How to Stop Being Lazy and Get More Done

How to Stop Being Lazy and Get More Done Article by Paul BoneaHave you everhad to do a task with a long timeline, but you couldnt muster the will to complete it until 0.2 seconds before it welches due?Of course you have at least once. You wouldnt be human otherwise.And even if thetimeline were shorter,you still would have been able to complete the task on time, right? Why is that?At first glance, you might say Procrastination, duh But heres an alternative explanation that wont make you feel as bad.The phenomenon is called Parkinsons law, which states that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.The first person to observe and write about this phenomenon extensively was Cyril Parkinson, a British naval historian and public administration specialist. He noticed that the more time bureaucrats were given for a task, the longer it took them complete it. Shorten the allocated time, and things moved quickly again.We procrastinate for a wide variety of reasons, such as fear or simple laziness. However, theres also an evolutionary motivation behind laziness. Our ancestors lived in a world where food sources were nowhere near as plentiful as today. As such, they conserved energy for important tasks such as hunting, foraging, exploration, building, and so on. If an ancestor of ours wasted his energy on useless tasks, he wouldnt have been able to cope with the hardships of food gathering. So, in a counterintuitive evolutionary twist, laziness has proven to be an important trait in keeping our species alive.Which brings us back to Parkinsons law. Our biology urges us not to spend energy on a task that isnt (yet) important to our survival. So, we postpone, delay, avoid, create excuses, and so on.But then, the deadline comes. It pulls you out of idleness and gives you a sense of urgency. Deep down, you know that missing the deadline is bad for your survival, because it can cost you at leastyour work reputation,if not y our job, income, valuable assets, friendships, and relationships. This fear pushes you to do an all-nighter to schliff a project.However, there is a way to use Parkinsons law to send yourself into a mig warm survival mode where you actually get stuff done without lazing about (too much). How to Use Parkinsons Law 1. Get Used to Setting DeadlinesGiving yourself time constraints will force you to restructure work tasks so they can fit intoyour schedule.More complex projects and tasks with distant deadlines lull you intoa false sense of security. The work should be done now, but not now now. In cases such as this, breaking the main task down into smaller bits and assigning a deadline for each will make the components of the project feel more immediate, thereby giving you a sense of urgency that motivates you to complete the task.Deadlines can also help you work less or at leastspend less of your time at the office. Its easy to treat the 5 p.m. threshold as more of a guideline than a r ule, working past it in order to finish tasks you postponed throughout the day. The thing is, you almost always know when postponing the task will keep you overtime, and yet you are fine with it. Thats because you dont feel you lose anything by staying longer at office, which brings us to the next point. 2. What Do You Lose If You Dont Respect the Deadline?The easiest way to make yourself respect a time limit is to give yourself something to lose if you dont stick to it. Think about what you are missing out on by lingering at the office.If you came home earlier, you could watch a movie with your partner, relax in the kitchen while cooking your favorite dish, or work on that side project of yours. Instead, youre wasting all these opportunities by doing last-minute work you could have done earlier in the day.A good way to keep yourself to a time constraint is to schedule something else right aftereach deadline you set. For instance, if you want to be sure youll finish sending a bunch of emails by 6 p.m., schedule a date at 630 or 7. Now, you have real skin in the game. 3. Learn How to Create Reasonable DeadlinesThere are really only two reasons why you might want to use Parkinsons lawCut down on lost hours in which you could be doing something else.Stop feeling guilty and stressed about wasting time.When first applying the rule, you might feel overzealous and set yourself impossibly tight deadlines in an effort to work faster. This doesnt work. Instead, youll just end up giving yourself even more stress as you rush to meet the time limit. Not only that, but the quality ofyour work will drop, too.According to a study by Dan Ariely, a behavioral economics professor,self-imposed deadlines are effective, but people have difficulty properly optimizing them.Arielysexperiment involved groups of students submitting three papers over the course of a semester. The free choice group could choose their own submission deadlines. The control group, however, had to hand in the ir papers at a time set by the professor. Compared to the control group, the free choice students enjoyed their task less, and their papers had more errors.The point of the deadline isnt to enter a competition with the clock, but to cut down on stress and wasted time. If a task realistically requires six hours of work, dont try to do it in five. If you can complete it in seven hours, thats awesome. That extra hour isnt wasted time, but a buffer period for unexpected events such as an urgent phone call, a loss of concentration, or even just a short period of relaxation.Parkinsons law can help you cut down on some of the wasted time and stress of your life as long as youkeep the following in mind whenever applying the lawAlways have a deadline.What do you lose if you cant keep the deadline?Is the deadline realistic?And one other thing Be gentle with yourself. See the time limit as a tool to help you out, not a race to be won.A version of this article originally appeared onSUCCESS.com .

Empowering Employees to Make Decisions

Empowering Employees to Make DecisionsEmpowering Employees to Make DecisionsEmpowerment is a panacea for many organization illswhen empowerment is implemented with care. People in organizations say they want empowermentand often, they mean it when they say it. Managers say they want employee empowermentand often, they mean it, too. Organizations that are committed to the ongoing growth of their employeesrecognize employee empowerment as one of their most important strategic methods to motivate employees. Employee empowerment is also a key strategy to enable people who have the need, the answers, and the knowledge, to make decisions about how to best serve customers. If employee empowerment is such a great tool and strategy for accomplishing work, customer service, and employee motivation, how come employee empowerment is so rarely implemented effectively? Here are the top ten reasons why employee empowerment fails. Why Employee Empowerment Fails Managers pay lip service to employ ee empowerment, but do not really believe in its power. As with all management and geschftlicher umgang buzzwords, employee empowerment can seem like a good thing to do. After all, well-respected management books and consultants recommend that you empower employees. When you empower employees, they grow their skills and your organization benefits from their empowerment. Right. Employees know when you are serious about employee empowerment and when you understand and walk your talk. Half-hearted or unbelievable employee empowerment efforts will fail. Managers Dont Understand the Concept of Employee Empowerment Managers dont really understand what employee empowerment means. They have a vague notion that employee empowerment means you start a few teams that address workplace employee morale or safety issues. You ask people what they think about something at a meeting. You allow employees to help plan the company picnic. Wrong. Employee empowerment is a philosophy or strategy that enab les people to make decisions about how to do their jobs. Managers Fail to Set Boundaries for Empowered Employees Managers fail to establish boundaries for employee empowerment. In your absence, what decisions can be made by staff members? What decisions can employees make day-by-day that they do not need to have permission or oversight to make? These boundaries must be defined or employee empowerment efforts fail. Managers Micromanage Empowered Employees Managers have defined the decision-making authority and boundaries with staff, but then micromanage the work of employees. This is usually because managers dont trust staff to make good decisions. Staff members know this and either craftily make decisions on their own and hide their results, or they come to you for everything because they dont know what they really can control. One HR manager in a small manufacturing company added ten days to the company hiring process because he required that his HR staff obtain his signature at ce rtain milestones during the hiring process. The paperwork was buried on his desk for days, but staff did not proceed without his signature. His lack of trust made employee empowerment a joke. Do employees make mistakes? Certainly, and they also correct mistakes and learn from them, but fooling them about their boundaries is worse. Managers Second Guess Empowered Employee Decisions You second guess the decisions of employees you have given the authority to make a decision. You can help staff make good decisions by coaching, training, and providing necessary information. You can even model good decision making, But, what you cannot do, unless a serious complication will result, is undermine or change the decision you had empowered a staff person to make. Teach the employee to make a better decision next time. But dont undermine their faith in their personal competence and in your trust, support, and approbation. You discourage employee empowerment for the future. Managers Fail to Prov ide a Strategic Framework Managers need to provide growth and challenging opportunities and goals that employees can aim for and achieve. Failure to provide a strategic framework, in which decisions have a compass and success measurements, imperils the opportunity for empowered behavior. Employees need direction to know how to practice empowerment. Managers Fail to Provide Access to Needed Information If managers fail to provide the information and access to information, training, and learning opportunities needed for staff to make good decisions, dont complain when employee empowerment efforts fall short. The organization has the responsibility to create a work environment that helps foster the ability and desire of employees to act in empowered ways. Information is the key to successful employee empowerment. Managers Abdicate Responsibility for Decisions Managers abdicate all responsibility and accountability for decision making. When reporting staff is blamed or punished for fail ures, mistakes, and less than spitze results, your employees will flee from employee empowerment. Or, theyll publicly identify reasons why failure was your fault, or his fault, or the other teams fault. Fail to support decisions publicly and stand behind your employees and makes staff feel deserted. You can make employee empowerment fail in sixty seconds. This is absolutely guaranteed. Managers Fail to Remove Barriers Allow barriers to impede the ability of staff members to practice empowered behavior. The work organization has the responsibility to remove barriers that limit the ability of staff to act in empowered ways. These barriers can include time, tools, training, access to meetings and teams, financial resources, support from other staff members, and effective coaching. Employees Want Praise, Recognition, and Compensation When employees feel under-compensated, under-titled for the responsibilities they take on, under-noticed, under-praised, and under-appreciated, dont expect results from employee empowerment. Employees must feel that their basic needs are met for employees to give you their discretionary energy, the extra effort that people voluntarily invest in work. If you dole out more responsibility than their positions should require and cause employees to feel overworked or underpaid for the work expected, you need to make adjustments. People want empowerment, but they dont want you to take advantage of them, nor do they want to feel as if the organization is taking advantage of them. Ensure that the responsibilities match the job, that the person is doing the job in the job descriptionor change it. Fail to Educate Employees About What Empowerment Really Means Employees often believe that someone, usually the manager, has to bestow employee empowerment upon the people who report to him. Consequently, the reporting staff members wait for the bestowing of empowerment, and the manager asks why people wont act in empowered ways. You need to educate y our employees about what empowerment really means. Educate them also about unterstellung ten ways in which managers undermine employee empowerment. Youre smart to ask them to let you know if you exhibit any of these ten behaviors that impede their empowerment. Think about employee empowerment, not as something a manager bestows on employees, but rather as a philosophy and a strategy to help people develop their talents, skills, and decision-making competency. This growth helps employees feel competent, capable, and successful. Competent, capable, successful people best serve your organization. Avoid these ten employee empowerment traps. Dont let employee empowerment fail in your organization. Employee empowerment is so marvelous when it succeeds.