A few days before Thanksgiving, Brad flew from Boston to Los Angeles with his family. He was going to work for the first few days and then relax with his family. During the flight, he decided not to use the plane’s internet access, choosing to talk and play with his children instead. A five-hour digital vacation.

When they landed, Brad turned on his BlackBerry and discovered that a crisis had developed while he was in the air and he had close to 500 email messages waiting for him.

So much for a digital vacation.

The truth is, we can’t ever really get away from it. There is no escaping the nonstop surge of email, text, voicemail, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn — and that’s just the technology-based stream. How can we ever catch up?

We can’t.

The idea that we can get it all done is the biggest myth in time management. There’s no way Brad can meaningfully go through all his email and there’s no way any of us are going to accomplish everything we want to get done.

Face it: You’re a limited resource.

Each day only has 24 hours and we can’t sustainably work through all of them.
On the one hand, that’s depressing. On the other hand, acknowledging it can be tremendously empowering. Once we admit that we aren’t going to get it all done, we’re in a much better position to make explicit choices about what we are going to do. Instead of letting things haphazardly fall through the cracks, we can intentionally push the unimportant things aside and focus our energy on the things that matter most.

There are two main challenges in doing the right things: identifying “the right things” and “doing” them.

Most of us manage our time reactively, making choices based on the needs that land on our desks. To determine the “right things,” we need to make deliberate choices that will move us toward the outcomes we most want. Which, of course, also means that we need to make deliberate choices about what not to do. The world will take what it can from us. It’s never been more important to be strategic about what we choose to give it.

In terms of the second challenge — “doing” or following through — we need tools and rituals. We need an environment that makes it more likely that we will do the things that matter most and less likely that we will waste our time with meaningless, unproductive diversions. We need to know how to prioritize properly, delegate deliberately, tabulate to-do lists, and mitigate multi-tasking.

But which tools work best? Which rituals will help us follow through? If you spend all your time discovering and using all the advice you get from me and others, it could become a distraction to the work itself. Here’s a process to help you avoid turning time management into another excuse to procrastinate on your most important priorities.

1. Think for a moment about the time-management problems you face. Do you leave the office with a nagging feeling that you worked all day but didn’t get your most important work done? Do you feel like you aren’t taking advantage of your talents and passions? Are you distracted by little things? Avoiding big hairy projects? Do you interrupt yourself with email and other distractions? Try taking this three-minute quiz to discover where you are distracting yourself the most.
2. Once you’ve identified your biggest time-management challenges, choose a single one to tackle. Maybe you’re not clear on your “right things.” Maybe you use the wrong rituals. Maybe you strive for perfection. Pick the challenge that most often gets in your way. Then choose one time-management tactic to solve that challenge — just one of the many good suggestions you’ve encountered here and elsewhere.
3. If that tactic works, repeat the process with another challenge. If it doesn’t, try a new tactic. Continue to approach things this way, one at a time, so you can be sure what works for you and what doesn’t.

Brad, overwhelmed by his hundreds of emails, put his BlackBerry away and did nothing until he arrived in his hotel room. Then, using his laptop, he triaged his now more than 500 emails based on what he knew were his most important priorities, answering the ones he needed to and deleting the majority of them. Within an hour, he was done. He shut his laptop, left his BlackBerry in his room (gasp!), and enjoyed a fun, chaos-filled dinner with his family, which, at that time, was precisely the right thing for him to do.

*Names and some details have been changed

I’ve known Nancy for 35 years. We’re close friends and both Eleanor and I love spending time with her. But, in that moment, we didn’t want to walk with her. We wanted time to ourselves.

We also didn’t want to slow to her pace. Which is the excuse we used, explaining that I wanted to keep my heart rate in an aerobic zone. It was true and, somehow, felt less offensive than saying we wanted to be alone.

But when we met her on the way down and she offered to descend with us, our exercise excuse didn’t hold up since pace wasn’t an issue going downhill. Still, we reasserted the excuse, and started hopping and skipping to keep our heart rates, and appearances, up.

We failed on both counts. We couldn’t skip downhill fast enough to keep our heart rates up and she knew it was an excuse. She was left feeling we were avoiding her and we left feeling dishonest.

Why didn’t we just tell her we wanted to spend some time alone? She surely would have understood.

The easy answer is that we were trying to preserve her feelings. But the real answer is that we were trying to preserve our own. We didn’t want to feel mean or rude. And the real, real answer is that we didn’t want to feel her judgment or disapproval of us for being mean or rude. Which, of course, backfired.

After that encounter, I did some soul searching. How often do I say things that aren’t completely true in order to make someone — usually myself — feel better? How often do I subtly — or at least I think subtly — position things so they appear in a better light?

Unfortunately, the answer is often. And I see this in organizations all the time. We position messages to gain buy-in. We present things in a light that we think will make it easier for others to accept. Maybe we don’t outright lie, but we gently massage the truth to make it more acceptable, more likely to be embraced.

And then, like Eleanor and me on our walk, we expend a tremendous amount of energy to keep up a ruse that fools no one.

People know the truth. They can sense it. And even if they are momentarily fooled, they won’t be for long because other people won’t be fooled and they’ll all talk. If not in person, then on Facebook or Linkedin or Twitter or some Google group.

Even though we know that, we still try to make things seem different than they are because it takes great courage to be honest. You have to be willing to make yourself vulnerable.

Here’s the crazy thing: honesty is much more compelling, powerful, and effective than the alternative. People want the truth. They are willing to accept it far more often than we think. And they respect other people and organizations for speaking it.

But what if the truth is that you’re a leader who isn’t sure what to do in a given situation? Do people really want to know that?

One of my clients, a large financial services firm, wanted to understand what differentiated successful new managers from unsuccessful ones. So they surveyed the direct reports of new managers with MBA degrees. The number one behavior that distinguished the best managers? Asking for help from their employees.

So, yes. People want you to be honest with them, even if you’re a leader and honesty means exposing yourself as a little intimidated, or shy, or unsure. That kind of vulnerability doesn’t alienate; it attracts. It makes us approachable. It allows people to identify with us, to trust us, and to follow us.

The day after our walk, Eleanor and I saw Nancy and told her the truth. That yes, we wanted to keep our heart rates up, but mostly we just wanted to reconnect with each other, alone.

Nancy laughed and said that she had guessed that and of course she understood. We all breathed a sigh of relief.

*Names and some details changed

It’s the kind of question that’s on many of our minds in the midst of New Year’s resolution season.

Something you should know about Byron: He recently started a business and he’s constantly developing his skills through training programs he pays for with his own money. So it’s not that Byron is unmotivated in general. It’s just that he thinks he’s unmotivated to work out.

But Byron is wrong. “I need to fix it,” he wrote. He ismotivated to work out; otherwise he wouldn’t have emailed me. He clearly cares about getting fit and when you care about something, you’re motivated.

No, Byron’s challenge isn’t motivation. It’s follow-through.

Which is important to realize because as long as Byron thinks he’s solving for a motivation problem, he’ll be looking for the wrong solution. He’ll try to get himself excited. He’ll remind himself that being in shape is really important. Maybe he’ll visualize the partners he’ll attract if he looks better or the years he’ll add to his life if he gets in better shape.

Each attempt to “motivate” himself will only increase his stress and guilt as it widens the gap between his motivation and his follow-through, between how badly he wants to work out and his failure to do so. We have a misconception that if we only cared enough about something, we would do something about it. But that’s not true.

Motivation is in the mind; follow-through is in the practice. Motivation is conceptual; follow-through is practical. In fact, the solution to a motivation problem is the exact opposite of the solution to a follow through problem. The mind is essential to motivation. But with follow through, it’s the mind that gets in the way.

We’ve all experienced our mind sabotaging our aspirations. We decide to go to the gym after work but then, when it comes time to go, we think, It’s late, I’m tired, maybe I’ll skip it today. We decide we need to be more supportive of our employees, but then, when someone makes a mistake, we think, If I don’t make a big deal about this, he’s going to do it again. We decide we need to speak more in meetings but then, when we’re sitting in the meeting, we think, I’m not sure what I’m going to say really adds value.

Here’s the key: if you want to follow through on something, stop thinking.

Shut down the conversation that goes on in your head before it starts. Don’t take the bait. Stop arguing with yourself.

Make a very specific decision about something you want to do and don’t question it. By very specific, I mean things like: I will work out tomorrow at 6 AM or I will only point out the things my employee does right or I will say at least one thing in the next meeting.

Then, when your mind starts to argue with you — and I guarantee it will — ignore it. You’re smarter than your mind. You can see right through it.

As for Byron, I have a few tricks that can help him shut down his mind and improve his follow-through — some things I’ve written about in the past:

• Create an environment that supports your workout goals. Have your gym clothes sitting by your bed and put them on first thing when you wake up. In fact, work out first thing, before your mind realizes what you’re doing.
• Use a trainer or commit to work out with a friend. It’s harder to argue against your accountability to another person.
• Decide when and where you’re going to work out — literally write it in your calendar — and the likelihood of follow-through will increase dramatically.
• Commit to a concrete plan that is simple to quantify: 45 minutes of movement a day, cut out sugar, go to the gym six days a week.
• Realize that the follow-through challenge will only last a few seconds. As soon as you put your sneakers on and start heading to the gym, your mind will give up arguing with you.
• Discipline will be useful for the first week as you get back into working out. But after that,momentum will take over and the pleasure of feeling more fit will quiet the internal chatter.
• Finally, think of all the above as a multifaceted campaign. A checklist that you should go through each day to make sure you are stacking the deck in your favor.

I once took a golf lesson with a pro who taught me a certain way to swing the club. After the lesson, he issued a warning.

“When you play with others, some people will want to give you advice. Just listen to them politely, thank them for their advice, and then completely ignore it and do exactly what I’ve just told you to do.”

That, Byron, is precisely how you should respond to your mind.

Plural Investments*, a hedge fund started several years ago, had a problem. They needed art on the walls of their New York City offices. It was a small problem of no strategic importance, one that could be solved quickly and effortlessly by simply buying a few paintings.

But sometimes, problems lacking strategic importance never get solved because, well, they’re just not that important. Which is what happened at Plural. The agenda item “Art in the office” kept getting pushed off in favor of work more critical to the business.

Still, it remained a problem because no one liked having blank walls.

Then, one day, Jenny Killeen, Plural’s head of Human Capital, was looking through a colleague’s vacation photos and found herself stunned by their beauty. That’s when she had the idea: why not use the creativity of our own staff to populate the walls?

The idea was brilliant. When Matt Grossman started Plural Investments, his intention was to harness the best efforts of many smart, creative people rather than just rely on the genius of a single founder, as so many other hedge funds do. Why not make the office an aesthetic reflection of the company’s philosophy?

Applying a strategic solution to an insignificant problem immediately heightens its significance. Suddenly, “Art in the office” got pushed to the top of the agenda. It wasn’t simply about pretty walls anymore. It was about living up to the vision of the company.

This wasn’t an abstract idea, either. It would require harnessing the best efforts of many smart, creative people.

Kate Marlatt, an assistant in the office, stepped in to lead the effort. Kate asked people to submit photographs they had taken — along with the story behind each photograph. Over 130 photos were submitted.

But they only had enough space for forty. How to choose? If one person were to decide, it would contradict the very notion they were trying to convey. So Kate set up a contest. All the photographs were put online and the entire office was asked to vote. The winning photographs would be unveiled at a wine and cheese evening to which everyone and their significant others were invited.

The excitement grew and more people began to volunteer. Kate researched the best way to display the photographs and created an art brochure, including the photographs, their stories, and personal artist bios of each photographer. James Serafino, in facilities management, handled the framing and hanging. William Porcelli, in technology, set up the online submission and voting process. Shemeka Flores, an assistant with a penchant for event planning, handled the wine, cheese, other food, and decorations with input from Rob Aurigema, the chief operating officer and a wine connoisseur. And Jared Kaplan, a music buff from the technology department, volunteered to DJ the evening.

This wasn’t just about art on the walls anymore. The entire company was rallying to create a work environment — and now a celebration — that reflected and inspired them.

My wife Eleanor and I attended the wine and cheese evening. John Metzner, the president, proudly showed us the photograph he had taken of an airplane in flight that was chosen and he talked with us about his interest in flying. More people described their photographs to us, and as they did, uncovered deeper parts of themselves — the parts that usually lie hidden behind task lists and paper piles.

I felt the same excitement I do when I visit my children’s classrooms and they show me their work hanging on the walls. “Look what I’ve done,” they tell me. “This is my classroom.”

We forget, sometimes, that adults in an office are not that different than children in a classroom. We’re all people who take justifiable pride in work that reflects who we are. We all want to be seen and acknowledged not just for our output but for who we are.

Art reflects who we are. Even people whose photographs were not on the wall could talk about why they voted for a particular piece of art. Everyone had the opportunity to be seen in a personal way.

The end result? The artwork in Plural’s New York offices is far more captivating than traditional office art. And more importantly, employees are surrounded by their own creations, which gives them deeper ownership for their workplace and their work.

This Halloween, my nine-year-old daughter Isabelle decided she wanted to sew her own Halloween costume. She spent hours designing, cutting, sewing, trying on, and redesigning. All her work inspired me to sew mine too. So I asked her to help and she guided me, step by step, as I cut, sewed, and sewed some more. It would have been much easier for both of us if we had ordered costumes online. But hours later, I had both a costume I was prouder to wear than any other before and a memorable experience with Isabelle to cherish.

Sure, it would have been much quicker and easier to have bought art for the walls. But, sometimes, quick and easy is a missed opportunity.

*Plural Investments is a client of Bregman Partners

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/jobs/speaking_volumes_UmyqlvH7NPZJj2EPDxb2AL#ixzz1h18HubGp

“Dave,” I said, “you can’t be serious. You eat horribly. Everything you eat is fried. And if it’s not, then it’s a chocolate chip cookie. I can’t remember seeing you eat a vegetable. How can you expect your cholesterol to be anything other than high?”

“But the day before the test,” he answered, “I ate really well.”

The idea of immediate results is alluring. Almost all of advertising is built on the notion that if you just buy this (whatever it is), then you’ll instantly have love, success, and power.

It’s the temptation of the lottery. Who among us hasn’t played at least once, imagining how many of our problems could be solved in a moment? Can Dave be faulted for expecting the internal workings of his body to change based on a single day of healthy eating?

Yet instant results are almost always unattainable. Sure, someone wins the lottery. But it’s so unlikely to be you that, statistically speaking, your chance is zero.

I was reminded of all this when responding to a reporter about what advice I would give to someone who wanted to ask for a raise at a time when most wages are stagnating or falling. My answer? Don’t ask.

It’s not that I think people can’t get raises right now. It’s that if you haven’t spent the last year laying the groundwork, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be successful. There’s no formula — no perfect words or positioning — that will magically deliver a raise with a day or two of preparation.

But there is a formula for getting more money over time. And if you start now, it can position you to get a raise next year.

The formula is based on one simple premise: We can get more money when we demonstrate that we’ve added more value. And we can add more value when we spend the majority of our time focusing on the work that the most senior leaders in the organization consider valuable. That is almost always work that increases revenue or profits, either short-term or long-term.

But aren’t we already doing this to the best of our ability? I think the deck is stacked against us. We’re all overloaded, working on too many things. Answering too many emails that don’t matter. Offering opinions that aren’t necessary. Spending time on issues whose outcomes we can’t impact. Doing work that’s more bureaucratic than beneficial. There’s no question that we’re all busier than ever before, but we often are not getting the most important things done.

There are always some things that are more important to do than other things. The problem is that most of us aren’t clear about what those are, so one of two things happen: either we put same amount of energy and effort into everything or we let the wrong things fall through the cracks.

Minimizing that noise is our opportunity. Making more intentional and strategic choices about where to spend our time can mean the difference between a stagnant salary and a growing one.

Here’s my formula:

1. During this year’s compensation conversation, take whatever is given to you without negotiation. If it’s appropriate, acknowledge that it’s been a hard year, and voice your appreciation for what’s been offered. Explain that you are less interested in a raise right now and more interested in how you can add tremendous value in the organization — that’s what you want to talk about.

1. Think like a shareholder of the company. Ask lots of questions about the strategy, what’s keeping the top leaders awake at night, how your department impacts revenue or profitability, and what’s important to your direct manager. Identify, with your manager, the top two or three things you can work on that will drive revenue or profitability. Once you’ve had that conversation, you’ll have your raise-worthy work focus.

1. Now keep those two or three things on the top of your to-do list. Make sure that the majority of your effort moves the organization further in those areas. Share your to-do list with your manager, making sure that the two of you stay on the same page about what’s important and how it’s impacting the organization. Do everything you can to quantify the impact you’re making. If your manager starts asking you to do things outside the top two or three things, push back and have a conversation about it. Sure, you’ll need to work on some things that aren’t important. But make a strategic choice to shortchange those. Do just enough to get by on them; they don’t really matter anyway.

After about six months of this laser focus, you’re ready to have another conversation with your manager to identify the impact you’ve had and prove that you’ve added tremendous value on the things that matter most.

During that discussion you’re ready to talk about a real raise. That’s good timing since most organizations are beginning to think through their departmental budgets and promotions around the six-month mark.

Here’s what’s powerful about this formula: It’s not a trick. It’s in everyone’s best interests. If you focus on the things that are most important — even if it requires that you push back against your manager when he or she asks you to work on frivolous things — ultimately you’ll be more productive, your manager will be more productive, and the organization will be more productive. That’s money in the bank. It will make your job more secure and you more promotable.

“So,” I asked Dave. “Now that you know you have high cholesterol, are you going to change the way you eat?”

“No,” Dave answered, true to form, “I’m taking a pill. My cholesterol will be lower in a few days and I can still eat everything.”

Maybe I like doing things the hard way. But as far as I know, there’s no pill for getting a raise. Still, at a time when wages in most fields are stagnant or falling, it’s nice to know at least there’s a formula.
*Names and some details changed

As Bertie examined my elbow, I reminded him of everything I had done to try to fix my problem. When it began to hurt, I used ibuprofen. When that didn’t work, we tried two injections of cortisone, six months apart. Meanwhile, I did physical therapy, tried ultrasound, used a brace, performed daily exercises, applied ice, and went to acupuncture and massage. Pushed to the edge, I even did an experimental therapy — a platelet-rich plasma injection, which had gained media attention because some high-profile athletes had used it. The shot was incredibly painful and only made my problem worse.

“Nothing has helped!” I complained.

“I have an idea,” Bertie said. “Something we haven’t yet tried.”

“What?” I hoped it wouldn’t be too time-consuming or expensive.

“You just said it yourself,” he replied. “Nothing.”

He suggested I stop all treatments for the next six months. “All your attempts to fix your elbow might just be agitating it,” he told me. “I bet after a few months of doing nothing the pain will just go away.”

I was skeptical but game. Sure enough, within a few months, my pain had disappeared.

In my last blog post, Restore Yourself to Your Factory Default Settings, I suggested that doing nothing for a minute might help change things.

Sometimes, though, it’s worth taking that to the extreme. In some situations, doing nothing – forever – is the right response. With my tendonitis, doing nothing helped. Sometimes, not trying to fix something is precisely what’s needed to fix it.

It’s a hard strategy to follow because we have penchant for being proactive. If there’s a problem, we feel better when we attack it aggressively.

But consider the idea that we might spend a lot of time, effort, and money solving problems that can’t, in fact, be solved with time, effort, and money.

In 2009, Americans spent about $3.6 billion on over-the-counter cold, cough, and throat remedies, according to the New York Times. And yet, the article concluded, there’s very little evidence that any of those medicines do anything to cure, or even shorten the duration of, a cold. And some remedies, like taking antibiotics, bring along side effects that risk making some people worse.

In other words, the best strategy for coping with the common cold is to do nothing.

Does this strategy apply outside medicine? There’s a lot of talk these days about creating new businesses through incentives. Does the money and effort put into incentives help? According to astudy released by the Kauffman Foundation, the answer is no.

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that the number of new businesses started each year between 1977 to 2005 varied only by 3% to 6%. According to the study, “none of the factors that might bear on prospective entrepreneurs’ decisions to form new companies — recessions, expansions, tax changes, population growth, scarce or abundant capital, technological advances or others — has much impact on the pace of U.S. startups.”

In other words, the best strategy for stimulating new business creation is to do nothing.

How about interpersonal relationships? Some time ago, I had a falling out with someone close to me. I tried several times to address it — I sent emails, made phone calls, and even sent a gift — but nothing I did left either of us feeling any better. Eventually I gave up and wrote the person off. For a long time, I did nothing.

Recently, I saw this person again and, somehow, it felt like that falling out was behind us. Well, mostly. It wasn’t as nice as it had been before the falling out. But it was a lot better than when we were trying to actively work it out.

I’m not suggesting we address all problems by doing nothing. Often addressing something head-on is precisely what’s needed. It can be incredibly effective to bring something up that’s been simmering in the background and deal with it openly. I’m a huge fan of discussing undiscussables, and I’ve seen it work wonders.

But how many unnecessary arguments could have been avoided by brushing off something unimportant? Perhaps we could have allowed someone’s weakness to go unmentioned. Maybe we could have forgiven without requiring an act of contrition.

In other words, sometimes, the best strategy for working out a difficult interpersonal issue is to do nothing.

So how do we know whether to do something or nothing?

“When many cures are offered for a disease,” wrote Chekhov, “it means the disease is not curable.” If past experience or data suggests that multiple solutions are possible but none are reliably successful, nothing may be the best strategy.

Also, if you’ve tried two or three solutions and none of them have worked, perhaps it’s time to try nothing.

It’s been about two years since my elbow stopped hurting. But I’m superstitious and, quite frankly, a little worried that writing this post — declaring so brashly that I conquered my tendinitis by doing nothing — will somehow start the pain again.

I hope that doesn’t happen. But if it does, at least now I know what I’m going to do: nothing.

That’s a lesson in itself. But it’s not the whole story.

Once I was done with the article, I needed to send it to my editor. What was previously a distraction — fixing my internet connection — was now essential.

So I put all my deep technological know-how to work: I yelled at it.

No change. So I yelled at it some more. When that didn’t work, I closed all the applications and rebooted the computer. It still didn’t work. So I opened the wireless router software and played with some of the settings. Still nothing. Finally, I turned the wireless router off and on several times but that didn’t do anything either.

I just sat there silently angry, staring at my computer equipment, ready to admit defeat. But then I remembered the solution that had worked for me before, when all else failed. I unplugged everything and waited one minute.

While everything was unplugged, I had nothing to do, so I just sat there.

It’s strange, because one minute is so little, but when the time was up, I felt noticeably different. I wasn’t angry or frustrated or annoyed. I wasn’t on the verge — as I was before — of throwing away all my electronics if this solution didn’t work. I felt oddly refreshed. My situation hadn’t changed, but my perspective had.

It turns out that when I unplugged my equipment, I unplugged myself at the same time. And when that short, barely noticeable minute had passed, I felt different. Renewed. Ready to speak softly and gently to my wireless router instead of yelling at it. Maybe even joke around with it a bit to lighten up the tension.

Which got me thinking: This unplug and stop everything for a minute strategy might be a pretty good solution for whenever things aren’t working in life.

That point was reinforced for me in a recent cell phone call I had with Eleanor, my wife, while she was traveling. We were having a difficult conversation and each of us had the feeling that the other one wasn’t listening. Then the call was dropped. We tried calling each other back but only got voicemail. So we sat there for a minute, each of us in our respective places. Unplugged.

When we eventually connected again, the tone of the conversation changed radically. We were softer with each other. More attentive. More forgiving and loving. Better at listening and rephrasing what we heard the other one saying. I never thought I’d say this but, for once, I was happy that my cellular network is unreliable. It gave us both a minute to breathe and get some perspective.

Unplugging and waiting for a minute is an unexpected strategy because it appears passive. You aren’t actively developing new strategies, arguments, or viewpoints. In fact, you aren’t actively doing anything.

When you unplug and wait for a minute, you restore yourself to your factory default settings, which for most of us tends to be generous, open-hearted, creative, connected, and hopeful. That makes us more likely to be effective when we plug back in.

In a meeting that’s going nowhere? Take a break. Making no headway on that proposal you need to write? Stand up and take a walk. Fighting with your kids? Give yourself a time-out. Unplug for a minute and breathe.

This is not a strategy that requires practice and skill building. All it requires is remembering to do it. Sometimes, life requires active, willful engagement. But sometimes, the smartest move is disengagement. That magic minute of not doing anything has the power to change just about everything.

Which is what happened with my great and wise teacher, my wireless router. Miracle of miracles, when I plugged it back in after that minute of waiting, my wireless internet starting working again. And so did I.