Your Favorite Success Tools?

Mind Tools Newsletter 45 - 28 March 2006 This newsletter is published by Mind Tools Ltd of 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London, EC1V 4PY, UK. You have received it because you have subscribed to our double opt-in newsletter. To subscribe or unsubscribe, just click the links at the bottom of this email.

Contents: What's New? Managing Interruptions Survey Store A Final Note

Each week, we hear from readers who have made great use of tools at mindtools.com, new ones or old favorites. It's hugely inspiring to hear how the tools featured have made such a difference to people in so many careers!

That's why we're dedicating this issue to share some of the tools that readers have found useful.

What's more, we're asking you what you've found useful in our US$100 Amazon voucher prize draw mini-survey. Find out how to enter below!

Our first 'success tool' is Managing Interruptions (subtitled 'Maintain Focus. Keep Control of Your Time'). This helps you analyze and so manage the many interruptions to your working day. It is one of the 39 tools in the Mind Tools time management program "Make Time for Success", and a firm favorite with people using it. Try keeping an Interrupters Log for yourself - the tool tells you how - and see if you can take back control of the time that so easy slips away.

Our second tool is Cause and Effect Diagrams. Not without reason, this tool is regularly quoted as a favorite with regular readers of www.mindtool.com. We urge you to give it a go: There's bound to be some challenge you are facing - however big or small - that will benefit from this process of analysis. Go on, just try it!

And in our "What's New" section, we point you towards two new tools on the MindTools.com site: Anger Management and the Boston Matrix. While the Anger Management tool might sound a bit serious, it helps you challenge anger and channel it to achieve positive results. And with the Boston Matrix, we give you a classic business tool that helps you think about where to focus your efforts. As you'd expect from Mind Tools, we've added a personal skills angle to the tool, so it will help focus both in your business and your career.

Enjoy this issue, let us know what you think, and have a great week!

James & Kellie

James Manktelow and Rachel Thompson
MindTools.com
Mind Tools – Essential skills for an excellent career!

To find out about new tools on the Mind Tools site the moment they’re uploaded, click here to subscribe to the Mind Tools RSS feed (you'll need an RSS newsreader installed), or here to find out more about RSS.

New tools on the Mind Tools site

• 24th Mar 2006 - The Boston Matrix - Focusing effort to get the greatest returns.
• 21st Mar 2006 - Managing Interruptions - Maintain focus. Keep control of your time.
• 18th Mar 2006 - Anger Management - Channel anger into positive performance.

Find out about new tools on the Mind Tools site the moment they’re uploaded! Click here to subscribe to the Mind Tools RSS feed (you'll need an RSS newsreader installed), or here to find out more about RSS.

New Tool:
Managing Interruptions:
Maintain focus. Keep control of time.

Everyday interruptions at work can be a key barrier to managing your time effectively and, ultimately, a barrier to your success.

Think back to your workday yesterday and consider for a minute the many interruptions that occurred. They may have been phone calls, emails, hallway conversations, colleagues stopping by your office, or anything else that unexpectedly demanded your attention and, in doing so, distracted you from the task at-hand.

Because your day only has so many hours in it, a handful of even the smallest interruptions can rob you of the time you need to achieve your goals and be successful in your work and life.

More than this, they can break your focus, meaning that you have to spend time re-engaging with the thought processes needed to successfully complete complex work.

The key to managing interruptions is to know what they are and whether they are necessary, and to plan for them in your daily schedule when they truly need your attention. The tips that follow will help you do that and so prevent interruptions from frustrating you and jeopardizing your success.

Using The Tool

Use the following tips to understand and manage interruptions:

1. Keep An Interrupters Log

If interruptions consistently rob you of time and energy, or if they frequently push you off schedule and cause delays, it’s time to keep an Interrupters Log. This is a simple record of the interruptions you experience in the course of a day.

Click here to download our free Interrupters Log Worksheet (you'll need to have Adobe Acrobat installed on your PC to open this - click here to go to Adobe for this.) And figure 1 shows an example of it.

Figure 1: The Interrupters Log

Person	Date and Time	Description of Interruption	Valid?	Urgent?

Keep your Interrupters Log with you every day for at least a week, recording every interruption you experience, and marking down the person interrupting you; the date and time it occurs; what the interruption is; whether it was valid; and whether it was urgent (or whether someone could have waited until a better time.)

This allows you to more accurately identify the interruptions that are causing you to fall behind or to experience time crunches and delays.

Once you have recorded the interruptions for a week, sit down with your log and analyze the information.

Which interruptions are valid and which are not?

You need to deal with the valid interruptions. We'll show you below how you can schedule them into your day so that they get the attention they need, while you still have the time you need to adequately address these and complete your daily work.

As for the interruptions that are not valid, you must find a way to block these out in the future or the productivity that will suffer is your own!

2. Analyze and Conquer Interruptions

To analyze and conquer the interruptions you find in your Interrupters Log, firstly look at whether the interruption is valid or not.

Could someone have avoided interrupting you by waited for a routine meeting? Or was it something they should have asked you about at all?

If not, deal with this politely but assertively.

Next, look at how urgent the interruptions were, and whether they could have been pre-empted. You can pre-empt many interruptions by holding routine meetings with people: If they're confident that they'll have access to you at a defined point in the near future, they'll learn to save up non-urgent issues until this meeting.

However, some interruptions are both urgent and valid. You need to be interrupted, and you need to deal with the situation.

From your Interrupters Log, you'll see how much time is taken up by these urgent, valid interruptions. Block this time into your schedule as "contingency time", and only take on as much other work as you can fit into the remaining time. You'll have to juggle this other work around the interruptions, but at least you won't be overloaded and stressed by the things that you haven't done because they've been displaced by emergencies.

3. Put Your Phone to Work for You (…Not Against You)

A little bit of planning can go a long way in working to control telephone interruptions, which most people experience all day long. If you are on a deadline or your focus needs to be intense (and not interrupted), use your voice mail to screen calls or have an assistant deal with messages for you. This way, you can deal with calls by priority at times that suit you. In fact, this telephone time can be planned into your schedule, and so become a normal part of your working pattern.

4. Catch Your Breath

When interrupted, it’s easy to get caught up in the “rush” of the person who is interrupting, for they undoubtedly feel their request is urgent. In reality, however, most interruptions are not a crisis and it serves everyone best to take a little time before taking action.

Take a few minutes to consider the situation. Catch your breath and clear your head. A small delay, even one of just a few minutes, goes a long way in assessing the situation accurately and reacting appropriately.

5. Learn to Say “No”

It’s often acceptable to say “no” to requests or tasks if you are busy when someone else can handle it, if it is not an important task, or if it can be done later.

When this is the case, saying “no” in a courteous and sincere way, followed by a short explanation is the best course of action to take: “I am working against a very tight deadline on an important project right now so, I am sorry, but I can not jump in and help”.

6. “Available” and “Unavailable” Time

Simple yet effective: Let people know when you are available… and when you are not. Make sure that people know that during your "unavailable time", they should only interrupt you if they have to.

You and your co-workers can also agree on a signal that everyone in the office can use when tied up and unavailable, like turning the nameplate on the door around, or simply closing the door. This alleviates interruptions and can avoid hurt feelings.

Tip: Be careful here. If you're a manager, an important part of your job is to be available to people, to handle urgent issues which arise, and to coach your team so that people are as effective as possible. If you put up barriers that are too high, you won't be able to do these jobs. By all means, use "unavailable time", but don't over use it, and make sure people know they can interrupt you if there is a genuine crisis.

7. “Invitation Only” Time

Schedule regular check-in times for the individuals you talk to most often. Ask these people to keep a running list of things that they need to discuss, so you can cover all the points at one time. And, force yourself to do the same.

An open-door policy is good, but you should limit the number of people you invite to your work area. For instance, if you're scheduling a meeting, offer to meet your co-worker in his or her office or a conference room. This way, you can excuse yourself after you accomplish your purpose. Additionally, it's much easier to get up and leave than it is to get people to leave your office once seated and comfortable there.

8. Uncontrollable Interruptions

There are interruptions that, no matter how hard you try, you simply cannot control.

Most people are happy to schedule a more convenient time, but when this does not work, quickly set the parameters by saying something like, “I only have five minutes to talk about this right now,” and stick to it.

Do not ask the interrupter to sit down and do not engage in small talk. Encourage the interrupter to get right to the point and if a solution cannot be reached before the allotted time runs out, set a time for getting back to them and, again, stick to it.

		"Like most people, I have to deal with many different interruptions every day. I use these techniques, and many others, to make the very best use of my time, maximize my effectiveness, and stay on track with my goals. I urge you to do the same - you'll go so much further! The Interrupters Log is just one of 39 essential tools in our ‘Make Time for Success!’ time management and personal effectiveness system. This helps you take control of your time, and so focus on the things that really matter."
		James Manktelow, CEO, Mindtools.com.

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Mind Tools Prize Draw Survey:
Tools for Your Success (and Your Boss's!)

We always love to hear your success stories, and how you use tools we feature – old or new – to make a difference to your life and career success.

So we’re running a survey to ask you:

“What tools and techniques have made the biggest difference to your career?”

And, partly for fun, we want to know:

“Which tools and techniques does your boss most need to know about?”

Tell us about your favorite tools at Mind Tools or any others you know and love. We’ll feature the best in future issues. (Anonymously, of course!)

And as a “thank you” for entering, we’ll give two prizes of US$100 of Amazon.com vouchers. We’ll give one to a randomly-selected survey respondent, and a second to the most enlightening response.

ntry closes in seven days time, and the winner will be announced in mid-April.

So answer the survey, and let us know what you think right now!

The Mind Tools Store:

• Make Time for Success: Learn 39 essential personal effectiveness techniques that help you bring your workload under control and maximize your productivity, so that you can make the most of the opportunities open to you. More >>
  
  
• How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You: Learn the 48 simple but essential skills you need to become a top leader in your industry. More >>
  
  
• The Mind Tools E-book: All of the tools on the Mind Tools website in one convenient, easily-downloadable, easily-printable PDF file. We have excluded advertising to enhance clarity and have formatted sections to be easy to read, print and use. More >>
  
  
• Personal Coaching from Career Excellence Professionals: Find career and life direction, bring your job under control, build self-confidence and put yourself on the path to long term success with a Mind Tools coach. Our coaches give you the focused personal coaching you need to make the very most of your career and life. More >>
  
  
• Design Your Life Design the life you want to live. Set the clear, vivid, powerful goals you need to live it to the full. More >>

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Tool Revisited:
Cause & Effect Diagrams:
Identifying the likely cause of problems.  

Cause & Effect Diagrams help you to think through causes of a problem thoroughly. Their major benefit is that they push you to consider all possible causes of the problem, rather than just the ones that are most obvious.

The approach combines Brainstorming with use of a type of Concept Map.

Cause & Effect Diagrams are also known as Fish Bone Diagrams. The box and line can be thought of as the head and spine of the fish.

How to use tool:

Follow these steps to solve a problem with a Cause & Effect diagram:

1. Identify the problem:
   Write down the exact problem you face in detail. Where appropriate identify who is involved, what the problem is, and when and where it occurs. Write the problem in a box on the left hand side of a large sheet of paper. Draw a line across the paper horizontally from the box. This gives you space to develop ideas.
   
   
2. Work out the major factors involved:
   Next identify the factors that may contribute to the problem. Draw lines off the spine for each factor, and label it. These may be people involved with the problem, systems, equipment, materials, external forces, etc. Try to draw out as many possible factors as possible. If you are trying to solve the problem as part of a group, then this may be a good time for some brainstorming! Using the 'Fish bone' analogy, the factors you find can be though of as the bones of the fish.
   
   
3. Identify possible causes:
   For each of the factors you considered in stage ii, brainstorm possible causes of the problem that may be related to the factor. Show these as smaller lines coming off the 'bones' of the fish. Where a cause is large or complex, then it may be best to break the it down into sub-causes. Show these as lines coming off each cause line.
   
   
4. Analyze your diagram:
   By this stage you should have a diagram showing all the possible causes of your problem. Depending on the complexity and importance of the problem, you can now investigate the most likely causes further. This may involve setting up investigations, carrying out surveys, etc. These will be designed to test whether your assessments are correct.

Example:

The example below shows a Cause & Effect diagram drawn by a manager who is having trouble getting cooperation from a branch office:

Click here to view diagram
(diagram too wide to include here)

If the manager had not thought the problem through, he might have dealt with the problem by assuming that people were being difficult. Instead he might think that the best approach is to arrange a meeting with the Branch Manager. This would allow him to brief the manger fully, and talk through any problems that he may be facing.

Key points:

Cause & Effect diagrams provide a structured way to help you think through all possible causes of a problem. This helps you to carry out a thorough analysis of a situation.

This is just one of the Problem Solving articles on the Mind Tools site. Click here for more.

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A Final Note From James

Do try out some of the featured tools this week! I know from my own experience that it’s important to try out new things, even if you’re not under pressure to do so.

By keeping your tool-kit up to date, you can look forward to greater success and effectiveness, and be ready and better prepared for any unexpected challenges as they arise.What’s more, if you learn some of the lessons in the Managing Interruptions article, you’ll be better able to keep in control of your workload; whatever challenges come your way.

Next week, we’re trying something new. What we’ve found in past issues is that our newsletters have been "bursting at the seams" with tools, leaving hardly any column space for in-depth reviews of career development products and services.

So every month or so, we’re going to look at a product or service that we like, and put it through its paces.The first of these reviews will focus on MindGenius, billed as “the creativity front end to MSOffice”. We hope you enjoy it, and find the review authoritative and useful.

And remember our survey – we’d love to hear what you think!

Best wishes, and until next time!

James & Kellie

James Manktelow & Kellie Fowler

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Essential Skills for an Excellent Career!

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