If
you’re like most you’re dreading your first day back after
the holidays. Your to-do list and bursting-at-the-(cyber)seams in-box
loom large. Workplace performance expert Jason Womack explains how to
get a handle on both—and maybe even find the wherewithal to finally
change your life.

Now that the presents have
been unwrapped and the halls have been undecked, it’s back to the daily
grind. And while you’d love to feel energized and excited about jumping
into 2012, instead you’re weighed down with dread. You know the second
you step foot in your office you’ll be hit with 20+ tasks to add to your
to-do list and an inbox full of e-mails begging for an immediate
response. You’ll start January 2 feeling overwhelmed and incapable of
getting everything done—and 2012 will become another year of wishing
things were different.

 
        It’s true, says Jason Womack: For too many of us, feeling
anxious and overwhelmed has become the new normal. But 2012 can be the
year you finally get a handle on your to-do list and start working—and
living—at your best.

 
        “Most of your dread doesn’t come from the work itself—it comes
from how you think about the work,” says Womack, a workplace performance
expert, executive coach, and author of the new book Your Best Just Got Better:
Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More
(Wiley, February 2012, ISBN: 978-1-118-12198-6, $24.95). “The
psychological weight of unfinished tasks and unmade decisions is huge.
There is a constant feeling of pressure to do more with less. You can’t
change that reality…but you can make peace with it.”

 
        Womack’s book is packed with strategies, tactics, tools, and
processes to help readers consistently and incrementally improve their
performance at work. It teaches the fundamentals of workflow and human
performance and spells out how to get more done, on time, with fewer
resources, and with less stress. But more than that, it provides
brilliant insights into why we tend to do what we’ve always done—and how
we can break out of the patterns that
hold us back.

          “The first step to changing the way you get things done is to accept that you’re never going to get it
all
done,” says Womack. “You’ll always be updating your to-do list by
crossing off completed tasks and adding new ones…and that’s okay. When
you improve the way you approach the things you need to get done, both
on the job and off, you’ll stop wishing things were different and start
really making new things possible.”

 
        Read on to learn more about the essential good habits you can
create in 2012 and make it your most productive year yet.

Purge and unsubscribe.
When
Womack suggests reducing your psychological burden, in some cases that
means reducing your literal burden. Start 2012 by deleting and recycling
to make room for the “new” of the new year. Too many people let a
backlog (paper AND digital information) pile up over the last six weeks
of the year.

“Get
rid of everything you can and reduce what might be coming in,” advises
Womack. “Unsubscribe from e-mail newsletters, magazines,
book-of-the-month clubs, perhaps even the ad-hoc committees you’ve
joined recently. Try the ‘unsubscription’ for three months; at the end
of those 12 weeks, you can re-up if you want to!”

Block out your time and prioritize.

Ask yourself this:
How much time do I really spend each day clicking through e-mails and making my to-do list?

The answer is probably a lot. When you spend your day making giant to-do
lists or flagging “urgent” e-mails, you’ll never get any real work
done. Instead look at your day and figure out where you have blocks of
time to really focus and engage on what needs to be done.

Time
blocking and prioritization are two important keys to daily
productivity, says Womack. Look at your to-do list, figure out where you
have blocks of time to act on those items, and then prioritize. “I keep
my defined ‘work’ actions to 15 to 30 minutes each,” he says. “These
are the ‘chunks’ of time I can use to stay focused, minimize
interruptions, and work effectively.”

On
that first day back after vacation, you might also designate specific
“Interrupt Me” times during the day for the first couple of weeks of the
year. This lets people know that you’ll be working “head down” for
larger blocks of the day and encourages them to “think-bunch-interrupt”
so you get more done at once, instead of getting interrupted multiple
times per day.

Change how you manage e-mail.
The
moment you click on your inbox, your focus goes and your stress grows,
as you proceed to delete, respond, forward, and file the messages you
find there. You see names and subject lines and suddenly your mind
starts racing; all you can think of are the latest projects, the
“loudest” issues, and the high-priority work that shows up. If you’re
not careful, all you’ll do all day is manage your e-mail.

Rather
than simply flag e-mails that require action, use the subject lines to
catalog and organize them, suggests Womack. For example, you might put
“Follow-up Call” in the subject line of an e-mail about a meeting you
just had with a client. Also, don’t look at your e-mail unless you have a
block of time to devote to prioritizing them and responding to them.
When you are going through your e-mail, use subject lines to catalog
them and organize them so that you’ll easily be
able to go back to less urgent e-mails later on.

Take technology shortcuts.

Womack writes about a client of his who easily wasted over three hours a
week organizing her e-mails into the 300+ folders she had down the
left-hand column of her Microsoft Outlook. And those three hours didn’t
include the time she knew she’d have to spend catching up—putting most
of her 7,000 inbox e-mails in those folders! Womack shared with his
client a few specific features (rules and search folders) of Microsoft
Outlook that would enable her to cut down considerably the
time she spent organizing her e-mails.

“My client now spends
less than an hour a week filing her messages,” says Womack. “And while
an e-mail system is what worked for her, practically every kind of
software you use daily has tricks and shortcuts that once implemented
could save you a lot of time. Sit down with those who can teach you more
about these systems. The more you fully understand the tools you use
the easier it will be to learn even more about their features and how to
use them to your advantage.”

Break inertia.
Ever
watch a freight train start to move? That first forward jolt takes the
most energy; keeping the train rolling is much easier. Do some small
things to get rolling on getting caught up at the beginning of the year.
Then pace yourself. You’ll probably find it’s much easier to keep
rolling along at a comfortable clip.

“We
build up such a sense of dread that what we have to do seems
insurmountable,” explains Womack. “Once you get started with something
small and manageable, you almost always realize ‘Hey, this isn’t so
tough after all.’ And soon you find that you’re making real progress—and
it feels good.”

Keep your Droid, iPhone and BlackBerry out of bed.
Womack
writes about a client who listed “Check e-mail on Blackberry (in bed)”
as part of his daily morning routine. Note that he didn’t do anything
about those e-mails while still in bed. He waited until he was commuting
to work (he had a 40-minute train ride to the office each day) to start
taking action. Then, he said, he rushed through his morning worrying
about the e-mails he had read in bed.

“Together, he and I
designed a five-day experiment during which period he would leave his
mobile device in another room and use an alarm clock to wake up instead
of his phone,” says Womack. “He would shower, dress, eat breakfast, and
then
check e-mail on his train ride to work. Initially, he expressed concern
that he might miss the ‘thinking about what I have to think about’ time
he had built in to the early part of the day, but he was willing to give
the experiment a try.

“When
I called him the following week, he had good news,” Womack continues.
“The experiment had worked. He was less stressed and was using his
morning more productively. This change in his routine gave him a higher
quality of life with less stress and increased productivity—one he
didn’t know was possible without falling behind in his work.”

Always be prepared for “bonus time.”
This
is a great strategy for increasing productivity throughout the year,
but it will be especially helpful in the days following your holiday
vacation (or any break). Bring small chunks of work with you wherever
you go. Then, while waiting for a meeting to start or for a delayed
flight to depart—Womack calls these unexpected blocks of free time
“bonus time”—you’ll be able to reply to an e-mail or make a phone call.
In other instances, you might have enough time to review
materials for another meeting or project you are working on. If you’re
prepared, you can also confirm appointments, draft responses, or map out
a project outline.

“I can promise you that sometime during the next month,
someone is going to arrive late for a meeting with you, cancel
a meeting, or otherwise keep you waiting,” says Womack. “When that
inevitably happens, you can look over your to-do list and pick
something—anything—to work on.”

Reduce meeting time lengths.

If meetings at your organization are normally given a 60-minute time
length, start giving them a 45-minute time length. You’ll find that what
you get done in 60 minutes you can also achieve in 45 minutes. You’ll
also gain 15 extra minutes for each meeting you have.

“Usually,
we fill the time we expect to fill,” says Womack. “Give yourself less
time and you’ll get it done in less time. The shorter time frame really
gets you focused. All that extra time will really add up and provide you
with more time to work toward your goals.”

Figure out what distracts you.

It can be extremely helpful to discern exactly what it is that gets in
the way of your focus. Identify what is blocking your ability to give
all of your attention to what needs your attention. Is it the constant
ding of e-mails popping up in your inbox? Is it employees or colleagues
who need “just a minute” of your time? Once you have this inventory, you
can begin to make subtle changes so that you wind up getting more done,
in less time, at a higher level of quality.

“I
look for what I call the ‘big two’ when I’m coaching clients,” says
Womack. “Together we uncover just two common interruptions or
distractions that are getting in the way of their getting more important
work done each day. My goal is to minimize the kinds of distractions in
my clients’ work world that can easily pull them away from doing the
meaningful, important, prioritized work they need to get done.”

Divide your projects into small, manageable pieces.


Take one step at a time and don’t worry about reaching the ultimate
goal. Make use of small chunks of time. In fact, a great way to approach
this is to break the yearly goals down into quarterly goals. Now that
you’re back, there are X number of weeks left in the first quarter. If
you worked on a goal only two hours each week (perhaps over four
30-minute sessions) you’ll have a total of X hours to invest in that
goal. Set milestones, decide actions, and make progress faster.

Identify the VERBS that need attention.
(And here’s a hint: Smaller is better.)
Organize your
to-do list by verbs in order to manage your productivity in terms of
action, delegation, and progress. Actions such
Call, Draft, Review,
and
Invite
are things that you can do, generally in one sitting, that have the potential to move the project forward one step at a time.

“If your to-do list has ‘big’ verbs—by which I mean verbs that are mentally demanding or longer term in nature such as
plan, discuss, create,
or
implement—replace them with action steps to just get started,”
says Womack. “That is, pick ‘smaller’ verbs, by which I mean verbs
describing tasks that are easier to start and faster to finish. This
will save you time and reduce the sense of overload you’re feeling.”

Learn to delegate clearly (much, much more clearly).
Come
to terms with the fact that you can’t get it all done yourself.
Identify exactly what needs to be done and by when. Over-communicate and
(if you need to!) track what you have given to whom.

“Check
back weekly with your ‘Waiting on…’ inventory and follow up with people
who you think may wind up falling behind,” urges Womack. “Be
relentless. After all, if the people you delegate to aren’t productive,
you won’t be productive either.”

Hold yourself accountable with end-of-day notecards. At the end of each day, for the first 20 or so workdays of January, write down (on a 3×5 notecard) basic things about each day:
Who you met with. What you completed. Where you went. What you learned.
At the end of the month, you can use this “inventory of engagement” to identify what you want/need to do more (or less!) of.

“It
is essential for you to be conscious of how much work there IS that you
have taken on,” says Womack. “When you see how much you ARE doing—or
how little of the right things—you will be motivated to ‘get better.’
This activity is a great way to hold yourself accountable and make sure
you’re really doing the things that help you make the most of your
time.”

Implement a weekly debrief. Take time
after every five-day period to stop, look around, and assess where you
are in relation to where you thought you would be. Look at three key
areas: 1. What new ideas have emerged? 2. What decisions need to be
made? 3. How do I track this information?

“Not
only does the weekly debrief help you hold yourself accountable, it
allows you to course-correct if necessary,” notes Womack. “Things
usually don’t go the way we expect them to, so these weekly debriefs
give us the opportunity to ask ourselves,
Does this still make sense? And if not, what does?”

Forecast your future.

Open your calendar to 180 days from today. There, write three to four
paragraphs describing what you’ll have done, where you’ll have been, and
what will have happened to your personal/professional life by then.
This kind of “forecasting” is good to do from time to time, and by
spending ten or so minutes at the beginning of the year thinking about
the next six months, you’ll put your goals into action.

“What
we think about is what we do,” says Womack. “Identifying what we’d like
to experience is the first step in developing the habits and actions
that move us closer to our goals. That ten minutes is the starting point
in moving off the ‘thought trails’ that force you into thinking what
you’ve always thought—and doing what you’ve always done.”

 
        “There’s a reason we’re so drawn to New Year’s resolutions,”
says Womack. “On a deep, fundamental level we want to get better and
better, both on the job and off. There is no reason to remain mired in
frustration and struggling to catch up. Life can be a wonderfully
exciting journey, and it can start whenever we want it to start. January
of 2012 is as good a time as any.”

About the Book:
Your Best Just Got Better: Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More
(Wiley, February 2012, ISBN: 978-1-118-12198-6, $24.95) is available at bookstores nationwide and from major online booksellers.

For more information visit www.womackcompany.com.