This shiny new decade finds me as overwhelmed as ever, struggling to find new ways to be more productive. If I can just “catch up”…
As ever, I turn for advice to Gretchen Rubin. In her book Better Than Before, she demonstrates the power of habit and explores many ways to set or break habits. One of these tips is to create space for a “power hour”* on your calendar. Power hour tasks are usually those that weigh us down because we know we should be doing them (hello photos). I find that once I put a task on a list, it stops weighing so heavily on me. It has been given its own time and space.
I’ve used the power hour concept in my home for years (or else my computer would never be backed up and my Goodreads account would be empty). I wondered if power hour would work in Town Hall. The answer is unreservedly yes. I am striving to put one hour a week on my calendar to tackle the kinds of tasks that never make it to daily list and therefore will never get done. Power hour tasks are also the kind of thing you can easily do at the end of a long week when you run out of steam. Here is my initial list:
- file
- read national association magazines
- read management books
- take personality tests and review data
- update policies
- clean out your pen drawer
- Update your resume
- organize the drawer where you keep coffee, soup and stale rice cakes
- de-clutter
- file email
- catalog your file drawers
- upload work photos from your phone
- update your password list
- file more
- throw out the Town Hall phone list from 2018
- Reevaluate the display of elementary school pictures of your married kids
- start and update a success log for yourself
- develop a success log for your direct reports to help you when the time comes for performance reviews
- create an annual schedule to meet with boards and committees
- plan out your professional development
- update contacts and birthday reminders
- call people you like on the phone (gasp)
- think up ideas for spicing up your budget message before the day it is due (By think up I mean find budget messages from other jurisdictions and borrow ideas.)
- draft a list of topics and speakers for your upcoming leadership meetings
- learn a new software
- create a personal brand PowerPoint template (I am so doing this.)
*Another thing I learned from Gretchen (I seem to say this as often as I say “I heard on NPR this morning…”) is that “Power Hour” is a fluency heuristic. According to Gretchen, the easier it is to say or think about something, the more valuable it feels. Ideas expressed in rhyming phrases seem even more convincing – hence “Power Hour” makes a chore more important. This got me thinking. I like to go to municipal buildings outside Town Hall just to walk through and say hello. It seems less like procrastinating with a name like “Rapport Tour.” Similarly, working remotely at a library or coffee shop is not hiding if your calendar lists it as part of your “Quiet Diet,” or your “Promote Remote 2020” initiative!
What would you add to the Town Hall power hour list? Do you have a fun fluency heuristic to share?
Let’s practice. Find me Friday afternoon – smiling while filing.
Very Kate 