Many times you hear people talking about the lack of time in their day and the amount of tasks or projects that are building up. There is a simple approach to this that can be used to great effect and may be worth a go. It is the idea of drip feeding 10 minute tasks into your day. Ten minutes isn't a lot of time and you can get a surprisingly large amount of work done in a focussed slot of 10 minutes. Ten minutes isn't very long and so usually doesn't make us feel overwhelmed, this means that procrastination can be avoided. Ten minutes done every day is fifty minutes in a normal working week. Many projects can be moved on with nearly an hour a week. Moreover, if the tasks or projects you have chosen to spend 10 minutes a day on are important, you will probably gain momentum and decide to spend more time on these and stop doing something that is less important. So, if you find yourself getting stuck then try putting your hard to reach / hard to start projects into

When an improvement has taken effect and the results you need have appeared this can often be an opportunity to stop doing some things that you have done before. Do the same KPIs need to be reported upon? Do the same reports need to be submitted to your clients? Do you still need to hold the same meetings that you had before your problems went away? When you make an improvement to your business some activities you did beforehand will not be as relevant. Some tasks may only be present because they are at the request of an unhappy owner or customer. Make the decision to stop doing what is no longer required and do more of what is essential. Smartspeed Consulting Limited Deliver on Time with Smartspeed

This is the sequence to make change happen. Many times we see organisations determine what solution they want, when in fact that will give them a different result to the one that they really want. If you find yourself in this situation, or are about to embark upon a new project, then ask yourself this question - "will this course of action give me the result that I need?" From root cause problem solving we know that the 'evidence' that we see around us is usually a symptom of the real problem and by probing deeper we can find the simpler and more powerful problem to solve. So, before you start your next project or improvement activity consider the steps once more: - What result do we need? - What is the appropriate solution? - What is the most efficient and effective course of action? Smartspeed Consulting Limited Deliver on Time with Smartspeed

When you hear that information is not available and that it won't be discussed you can be fairly sure that there is something going wrong within a business. Whatever the reason is for not wanting to discuss the facts the outcome is clear. You cannot make decisions properly without the facts. Many times you can see this lack of engagement through the minimisation that takes place. Comments are made that make the situation look less important than it really is and the necessary fact finding never takes place. Keep your eyes and ears open for times when facts are being ignored or played down, there could be a significant opportunity lurking behind the scenes. Smartspeed Consulting Limited Deliver on Time with Smartspeed

Businesses run on routines. Every day there will be some kind of activity that needs to take place like clockwork. If the routine task does not take place it will probably not be the end of the world, but if the task is never done the quality of the service, or the standards in the business may well drop. If routines of work are important then why do we struggle to keep them in place? One answer for this question is that we don't create formal rotas / schedules of activity that are clearly visible and located in a public place within the business. It does require discipline to maintain routine activities - especially when we become really busy. With a rota we are more able to remember what we need to do in order for the business to run smoothly, professionally and efficiently. If you need more help than just a rota then you may want to try implementing an end of week checklist for your own personal use, or put a reminder on your phone / email calendar. As the habit forms an

On our travels we see many projects getting behind schedule due to the people involved not the 'taking the rough with the smooth'. By this we mean that during the course of the project there may well be some elements that are highly enjoyable and some that are boring or difficult. If all of the tasks listed for a project are required to complete the project then all of them will need to be completed. By actively managing the parts of the project which appear, or are expected, to be in the difficult / confusing / tedious camp then you will have a better chance of others completing all of the tasks in a timely manner. If it is you who is struggling with these tasks then it might be worth considering the advice given by Brian Tracy in his book 'Eat that frog'. Basically, start your working day with the most unpleasant, difficult (and most important) task. Once this is done you don't have to think about that task again. Try it and see what it does for your proje

It's interesting to watch and take note of what happens when people rush their jobs. Things get missed off. Parts of the job that normally get done, and can be done from memory, don't get done. Depending on where you work this may or may not be critical. For a surgeon this may be life and death (or a fire fighter, or a pilot for example), for everyone else this could at least mean a poor customer experience for our clients, or the reworking of a job at a later date. Two improvements spring to mind with this problem in mind. 1 - using checklists can make life a lot easier (so when you are pushed for time you don't need to rely on your mind!). 2 - appropriate time should be given to a task and scheduled accordingly (or deferred if possible - should there not be enough time). Business does go quickly - but reworking the same problems time and time again is even slower. Look at the areas where you find mistakes occuring. If they are due to people rushing the job the

One of the simplest things we can do if we want to improve our business is to stop and think. Just stopping to reflect upon what we are doing can give one of the greatest impacts we can have within our own business. When we take a look at what we are doing we are able to see activities and arrangements that don't lend themselves to being the best possible way. These areas for improvement become more obvious when we take the time to stop what we are doing and take a step back from the (hectic) day-to-day. 'Does it work?' is a great question to ask when we step back - does it work well? By taking the time out to ask this question you will most likely find opportunities to improve leaping towards you. This is not hard - it just takes the discipline to periodically stop and think about what we are doing. Smartspeed Consulting Limited BESPOKE BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT | LEAN TRAINING | OPERATIONS TROUBLESHOOTING www.smartspeed.co.uk

One item of conversation that crops up time and time again is that of wanting a boost in productivity. Projects get delayed and don't seem to move, let alone the piles of paperwork on your desk that seem to build up from normal working; these all detract from our ability to be productive. Well, there is a simple approach to improving productivity. It can give a one time boost, or can be used on an ongoing basis to maintain higher levels of productivity. It's quite simple and all to do with 'keeping your house in order'. Write a list of everything that you think you need to do to get all of your tasks / projects back on track. Resolve to sort out this list and focus on clearing as many items as possible. In fact don't stop until you do clear the list. When you have finished you will be in a position to tackle new jobs and hence become truly productive. The list that was holding you back was stuff that should have been done already and therefore a case of obliga

Many people spend their days working without truly appreciating what their job really entails. I'm sure that you have seen other people work really hard at what they are given (or have chosen) to do, and yet aren't producing results of any real merit. Most jobs are designed for a purpose - to add value to a specific process or client, they are there to make the process or client experience better. If you are familiar with Parkinson's Law (that effort expands to fit the time available) you will see the countless unnecessary tasks that fill the days of many working people. Jobs that do not fit with the value that the organisation is trying to generate, and do not help anyone to deliver meaningful results. Not understanding current work content and how this generates value to the end client is crucial if we are to spend our days doing something that is useful, profitable and enjoyable. Does your day-to-day work deliver the results? Smartspeed Consulting Limited &#

We all know that our projects and our tasks are a collection of steps. We take time to map our work (looking for improvements) and then find that productivity does not increase as a result. Could it be that we are reviewing the wrong areas? Could we be better off by doing something different that just mapping what we think we do? Sometimes the improvement that we need is at a very lowest level within the organisation's efforts - in the day to day activities, not necessarily the strategic ones. How we file our work, how we decide when to give the information to the next stage of the process and the format of the information can all have big impacts in the productivity of our work area. When we don't understand what the best sequence is for our work we find ourselves not being as efficient as we could be. What is the right sequence for the work in your business? Can you engineer the handovers and sequences of work so that you can become more productive in your work? H

Busy busy busy are our days and yet there is always the opportunity to get more done if that is required. There are many tasks that can be run at the same time as others, effectively getting two things done at once. Looking for these opportunities to piggy back other activities can add a further degree of productivity to your day. Of course, you also have the opportunity of jettisoning tasks that yield little value to your cause (or your stakeholder's) and have less to contend with in the first place. Smartspeed Consulting Limited 'For When Results Matter' www.smartspeed.co.uk

Pretty much everyone has a huge stack of items that they need to do. When seeing the amount of confusion that this can cause it raises the question of how do you remember everything that you have to do. At most people's disosal are existing systems that can be used to capture all of this information. Whether this is a CRM system, email, paper or something else there is one thing that is certainly true. If we keep it only in our heads thenwe risk a continuous state of confusion. If this situation applies to you then the following considerations may help you to enjoy more productive days: - find a way to get your list of tasks out of your head on an ongoing basis. - decide how you are going to prioritise your activities. - keep your lists up to date and maintain a flow within your list, flush tasks when they stagnate (either do them or remove them from your list if no longer relevant). Keep your brain working at full tilt through better organisation of your list of tasks