How They Do It
Five influential professionals recently shared how they manage personal productivity.
David Allen wrote the popular book, Getting Things Done, and he has a new book out, Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life.
What routines have you established in order to manage your time effectively?
My primary success habit is a once-a-week review of all outstanding projects, actions, waiting-for’s; and a thorough look at every one of my upcoming calendared items. This “hard wires” my intuition so that as I move through work and life...I make better judgments about my activities, commitments, and responses.
How do you stay motivated and engaged?
I ensure that I’m consistently defining and completing actions toward meaningful outcomes, and that those outcomes are aligned toward significant things I want to accomplish and experience. It’s also quite motivating to be doing work that’s obviously providing great value for many people....
Catherine McCarthy is coauthor of The Way We're Working Isn't Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance due out in May. She is chief operating officer at The Energy Project. She was an All-American lacrosse player and holds a PhD in clinical psychology.
What routines have you established in order to manage your time effectively?
The work that we do at The Energy Project revolves around the concept that we must learn to more effectively manage our energy—not our time—because time is finite. Energy, on the other hand, can be systematically renewed and expanded by adopting certain rituals. If you can increase the amount of energy you have available to you, you will be able to get more done, in less time, at a higher level of engagement and a greater level of satisfaction. Human beings are complex and run on four sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy....
Some examples of rituals that I use to better manage my energy include taking a break every 90–120 minutes to eat something, drink something, move, or take a few deep breaths to refuel my physical energy. Emotionally, I make sure that I do something every day...that makes me feel happy to make sure that I am nurturing the kind of emotions that will serve me and others well. Mentally, I try to have a period of silence a couple of times a day. This helps to improve my focus and makes me more effective. None of these activities take more than a few minutes and they help to keep me energized with the right quantity, quality, and focus of energy.
How do you stay motivated and engaged?
When you manage your energy well, it is much easier to stay motivated.... When you feel that you are running on fumes, it is hard to be the kind of person that you want to be. I also know from my own personal experiences and from delivering our curriculum to thousands of people...that people who stay connected to what matters most to them, live in alignment with the values that they most believe in, and find ways to serve a cause greater than themselves are more engaged than others. We believe these individuals are tapping into the energy of the human spirit....
Mario Denton is an industrial psychologist and chief executive officer of Strong Message, a consulting firm in South Africa.
What routines have you established in order to manage your time effectively?
Start where you are, visualize it, make a map, write it down, plan it out. Remember that most urgencies are simply other people’s priorities. I like the statement from Stephen Covey: “Time management is really a misnomer—the challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves.”
How do you stay motivated and engaged?
Keep a journal of your hopes, dreams, goals, and accomplishments. If your life is worth living, it’s worth writing down.
Larry McAtee serves on the Oklahoma City Council. He is president of the consulting firm Ironsharpeners, Inc. And he holds a master's degree from New York University Graduate School of Business Administration.
What routines have you established in order to manage your time effectively?
I have gone from a paper schedule outlining activities by day and hour to a Blackberry that does the same function electronically. Using a simple priority format of God, family, city council duties, consulting engagements, and ministry, I schedule as far in advance as possible. This allows me to focus on balancing my actions as best as possible.
How do you stay motivated and engaged?
To keep from becoming distracted or discouraged, I try to keep my focus on accomplishing my life goal. That goal is to have God say when the end comes, “well done my good and faithful child.” When upon a review of where I am…I 
realize I am off course, it is then that I have to admit it, quit it, and get back on the right path.
Mayor Mick Cornett spent 20 years in local television and launched his video production business before becoming Oklahoma City's mayor in 2004. He has presided over the arrival of the NBA in Oklahoma City and several renovation and development projects.
What routines have you established in order to manage your time effectively?
Get up early, stay organized, and surround yourself with really good people.
How do you stay motivated and engaged?
I love what I do. I try to rehearse in my mind my reaction to every possible scenario.
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I read David Allen's book, "Getting Things Done," exactly one year ago. And it has really helped me organize my thoughts, my work, and plan projects. My biggest takeaway was focusing on Next Actions: real, tangible things you can do to move a project forward. When there are no more Next Actions, then the project is done!
Posted by Robert Greenlaw, 07/05/2010 9:07am (2 years ago)
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