Do you use time to your best advantage?
Stop worrying about wasting time and start increasing your productivity
By Michael Feuer
June 2006
When I was in elementary school, on every report card there was a box that was checked yes or no to indicate whether “student uses time to best advantage.” Unfortunately, as a 10-year old, I didn’t appreciate the significance of this measurement.
Like most of us, I have spent much of my business career time-stressed. But over the years, I have employed a bit of discipline, combined with a modicum of creativity to overcome my impatience over wasted time and become more productive.
Instead of complaining to anyone and everyone about things that waste my time, I’ve taken proactive steps to increase my productivity. As an added bonus, I can also ameliorate certain unpleasant experiences ranging from enduring a dentist appointment to sitting through a skull-numbing event.
What’s my Holy Grail answer to unleash you from lamenting the loss of every second of down time? It starts with a mental agenda. Deep in left side of the brain, create your own “my agenda” folder, much like the folders we all use on our computers. In the folder, mentally build a list of things that you must do (such as preparing a report or, in my case, writing my monthly column). If at first you’re not comfortable with this mental storage process, write your agenda on an index card and keep it with you.
Case in point: you’re sitting in the dentist’s chair as the hygienist fires irrelevant questions at you in between the frequent one-word command of “Rinse.” Given the natural apprehension of being at the dentist and having someone fussing in your mouth, you immediately launch your cerebral to-do list.
Click on the personal mental agenda you previously etched in your memory. Now choose one of the specific items you’ve stored away, and organize the material in your head. Utilizing both visual imagery and an interior soliloquy, begin preparing your mental work product, much as you would do if at your computer or with pen in hand. Before you know it, the unpleasantness of the event from which you have taken a mental hiatus has concluded.
After the hygienist removes that antiseptic-smelling plastic bib and launches into the obligatory diatribe about advanced flossing techniques, you must move quickly to capture the fruits of your thought-processing session. I recommend, again, carrying index cards or dictating, as I do, into a digital recorder.
In a pinch you can always download by writing on the palm of your hand, preferably in nonindelible ink. Sometimes, under dire straits, I have been known to write on my shirt cuff, but I limit this only to my greatest ideas. After disciplining yourself and overcoming a few false starts, this mental regimen will become a way of life.
Beware, however, as there are some downsides if done incorrectly. To the casual observer, you may appear catatonic at times, and that can be disconcerting as well as disruptive to all around you, particularly in long lines at movies and the supermarket. Moving your lips while mentally dictating your thoughts is also risky for obvious reasons. (Visualize a muscular stranger standing next to you asking, “You talkin’ to me?”) On the plus side, this technique can be employed virtually anywhere when you elect to tune out and turn on.
So what is the business application to what I have just recommended?
Garden-variety daydreaming and fantasizing certainly have their time and place, however this new productivity tool disciplines you to translate your thoughts and ideas into actionable realities that can accomplish objectives.
After six months of using these mental gymnastics, you will have unleashed your creativity and dramatically expanded your capabilities. You’ll become more productive, work fewer hours per week sitting behind a desk and extend your abilities as a true mobile executive. You’ll think more and worry less about delays. Eventually, your brain will hard-wire itself to go immediately from stand-by mode to real-time creating.
Plus, you will be entitled to check yes on that time-management box on your report card.
Michael Feuer is co-founder of OfficeMax, which he started in 1988 with one store and $20,000 of his own money, along with a then-partner and group of private investors. During 16 years as CEO, he grew the company to almost 1,000 stores with sales approximating $5 billion before selling it in 2003 to Boise Cascade Corp. In 2004, Feuer launched another startup, Max-Ventures, a venture capital operating firm that focuses on buying control and/or making substantial investments in retail-oriented businesses. Reach Feuer with comments at mfeuer@max-ventures.com.
