In this ‘Power Productivity’ series, we are looking at ways that you can progress easily in your writing and manage your environment as much as possible to help propel you forwards.  This final strategy helps you to control time leaks.

The best way to become ‘Power Productive’ is to develop ways of cutting off time drains before they eat into your productive time.  For example – phone call comes in and it’s from someone who is a talker.  Rather than inwardly groan as you know that you’ll still be on the phone 20 minutes later, when they announce themselves, say to them in a really nice voice “Hi – I’m glad you caught me, I’m off into a meeting in 5 minutes” which will force them to focus on the reason they called you and they get to the point.  If they do start to waffle, you have a polite way to interrupt them and end the call by saying that your meeting is starting or your client has arrived.

Another time drain involves all those meetings and events that you don’t want to go to or aren’t very useful but you find it hard to say ‘no’ when asked.  If someone invites you to an event and you don’t really fancy it or are not sure if it will benefit you, just tell them you will check your diary and get back to them which gives you breathing space to make a decision about your attendance in your own time rather than signing up to something that will be a waste of your time.  Putting a bit of distance between the request and your answer allows you to consider if the occasion is going to take you toward your goal or away from them. Our time is the most precious thing we have and it devalues us when we waste it, so don’t just say ‘yes’ automatically if we are asked to attend something.  By all means have fun, go to events that you want to with friends that are not going to move your career or writing goals forward, by doing this you are attending to your personal relationships area from your ‘Wheel of Life’ (remember strategy No 2?), but just don’t end up at those events that you really don’t want to be at just because you felt it impolite to say “No”.

Become a home run hitter – hit those balls out of the park – right back at them!  If you are asked a question and you know someone else who can answer it better than you, tell the person to ask (name).  If you are asked something that you need to deal with but you can’t right now, tell them when you will do it so they are not waiting indefinitely and they know when they can expect a resolve.  This keeps you in control of your time rather than constantly reacting to events.

We all know people who are time drains when they ask you repeatedly for the same information.  In the past I have had people constantly asking me for a certain person’s telephone number as they know I’ll have it to hand, or to tell them how to do something (like mail merge) every time they had to do it.  I plugged this time drain by saying to the number request the second time it was requested “Write this number down so you can store it in your phone as you seem to need this number a lot”.  To the mail merge instruction request, I said “Of course I’ll take you through mail merge but this time you can make notes so that in future you can follow your notes to complete the job”  After that it would be a bit embarrassing for them to have to ask you again and if they do then you have an easy way to deflect them if you cannot help when they ask as you can say “this is why I showed you how because I can’t help you right now, I have to complete this” and you can get them to wait until you are available.

Placing a high value on your time will ensure that there is enough of it left for you when you need to find the time to do some writing or planning out your next book.  Remember, time is a finite commodity – we cannot make more if we waste it.