Clearing your email inbox

The truth is that you probably can take the average email inbox — even a relatively neglected one — from full to zero in about 20 minutes. It mostly depends on how much you really want to be done with it. The dirty little secret, of course, is that you don’t do it by responding to each of those emails but by ruthlessly processing them. Is that how you thought this worked? Answering 500 emails in 20 minutes? Jeez, it’s no wonder you’re such a mess. Your cognitive dissonance is epic.

Here’s the deal: your email has been accumulating because you don’t have the time to answer it properly, which is certainly reasonable and accurate. You also fear losing track of the email you haven’t responded to — that it will fall between the cracks. This fear is also reasonable and accurate. But you’re just as keenly aware that with the backlog of email you have plus the increasing rate of incoming messages you receive each day, you can’t possibly ever catch up. This, sadly, is also entirely reasonable and accurate. It’s all reasonable and it’s all accurate, but come on: something’s gotta give.

There’s an easy but non-obvious way to win at this Catch-22: you cheat. You rewrite the rules. You adapt at a higher level. You don’t answer them all. Not even most of them.

How to cope with interruptions at work

You need to get that report finished today and a colleague comes over to the desk to talk about another project. Then you have a shedload of emails to read. A salesperson rings to tell you about a conference that has not sold enough places. By the end of the day the report is still unfinished and you stay late to finish it whilst everyone else goes home or to the pub. What to do?

Emails and phone are easy to deal with. You can switch them off. This rarely works with people. Consider whether an interruption is useful or a distraction. Often the unscheduled chat is very useful and more time-efficient and timely than a formal meeting scheduled for two weeks time. Things get done. Therefore try to schedule periods when you are available to talk.

When you want to shut out the world put on earphones. Even if you are not listening to anything most people understand the clear signal that you are unavailable.

Failing that a Do Not Disturb sign can work. Just don’t expect the boss to pay any attention to it!

MJ PEAK PERFORMANCE: Snooze, You Win – Improve your mental and physical performance by power napping

Snooze, You Win
According to new studies, nothing tunes up mind and body like a good nap. But there’s an art to catching the right kind of z’s.

When billionaire adventurer Steve Fossett broke the record for around-the-world solo jet flight last March, he slept just 60 minutes in 67 hours of flight time — 60 minutes broken into two- and three-minute naps. “I slept when I needed it and awoke refreshed,” he says. Fossett, who holds world records in ballooning, sailing, and flying, adds that none of his feats could have been done without these micro-variety “power naps.”

So what makes a power nap effective? Think of it as an investment with the greatest return in the least amount of time, a kind of super-efficient sleep that fits nicely in a high-pressure schedule: say, between business meetings or in the minutes before a game.

Napping in general benefits heart functioning, hormonal maintenance, and cell repair, says Dr. Sara Mednick, a scientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies who is at the forefront of napping research. A power nap, says Mednick, simply maximizes these benefits by getting the sleeper into and out of rejuvenative sleep as fast as possible. No surprise that Lance Armstrong’s coach, Chris Carmichael, says that “naps were critical in his overall training plan.” In Manhattan, napping has become a lucrative business: MetroNaps in the Empire State Building provides darkened cot-like redoubts that attract Broadway actors between shows as well as investment bankers who otherwise would fall asleep at their desks. And in Iraq, U.S. Marine commanders have mandated a power nap before patrols.

Convince Your Boss to Let you Work from Home

According to the 2003 Census report, the average commute time is 38 minutes each way for some parts of the country. That is 76 minutes each day, over 6 hours per week or 41 work days each year. If you live somewhere that has a long commute time, it is easy to see how much time is just spent driving back and forth.If you were able to eliminate the commute even one day per week, you would save over 65 hours per year. That is over 8 work days of time or equivalent to an extra 1.5 weeks of vacation.

There are three basic ways to eliminate or shorten your commute:

1. Start your own business.
2. Telecommute and work for your current employer from home.
3. Switch to a shorter work week.

Switching to a shorter work week is a nice possibility, but for this article, lets assume that working from home is technically possible and concentrate on a strategy to get your boss to say “yes”. There is no magic formula, but if you follow these five steps, it will go a long ways toward increasing your odds for success.

Double Your Reading Rate

Reading is an incredibly important skill to have. Just about any form of education will involve reading, sometimes almost exclusively. You can often make yourself an expert on an intellectual subject just by reading enough in that area. But despite the incredible importance of reading, most people are wildly inefficient at it. Like a child that never goes beyond a crawl, most people have enough reading skills to move around, but they are far from running.

Over a year ago I picked up the book, Breakthrough Rapid Reading by Peter Kump, an expert in the area of speed-reading. From that purchase I took the time and energy to study other ways to improve my reading skill. I recently got a chance to finish Eckhart Tolle’s, The Power of Now, and I read the last half of the book in under forty minutes.

When I did the initial test at the start of the book, I could read at 450 words per minute. A little above the average of around 300, but nothing spectacular. By using the techniques I’ll describe in this article I was able to increase that rate to around 900 words per minute in average situations, at least doubling of my reading rate.

I believe there are six major keys to improving your reading skill. Like all skills, success only comes through practice, so just reading this article won’t be enough. But if you are interested in how you might be able to make dramatic improvements in both speed and comprehension, I’ve found these six points to be the best start.

How to Detect Lies – Become a Lie Detector

Introduction to Detecting Lies:

The following techniques to telling if someone is lying are often used by police, and security experts. This knowledge is also useful for managers, employers, and for anyone to use in everyday situations where telling the truth from a lie can help prevent you from being a victim of fraud/scams and other deceptions.

Warning: Sometimes Ignorance is bliss; after gaining this knowledge, you may be hurt when it is obvious that someone is lying to you.

Eye Direction and Lying

Eye Movement and Direction and How it Can Reveal the Truth or a Lie

This is a continuation of How to Detect Lies. Many of the comments by our visitors have asked about how eye direction can indicate the presence of a lie.

So can the direction a person’s eyes are looking reveal whether or not they are making a truthful statement? Short answer: sort of. But, it isn’t as simple as some recent television shows or movies make it seem. In these shows a detective will deduce a person is being untruthful simply because they looked to the left or right while making a statement.

In reality, it would be foolish to make such a snap judgement without further investigation… but the technique does have some merit. So, here it is… read, ponder and test it on your friends and family to see how reliable it is for yourself.

Decision quality

Decision making is one of the defining characteristics of leadership. It’s core to the job description. Making decisions is what managers and leaders are paid to do. Yet, there isn’t a day that goes by that you don’t read something in the news or the business press that makes you wonder, “What were they thinking?” or “Who actually made that decision?” That’s probably always been the case, but it seems exponentially more so in the vanguard of the new millennium where everything seems marked with, “too big, too fast, too much, and too soon.”

The reality seems to be that most organizations aren’t overrun by good decision makers, yet alone great ones. It’s not that people don’t have it in them. Decision making is a distinctly human activity. We all make decisions all the time. But the fact that we’re hard-wired to make decisions doesn’t by itself make us good decision makers. That takes discipline: discipline to do four things all the time and well.

5 questions to answer

At ITAG, you can expect to be asked the following questions so you need to prepare answers in advance:

1. When?

• When must I start planning?

2. Cost?

• Who will pay?
• How much must I budget?

3. Resources?

• What must I allocate to do the work? Equipment / People / Time

4. Effects?

• Will be the changes to my current systems and network?

5. Leads?

• Who is the lead in this area: ACPO / Operational unit / Role in force

Answering tough questions

I recommend this book to help you answer those awkward questions posed after a presentation. It is clear and interesting, full of stories of US politics to illustrate the points and techniques.

In the Line of Fire: How to Handle Tough Questions…When It Counts

This book may be borrowed from Matt Bishop or Nick Tischler.