“Routinize the routine. The things that aren’t important to you… do them with the least energy possible.”
-Robert C. Pozen (“)
PERFORMANCE ENHANCER: In his new book, Robert C. Posen shares the time-saving secrets that have enabled him to work two full-time jobs concurrently and raise a family. (
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BEATING THE CLOCK: A new book details how you can up your productivity at work to make more time for a life outside of it. (
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At first blush, Robert C. Pozen doesn’t seem like an extreme kind of guy.
He doesn’t BASE jump, BMX bike or bodyboard.
Instead, he has simultaneously taught a full load at Harvard Business School and served as executive chairman at MFS Investment Management in Boston, written six books and hundreds of articles and raised two children with his wife of more than forty years.
His secret? Extreme productivity!
After 40 years in the business world, Pozen is sharing his efficiency tips in his newly published book, “Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours.”
For many, this comes not a moment too soon.
“People are really struggling with these issues,” he says. “The whole point of this is for you to make some sort of trade-off between your professional and personal life to get more personal life.”
In a lengthy interview with @work, Pozen shares his tips for reclaiming wasted time and making the most out of the day:
1. Like “Memento,” the end is the
beginning: “On the high-priority stuff, the key is to start at the end,” Pozen says. It’s important people figure out what they’re after as soon as possible, what he calls reaching “tentative conclusions,” so that they don’t waste their time down the line. “I’ve seen people spend days, if not months, researching and gathering data, but only at the end did they finally figure out what they were really looking for; then they have to redo a lot of stuff,” he says. “If after a day or so you force yourself to put together your tentative conclusions, then you’ll have guidance for the rest of your research. Of course, these tentative conclusions will be revised. They’re meant to be revised. But if you don’t do them early, you waste a tremendous amount of time doing other things.”
2. Productive mornings begin at night: “The night before, go over your schedule and see what you’re going to do and what the purpose of what you’re doing is,” Pozen says. “I advocate having a two-column schedule. On the left, put down all your appointments and phone calls. On the right, put down what the purpose is. [Ask] what am I trying to get out of this?”
His other advice for productive mornings is far simpler: Lay out your clothes the night before, so you don’t have to think about it and can start the day with ease. “I’m a great advocate of being boring in the morning,” Pozen says.
3. Save your strength: “Routinize the routine,” Pozen says. “The things that aren’t important to you, whether it’s breakfast or your commute, try to do them with the least energy possible so that leaves you with more energy for other things.”
4. If you must meet, keep it fleet: Time-consuming business meetings are best avoided, or, in the least, managed. “If somebody calls you for a meeting, you might say, ‘I’ll go if you send me an agenda and materials in advance. If you don’t, I’m not going to go,’ ” Pozen says. “If you’re stuck in a meeting, make sure it doesn’t go on too long. Most meetings can be done in an hour, 90 minutes tops. After that, people lose attention. So you ought to ask that it only go for a certain amount of time.”
5. Manage your procrastination: “I divide the world into modest procrastinators and heavy-duty procrastinators,” Pozen says. Modest procrastinators can usually overcome their delaying tendencies by setting up little rewards for themselves.
“But,” he notes, “there are people who literally cannot start a project until the deadline is four hours away, even if it’s a big one. And those people have a serious problem. My recommendation is set up mini-deadlines. You might say, ‘Okay, here’s my deadline after three days for this and there’s another deadline for that and then a third deadline.’ You’re forcing yourself to have more deadlines since you’ve already admitted you only respond to deadlines. Some people say, ‘Those deadlines are artificial.’ And I say, ‘Well, good. Tell your boss about them. Then they won’t be artificial.’”
6. Sleep your way to the top: Pozen is a big fan of short, 20-to-30-minute naps. “I’ve napped in all sorts of places,” he says. “Just find a conference room that isn’t being used for a half an hour. The key is just to get your feet up and have a blindfold, which I carry at all times. Train yourself to fall asleep. Some people say the problem is, ‘If I fall asleep, I can’t wake up.’ The answer is simple: Set your iPhone or BlackBerry alarm and you’ll get up.”
7. Manage your boss: “You’ve got to be communicating with your boss,” Pozen says. “A lot of people think they know what their boss wants, but they’ve never actually sat down and gone through it. I like to sit down once a month and say, ‘This is what I see as my top priorities for the month. Do you agree? If you don’t, let’s discuss it.’ ”
What if you have a boss that’s not-so-easy to handle? To deal with bad bosses, Pozen suggests focusing on complementing their weaknesses. If you have a boss who’s a great conceptual guy but can never get down to the details, supply those details. And when you have a chance to compliment your boss, give him or her credit, especially in front of the hierarchy.”
8. Write the right stuff: For memos and articles, writing an outline is key. “About half the people I know don’t put together outlines, then get stuck because they don’t know where things are going,” Pozen says.
Next, focus on writing a clear introduction noting what topics will be addressed. From there, every paragraph should have a clear topic sentence that tells the reader what’s to come.
“Lastly, every article or memo needs a conclusion,” he advises. “Lots of conclusions aren’t conclusions. They’re just regurgitations and summaries. You can start with summarizing, but you ought to go further and try to draw out some implications — something that gives the reader a little more.”
If, after all of the above, you find yourself with a memo that’s more than a few pages long, create an executive summary. “That’s crucial,” Pozen says. “Many people don’t have time to read a six-page memo, but they will read an executive summary.”
9. When reading, fight the need for speed: “You need to read fewer words per minute but read the ones that are important to you,” Pozen says. “How do you decide which ones are important? In a writing situation, you write an outline. In reading, you think before you start to read, ‘What’s the purpose of my reading this?’ Sometimes you’re reading a memorandum just because you want to get the main point. Then the executive summary might be OK. But other times you might be reading a memo because you want to get details. You take a different approach.”
“The second thing is read the introduction and then the conclusion,” he says. “Don’t go from the introduction to the first, second, third part. By going from the introduction to the conclusion, you’ll know where the article is headed and what the structure will be.”
Lastly, read the first line of each paragraph to gauge whether or not you need to read on.
10. Use your drive home: “I find that driving is a good time to grapple with difficult problems,” Pozen says. “Sometimes if you’re on the road and you really think about a problem, it’ll give you a chance to solve it.”