S4 Reading and Assignments
SESSION 4 – VIRTUAL IN TRAY & TERMINALS – READING MATERIAL
Think of your workspace as an Airport, with Terminals.
It is useful to think of your workspace as an airport for your workflow, and your Virtual In-Tray as a runway or landing strip. Incoming work items, like aircraft, do not stop after landing on the Virtual InTray; they must immediately go to where they belong in your organizational system. In the case of signed paperwork for a completed project, for example, the item goes into a file cabinet. In the case of a document that requires action on your part, it goes to your active-task stack, a tool that I call the Turtle. (The Turtle will be discussed in depth in Session Five.) I like to call the functional areas of your workspace Terminals, like the terminals of an airport.
Keep the runway clear
Think now about a vitally important rule of airports: The runway must always be cleared for the next aircraft to land. Imagine yourself landing at a major airport. Your plane touches down, and the pilot stops, abruptly, on the active runway without taxiing to a terminal.The doors of the aircraft open for you and the other passengers to deplane. No other aircraft can land safely on the runway as long as yours stands there. What a danger, what an act of foolishness!
Not emptying your Virtual In-Tray will cause you danger of a different sort, and so the rule applies: YourVirtual In Tray must be kept clear for the next work item to land.You are the pilot who taxis incoming items from the runway (the Virtual In Tray) to their appropriate terminals. That means you have to move anything that lands in your Virtual In Tray to its proper terminal immediately. Even if you are busy working on something else, such as a report or an E-mail message, when something lands in your Virtual In Tray, you interrupt what you are doing, pick up the new item from the Virtual In Tray, identify it, and move it to the terminal where it belongs.
NOTE: While this may seem like a breach in your concentration, the truth of the matter is that this action keeps your sub-conscious mind calm and your re-focusing will be in just mere seconds.
Not what it is, but Where does it go?
One important principle to learn is that you no longer need to determine what to do with an item based on what it is rather, you make that determination based on where it belongs in your workflow organization system, in other words, one of your Seven Terminals. You no longer handle a paper file one way, a brochure or a fax or a letter another way, and an E-mail message yet another way. All of these, when they reach your workspace, require your attention. The crucial way of defining them is by where they go in your new organizing system. Essentially, you determine an item’s identity by the terminal to which it now belongs.
To state this another way, when you receive a work item, the first thing you do is to consciously disregard its form, such as a file, flow chart, letter, or mock-up for a brochure, and and think of which terminal it goes to.
The procedure that routes tangible items through your Virtual In-Tray applies similarly to E-mail and Voice-mail. And that brings us to the next technique – how to prepare your computer and Voice-mail system for maximum efficiency.
Process your work and keep files instantly retrievable.
We used an airport metaphor for processing your workflow efficiently. The Virtual In-tray is the runway on which your work-related information lands, and from there you immediately taxi the incoming materials to terminals where they will be processed in the appropriate time.
Outside the context of our airport metaphor, it might seem odd to refer to these functional objects in your office as terminals, but it will soon become apparent why the term fits them. These three terminals Trash, Out-Tray, and FileSystem have in common the fact that they receive items which do not require further action on your part; they are items you either throwaway, pass along to someone else, or file away for instant retrievability. Lets look at these three terminals, and their functionality, as you will want to employ them, one by one.
Trash
Trash seems so uncomplicated: What you do not need or want, you throw away. And yet there are people who have a hard time eliminating trash from their lives. Maybe their Mom threw out their comic-book collection before they were ready to part with it. Maybe it was their childhood task to take out the garbage every night, even during an Arctic blizzard, and they shiver just to think about it. They simply find it hard to throw anything away.
Whether that applies to you or not, you need to get rid of your trash promptly. Trash clutters up our desk, our filing cabinet, our floor. It can prevent us from focusing and optimally utilizing our creativity. When our working environment is cluttered, our minds are cluttered and our best qualities, our best work, cannot be realized.
Calling it a terminal does not mean we need to complicate Trash. You can use a standard wastebasket; nothing special is required. Just make sure to keep it in an easy-to-reach place.
Hard to throw away?
There are people who love tossing things out, and then there are pack rats. Most of us fall somewhere between these categories, but if you are one who has a hard time throwing things away and you know who you are try asking yourself the following questions about every item:
Do I need this for my work, or for tax,legal, documentation, or other archival reasons? If the answer is no toss it.
Do I foresee a specific need for it? If you think, Hmm, maybe someday it might be useful, but you can not think how, then take a deep breath and toss it.
Does a copy of this item exist somewhere else that is easily accessible? If you or a colleague will need the item, but it exists in a file stored on the company network, on the Internet, or in another easily accessible location toss it.
Still cannot decide? Try this rule of thumb: When in doubt, throw it out.
If you’re not sure you should be making the decision to discard a particular item, ask your supervisor. The point is that you need to be tough about not keeping superfluous items that can pile up, waste space, and become a distraction. Do not let such items sit on your desk, credenza, computer return, the top of your filing cabinet, or any other surface. Similarly, do not let them accumulate inside a drawer or cabinet. And do not waste time about it. Do not procrastinate about making the decision. People often hang onto items they could throw away, or they do not make that decision until weeks or months later, when their workspace is in such a mess that they can’t find papers and documents they need. Be proactive and be consistent. Use the Trash terminal.
The guiding principles about where to keep your Out-Tray are that it be (a) outside your 180, the 180 degrees of your sight line from periphery to periphery as you sit facing your primary work area and, (b) a place that makes it accessible to grab each time you are on the way out of your office or cubicle. For example, it can be on a bookshelf near the doorway, the end of a printer table, or the top of a file cabinet as long as it sits where you see it on your way out, reminding you to deliver it to where or to whom it belongs.
The Out-Tray has a very specific function: It momentarily holds items that belong outside the confines of your workspace. It does not matter what the item is or what stage of completion its in; if its next destination is somewhere outside your own work area, it goes into your Out-Tray.
Every time you get up and leave your office to go to a meeting, the coffee area, or the rest room, to go for lunch, or just to stretch your legs you can easily take the Out-Tray contents with you and deliver them. This is a good habit to get into.
If you have an office assistant, ask this person to do the same thing every time they come into your office. To make all destinations clear, you can use Post-it notes or other stickies, labeling each item or bundle according to its destination (for example, Emma F., Warren, HR, or Mail pick-up).
That is all there is to learn about the Out-Tray terminal. It is as simple as it appears. Just remember to use your Out-Tray liberally, like your trash receptacle, and empty it often by moving items on to their next destination.
NOTE: Many of your items placed in the Out-Tray contains information that others are awaiting, hence delivering them ASAP is really a matter of cooperation, support and respect to others.
Reading
If your are like most of us, you need to do a lot of reading in your work: reports, procedural manuals, business journals, informational web pages, and more. You can not read every article immediately as they come across your desk, hence they can pile up quickly. You may develop a sense of guilt, watching those materials accumulate. I should be doing my reading, we might think. Look at all those magazines and journals piling up around me.
There is a better way. You can effectively cull your reading materials, set the essential ones aside for reading at an appointed time, and escape those feelings of being overwhelmed by the stack. The method is similar to how you handle tasks in the Turtle. However, you do not want to put the reading materials in your Turtle stack, because you need to reserve the Turtle for active work projects.
The Reading terminal then becomes the exact location. It resides next to your Turtle. You create an orderly stack of materials that will serve as your Reading terminal.
NOTE: As with the Turtle, you will want to keep your reading material prioritized – most important on the top, least important on the bottom, and so on.
For handling articles, here is the procedure I recommend: As soon as you receive a magazine, journal, or other periodical, and I do not mean days later, open it to the table of contents (T.O.C.) and quickly scan the TOC asking yourself two questions:
1) Is there anything in this TOC that is important to me now?
2) Is there anything that could be important to me in the future?
If your answer to either question is yes, then clip out or copy the article pages and staple them together. (Clip them out if the magazine, periodical, or other publication is yours to keep; copy them if you intend to pass the reading on to someone else.) It is better to staple the pages together rather than use a paper clip. Paper clips can easily fall off a bundle of sheets, and sometimes they will attach themselves to other or adjacent pages. If you do not like stapling the sheets, another alternative is to use binder clips (they come in all sizes.)
Being proactive:
The question of “When will I ever get the time to catch up on my reading?” is a viable one. As with everything you are doing in this program, discipline is the key. So here is the rule of thumb – I ask you to allocate just two mornings a week, let us say Tuesday and Thursday mornings. If you normally arrive at work at 8:00 A.M., I ask you to arrive at your desk on these two mornings at 7:15. (This means with coffee cup already in hand.) Do not begin checking out your E-mails, Voice-mails, etc. Take this forty-five minute period to JUST READ from your Reading stack. I can safely promise you that within two weeks of doing this twice weekly, 45 minute exercise you will have caught up on your reading
In addition, you might want to grab one or two articles off the top of the stack as you head for lunch.
NOTE: I definitely urge you not to take your reading home with you. Remember that you are changing your work habits to have more quality time for yourself and your family. Taking your work reading home may very well sabotage that important goal.
Another Turtle procedure (to be discussed in Session 5) useful for the Reading terminal: Large or bulky items, such as a chapter of a thick book, or a report contained in an oversized binder, can be held elsewhere and represented in your prioritized Reading stack by a Turtle Sheet. You do not need to fill out this Turtle Sheet quite as much; just give the title of the reading piece and log its location (Top shelf of bookcase, Bottom shelf of vertical cabinet, or wherever you are putting it). If the title does not describe the contents sufficiently, you can also add a brief note, for example, Article on effective sales techniques or Review of new enterprise software. If you need to read something by a specific date, add that information to the Completion date field.
As with your Turtle, you will want to keep your Reading terminal prioritized and contained. Do not let your Reading terminal overlap with your Turtle terminal. An orderly Reading terminal helps keep your mind free from anxiety and stress.
Take my advice: Get your reading materials under control, make time to read them regularly and discover how easy it is to stay on top of the literature that is relevant to your work.
Clear your Virtual In-Tray
After arriving at work it is imperative to clear your Virtual In-Tray of any materials that may have been delivered to you since the last time you were at your desk. For each active work item, quickly estimate the time you will need to complete it, log the Estimated Time, Completion Date and Start Date at the top of the work item, and place the item immediately in your Turtle stack. If it is a large item, fill out a Turtle Sheet and take the item to your THA (Turtle Holding Area), logging the location on the Turtle sheet. Be sure to place the Turtle Sheet in its prioritized place in your Turtle stack. If you have any active work items that can be handled quickly (within 60 seconds, and not requiring great concentration), JUST DO IT!, and then transfer the item either into your Out-Tray or their proper place in your File System.
For non-Turtle items, remove them from your Virtual In Tray and place them into their respective Terminal Pending, Reading, Filing System, Electronic or Paper Organizer, Out-Box or Trash.
One of the most important criteria for an efficient filing system is uniformity.If the model you use for your paper filing system differs from that of your computer files, anything from confusion to chaos will inevitably result. However, if your paper and computer files are consistent if you organize them using the same methodology, and if the category and folder names are consistent the flow of information within your organizing system will amaze you.
Uniformity and consistency within your physical and electronic systems will make your life far less stressful. Storing and retrieving documents,finding E-mail messages, following up on tasks and projects, and staying on schedule will become embedded, so to speak, in your working habits.
The Paper/PC Connection is what I call my system for building uniformity into your workspace. All paper and electronic files pertaining to any specific work task or project are treated the same. The methods of processing information are consistent whether paper or electronic files are involved. Both the procedures and the terminology, the language, if you will, are consistent. There is a paper-based Turtle and an electronic Turtle, a physical Library/Reference and an electronic Library/Reference, a paper Pending system and an electronic Pending,and so on. If you have applied my techniques thus far, you, too, now have the same tools that I use to make your work life enjoyable, pro-active and rewarding.
SESSION 4 – VIRTUAL IN TRAY & TERMINALS – ASSIGNMENTS
Step One: VIRTUAL IN TRAY (V.I.T.)
Download and print a Virtual In-Tray:
Your Virtual In-Tray should best be laminated and then taped down to the bottom left or right corner of your desk (whichever side is closest to your doorway).
Step Two: Let your co-workers know what it is, where it is, and understand that whatever they have for you (in physical form), is to be dropped directly there.
Step Three: Become very familiar with the Seven Terminals and your Virtual In-Tray.
TRASH
OUTBOX
READING
TURTLE
PENDING
ELECTRONIC (or PAPER) ORGANIZER
FILE SYSTEM
NOTE: The Turtle and Pending Terminals will be discussed in Sessions 5 and 6 of this Program.
Step Four: When new information lands in your Virtual In-Tray, pick it up IMMEDIATELY, identify it, and move it to the appropriate terminal.
Assignment#1
Before you begin Session Five, “The Turtle” please retake photographs of all of your office areas that you photographed before completing “The Purge”. Those areas are: I. Your desk 2. Other office furniture 3. A wider angle shot of your area. Please get every aspect of youroffice in the photos. If you are receiving the benefit of our personalized Tele-Coaching, your Coach will be using these photographs to optimize your office layout and create maximum office efficiency for you. Please e-mail the photographs toTeam@LivingChaosFree.com.However, if you are not participating in Coaching you can still utilize these photographs to monitor your progress.