Graham Chastney

Another day, another conference call, another set of instant messages, some SMS messages and lots of rudeness.

I would like to confess that today I have:

• Joined a conference call without introducing myself.
• Had an Instant Message conversation with someone I have never met and not even said “hello”.
• Looked at my BlackBerry while talking to someone, to check an email.
• Left a conference call to speak to someone else, while the call was still running, and not said anything. I just walked away.
• Created a slide deck while on the same call – for a completely different project. I nearly had to confess to this rudeness and say “I’m sorry, can you say that again”.
• Sent an SMS text message to someone without any pleasantries at all.
• Ignored a phone call – because I knew who was phoning.
• Stopped listening to someone sat next too me, because I was giving more attention to the PC screen in front of me.
• Turned up late to a conference call and didn’t apologised for my lateness. These calls never start on time, do they?
• Ignored a whole set of Instant Message conversations that people are wanting to have with me.

In short – very rude, but very normal.

You might argue that some of this is not really rudeness at all, but that would be putting a gloss onto something that is becoming an endemic issue.

Anyone else like to confess?

Some days, there are more important things to be done:

I could spend hours doing this…

I hate to think how many meetings I have sat in that have basically been people catching up on email with the odd nod to the presenter.

We have a presentations style at work just for this occurrence – it’s the non-stop meeting style. We present at breakneck speed without any stops and without any time for questions. At the end we say “so is that agreed then?” and in many instances the answer from the non-listening participants is “yes”.

How do you get more done when you are busy? Here are my top 5 tips for overcoming busyness:

1. Productivity not activity

When busyness strikes people will often leap to the nearest activity in a hope that this will help them to get through the pile. This creates activity, but destroys productivity, and it’s really productivity that you need.

This might sound obvious but it’s just as important to prioritise when you are busy as it is when you aren’t. Having prioritised you can then get through the items productively.

2. Lists are your friend

One of the key lessons of the GTD methodology is that we can waste lots of effort managing the information in our head. Making lists help you to focus your brain on getting things done rather than on managing the information.

3. Learn to skim read

You can’t read all of the information available to you – after all if you printed-out the internet it would take you 57,000 years to read it all.

There is lots of stuff that you don’t need to read all of, you just need to understand what it is saying and that is what skim reading is all about.

It’s a skill that takes a little while to become confident in, but it’s well worth developing.

4. Take “Out” times

The productivity of your work times is defined, to a greater extent, by your “out” times. If you don’t take the “out” times your productivity in the “in” times will steadily diminish until all of the extra time that you are putting in is worthless.

Exercise in your “out” times is also very important because exercise is just as important for your brain as it is for your body.

5. Say “No”

The danger when you are busy is that you are venerable to being put upon. Not everything that everybody asks you to do is important. When you are busy it can feel easier to just accept things rather than go through the hassle of challenging them. This, of course, just adds to the problem.

I do this a lot and the result is that I just dig a deeper and deeper hole for myself.

(This idea for a blog came via twitter following my What would you like me to write about? post. Please fell free to add other ideas)

I’m not sure whether this counts as a real fully fledged concept, or just an idea, or actually even whether there is a difference.

The idea comes from Jonah Lehrer over on The Frontal Cortext blog where he reflects on the diversity of music that we enjoy (his pretext is the events at the MTV awards with Kanye West and Taylor Swift).

It got me thinking, in what other ways are we culturally plastic:

• Food: The range of food available in the UK is incredible. Foods from every country in the world and even fusions of different food types. We skip between them without really thinking about it, something that my grandparents would never have done.
• Video/Television/Films: I know a few people who will only go to the movies to see a certain type of film, but there aren’t many of them. And the range of film genre is increasing all of the time.
• Reading: Looking at the book shelf beside me there is a huge variety of material. There’s no Mills and Boon, but apart from that there is practically every other type of writing.

So what impact does this plasticity have on the world of work?

Teams that accept diversity work better and produce stronger results. As people become more tolerant of, and learn to enjoy cultural differences hopefully this will be reflected in teams. This will be especially true for international teams which will become more prevalent as technology enables it.

I suspect, to, that people we start to choose the places where they work on the basis of the diversity of the culture. Places with a monolithic culture we be regarded  as stale and dull. Skilful business managers will be able to create diverse cultures that are highly productive.