducing or restoring productivity starts with providing the right tools, empowering employees to take control of their workload, a shift in corporate culture, and best practice implementation.

Give all team members access to the data they need 

One of the biggest problems with productivity is simply the way tasks are handled. The lack of an efficient system for managing the work process from start to finish causes many tasks to get lost in the shuffle, delayed, or ignored.

Task assignments come from all directions—via email, telephone, and water cooler conversations—making it nearly impossible to keep track of them all. Conflicting priorities make it tough for team members to know what tasks to do first and whose requests take precedence. Tasks take longer than expected because the information and resources needed are scattered throughout multiple software tools and formats—email, spreadsheets, whiteboards, to-do lists. As a result, managers spend more time tracking down status updates from team members than they do actually getting work done.

Eliminate information silos and the time wasted in searching through email threads, databases, and company intranets for vital data by creating a central repository for each project. By providing employees with the information needed on projects upfront – including the business case, deadline, requirements, etc. – and storing them in a single location, employees will be working toward an agreed-upon conclusion, rather than grasping for straws.

Foster an atmosphere of collaboration

It’s easy to say that the fastest way to solve the productivity problem is to simply stop wasting time. But, in many cases, employees don’t even know they are—they’re simply following the standard protocol for how work usually gets done—or doesn’t get done, as the case may be. It’s time to make a fast and firm break away from the “way we’ve always done it.”

Encourage your employees to collaborate together on tasks and projects with the purpose of determining the most impactful way to reach the end goal of the work. (As stated before, having that end goal in mind really helps with the overall process.) This way employees can work together, share ideas, give input, and provide assistance and support for one another, rather than toiling alone like hermits in their hobbit holes, I mean, cubicles.

With collaboration, it’s important understanding when enough is enough. This can vary from organization to organization and from team to team, so define within your organization how to benchmark the time that should be spent collaborating versus getting the work done, so that you can remain effective.

Get iterative and stay flexible

Meetings are another huge drain on productivity. For many employees, one-half of meetings are considered “wasted time,” while, nationwide, employees waste 31 hours per month in unproductive meetings—nearly 1/5 of the average working hours each month. In total, U.S. businesses spend $37 billion in salary costs on unnecessary meetings each year.

A better way to work is to plan for change and work iteratively. When you kick off a project, get the business case and the basic requirements documented and then plan to tackle specific work in chunks. As priorities shift or new work comes into the queue, the team will be flexible enough to iterate while keeping the end goal in sight.

Do quick check-ins, not drawn-out meetings. There are a number of agile methodologies you could explore, like Lean or Kanban, and then apply the best ones that will work for your team.

The truth is productivity can only increase through the effort teams make to be flexible, collaborative, and transparent. The alternative is wasted budget and stifled creativity. Taking a cold hard look at where work processes, collaborative culture, and information sharing break down inside your organization is the first step to improvement.

Bryan Nielson is an IT work management expert at AtTask, maker of best-in-class enterprise work management solutions.

8 Things Really Successful People Do

Real success takes discipline and methodology. Here are eight things the most successful people are meticulous about getting right.

shutterstock images

Most people claim to want success. But not everyone is willing to do the hard work and the smart work to get there. Often opportunities present themselves and because people are distracted, they miss them or give up on them before things fully develop.

Truly successful people don't leave much to chance. They are disciplined and focused.  They constantly seek new methods to achieve more, in bigger and faster ways. Listed below are eight different practices that will help you concentrate your efforts on rising above the tide.

1. Make Materialism Irrelevant

Fancy cars and houses are all well and good, but many foolishly focus on the byproducts of success, rather than concentrating on building sustainable success in the first place. Establish a bare minimum for your material needs, and then you can enjoy the benefits of success, debt and stress free.

2. Enhance Knowledge

Success comes faster to those who are open, active learners. The higher up the success ladder you climb, the more complex the systems and opportunities that are presented to you. Absorb all the information you can and if you sense a gap you can't fill, connect with people who have the knowledge you need.

3. Manage Relationship Expectations

People in your life require time. Successful individuals attract folk and so they have to carefully regulate the time they can spend with others. It's hard to limit the time you share and still make people feel important. Make choices about the people who matter to you and determine how you each can get value from your interactions. Then make sure they understand your limitations so they don't take it personally when you can't be present.

4. Practice Emotional Self-Awareness

Not all successful people are calm and nice. In fact, many can be volatile. But most are very aware of their tempers and idiosyncrasies. They know how to use their emotions to get what they want from life and work hard to make sure feelings don't become a detriment. Know yourself and learn how to let your emotions work for you in positive ways.

5. Commit to a Physical Ideal 

Everyone has a vision of their own perfect body. They don't have to be fashion models or athletes to be happy. But physical health is a consideration in their life and it's a big distraction when it gets out of whack. Determine the body you believe is worth working for and set a game plan to achieve and maintain it.

6. Gain Clarity About Spirituality

There are many highly successful people like Richard Branson and Warren Buffettwho don't consider religion to be important or relevant. But they have a clear point of view as to the role spirituality plays in their life. Find your own way to be at one with the universe and be clear and deliberate in how you practice.

7. Adhere to a Code of Ethics  

Really successful people live by rules. They may not be the rules of others, but consistency is important for them to maintain power and stability. Their individual view of how the world works is the basis for how they believe people should be treated and they will defend it until their dying day. Determine your ethical lines and broadcast them loud and clear so people around you know where you stand.

8. Focus on Time Efficiency

Prioritization is a key component of success. You can't reach your pinnacle if you are wasting time on distractions. Integration of activities frees up time for greater achievement. Spend your time on activities that are fun, enlightening and productive and soon you'll have gained hours to reap the benefits of success.

Ultimately, really successful people live their lives by design instead of default, so if you want to be one of them, dedicate time and effort to determining the plan for yourpreferred future and execute that plan in a focused and consistent manner.

Nerf guns don't matter

Free soda does not a good company culture make

I'm seeing it more and more--job descriptions with perks about nerf gunsand happy hour, or new grads who joined a startup and are bragging aboutping pong tables and free coke. This is apparently something that people see as a fun culture, a sign that this is a place you'd enjoy working at and has people you'd enjoy working with.

This stuff doesn't matter.

A fun distraction is still a distraction

This stuff is all stuff you do when you're not working. When you have a few minutes to spare here and there and are bored and want to have fun. It's recreation. It's a distraction from work. It's not going to make you more productive, or make you happier with the work you have to do, or the people you have to work with.

In fact, it might make you less happy with those things. Suddenly the work you have to do, which could and should be fun and challenging if you're in the right field, is just a necessary evil to spend a few hours on before the next game of ping pong. You're not at work to play around, you're at work to get crap done, but if you spend long enough in an environment like this, then the work becomes the distraction and the nerf guns and happy hour become the thing you look forward to and are excited about.

This will not help your productivity and certainly won't make doing actual work any more enjoyable.

Keeping work and play separate

Lots of people seem to love bragging about working hard and playing hard, and it's a pretty common attitude that working with people you can go play laser tag with and be friends with is a big win. I'm going to disagree.

I'd like for people at work to judge me based on my work, not on how good I am at pool or how well I can handle my alcohol. I'd rather they didn't know any of those things, because it just distracts from what you're there to do. I don't want to have to deal with the drunken argument last Friday night at the bar when I'm working Monday morning. I don't want someone I work with to be bummed out with me because I didn't want to hang out on Saturday since I have a family.

Trying to enforce a culture where people are all friends with each other and go out drinking together and watch movies together does not make anyone any happier when they're working, it just creates more opportunities for drama and biases.

What really matters

It's easy to throw some toys into the office and call it your culture. Actually creating a good, positive, productive culture is much, much harder than that.

Do your employees feel heard when they have suggestions or questions? Do your managers do a good job of keeping track of budgets and focus without micromanaging and getting on everyone's nerves? Do people have a solid method of critiquing each others work and providing helpful feedback without hurting any feelings? Does everyone feel challenged and interested in the work they're doing?

These are the things that produce a good culture, and these are the things to strive for, and these are things that you can't buy at Target or brag about on job descriptions, but they're the things that keep people around and working hard and happy.

10 Ways to Boost Work Productivity

Break time
Set your priorities

http://money.usnews.com/money/careers/slideshows/10-ways-to-boost-work-productivity/2

TO DO List

	Creating A To-Do List
	By Ramona Creel

Feel free to use this tip sheet / checklist as you tackle your own ""do-it-yourself"" organizing projects. If you would like to REPRINT or DISTRIBUTEthis information, please click here for reprinting instructions.

6 REASONS TO KEEP A TO-DO LIST

• can help you take control of your time
• gives a one-glance look at everything you want to accomplish
• minimizes mind-clutter by keeping track of odds and ends
• improves your memory by writing everything down
• frees up mental "RAM" by emptying your brain of trivial items
• helps you prioritize your activities

BUILDING A MASTER TO-DO LIST

• keep a notepad nearby so you can enter items as they occur to you
• empty all of the to-do's in your head onto a piece of paper
• don't worry about priority, importance, or time frame for completing
• this is your "master to-do list"
• don't try to tackle all the items on this list
• you will build your "daily to-do list" from your master list

CATEGORIZING AND PRIORITIZING

• break your master list into meaningful categories by activity
• home maintenance, work, calls, errands, to buy, etc.
• break large projects into smaller individual tasks
• assign a letter code to each item on the list
• "A" = must do; "B" = should do; "C" = could do
• prioritize items in each category by letter ("A" then "B" then "C")

DAILY TO-DO LIST

• limit your daily list to no more than 10 items you hope to complete
• include no more than 2 large or difficult tasks
• your daily list includes appointments and commitments to others
• also include "A" items off of your master list
• if you have time, fill in the gaps with some "B" and "C" items
• leave room for urgent items that just pop up

DEVELOPING A NOT-TO-DO LIST

• not every item on your to-do list has to be done
• the key to productivity is awareness of how you spend your time
• what you do, how long it takes, and what benefit you get
• create a log tracking your activities for a week
• evaluate the time investment time versus "payoff" for each activity
• how much benefit or enjoyment are you getting from each activity?
• keep high-payoff and enjoyable activities on your to-do list
• ask yourself if low-payoff activities need to be done at all
• if they do need to be done, do they have to be done by you?
• if they need to be done by you, could they be simplified?

HOW TO TACKLE YOUR LIST

• tasks should be completed in order of importance
• unless they have a specific time frame (like a meeting or class)
• is this the best possible use of your time at the exact moment?
• your goal is to complete all of your "A" items first
• then finish as many "B" and "C" items in the time available
• be realistic about how much you can accomplish in a day
• create an agenda for your daily task list
• schedule times for completing specific activities whenever possible
• if you didn't complete a task, you had too many items on your list
• move unfinished items to another day and re-evaluate the priority

MAKING SURE YOUR ACTION ITEMS GET DONE

• if you procrastinate, create artificial deadlines to finish early
• know your work style (long stretches or short bursts)
• understand your high and low energy periods
• plan your to-do's accordingly
• make liberal use of memory joggers -- alarms, sticky notes, etc.

OTHER ALTERNATIVES

• get your family to take on household responsibilities from your list
• ask a co-worker for assistance with routine business tasks
• ...and offer to help out the next time that co-worker needs a break!
• make use of support staff (admin clerks, assistants, etc.)
• outsource jobs to an independent contractor or freelancer
• develop a local co-op for sharing time-consuming domestic chores
• set up an informal chore swap with a neighbor

5 ways spring fever can boost productivity

By

Laura Vanderkam

Coming into full bloom (Photo courtesy of Flickr user brianfuller6385)

(MoneyWatch) Winter hasn't been too bad this year in much of the country, but even so, the first few weeks of spring just feel different. A pleasant breeze gives you more energy. Sunshine makes you feel happy for no reason. With flowers blooming more copiously by the minute, it's hard to buckle down and focus on work.

But I think spring can be a great time to change things up a bit, and maybe boost productivity in some unexpected ways. Here's how:

1. Take that conference call outside. We live in a virtual world. Many of us sit tethered to our desks in order to type on laptops and talk on cellphones. This doesn't make much sense. If you've got a long call, go sit outside and smell the flowers while you chat. One-on-one meetings can be done just as easily on a park bench outside your office building as they can be done in a conference room.

2. Get up early to exercise. Now that the temperatures are warmer, burrowing deep under the covers isn't quite so tempting. Set the alarm half an hour earlier and go for a run or walk outside. Even two to three days a week can make a huge difference in your health and mood. (See the related post, What the most successful people do before breakfast.)

3. Use that planning instinct. Some ambitious souls think about their summer vacation plans the previous summer. I've never been that organized, and I know I'm not alone. For some reason, warmer temperatures lend urgency to thinking about what you'll do during your time off. But if you can plan a trip four months from now, in July, why not think about other things you'd like to have done by July? What professional goals can be achieved in the medium term? You think through specifics like hotel reservations, so start thinking through specifics like how you'd meet a new client, how you'd scale up work at an existing one, etc.

4. Take a strategic afternoon off. A big chunk of the happiness boost associated with vacations comes from anticipating them. But you don't need to take a whole week off to anticipate good things to come. Look at the 10-day weather forecast, and choose an afternoon that will be lovely. Put in to take that off, block it on your calendar and plan what sort of spring fun you'll have. A picnic with your kids? A hike in a nearby nature preserve? A mini-canoeing trip? Knowing that your afternoon treat is coming, you'll likely be more organized and productive in the mean time.

5. Bring some blooms into your life. Flowers are rare in January but they aren't now. Make a habit of cutting a few from the yard and bringing them to work with you. Even if you're trapped in a cubicle, a few magnolia blossoms floating in a glass bowl make life a little more calm and sweet.

How are you celebrating spring?

Managing Yourself: The Paradox of Excellence

Why is it that so many smart, ambitious professionals are less productive and satisfied than they should or could be? Why do so many of them find their upward trajectories flattening into a plateau? In our experience—Tom’s as a business school professor and consultant and Sara’s as a psychiatrist—high achievers often let anxiety about their performance compromise their progress. Because they’re used to having things come easily to them, they tend to shy away from assignments that will truly test them and require them to learn new skills. They have successful images to preserve, so instead of embracing risk, they hunker down and lock themselves into routines—at the expense of personal growth.

We’ve seen this time and again with the executives and managers we’ve counseled—between us, some 600 professionals over a combined 35 years. Many high performers would rather do the wrong thing well than do the right thing poorly. And when they do find themselves in over their head, they’re often unwilling to admit it, even to themselves, and refuse to ask for the help they need.

Consider Ted, a highly successful sales executive at a major enterprise software firm. He excelled at the huge deals that were the revenue engine for the company. He knew the product inside and out, understood the pain points of his customers, and could unerringly sniff out and connect with the real decision maker in a deal. After years of praise and enormous commission checks, Ted began to sense that something was off. The company had expanded in a new direction, shifting to a software-as-a-service business model. Though the majority of revenue was still coming from the legacy products, all the innovation and energy were focused on the subscription offerings. At first, Ted was contemptuous—selling software as a service was all about small transactions and high volume. “Just get some telemarketers for that nickel-and-dime stuff,” he’d say. “I’ll handle the big boys.” Soon, though, he began to see the writing on the wall: He was becoming increasingly marginalized in the company—and in the industry. But he was paralyzed by fear and self-doubt. His professional identity and self-esteem were wrapped up in his success as a salesman.

Consider, too, Kurt, a lawyer known for his trial skills and intellectual heft; he was a natural in the courtroom and a skilled writer with a keen sense of nuance. When he was assigned a case that required combing through thousands of technical documents, he believed it would just be a matter of rolling up his sleeves and getting to work. But early on, he realized he didn’t have enough content expertise and couldn’t make sense of the casework his associates delivered. He began to find himself alone in his office, late at night and on weekends, wading through and deciphering the facts. It wasn’t until almost the eve of a trial that Kurt finally asked for help—which didn’t endear him to colleagues who suddenly found themselves joining him in the office after hours.

Of course, leaders within organizations bear some of the blame for this mind-set. They don’t always want to hear that somebody’s struggling, nor do they necessarily reward new ways of doing things, despite the lip service they might pay to innovation and prudent risk taking. As one executive we worked with pointed out, “My boss wants innovation as long as it’s done perfectly the first time.” Another confided, “We tell our people over and over again that we will support their professional development, but if a new project doesn’t work out immediately, we basically push them over the cliff.”

However, it’s possible to break this cycle and make the next move toward professional growth. First, you have to take a hard look at yourself and identify the forces that escalate your anxieties and cause you to turn to unproductive behaviors for relief. (See the sidebar, “The Curse of Being a High Achiever.”) Then you must adopt counterintuitive practices that give you the courage to step out of your comfort zone. This won’t happen overnight. It requires acknowledging vulnerability, something that driven professionals don’t like to do and that runs counter to their obsession with managing their image at all costs.

The Curse of Being a High Achiever

ome behaviors that help you succeed can also get in your way. The classic high achiever is:

Driven to get results. Achievers don’t let anything stop them. But they can get so caught up in tasks that providing transparency to colleagues or helping others feels like a waste of valuable time.

A doer. Achievers believe, often rightly, that nobody can do it as well as they can. That can make them poor delegators—or micromanagers.

Highly motivated. Achievers take all aspects of their jobs seriously. But that means they often fail to distinguish between the urgent and the merely important.

Craving of positive feedback. Achievers care intensely about how others view their work—but they tend to ignore positive feedback and obsess over criticism.

Competitive. An appetite for competition is healthy, but achievers obsessively compare themselves with others, which can lead to a chronic sense of insufficiency, false calibrations, and ultimately career missteps.

Passionate about work. Intense highs can give way to crippling lows. For achievers, it’s a fine line between triumph and agony.

A safe risk taker. Achievers aren’t likely to recklessly bet the company on a risky move, but they may shy away from the unknown.

Guilt-ridden. Achievers are driven to produce, but no matter how much they accomplish, they feel like they aren’t doing enough.

To achieve continued success, you must open yourself up to new learning experiences that may make you feel uncertain at best and incompetent at worst. Remember that those feelings are temporary and a prelude to greater professional ability.

Let’s look at steps you can take to get past self-imposed limitations.

The Productivity Paradox: How Sony Pictures Gets More Out of People by Demanding Less

Companies are experiencing a crisis in employee engagement. One of the problems is all the pressure companies are putting on employees to produce. Workers are trying to get more done in less time-and are burning out. But while time is finite, energy is not; people can increase their reserves of personal energy. The key is to establish rituals-such as shutting down your e-mail for a couple of hours a day so you can focus on priorities, or taking a daily 3 p.m. walk to get a breather-that renew your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energy. These behavioral changes are sustainable, though, only if leaders at the most senior levels of an organization are willing to set a context for them, both by creating their own rituals and by setting a tone where people feel safe taking time out of the day on a regular basis. This is just what the leaders of Sony Pictures Entertainment did. Working with Tony Schwartz of the Energy Project, they implemented energy management training that has reached nearly half the company so far. To date, the reaction to the program has been overwhelmingly positive. Eighty-eight percent of participants say it has made them more focused and productive. More than 90% say it has helped them bring more energy to work every day. Eighty-four percent say they feel better able to manage their jobs' demands and are more engaged at work. Sony's leaders believe that these changes have helped boost the company's performance. Despite the recession, Sony Pictures had its most profitable year ever in 2008 and one of its highest revenue years in 2009.

The new normal means constant change. Companies must reinvent themselves if they want to survive. This HBR Spotlight section looks at organizational change through two very different lenses-the first examining the connection between restructuring and improved performance, the second making the case for reorganization as a means of keeping a company's structure in tune with the human dynamics that drive creativity and innovation. A third article suggests new ways to keep overworked employees engaged and productive in an economy struggling to recover from global recession.