5. “Russell…why do you have to be an over
achiever wonder-weenie?”
• Barnhart, A. to Palmer, R.L. (2010). LOEX of
the West Conference, Calgary, AB.
6. So…what did I want to know?
• Highly scientific survey
• Asked 2 questions of 31 of my closest friends
and colleagues in the library world via
Facebook message
• Public and academic people
• All have experience with some form of
instruction/training
7. The questions
• What are your BIGGEST time wasters that are actually
considered to be WORK.
– Examples--spending too much time on a pathfinder or libguide or
obsessing over a detail in a presentation that's already "good enough.”
Meetings? Let me know!
• What types of things happen routinely that steal YOUR time
from you? Cause you to leave late or give up a vacation day or
a Saturday when you were scheduled to be off?
8. My hypotheses
(not entirely inaccurate, but…)
• Work related time wasters would be rooted in:
• Obsessing over details (classes, presentations)
• Inability to say no
• Changing staffing patterns
9. What happened?
• The flood gates opened
• Everyone I asked responded, many at length
• Some of my assumptions were shattered
11. From the corporate world
• "Too many meetings" was the No. 1 time-waster
at the office, cited by 47% of 3,164 workers in a
separate study by career site Salary.com this year
on workplace time drains. That is up from 42% in
2008, when meetings tied for third place with
"waiting for a co-worker to finish something you
need." (No. 1 was "fixing someone else's work"
and No. 2 was "dealing with office politics.")
– Meet the Meeting Killers: In the Office, They Strangle
Ideas, Poison Progress; How to Fight Back, WSJ, May 15, 2012
12. These three, I can handle
(but help is always nice!)
• Meetings
• e-mail
• Saying no
13. Meetings
• “Some meetings I call Ground Hog Day meetings—
it’s the same meeting--with the same agenda--for
the last three years, and nothing ever gets decided”
• “MEETINGS. Meetings about meetings. Seriously, I
once attended a meeting where we decided when to
meet and set the agenda for the next meeting.”
14. Meetings
• Start with a purpose/clear agenda
• “We are meeting today to <verb>”
• If you can’t start a meeting with that
sentence, don’t have one.
• End meetings with a recap--
takeaways/executables for everyone present
16. Meeting tips from WSJ
• Set a clear agenda
• Impose a 'no devices' rule or schedule periodic tech breaks for
email, texts and phone calls
• Redirect people back to the agenda when they ramble or
digress
17. More meeting tips
• Draw out quiet people by asking them in advance
for a specific contribution
• Do a 'round robin,' when appropriate, to allow
everyone to contribute
• Ask early for objections to keep them from
derailing discussions later
• Limit the length of slide presentations
• Interrupt people who talk too long or talk to each
other
• Set an ending time for the meeting and stick to it
18. e-mail
• e-mail is a problem. Some emails in our office are related to
patron issues, so we like to reply to those quickly. Others join
the long list of stuff you know you need to deal with but don't
have the time for right now.”
• e-mail with no subject line, or a subject line like “question.”
• “Biggest time suck...unnecessary email. After 1 or 2 exchanges
pick up the phone!”
19. e-mail
• Believe it or not, it will wait
• Process your e-mail 3 times daily
• Don’t work out of your inbox!
• It’s processing, not producing
• Being reactive, not proactive
20. Processing vs. Producing
• Processing: dealing with information
– Categorizing, sorting, prioritizing
– Checking e-mail, answering messages
– Necessary to stay on top of things
• Producing: creating results
– Working, accomplishing
– Getting things done
– The part you actually get paid for
21.
22. Saying “no”
• “*It frustrates me+ that when something needs to be
covered, it inevitably and always falls to the people who don't
have children. In all of my jobs, I was always the first one
called when someone needed to come in on a snow
day, when someone had to rush home to pick up a sick child
and couldn't teach a class, or when a football game came up
on a weekend shift. You can't say no, because you want to be
a team player, but the resentment does build after awhile.”
23. Overcommitment
• As libraries are asked to do more without more
resources, library staff are asked to do more
without more time
• Failure to say NO because of:
– Desire to please everyone
– Don’t want to thwart supervisor
– Dedication to customer service
– Unrealistic idea of own abilities/commitments
– Just didn’t think before saying yes
23
24. How to say “No”
• Never say Yes without thinking about it
• Offer a counterproposal or alternative
• Keep explanations short & simple
• Head off requests before they are made
• Psych yourself up to say No
– Ask what’s the worst that could happen if you say No
– Be firm; control your body language
• Be polite!
24
25. Not QUITE saying “no”
• "I'll do it if nobody else steps forward"
• "I'll be your deep fall back, but you have to
keep searching”
26. Saying “no”=what to ignore
• Peter Bergman, “18 Minutes: Find Your
Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right
Things Done”
• Draw up a “to ignore” list. Ask yourself:
• What are you willing not to achieve?
• What doesn’t make you happy?
• What’s not important to you?
• What gets in the way?
27. These three—
we’re going to work on together
• Technology held together with paper clips and
crazy glue
• Paperwork (especially travel)
• Workflows and processes
28. Dealing with “bad” technology
• If you are waiting for a system to execute, plan
tasks for “while you wait”
• Advocate for change!
• ?
32. Learn to accept good enough
• When that’s all you have time for.
• “Like a few others who have already responded, I also waste
precious time on sweating the small stuff when it comes to
presentations. I want things to be perfect – not only because I
sincerely care if people actually walk away having learned
something or feel inspired, but also because I care deeply
about what other people think of me.”
33. How to be extremely unsuccessful at creating a subject
guide—how many hours???
34. Three rules
• 1. Don’t let anyone hold your time hostage
• Examples?
35. 2. Your time…is yours
– Cf. Scott Adams’ OA5 management model, The Dilbert
Principle, ch. 26
– NO working late
– NO working weekends
• unless you’re scheduled and get time back
– NO taking work home
• But what if my computer works better than the one at work?
– If it doesn’t get done during normal work hours, it doesn’t get
done
• But…I have to!
• Administrative priorities
• Changing generational perspectives
36. 3. Sorry…you don’t
work better under pressure.
• Procrastination—why?
• Perfectionism
• Job is too big to do all at once
• Job takes too long to do all at once
• Job is too difficult
• Don’t like to do it
• Fear of failure
• Fear of success (!?!)
• HABIT!
37. 3a—We are not great at multitasking
• Studies show:
– Reduces quality of work
– Increases stress
– But! It makes us feel better
– Wang, Z. and Tchernev, J. M. (2012), The “Myth” of Media
Multitasking: Reciprocal Dynamics of Media
Multitasking, Personal Needs, and Gratifications. Journal of
Communication. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01641.x
38. In the end, a few more things--
communication
• “poor communication costs a huge amount of
time that most people do not see. Chasing
information, rewriting procedures, correcting
work, training/retraining, soothing over hurt
feelings, trying to rectify the effects of poor
communication -- all sorts of things. Ugh.”
39. Poor planning
• “Poor planning by colleagues… My role often
supports the.. initiatives of other
departments. Another department might have
a.. project, and I'll be called in for consultation
and technical expertise. The department to
whom the project belongs might wait until the
last minute and then expect that I can help
out at the drop of a dime. I find myself saying
OK, working late or taking work home, instead
of asserting my boundaries.”
40. SO…do as I suggest, not as I do
(It’s 7:21 PM on Tuesday evening right …now)