How to Start Your Week with a Calm Mind

Ask any teacher how they spend their weekends and they'll tell you- grading papers and prepping for upcoming classes.  I once asked a friend in the software industry how he prepares for a week and he said with a shrug of his shoulders, "I guess I just show up on Monday and go to work."  

Basically, he had no idea what I was really asking.

Most leaders I know have a similar experience as teachers- they don't just show up on Monday for work.  Rather, they prepare the night before in order to start the week with a calm mind.  

A calm mind is what some call a "mind like water", i.e. a mindset that is perfectly prepared for whatever comes its way.  A calm mind also comes as a result of preparation for the week ahead.  

As Peter says in his first letter, "Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming."  While I don't think that Peter was typing this out on his iPhone, he does remind us to be people who take preparation seriously. 

A prepared leader is one who follows productivity routines.  

According to Elizabeth Grace Saunders in a recent HBR interview, "You want to have routines in place. So I'm a huge advocate of strengthening simple routines. Because on a day to day basis, we're stressed, we're overwhelmed. We can't think about, what's our priority, or what's the best thing to do? I need to have a routine in place."

I suggest starting the week the day before by taking time to review the following:

• What did you accomplish last week?
• What did you not accomplish in the past week?
• What do you need to accomplish in the coming week?

By looking at these three questions, you'll begin the week with poise and calm.  Not a bad way to kick things off.

How do you prepare for your week?

Photo courtesy of HB

How to Give Someone Feedback in Five Minutes or Less

Too many organizations are lousy at giving feedback.  They wait until the end of the year to sit you down and give you a form which allocates a score to how the entire year went.  

Imagine if we applied this same concept to marriage or parenting or friendship?  I can just picture my wife saying one night over dinner, "Honey, here's your review for the month of May.  I've scored you a 7 out of 10 because you were late for dinner three times.  You can do better!"  

Not exactly a motivational speech.  Chris Farley would not approve.

The ultimate point of feedback is to improve future behavior.  You can't change the past so give that up immediately.  Feedback is future oriented.

The guys at Manager Tools are the best when it comes to training folks to give feedback.  The best part is that you can give people feedback in less than five minutes.  Here are some key points before we add on the practical tips for delivering feedback:

1. People crave feedback.
2. Feedback is a normal part of work and life.
3. Feedback is traditionally seen as negative.  It can just as easily be positive.
4. Both positive and negative feedback are important.
5. Feedback is great for the employee but even better for the supervisor.
6. Feedback is meant to be given over time rather than in one fell swoop.
7. Continual feedback can transform an organization.
8. Feedback is best given close to when the behavior occurred.
9. Feedback is best given face to face.

Now let's look at two forms of feedback.  First to positive feedback and how you can deliver it:

Supervisor: Hey Chip can I give you some feedback?

Chip: Sure.

Supervisor: When you started yesterday's meeting on time, it told the group that we were about to do something important. Thanks for that.

Chip: No problem, it turned out to be a good meeting.

This is doable right?  The best part is that it only takes a second.  You can also do this while walking down the hallway or in between conversations.

Now on to negative feedback which is just as important.

Supervisor: Hey Chip can I give you some feedback?

Chip: Sure.

Supervisor: When yesterday's meeting went an hour overtime, it really slowed everyone's productivity.  I know that Shelley had to reschedule an appointment as a result.  Can you do that differently next time?

Chip: I can do that.  Sorry I guess time got away from me.

In both positive and negative feedback, the interchange is brief and honest.  Both the supervisor and the team member accomplish what they need to get done.  Most importantly, future behavior is more likely to change for the better.  

When was the last time that you received helpful feedback? 

Photo courtesy of JE.

5 Things to Avoid First Thing in the Morning

The morning is a critical time of day.  You're either spent or totally focused.  You love it or loathe it.  Wherever you are in the spectrum, we can all agree that mornings are important.  

For productivity-minded folks, the morning hours are vital to getting the most out of a day.

Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening. -Gandhi

So how should you begin?  That's a loaded question for sure.  To help in the process, we might want to consider listing a few actions that are not helpful at the start of your day.  These include:

1. Shopping- shopping is necessary but try and avoid it first thing in the morning.  Shopping moves our hearts towards objects rather than towards the day ahead of us and the people we serve.  
2. Negative reading- whatever is "negative" in your book, try and avoid it.  This could include dark literature or even current events.
3. News- let's face it: the news can be depressing.  Bad stories sell papers but that doesn't mean that you have to start your day with it.
4. Email- I think that email needs to be addressed early in the day but not necessarily first thing.  Email sucks you in to work rather than keeping your mind clear and focused on getting grounded to begin your day.
5. Too much talking- journaling is very useful as a day starter but don't do all of the talking.  Make sure to allow some time to just sit and listen: to God, nature, the stirrings inside of your own heart.

What types of activities do you avoid at the start of your day?

Photo courtesy of KS 

How a Shift to Android Improved my Productivity

When was the last time that you made a major change in your workflow that resulted in a dramatic increase in productivity?  

I love gadgets.  I can still remember my first PalmPilot and subsequent Palm Treo devices.  When the iPhone first came out, I jumped in and have owned the iPhone 3G, 4, 4s and 5.  All have been great and have become important tools in my productivity toolbox.  

Something changed in the past several months.  I got bored with my iPhone.  It's built with precision craftsmanship, works fairly well and is stunningly beautiful.  When I had the iPhone 5 for a week, the best comparison I could make was to the latest and greatest … Toyota Camry.

Before you accuse me of blasphemy, let me explain.

My brother has a Camry.  It's comfortable and offers a smooth ride.  The gas mileage is good enough.  With each new iteration, it improves over the previous model.  The only problem with a Camry is that it's, um, boring.  

Never heard a cute girl compliment a guy on his choice of a Camry over say, a Corvette or Jeep.  Camrys (and I've owned one) communicate something different.  They say, "I'm safe," or "I'm refined" or even "I'm vanilla".

So I got bored and studied how I could tweak my experience.  I learned that you can do something called "jailbreaking" which enables your iPhone to do amazing tricks and exciting actions.  Sure, I told myself, it voids the warranty but what's the worse that could happen?  

My iPhone froze up, that's what.

So I switched it back to its original mode. Until I missed the jailbroken features and re-jailbroke it two days later.  I loved the fact that I could send a text from the lock screen or configure my screen exactly the way that I wanted.

Freedom was mine.  That is, of course, until Apple updated the OS and the jailbreak window was closed. Never again would an iPhone user be able to modify, tweak and customize his experience within the Camry walls of Apple.  

Like a curious traveler, I considered my options.  I could stay with my iPhone.  After all, don't all of the cool kids have them?  Or, I could venture out and begin again within the parameters of a new platform.  

The new Blackberry wasn't out yet.  Windows Phone seemed destined to fail within a year's time. I was left with Android, a platform that I had previously bemoaned as clunky and cheap.

Until I actually tried one for a period of time.  My brother has a Google Nexus 4 and really liked it so I decided to give it a try.  Here are my results:

WHAT I LIKE

Google Play Store: While the Apple App Store probably has a better quality of apps, nearly every app that I used to run on my iPhone is available on Android.  Nozbe, Dropbox, Evernote, etc.  Better yet, the experience of buying an app via the Android App Store is much better, allowing you to purchase something online which is later downloaded to your phone.  Smooth and easy.  Do I miss a few apps that are only available on my iPhone?  Sure but not that much and I've been able to find replacement apps that work just as well.

Software: I can't fully communicate how nice it is to have the freedom to change whatever I want about how I use my phone.  Different lock screen?  Yup. Change the way your apps behave?  Sure.  Modify how your phone allocates battery power?  No problem.  Have apps work together seamlessly so that you can get more done on the fly?  Absolutely.  Android, in my opinion, has caught up to Apple's iOS platform, at least in terms of how the OS works.  I love it.

Google Simplicity: When I used an iPhone, I would sync my calendar app (and I've tried just about all of them) with Google Calendar.  Unfortunately, try as I might, I would end up with multiple events repeating themselves. There's nothing more stupid than four events on your calendar that say "Budget Meeting", all showing up at the same time.  With my Android phone, the sync power to Google products (like Calendar) is totally clean.  Only one Budget Meeting event will show up which  keeps my schedule clean and doesn't frustrate me in the middle of a day.

WHAT I MISS

The hardware of an Apple product is tough to rival.  The HTC One is probably a worthy competitor but the other top-flight units have a way to go.  My Google Nexus 4 is not particularly noteworthy when it comes to hardware.  The camera is average as best.  The buttons are pedestrian.  No LTE is a bummer.  Many of the Twitter apps for Android have a long way to go.  

HOW ANDROID BOOSTS MY PRODUCTIVITY

Any gadget should help you get things done.  Sure, each is fun in its own way but if it doesn't help you to do your work, it could be fodder for the paperweight drawer.  For me, Android is lots of fun.  As someone who likes to tweak and customize my experience, it's perfect.  I'm willing to make some hardware compromises in order to get more done.  Android is less of an experience of in-app/out-of-app productivity and more of doing what you need to do while using multiple apps.  I feel as if I'm using a more full-bodied computer and it's doing what I want it to do instead of what the company tells me that I should do with it.  

That's a gadget that I look forward to using today and for months to come.  

Question: How is your smartphone a help/hindrance to your productivity?

Photo courtesy of AC

Five Things to do on a Friday

Fridays are pretty great. We look forward to them. They mark the end of either drudgery or vocation during the week. I don't know about you but I find the mere existence of Friday makes Monday through Thursday a bit more tolerable.

Thanks be to God for inventing Fridays. Really good stuff there.

From a productivity and spirituality perspective, Fridays are also useful insofar as you can tie a ribbon on your week. When you do that, the weekend and the following week go better. Here are five simple things you can do to end your week on a high note:

1. Do a weekly review. Remember the last time you did a true GTD weekly review? If it's been a while, now is the time to get quiet and review your project list and plan for the next week.

2. Find one spiritual reading for the weekend. Whether it's a New Testament reading or something from Relevant Magazine, find something to save and then get alone with it later in the weekend.

3. Plan an outdoor activity. When was the last time that you actually researched an outdoor activity?

4. Clean up your workspace. There is nothing better than to start your week on Monday having cleaned it up on Friday.

5. Surprise your loved ones. You can pick up flowers for your wife, rent a silly movie for the kids or buy a bunch of legos for your son (or yourself). People like surprises and Fridays are perfect for delighting those you love with something out of the ordinary.

So how will you use your Friday?