Plan & Increase Productivity

Work efficiently despite digital information overload, master permanent stress, manage time traps priorities & schedules, make the right desicions

Simone Janson, Simone Janson, Simone Janson

• Publisher: Best of HR – Berufebilder.de®
• Year: 2024
• ISBN:
  9783965961517
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Economia
• Subtopic: Teoria economica

In the 4th, completely revised edition of this groundbreaking guide, published by an award-winning publisher, renowned experts (overview in the book preview) combine their knowledge with interactive AI. This unique combination of decades of experience and state-of-the-art technology enables you to master challenges on a whole new level. Thanks to the innovative transfer of information, complemented by personal experiences of success, you can realize your goals and reach your full potential. Because we all want and should all become more efficient, after all, digitisation, employers and customers demand ever faster and at the same time high quality work. But working productively can be planned with the right methods and increased step by step. However, many people react to innovations with stress and excessive demands because they lack the right digital strategies to be successful despite the pressure to perform. This book gives tips and instructions on self-organisation and time management, shows how to successfully avoid stress, increase motivation and concentration and, despite the increasing demands of the job, improve the quality of life and wok. For its concept "Information as Desired, " the publisher won the Global Business Award as Publisher of the Year and received government funding. It is also a partner of the Ministry of Education and Research of the Federal Republic of Germany. The goal to give you the best possible content on topics such as career, finance, management, recruiting, or psychology goes far beyond the static nature of traditional books: The interactive AI Extended Books not only provide AI-optimized content in several languages based on data analysis but also allow you to ask individual questions and receive advice tailored to your personal interests. Each book contains detailed information and examples for your successful use of AI. You can utilize AI software for free, download e-courses, collaborate with workbooks, or engage with an active community. So you gain valuable resources that enhance your knowledge, stimulate creativity, and make your personal and professional goals achievable and tangible. Expertise and technical innovation go hand in hand, as we take the responsibility to deliver well-researched and informed content seriously, honoring the trust you place in us. Due to the unique combination of human expertise and innovation, we can publish works that meet your requirements in every aspect. And furthermore, we want to offer you the opportunity to make your journey towards personal growth and success even more unforgettable. We understand that true change occurs not just in the mind but primarily through personal experiences and application. Therefore, we've conceptualized special success journey experiences tailored to each book for you. Be inspired to elevate your life to an entirely new level. By purchasing the books, you can also do good: The publisher dedicates about 5 percent of book sales revenue to socially relevant or sustainable projects. We provide scholarships, support innovative ideas, and contribute to climate protection initiatives. Publisher Simone Janson is also a bestselling author and one of the top 10 influential German bloggers according to the Blogger Relevance Index. Additionally, she has been a columnist and author for renowned media outlets such as WELT, Wirtschaftswoche, or ZEIT - more about her can be found, among other places, on Wikipedia.

Self-management: work organization and productivity in the digital change
// By Simone Janson

What makes people like IT billionaire Jon Oringer, LinkedIn co-founder Konstantin Guericke or extreme mountaineer Reinhold Messner successful? Self-management works like a facade cleaning: The ability to organize yourself in difficult situations is decisive for success in digital change.

Learning from the successful: like a facade cleaning

Because at no other time in history were we asked to work independently and to organize ourselves. The digital change seems like a facade cleaning, it offers many opportunities, but also risks: The fundamental paradigm shift presents us with unknown challenges, stirs up fears and demands that we learn new skills. This post shows what successful people do better. And how we master these challenges - with ourselves, with courage and passion, but also with what needs to change in our society, for example in the education system.

One of the most impressive interviews I've had recently was with Google Ireland's Sales Director. The internet giant is undoubtedly one of the most successful companies of our time, so I expected a typical high performer, someone who can't get out of the office under 16 hours. Instead, I sat across from a woman who told me very calmly that she left the office at 16 or 17 p.m. every afternoon, took no work home, and wanted to have dinner with her children at 18 p.m.

“Above all, it is my own conscious decision how long I work and when I am available. The colleagues accept this because I also communicate it to them just as clearly, ”she explained to me, clarifying her reasoning:“ Google's requirements are very high. Only when I switch off can I fully concentrate in the office. So I don't spend my free time with colleagues. ” When I read the story later in my column in the WELT published, there was criticism: Meehan, according to the original sound, is just in the position to be able to afford it. I see it the other way round: Exactly because Meehan sets quiet limits, but still clearly, she has managed to get into such a position.

Efficient work organization as a common thread

In fact, if you ask very successful and famous personalities exactly how they organize their work, this sometimes brings out astonishing results, but efficient work organization runs like a thread through all the interviews I have conducted on this topic: Fionnuala Meehan, for example, says , she was very organized, neat and able to make quick decisions. For example, she regularly makes lists to keep track of things and prioritize tasks. And she learned, also thanks to seminars that the company offers to control energy and sometimes leave problems in the office to work on the next day.

For the IT billionaire Jon Oringer, founder of the photo agency Shutterstock, working methodically, quickly and efficiently is the key to success - and he always has a notepad with him for new ideas. For him, the success of his company is the product of numerous previously failed start-ups. For Oringer, productivity does not depend on time or place: “Sometimes I am productive in the office, but sometimes I am also very productive in places that I would not have expected. It is therefore important for me not to be tied to the time or place in order to be able to work, ”he says. "Productivity is by no means tied to the desk, on the contrary - that's why I use my smartphone and tablet a lot," says Steffen Hopf, head of Yahoo Germany. He therefore prefers a tidy desk without distraction and can also work well at the airport.

Productivity arises from the exchange with others

Productivity arises above all from exchanges with others - Andrus Järg, General Manager of Skype Estonia, is convinced of this. That is why he is like everyone else in the open-plan office and the sauna is also equipped with WLAN for meetings: "If there are problems, I look for an exchange with my employees and we try to find solutions together," says Järg. Unusual meetings, in which case hiking is also the secret tip of Konstantin Guericke, who founded the LinkedIn business network with four others in 2003. It was a long development process that involved several people.

"But we talked about it a lot when hiking," recalls Guericke. Back then, lack of exercise led him to go hiking, today he is a partner at Earlybird, a Berlin venture capital company, and is also getting more and more business partners enthusiastic about it: he has 10-15 hiking meetings a week - and they are anything but unproductive; According to Guericke, remembering important things works even better than when sitting because of the spatial concept: "I go through the path again in my memory and link content with experiences such as the rattlesnake on the side of the path." A real market has long since emerged around unusual meeting forms, where resourceful organizers offer hiking meetings on pilgrimage routes or in the volcanic crater, silence seminars in the monastery or event in fjords.

The thing with the flow: Success factors at a glance

Finally, extreme mountaineer Reinhold Messner sees top performance as the result of passion and focus. Resistance has to be accepted and overcome. That is why Messner only started projects like crossing the Antarctic with people with exactly the same objective: “Otherwise they would have given up after a week what would have meant certain death. All the motivation seminars are therefore wasted money, motivation is only in ourselves, ”he says.

It is no coincidence that almost all of these examples come from the IT sector: It is particularly innovative and trendsetting when it comes to productivity improvements. If you take a closer look, several success factors quickly emerge: such as passion, decision-making security or communication skills. An overview:

With passion: motivation

It makes sense what Messner says: People work better when they are motivated and happy about what they do. Because if you just want to do your job well, you usually think forward, positive and optimistic. He assumes that he can handle the tasks ahead well, which makes him productive. The psychological episode Mihály Csikszentmihályi speaks in this context of flow, the lust for curiosity and the complete involvement in a task that leads people to move forward with enthusiasm and to solve problems. The reason for this is the biochemical processes in our body:

The euphoria that we feel when we have completed a stressful job satisfactorily is thanks in part to the hormones noradrenaline and serotonin. These evoke positive feelings that act as a reward for the previous effort. If this so-called eustress occurs regularly and in doses, it stimulates the immune system and has a motivating effect. Recent brain research results even show that stress promotes faster networking of brain cells. And because the skills increase the more you do the job, you will have to face new challenges if you want the flow experience to continue. This creates new ideas that move people forward.

Only targeted work leads to success

However, this only works if you work purposefully and the challenge matches your own abilities. If the requirements are too low, boredom sets in, they are too high, frustration and excessive demands. In both cases, motivation suffers. From this point of view, perfectionist aspiration, which is a cardinal virtue in our society, is anything but good for a career.

Apart from the fact that you can drive the individual into a dangerous vicious cycle, which often leads to burnout, paradoxically, they often even hinder career advancement. Because if you want to be perfect and flawless at all costs, you quickly overwhelm yourself. Because nobody can always give 110% and most people know that too. As a result, however, they approach the matter negatively from the outset, because at least unconsciously it is completely clear to them that they cannot actually solve the problem; the fear of failure is then greater than the will to succeed.

Yes, no, maybe ... Courage to make a decision!

This is particularly disadvantageous when decision-making and leadership are important in everyday work. For fear of making the wrong choice, some prefer to delay the decision as long as possible, avoid it, or even pass it on to others. However, if important work is repeatedly postponed or neglected, or actions are headless and panicked instead of deliberate and calm, this becomes a problem. However, this fear also prevents the courage needed for good and clear decisions.

Because you feel overwhelmed and fear becomes the driving force behind your own actions, negative distress arises. This always occurs when there is no way out, because the human brain does not have a solution mechanism for this problem due to a lack of experience. In contrast to eustress, we do not experience any flow in such situations, but often feel helpless and at the mercy. Distress can even cloud our memory. Because cortisol is released from the adrenal cortex to protect the body from overexertion. It blocks memory, among other things, leads to a high blood sugar level and acidification of the blood and to a weakening of the thyroid function.

Fear eats productivity: set limits

Usually the result of a wrong decision is far less dramatic than one imagined in his horror scenario. Even the boss will not freak out right away if you justify your “No” like Fionnuala Meehan reasonably, but only respect you a little more. But if you have the positive experience that mistakes do not cost your head right away, you will be motivated to tackle difficult tasks courageously. Anyone who realizes that mistakes are inevitable and learns from them instead of complaining will find it easier to make decisions. And if you do your work less stressed and nervous, you also have more time to set up important networks.

Fionnuala Meehan is also the best example of how important it is to set limits. Saying “no” sometimes has nothing to do with laziness: instead of confidently scoring points with his competencies, eternal “yes” people, in their endeavor to do everything right and make everyone happy, show them by themselves are not convinced. So why should the boss trust the skills? And despite all efforts, such people are not really reliable, because the shot goes backwards: Because those who take over from colleagues and superiors without complaint for fear of negative reactions, will soon have a problem for all the time, all the work involved to do. Important tasks are then postponed or not finished at all. This is not particularly productive: The economic researcher Winfried Panse, Professor at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences even calculated that anxiety-controlled employees provide at least 20 percent less performance.

In addition, such hard work is often not even noticed. The boss, who only comes at 9 a.m., does not even notice that you were there by 7 a.m. to get the project concept ready on time. He overlooks the fact that you don't take a lunch break because you still have them eMail-List through list. And when he leaves at 18 p.m., he no longer notices how the worker bee tends to the night because it is still working on the files.

Get out of the hamster wheel: prioritize

It is also necessary to separate the important from the unimportant, but it is particularly difficult in particularly stressful situations. Because with stress, clear thinking becomes more and more impossible and soon you turn meticulously in the hamster wheel around your own axis, block yourself and overlook the zeal of the battle that there would be easier ways in many situations. One would only have to do it a little more relaxed, instead of falling into blind actionism. Instead, many people run the risk of thinking about something for so long, literally pondering a decision, and getting so deeply involved in fears and worries that they are ultimately no longer able to act. An experimental study conducted by psychologists Neil J. Roese and JR Kuban at the University of Illinois shows that the longer you ponder, the more effort the brain has to make and the more difficult it is to solve the problem.

But what can you do about it? A tidy work environment can actually help, as Steffen Hopf explained. Because the solution to the problem begins in your head: First of all, you have to make it clear that you are spinning in a hamster wheel that can quickly become a vicious circle: If you are afraid of making mistakes, you will always try to achieve top performance quickly to the limits of his motivation and performance. To prevent this, you have to convince yourself that less is usually more. And the best way to do this is to start small test balloons: So instead of starting to work in the morning, you should first think about which tasks are really important. The less important work should be tackled with a little less perfection. It helps to realistically visualize what could happen in the worst case if one or the other job is not perfectly accomplished. Or the boss, who turns the corner with the next extra order, simply says friendly, but definitely “No”.

Absence as a status symbol: switch off!

If you consider what is happening in your body at such moments, you will quickly understand why it is important to be able to simply turn the switch in the brain to “off” - even if it is not as easy as it sounds. For example, sports or at least regular exercise are helpful, as they reduce stress hormones in the body. This should be built into your workload. It shows how important and meaningful is Konstantin Guericke's method of holding his meetings not while sitting but while hiking. An emergency measure is the trick with the rubber band. You attach a rubber band to your wrist and whenever you start pondering a specific problem, you pull on it and say out loud: Stop.

Those who are clever even increase their reputation with occasional phases of inaccessibility. Because when everyone is available at all times, it becomes a rare luxury not to have to answer all the time. And whoever allows himself the luxury of communicative absence shows: "Look, I can afford it!" Absence as a status symbol. An example: If you want to demonstrate your leadership qualities as a manager today, you go on vacation for 10 weeks - and you simply cannot be reached! Apart from the fact that this i...