18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done (18 page)

Here’s my problem: I have a very high need to be efficient and productive. And transition time is neither of those things; it’s annoying.

I’d rather just
be
somewhere. I don’t want to waste the time
getting
there. So even though I know I should leave more time, I push it, clinging to the illusion that I can get places faster than is humanly possible.

I’m not the only one. Anyone who has ever scheduled
back-to-back meetings lives under the same illusion. How can we end a meeting at 2
PM
and start the next one at 2
PM
? Even if they’re just phone meetings, we can’t dial that fast. Or switch our mind-set from one task to the other in so little time. And when you throw in a bathroom break? It’s premeditated lateness, and we do it all the time.

One of my clients has a
policy
not to start a training program until ten minutes after it is scheduled to start. That’s institutionalized lateness.

But the joke is on us late people. Because being late causes the exact things we’re trying to avoid: inefficiency and counterproductivity. Not just for the people who are waiting, but for the people who are late. Because nothing is more productive and efficient than transition time. It’s not just our time to travel. It’s our time to think and to plan.

How many meetings have you attended in which, halfway through, you begin to wonder:
Now, what is the point of this meeting?

How many times have you been on a phone call and found your mind wandering, or—be honest now—surfed the Web, because you were bored?

How often have you thought:
You know, this sixty-minute meeting should have been thirty minutes
?

And you’re right. The meeting probably should have been thirty minutes. Or forty-five at the most. Because almost anything that could be done in sixty minutes can be done in forty-five. But since we haven’t thought enough about it beforehand, the meeting drags on.

If we took a few minutes before the meeting to really
think about it, we could drastically shorten it. So here’s the one thing you should think about as you transition leisurely (gasp) to your next commitment:

How can I make this shorter, faster, and more productive?

Even five or ten minutes of that kind of planning can shave thirty minutes off a task. Think about your outcome. Think about what you really need from people. And then, in a move that will make everyone else in the room overjoyed, let them know you want to make the sixty-minute meeting thirty minutes and tell them how you plan to do it.

Spend your transition time plotting how to maximize your outcome. Need people’s ownership? Think about how you can involve them more openly, get their perspectives, and engage them. Going to a dinner? Ponder how you can have more fun.

Maybe you’re thinking,
But I already plan
. Sure you do. But there’s no better planning time than the fifteen minutes before you walk into the room or get on the phone. Do you know any athlete who would rush off her cell phone and jump into the starting gate of a race? Of course not. Because athletes know that transition time is productive time.

To make this work, we need to schedule it—literally put the transition time on our calendars. End meetings at least fifteen minutes before the hour and schedule that time to prepare for the next one. Maybe, then, we can keep that meeting to thirty minutes and have an extra fifteen minutes
to go to the bathroom, answer email, or surf the Web. That would be more efficient than doing those things during the meeting.

I have more to say about this. But it’s only fifteen minutes until my next meeting so I’ve got to go. And besides, it’s 4
PM
, and by my calculations I’m already running late for a 2
PM
meeting tomorrow.

I
don’t want to go to ski class!” Sophia, my daughter who was four years old at the time, was crying. I knelt down on the snow so we could be at eye level and asked her why.

“I just don’t want to go,” she whimpered.

I didn’t want her to skip class. She was already skiing well—turning and stopping on her own—so I knew she could do it. Plus, she’d asked for lessons, and we’d committed with the instructor. I wanted to teach her that she needed to follow through on her commitments. Finally, I had seen this before: She’d cried while learning to ride a bicycle, but when she finally learned, she was tremendously proud of herself.

I tried to comfort her, reason with her, convince her that, in fact, she liked class, and at the end of it she would smile and tell me she had fun.

But she was still crying when we walked up to her ski teacher. She hugged me, then hugged me again. I walked
away, but when I heard her continue to cry, I came back and hugged her more, telling her again how the class would help her ski better, how she would have fun, how it wouldn’t be so bad.

Finally, after twenty minutes of trying to comfort her without success, I tore myself away.

Later that morning, I was on the chairlift with two teenagers and their mother. I asked the mother what she would do in my situation.

She didn’t hesitate. “Drop ’em and run!” She laughed. “Remember?” She looked at one of her sons. “I would put you on the floor at day care and ten seconds later you could hear the tires screeching as I pulled away.”

Now we were all laughing, and I realized she was right. My mistake? I prolonged the agony.

In the last chapter, I extolled the virtues of transition time, arguing that if we only built in a little extra time before a meeting, call, or event, we could use that time to prepare.

It’s incredibly valuable when the transition time is used to make the subsequent activity more useful, more productive, maybe even shorter.

But in some situations, transition time isn’t the solution. It’s the problem. As long as Sophia was in the transition, she was miserable. And by trying to comfort her through it, I prolonged her misery. I kept her in the pain of the transition.

We do this in organizations all the time. We decide on a change and then spend a tremendous amount of energy
trying to get everyone to feel great about it before they have a chance to experience it. We try to get them to want it.

But sometimes, too much preparation can be a bad thing.

Imagine you’re on a cliff overhanging a river, and you’ve decided you’re going to jump into the water. Would you be better off standing at the edge, looking down, convincing yourself it will be okay? Or would you be better off just jumping without thinking about it?

Sometimes it’s better to shut your eyes and jump. Especially if you feel anxious about your next step.

I know a large company that moved offices from New York City across the Hudson River to New Jersey over a period of a year, a move many people were dreading. Some departments opted to move immediately to secure space and get it over with, while others stayed in New York City as long as possible, trying to delay the pain.

The delaying strategy backfired. The departments that stayed in New York started to feel the pain right away—in their anxious anticipation of the move—and continued to feel it right up until they actually moved. Then the pain continued for a few months until they adjusted to their new reality.

The departments that moved early started their adjustment period right away, cutting out many months of trepidation. The reality of being in New Jersey just wasn’t as bad as people feared.

When we fear something, we often complain about it. And when we complain about something, we rile ourselves
up and convince ourselves that our fears are justified. The more we complain about a decision that’s already been made, the more frustrated we become. And the more we resent being in the situation.

So if there’s something you need to do that you find difficult—writing a proposal, having an unpleasant conversation with someone, or doing any work you consider unpleasant—try doing it first thing in the morning so you minimize the time you have to think about it.

And if you’re in a position to help others through a transition? Here are three steps that may quicken the transition:

I knew Sophia was going to class, so I needed to move her out of contemplating the change and into living it as quickly as possible. I should have hugged her and left.

“She cried for the first few minutes of class,” her ski teacher told me at pick up, “but then she was fine.”

I knelt down to Sophia and asked her how she liked it. She stared at me intently, looking angry, like she was about to cry again.

We stayed like that for several seconds, looking at each other without saying anything. Her face remained stern. Then she broke into a wide smile. “It was fun,” she said, and fell into my arms.

E
very time I go on vacation, I feel two distinct emotions: excitement and anxiety.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I adore my family and the time we spend together. And that includes stuff like changing diapers and putting groggy kids back to bed at four in the morning. Fun or not, I treasure it.

Still, vacation makes me anxious because I know I’ll feel torn. When I’m not working, I’ll feel like I should be; and when I am, I’ll feel like I shouldn’t be.

Some will accuse me of being a workaholic. But it’s not just that, and it’s not just me. We live in a world in which we’re expected to be available all the time for almost any reason. Worse, we expect it from ourselves.

Leashed to our technology, we find it harder to spend an unadulterated moment doing anything. Forget about vacation. How about a short break in
conversation
? We quickly check our email. A walk from one office to another? Check
voice mail. Bathroom break? I hate to say it, but it’s rare to walk into a men’s room and not see a man at a urinal with one hand on his BlackBerry (the other hand, well, I’m not looking).

Sure, we might say we have no choice. But while non-stop work might feel overwhelming, it’s also reassuring. It makes us feel busy. Valuable. Indispensable.

Unfortunately, there’s a downside to feeling indispensable. And going on vacation brings that downside up. You can’t get away. Or you won’t.

Because getting away—truly not being needed for a week or two—raises all sorts of insecurities.

Two years ago, after ten years of running my company, I took a month off and went to France with my family. As I prepared to leave, I spoke with each of my clients, letting them know I’d be away. One client, Ross, the CEO of a small company and also a good friend, smiled at me, his eyes twinkling.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. “Just know that three things will happen: We’ll regress. We’ll forget you. And we’ll replace you.” Then he laughed. Ha-ha.

I laughed, too, and then quickly added, “Of course, you know I’ll be reachable if you need me.”

Ah, there’s the rub. Reachable if needed. And since we all like to be needed…

There are two reasonable ways to deal with this problem without ruining a vacation by staying plugged in 24/7.

Thankfully, when I came back from my month away, Ross’s company had not regressed. They didn’t forget me, and they didn’t replace me. Next time, when I leave for vacation, I’m sure I’ll bring my laptop. I still want to be reachable if someone needs me. But only for half an hour a day.