Be More Productive Than Ever

**Note** I originally wrote this entry at the end of June and intended to publish it the first week of July.  Then my wife went and had a baby, and the last few weeks have been a blur of diaper changes and midnight feedings.  That said, none of what I wrote is any less relevant in August than it was in July.  Enjoy. -AB

If only it were this easy!

I’ve had one of the most productive years of my life so far in 2012, and the year is only half-over. During the first six months of this year, I have accomplished nearly every goal I set for myself at the beginning of the year. Those include personal and family goals like teaching my son or preparing my family for the birth of our daughter (any day now, seriously). Spiritual goals like daily prayer and volunteering at our church. Financial goals like getting that promotion I’ve been working towards. Giving speeches. Writing blog posts. Reading books. Of the 34 specific, measurable, attainable goals I set in January, I have achieved 27 of them in one form or another and failed at 7 of them. Goal-setting and regular evaluation of goals is an important part of my productivity.

1.) Set achievable goals, and then review them regularly.
Look back at the goals you set in January.  How many of them were specific, measurable, achievable goals? “Lose weight” is not specific. Lose how much weight? By when? “Lose ten pounds by June 1st” is specific, measurable and achievable.

2.) Do more in the same amount of time as everyone else.  
We all have 24 hours in a day. What you do with those 24 hours determines how successful you will be.  I read a great New York Times article about what CEO’s do that everyone else does not.  One of the things that popped out at me was that they get more done in the same amount of time than everyone else does. They find tiny ways to be more productive. For me, that has been eye-opening. I used to waste a lot of time on things that weren’t adding value to my life. TV, messing around on the internet, classic time-wasters. I’ve cut a lot of that out of my life and replaced it with things that I feel are more productive uses of my time.  In the mornings, when I’m getting ready in a quiet house with my wife and son sleeping, I will throw on my headphones and listen to a book.  This has helped me read/listen to more than twenty books so far this year.  They run the gamut, from fiction to business to biographies,  but each one has engrossed me and taught me something.  I write speeches for my Toastmasters group and then turn around and edit those speeches into a blog post. Twice the work in half the time.  But lest you think my productivity is limited to my personal life, I’ve also found ways to increase productivity at work, through consolidating a dozen reports into one simple easy to read report or getting a subject matter expert to explain to me a topic I am not familiar with before I dive headlong into a new project.

Find the places you are wasting time and figure out a way to use that time more effectively.  Sitting in line at the post office? Don’t check your email/Twitter/Facebook, rattle off some words you were trying to learn in German.  Playing blocks with the kid? Just kidding, when it’s play time, my son gets 100% of my attention.

3.) Find someone to keep you accountable. About once a month, a good friend and I talk by phone about our goals. We discuss the things we’ve been working on, detail our failures, and offer advice to each other. These conversations are great because they allow me the chance to see what someone else is doing (and sometimes shamelessly steal his goals as my own) and they keep me accountable because I know that I’m going to have to talk about what I accomplished and I don’t want to say “nothing.”

Sure, there are literally hundreds of other ways to increase your productivity, but these are three things that I started doing this year that have turned 2012 into one of the most productive years of my life. Wouldn’t you like to look back on 2012 in six months and be able to say the same thing?

Speaking Extemporaneously

Don't be afraid of speaking extemporaneously!

In Toastmasters, we have a part of the meeting called Table Topics, a point at which the Table Topics Master starts talking about the topic of the day and then asks several people in the audience questions for which they have not been prepared.  The speaker then stands and speaks extemporaneously for up to two minutes on the topic they have been asked about.

It is for many people, the scariest part of a Toastmaster meeting. For me, it’s the most exciting. I have been blessed with the skill of speaking extemporaneously, a skill I further developed in college during fraternity and Student Government meetings (surely, much to my colleagues’ chagrin). The ability to speak extemporaneously is a valuable skill to have, as its usefulness is evident whenever someone stands up to speak and stumbles over their words for thirty seconds before sitting down. If you are scared of speaking in front of people, don’t be!  You can learn how to do it.  Here’s how.

First, collect your thoughts. There is no shame in silently standing for a few seconds to collect your thoughts. Usually, while doing so you will grab the attention of the room.  Silence is so rare these days that when someone stands silently, even for a few seconds, people tend to stop what they are doing to pay attention. Silence is not a bad thing. Don’t be afraid of it. Your audience will find themselves on the edge of their seats in anticipation of what you will say. Once you have them there, don’t let them go.

These guys would be a hostile audience.

When you have an idea of where you want to go with what you are going to say, start strong. You will lose your audience immediately if you mumble and fumble your way into your speech. Speak loudly, speak clearly, and state your point at the very beginning. Your audience has just spent ten to fifteen seconds in hungered preparation for what you will say, and it is up to you as the speaker to feed it to them. You want them to know what your point is from the start. Once you’ve stated your thesis, use the rest of your time to frame your oratory around that one, simple thought.

While doing so, be sure you direct your conversation to a subject you can speak on for a few minutes. In other words, don’t talk about things you don’t know about. Too often, I see people who speak on subject from which they have no knowledge, and it is painfully evident from the get go that they will be lost within thirty seconds. Your audience is smart. They will know if you are BS-ing them. I was once asked the following question by an engineering graduate student during table topics: “The philosopher Plato examined the reality of the metaphysical world. His beliefs questioned whether anything in the world is real or merely a construction of our imagination. What do you believe? Are we really here or is all of this a construction of my, or your, imagination?”

Yes, he really asked me that.

It took me a few seconds just to wrap my head around the question. It has been about fifteen years since I studied Greek philosophy, and I have long since forgotten the theories we discussed in my classes. So I stood, gathered my thoughts for a few seconds, and talked about the first thing that popped into my head.

The Matrix.

Yes, the movie.

I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stand there and try to make up something about Plato’s belief system and whether or not those beliefs were accurate or not. So I started talking about how the allusions Plato discussed were an allegory to the subject matter of The Matrix, and how those who were in the matrix thought their world was real, but it was actually a construct of the machines. (Yes, I still remember the movie’s plotline ten years after it first came out.)

Needless to say, I was pretty happy to sit down after my two minutes were up.

The point of that story is that I didn’t BS the audience trying to make up something about Greek philosophy when I was clearly out of my element. Instead, I steered the topic of conversation to something I could speak about- science fiction movies. You can and should do the same when faced with talking about a subject of which you have no knowledge. Politicians do it all the time- ask them about health care funding and they will move the subject to gun control. Ask them about the deficit and they will answer by talking about privacy rights. A good politician will answer the question THEY want to answer, not necessarily the question that is being asked. And a bad politician will answer a question about Net Neutrality by comparing the Internet to a series of tubes.

Don’t talk about tubes, folks. Speak about what you know.

Finally, as your time is coming to a close, have a definitive finish. Make a point, whether it is a reference back to your original thesis or a joke to close out your speech. I finished my Greek philosophy Table Topic question by positing, “If the question is whether the world is real or a figment of my imagination, I choose the latter, in which case this question was something my mind made up and I no longer feel it is necessary to jump through hoops trying to answer this question.”

Perhaps Homer Simpson put it better. “Alright brain, I don’t like you and you don’t like me. But let’s just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer.”

Get To The Point (Again)

One of my most popular posts has been Get To The Point, a primer on how to be clear, concise and quick in a fast-paced business environment.  I talked about organizing your thoughts so you know what you’re talking about, concisely expressing your main points and getting to your conclusion quickly because no one likes to listen to someone prattle on.

I have a few more thoughts on Getting To The Point that I’d like to share with you.  I recently gave a speech in which I used Keynote slides to help illustrate my points.  I had about twenty-five slides and the speech lasted about ten minutes.  For most of you, this description is already bringing to mind some of your own experiences with Powerpoint in a business meeting.  Someone slaps a slide up on the screen full of text and bullet notes and then proceeds to read word for word what is written on the slide.  Within seconds, the audience zones out either by reading the slides instead of listening to the speaker, or by just tuning out completely.

GET TO THE POINT, PEOPLE!

This pretty much describes nearly every single staff meeting I’ve had in my professional career.  It describes about 75% of the courses I took in college.  I don’t know about you, but I can read.  Do I really need someone to put a slide up and then read to me word for word what is on the slide?

NO!

So why do we do it?  Why do you do it?  The biggest complaint I hear from meetings like that are about the presenter reading directly from the slide.  But when given the chance to present, the same exact people do the same exact thing- bulleted powerpoint slide, read from the screen.

THIS IS NOT HOW YOU DO IT.

Your slide should help emphasize what you are trying to say.  It should not give the presentation for you.  You should know what you are trying to say verbally to keep the audience focused on you and your message.  The powerpoint slide is there simply to help make your point or to show off something you want the audience to know.  That’s it.

For example, the speech I gave was about making smart decisions in the workplace.  I came up with a little acronym to help me outline my points.  Here is the slide I used:

Simple, right?  Doesn’t tell the audience what each point means, but it does sort of grab your attention and make you want to know what each letter stands for.  I could have used a slide like this:

But that is so wordythat the audience will focus on reading the text on the screen instead of listening to what I am saying.  I went on to outline each letter in bullet point and summed them up at the end, but I never dwelled on the slide and I certainly never read directly from the slide itself.

Here is another slide I used:

While this slide was up, I talked about Netflix’s recent decision making snafu’s, how they seemed to have no direction and how they only served to anger their customers who left the company in droves (800,000 lost subscribers) and tanked their stock price (from $300+ to $70 in only 15 weeks.

Again, I could have used a slide like this:

But then you aren’t listening to my point, you’re reading the words on the slide.  In fact, you may have read every word on the slide before you moved on, EVEN THOUGH I had just told you what would be on the slide in the previous paragraph.  The goal of ANY speech, whether it is a business presentation, a staff meeting or a toast at a wedding should be to communicate your message clearly and concisely while engaging your audience.  Not to overwhelm your audience with words on a slide.

After my speech, I received the following comments:

“Great visual aid, very well organized.”
“Good use of slides.  Thank you for not looking at the screen the whole time.”
“Your slides were simple and easy to understand and kept me engaged.”

People LIKE to be engaged by their speaker.  They want you to look at them, talk to them and make eye contact with them.  They don’t like having slides read to them.  The next time you have to put together a powerpoint presentation, make your slides simple and focus on the message you are trying to get across.  Your audience will thank you for it.

The Road to Going Pro

Originally posted 3/16/2011.

I joined Toastmasters this week.  The first meeting I ever attended was last week on the 51st floor of the Williams Building in downtown Tulsa.  I first heard of Toastmasters many years ago and had thought about joining several times in the past but never got past “that seems like a good idea,”  A few weeks ago, I was thinking about my professional goals and self-improvement and Toastmasters popped back into my head.  After a little bit of research, I found an active club nearby and decided to attend a meeting.

This week was my second meeting.  It is odd, although I was in a room comprised of complete strangers, I felt completely at ease.  A big part of that is the welcoming nature of the Toastmasters- nearly everyone introduced themselves to me either before or after the meeting and every one of them was engaging and enthusiastic about Toastmasters.  As long as I can remember, I have been skilled in speaking in front of large groups of people- much of my college career involved giving presentations and early on in my banking career I developed and presented a “Financial Info for College Students” speech and presented it to local college students during their orientation week.  During my one year of law school, I participated in a moot court competition where we received our topics of argument the day of the competition and had to research the topic and formulate an argument either for or against and compete against other students.  In the first event I ever competed in, I placed third out of a field of more than 20 students, and gave my final arguments in front of a panel of judges and a courtroom full of people.  It was nerve-wracking, and yet, I felt cool and calm and received several comments afterward about my poise and presence.  Also during my year of law school, I gave a presentation about a baseball arbitration, again arguing against other students in the class.  The arbitration I lost, but after class the teacher (a local judge) pulled me aside to tell me that in twenty years of teaching his class, he’d never seen a presentation as skilled as mine.

Why, then, am I joining a club designed to develop public speakers when my skills are already decidedly well-developed?  Because you can always get better, and despite my extensive experience thus far, there are areas I can stand to improve.  Unless I am focused on it, I make unfortunate use of non-verbals (uh, um, and).  I can also use more practice seeing what makes a good speaker great.  At some point in the future, I would like to become a professional public speaker, someone who is paid to speak to groups at conferences.  There is no better way to make the connections I will need than by joining an organization comprised entirely of public speakers.

During a Toastmaster’s meeting, the Presiding Toastmaster will address a Table Topic, often a question designed to facilitate easy discussion.  Last week it was, “What would you do with $100 million” and this week it was “If you could be any age.”  Surprisingly, the Presiding Toastmaster asked me to speak briefly on the topic at hand. While caught off guard, I recovered immediately and stood and spoke for about a minute about going back to high school and re-visiting some of the events and situations that have crafted me into the individual I am today.  I sat back down and was thrilled to receive a hearty round of applause from the group.  Later in the meeting, during the “critique” session, I was informed that I had used no non-verbals during my brief speech (whew!) and that the consensus was that my
speech was good.  I was later told that I have an excellent speakers voice and great presence in commanding the room.  To say I was beaming from this praise would be an understatement.

I will soon be sent the “Newbie Notebook” from Toastmasters and will get to progress through the ten speeches necessary to become a “Competent Communicator,” the first in a line of ever-increasingly challenging ranks achieved through giving various speeches in front of the Toastmasters or outside groups.

http://www.toastmasters.org/education

After Competent Communicator comes Advanced Communicator with ranks of Bronze, Silver and Gold before becoming a Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM).  While working towards the rank of Distinguished Toastmaster,
an applicant can also apply to become an Accredited Speaker.  To date, only 60 Toastmasters have ever achieved this rank which requires having spoken at at least twenty-five non-Toastmaster speaking engagements within three years of application, and an audio presentation.  If your speech passes the first level of screening, you are invited to appear before a live review panel at an International Convention during which you will be judged.  Only a few applicants each year are awarded the level of Accredited Speaker, in fact, fewer than twenty percent of all applicants have qualified for Accredited Speaker status in the 31 years the program has existed.

http://www.toastmasters.org/asapp.asp
http://www.toastmasters.org/astips

Whether I am ever able to achieve Accredited Speaker status, I know my future lies in public speaking.  The skills I have developed on my own will only be enhanced and perfected through my involvement in Toastmasters.  My praise, while uplifting, will fade if I fail to improve.  In order to become great, I must continue to challenge myself by stepping outside of my comfort zone.  Only then, after growing as a speaker, will I be worthy of delivering a speech that people would pay to come see.  Someday soon, I hope to be the keynote speaker at a business conference near you.