effective

You Don’t Have to Be Hilarious, Just Be Good Enough

By on October 21, 2009 in Quick Wisdom

Growing up, I used to be a perfectionist–I would make sure that every ‘t’ was crossed, every ‘i’ was dotted, and that my handwriting all slanted the same way.

As I started doing comedy, I realized it wasn’t necessary or, in most cases, even possible.  You’ll never know for sure that you have the “perfect” punchline, but you’ll know when you have one that’s good enough.

The 80/20 principle that Pareto defined captures this idea perfectly.  And while the principle can be applied in most situations, it’s particularly true for office humor.

When incorporating humor into the workplace, you don’t have to craft the perfect joke before adding humor to a speech, or write a flawless script before shooting a fun promotional video for your project.  The fact that you are even working to improve the office with humor will be good enough to improve office morale, increase retention and have fun.

So don’t worry so much about being hilarious, just be good enough.  Trust me, it’ll go further than you realize.

Need some help? Steal some ideas from 101 Ways to Create Humor at Work.

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Creating a Sense of Urgency

By on April 28, 2009 in Learn with Humor
Photo by clix

Photo by clix

One of the best tips I’ve learned for getting things done is creating a sense of urgency for my work.  If I feel like I have all day to do something, I’ll take all day to do it – it’s Parkinson’s Law (“Work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion”).

But if something is urgent, if I need to get it done quickly, then it will get done quickly.  The trick is to do this while minimizing stress.  I could just wait to the last second to do everything, thereby forcing myself to urgently do it, but I’d also like to avoid a heart attack by age 35.

The other thing to keep in mind while working in an “urgent” environment is that the work still needs to meet expectations.  While you can consciously decide that you are only going to deliver the 80 for 20, you should always execute with excellence–delivering everything you promised 100%.

So, while keeping low levels of stress and executing with excellence in mind, here are some ways to improve productivity by creating a sense of urgency:

1. Set Short Deadlines… Stick to Them

The easiest way to create a sense of urgency is to set short deadlines (e.g. this task is due by the end of the day) and then stick to and deliver them.  Of course if you had the discipline to do this, you probably wouldn’t need the rest of this list.

That’s why you can set arbitrary stopping points that can help you.  For example, I’ll often tell myself I can’t go to the bathroom, or go to lunch, or grab a snack, until I get a task done.  You better believe that when the bladder starts getting full, I feel that sense of urgency and the task gets done quickly (which reminds me, I need to wrap up this post).

2. Make Public Commitments

Commit to delivering a project or task publicly–to your boss, your co-workers, or even your reader’s if you have a blog.  By committing publicly, you’re more inclined to complete your tasks because there are people that will hold you accountable if you don’t.

Where you can, ask the person you committed to to ask you for a status update on the task 24 hours before it’s due.  This will instill that sense of urgency and remind you that someone is expecting the task to get done, two powerful motivators combined into one.

3. Schedule a Busy Day

I don’t know about you, but I am more productive if I have a busy day scattered with meetings than if it’s a day free of any obligations but ”work.”  Knowing that I only have 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there, an hour over there, makes me work more efficiently in that time period (Parkinson again!).

It’s important to make sure that you don’t schedule too many meetings though.  You don’t want to be that person that is trying to multi-task in a meeting, not giving your full attention.  But with the right balance, you can have still get everything done in your heightened sense of urgency, and have productive meetings too.

4. Take Breaks

One of the most important, and most ignored, steps in becoming more efficient is taking breaks.  While you certainly want to push yourself to meet challenging deadlines, you also want to make sure you take time to recuperate and relax.  Because even though stress isn’t always a bad thing, it’s also not effective in the long term to always be in a state of high-pressure.

Remember to take breaks, have a laugh, and then resume to your highly effective self.

From Sense of Urgency to Sense of Accomplishment

Creating a sense of urgency (whether imagined or real) is a great way to get things done quickly–it follows Parkinson’s Law and it forces you to apply Pareto’s principle (80/20) .  And while it’s not the only way to have a more productive day, it is one of the most effective that I’ve found.

And now that this post is done, I can finally attend to some other, um, business.

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Have More Productive Meetings in 4 Steps

By on January 27, 2009 in Learn with Humor

In any given week, I average being in between 15 to 20 meetings.  That’s an average of 3 meetings per day, and that’s the low end for most employees–I know many people in upper management whose entire 9-5 job is meetings.

Given that we spend so much time in meetings, it amazes me how few of them are done well.  Meetings in the comedy world are equally horrendous, if not worse.  Whether it’s a writer’s session, an improv practice, or a rehearsal, it’s easy for time to pass with no meaningful work getting accomplished.

Having a productive meeting isn’t even that hard to do, you just need 4 things:

1. Have an Agenda. Always.

I know some people who won’t even attend a meeting unless they know the agenda (oh to be so bold).  An agenda does three things:

  1. Allows the people attending to mentally prepare for the meeting before-hand.
  2. Forces the meeting organizer to really think about what the point of the meeting is.
  3. Makes it easier to stay on-track during the meeting since you actually know what the track is.  Having no agenda is like a train running down the middle of 3rd Avenue.

2. Start on Time.  End on Time.  90 Minutes or Less.

I understand, we’re all busy.  Sometimes we’re even overbooked so we can’t make it to every meeting on time.  BUT every meeting should start right when it says it will.  The problem with “waiting for everyone to get here” is that it sets the expectation that in the next meeting you have, it’s ok to be a little late.  It also increases the likelihood of you going over the designated time, which is disrespectful to people’s calendars.

As for 90 minutes or less: unless it’s an all-day training session, any more than an hour and a half is too long for anyone to stay focused and away from their crack email.

3. Take Notes.

Ideally, every meeting would have somebody designated to take meeting notes (but not the agenda owner–there’s too much to do to do both).  If a meeting notetaker isn’t present, you should be taking personal notes.  Why?

  1. Taking notes keeps you focused on the meeting.  You have to be writing down what’s going on and what’s important so you’re forced to pay attention.
  2. At the end of the meeting you’ll have a list of any action items you need to take (see Step 4).
  3. It’s fun.  I love reading old meeting notes.  Not only do I read about myself in the third person–”Drew to follow-up with Amy”– I also make myself laugh because I always throw in some humor in my meetings notes–”We have to keep pace with the rest of the industry.  Do companies that make pacemakers say the same thing? Cuz I’d hope they’d just keep pace with a heartbeat.”

4. Next Steps (aka Action Items (aka Next Action Step Items)).

Probably the most important item on here is this one, #4.  Every meeting should end with Next Steps.  If there are no Next Steps after a meeting, then the meeting wasn’t necessary (email would’ve worked).  Next Steps make sure sitting in a room with people for X hours turns into action, and action turns into results, whereby results turn into success.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to write the agenda for my next writer’s session.  The key tasks are: 1) Write funny stuff, 2) Write more funny stuff, 3) Eat pizza.

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