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Stop, stop, stop pulling out at the last second!

What am I talking about?

Stop cancelling meetings at the very last minute!

Too many organizations come to me and complain about the lack of productivity within their company.

And cancelling meetings at the last minute or having 'no-shows' is one of the worst things you can do for your organization's productivity.

Here's the problem as I see it.

Too many of us accept every single invitation that arrives in our inbox.

We don't even bother to look at our schedule to see if there might be a conflict.

And a few of us use auto-responders, meaning that we automatically accept everything that comes into our inbox.

We don't even look at it.

The system automatically tells the organizer that, "Yes, we will be there."

And then we're surprised why we're double, triple, or even quadruple booked.

Well now you're not just damaging your own productivity, you're damaging the productivity of several or maybe several dozen others.

So I'm pleading with you, be honest with yourself and be honest with others.

When you receive your next calendar invite, take a good hard look at it.

Will you be able to attend?

Will you be able to commit to that date?

If you can't or if you're unsure, select tentative.

They give us that option for a reason.

And if you're the organizer and you cancel a meeting at the last minute, please don't say something cheeky like, "Well, I guess I gave you an hour back in your day."

Wrong!

You didn't give anyone an hour back in their day.

They've already adjusted their day's schedule.

They've adjusted meetings, phone calls, other conversations with clients, all around this meeting.

So don't think that you've given anyone a bonus or additional time.

No, because chances are we just have to reschedule this meeting into the future and Friday already looked pretty busy, now it's extra busy thanks to your cancellation.

Now I understand once in a while you may have a genuinely good reason for cancelling a meeting last minute.

There may be a genuine emergency or crisis that comes up.

But I'll tell you this:

There are a lot fewer emergencies than you think there are.

Too often and too quickly we make things more urgent than they actually are.

So be honest with yourself, be honest with your colleagues.

Take a good hard look at that invitation before you hit accept or before you hit decline.

It's very simple.

What do you bring to work

What are some essential items that you always pack with you in your work bag? Whether it's a briefcase, a backpack, a purse. What are the key things that you always bring with you to work? I'm going to assume that you start with your devices. You probably have a laptop, maybe a tablet, your smartphone. And in addition

Charging cables

to those devices you probably have charging cables. No one likes to get halfway through their day and have a dead smartphone. Well just like you don't want your devices to conk out at you half way during the day, I want to make sure that you have the energy

Why an energy bar

you need to fulfill your most productive day. No matter where I go, no matter where I travel, I always make sure I pack an energy bar. Why an energy bar? Our schedules change quite

Our schedules change

rapidly. Although I may intend to eat healthy today, make sure that I make some time to

Sneak out and grab a salad

sneak out and grab a healthy salad, I know that's not always the case. I may be pulled into an emergency meeting, there may be some other crisis that pops up and I can't pull

I cant pull myself away from my office

myself away from my office or the location that I'm visiting. With an energy bar, I can be sure that I've got 200 to 250 calories that will power me

I dont need to worry about my surroundings

through to the next meal. Especially when I'm on the road. Especially when I'm in a place that I may not know my surroundings. I don't need to worry about how many blocks away the nearest restaurant is or if there's a deli downstairs. If I've got an energy bar

If Ive got an energy bar

I know that I can power through the rest of your day. So regardless if you're travelling abroad or even if it's your own local office, always

Outro

pack an energy bar. Make sure that you have the fuel to have your most productive day. It's very simple.

For you to perform at your very best, you need to have a number of good habits in place.

You need to have a way to manage all of your communication, whether that be email, phone calls, text messages, or social media.

You also need an effective way to manage your schedule.

How do you block out time for your most important work or your most important people?

How do you avoid distractions and other interruptions that we face on a day-to-day basis?

Well, beyond just the tools and techniques of productivity, you have to have a certain mindset.

So today, I want to share with you two simple truths that you must accept in order for you to perform at your very, very best.

First Truth

The first truth is this: you will never complete everything that you want to do.

Sound surprising?

Coming from a productivity professional, coming from someone who helps others to get more things done in a shorter amount of time?

Well, the emphasis should always be on your most important work or your most valuable projects, not just simply getting more and more done off of your to-do list.

You see, the person who makes the most phone calls today will not be the most productive individual.

The person who writes the most emails today will not be the most productive individual.

But the person who focuses their effort on the right work, on the most valuable work, either to them or to their organization, that person brings real value to everyone else around them.

Take a look at the most successful people you know in your industry or any industry for that matter.

They've said no so many times to good ideas in order for them to pursue great ideas.

So don't worry so much about getting everything crossed off of your to-do list.

Focus your attention on what's most important and what's most valuable.

Second Truth

The second truth is this: right now, something is more important than everything else.

Too often, we look at our to-do list and treat everything as equals.

We convince ourselves that we're having a productive day as long as we are checking things off of our to-do list.

However, at any given point in time, something is more important and deserves our attention more than anything else.

You see, you simply can't have seven high-priority items.

Of those seven, one of them is much more important than everything else on that list.

So look at your day, look at your projects through that lens.

You'll be much more productive, and you'll be able to zero in on what your most important work is.

Keep these two simple truths in mind so you can have your most productive day.

One, don't worry about getting it all done because you will never complete everything that you want to do.

And number two, right now, or at any given point in time, something is more important than everything else.

It's very simple.

Here's a quick tip to help you be more productive in the mornings. I want you to ignore email for the very first hour.

That's right, I want you to let your inbox sleep in. I don't care what time it is that you wake up in the morning. I want you to ignore email for the first 60 minutes.

How is this going to make you more productive? Well, when we start our days with email it tends to put us in more of a reactionary mode. As we're replying and responding to other people's requests, we get pulled away and distracted from our own most important work.

So starting tomorrow, start ignoring your email for the very first hour. You've got so many hours in the day to reply to email, just don't make the first hour one of them.

Let your inbox sleep in. It's very simple.

The other day I was driving my car when I approached a red light. As I stopped at the intersection, I noticed that there was a man on the sidewalk who was also wanting to proceed in the same direction as I was going. He did what any normal person would do and he pressed the crosswalk button.

But then he proceeded to press it again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again. He just increased the amount of times that he was pressing the button. After some time, he started to increase the force and just slamming his hand against the crosswalk button. As I remained seated in my vehicle, I was laughing hysterically.

You see, this individual obviously didn't understand how a crosswalk button works. And it makes no difference whether you press it once or whether you press it 423 times, that crosswalk man, that little flashing signal is not going to come on any sooner for you.

It got me thinking of other areas of our lives where we sometimes waste energy. Where we spend too much energy on a task or too much time on a particular task when we could reserve that for something much more important.

Think about your email, think about how many messages you send in a day. Think about meetings and the number of meetings that you need to attend this week or you think you need to attend this week. Could you send fewer emails? Could you send better, well-crafted emails and therefore not have to send so many follow-up or clarifying messages?

Could you have one or two fewer meetings by making sure that there was an agenda set forward at the beginning and that you made sure that you had an opportunity to hear from everyone in attendance?

I don't want you to be like the man at the crosswalk just repeatedly pushing the button over and over again. I was saddened to see the frustration on his face. But I was also saddened because he didn't realize how much extra and pointless energy he was spending.

So, make use of your energy in the very best ways. Put it and focus it on the most important things in your life and in your work. It's very simple.

I've got a question for you and it's about mail. Not email, but physical mail. You know: envelopes, postage stamps, that type of thing.

When was the last time you went to your mailbox and took out every single envelope, opened it up, read the contents of every single letter, and then carefully folded them back up, placed them back into their envelope and then shoved it all back into your mailbox?

No? Never? You've never done that before? Of course not! It sounds ridiculous.

However, if I was to ask you the exact same question about your email inbox, I assume many of you would say yes.

Too many of us complain about how hard it is to manage our email inbox. But we tend to do it to ourselves. We leave all of our messages, both those replied to or responded to, in our inbox.

As a result, it's very difficult for us to decipher as to which message should we pay attention to next. Did I already reply to that? I think I did. Let me go open it up again and we waste time and energy in the process.

There is a much better and simpler way. Use the archive function with your email client. When you're finished with an email, archive it. You can always go back and search it later. But it will no longer clutter up your inbox.

If you want to be able to reply to an email but maybe you don't have time right now, create a reply-to folder. You can put those messages in a separate folder knowing that you can go back to it and reply to them one by one but yet it won't clutter up your inbox.

You see it's called an inbox for a reason. It's where emails start their lives, it shouldn't be where they go to die. So make use of a separate folder or make use of the archive function.

When you're finished with an email, get it out of the inbox. It's very simple.

You've got a lot of things on your plate today.

You've got a lot of email to get to.

You've got meetings to attend.

You've got phone calls you need to make.

And don't forget about that report that's due at the end of the day.

You're going to need an awful lot of focus to do everything that you want and accomplish everything on your to-do list.

However, sometimes the biggest distraction to our most important work is ourselves.

Have you ever sat down and tried to focus on a particular task when suddenly a pressing issue, a new idea, or something that you haven't thought about for a number of days pops into your head and pulls you away from that particular task?

Well, if you've experienced this before, you may be in need of a mind dump.

What's a mind dump?

It's really pretty simple.

It's taking whatever's on your mind right now and exporting it somewhere else.

It could be a piece of paper, it could be a spreadsheet, it could be Evernote, whatever you use to capture new ideas or new notes.

I want you to take whatever's pressing on your mind right now and put it on that piece of paper or put it on that note-taking tool.

With that information safely tucked away, you can give the current task or that current conversation the attention it deserves.

Once the meeting is over or once you've completed that task, you can return to those notes and deal with them appropriately.

Now, a mind dump can be very beneficial for yourself, but it can also benefit those around you.

I know a manager who conducts a weekly team meeting, and at the beginning of that meeting, she hands out a piece of paper to everyone in attendance.

She gives them five minutes to perform a mind dump—five minutes to export whatever is up here onto that piece of paper.

Why does she do this?

Well, she wants her team's full attention for the remainder of that meeting, and she knows the chances of having their full attention are that much greater once they've exported whatever they're worrying about, whatever issues, or maybe even things that they're excited about, onto that piece of paper.

So whether it's for the benefit of yourself or for the benefit of your team, perform a mind dump today.

It's very simple.

YouTube is such a fantastic place to find new tips and techniques to be more productive.

I mean that's precisely why you're watching this video, isn't it?

Of course, it can also be a pretty big time waster.

New Simpsons videos? No thanks.

The funniest table tennis match in history? Maybe later.

I want you to be at your productive best, so today I'm sharing with you three of my favorite YouTube channels that focus on productivity.

The first one is Doto TE.

Dottotech

And it's hosted by Steve Doto.

Now Steve is a longtime technology enthusiast and his specialty is reviewing and showing you interesting ways to use new pieces of technology.

Now when I say productivity, I'm not just talking about task apps or to-do list managers.

No, Steve reviews everything from Dropbox and Evernote to office suites to operating systems, even social media.

In fact, I'd be hard pressed for you to find an application that Steve has not reviewed when it comes to personal productivity, some way to help you stay more organized or help you stay more productive.

Now Steve is also a very engaging and entertaining individual and I love how he brings in real-world examples as a part of his demos.

So I strongly encourage you to check out Steve Doto on his channel Doto TE now.

Productivitygame

the second channel is relatively new to the YouTube Universe productivity game no it's not a game it's not a app that you're going to find on the Google Play

store or the Apple App Store productivity game is actually a collection of book reviews books that focus on productivity or or creativity or leadership or innovation the video is usually average somewhere around 6 or 7 Minutes in length and what I love about productivity game is that they do not try to summarize the entire book instead they focus on one or two really key points that the author was trying to get

across as you can tell by the thumbnails here they are an illustrated summary or

an illustrated video which keeps it very entertaining keeps it very uh interesting as you watch the concept that is being displayed to you I've used productivity game many times as I'm searching for the next book that I'd like to check out at my local bookstore so be sure to check out productivity game lastly one of my favorites from

Lifehacker

Many years is Lifehacker.

Now you may be familiar with lifehacker.com, which is a fantastic resource of blog articles and other tips and tricks on how to be more productive.

Now unlike the first two channels that I've recommended, Lifehacker often has a slant on personal productivity in the home, not just in the office, not just as it pertains to your career.

As you can see by some of the more recent videos, many of them have to do with being more efficient or effective in the kitchen or how to effectively clean your bathroom or organize kitchen drawers, that type of thing.

Still, you'll find some great inspiration at the Lifehacker YouTube channel, a great place to check out and find new things.

I would encourage you to subscribe, so check out three new...

Conclusion

Productivity channels if you haven't already done so.

Join Steve Doto at Doto TE.

You can check out Productivity Game and find out what’s the next book that you're likely to pick up to make you more effective.

And of course, Lifehacker, not only to make you more productive at work but also in the home.

And of course, if you want to be at your productive best, be sure to subscribe right here to Simpletivity so you can be more productive and not just busy.

Until next time, it's very simple.

Boomerang is a very powerful extension to help you be more efficient and productive with your email and manage your inbox in a better and smarter way.

Now, Boomerang allows you to bring emails back into your inbox if you don't want to deal with them right now, and that's a feature that we're seeing more common in other email clients as well—an ability to defer an email. But Boomerang is so much more than that. It adds some additional powerful features to help you manage your messages.

I'm using Gmail, so I'm using Boomerang for Gmail. You can see below my send button, within my message dialogue, I have an additional row that Boomerang adds to all of your messages.

With this, I can schedule messages for the future. Maybe I don't want to send this email right now or I don't want the person receiving it to get it today. Maybe I want to schedule it for an optimal time. So, I'll schedule it for tomorrow morning. Boomerang allows you to do that.

It also allows you to bring a message back into your inbox if the person who receives this does not reply in a certain amount of time. Here, you can see it says "two days." I can pick any time that I would like, and then it will reappear in my inbox. This is fantastic for follow-up.

Well, Boomerang has introduced a brand new feature as part of its extension called Boomerang Respond. As the little help text tells us, it uses artificial intelligence to help you write better emails.

So, what does that mean and how can that be helpful? Well, most of our emails, we want a reply. We are desiring a response. We're asking a question and we want someone to reply to us with an answer or at least to continue the conversation.

So, Boomerang is giving you a score to see how likely it is that that person will respond to you based on what you've written—based on the combination of your subject line and what you've actually written in the message.

Here, you can see Boomerang has given me a relatively poor score. I've only got two of these green bars out of, I think it's a total of eight. It's unlikely that someone's going to reply to me with this hypothetical email that I've written here.

So, you see my subject line is "Meeting." No surprise there; that's pretty boring. I'm not even sure if they're going to open this email, let alone reply to me with that type of subject line. And then my two sentences here that consist of the body are pretty basic and really don't have a call to action.

I was planning to attend the meeting this week to discuss the collaboration opportunities with our vendor. Let me know if we can discuss. Again, there's no really concrete call to action. I'm not surprised that Boomerang is giving me a low score.

So, what exactly is it looking at and how can I improve my score? Well, by clicking on this meter, it's going to open up a small dialogue that will show you what it's looking at.

Right at the top it says, "Not very likely to receive a response." Why? Here are the criteria that they are looking at:

• Subject Length: I've got a one-word subject. Well, that is relatively poor. The recommendation is going to be to increase my subject length, and you see they've got some nice color-coded bars to see if you're below or maybe even above a certain level.
• Word Count: Sometimes email messages can be too short, right? Too short to grab the reader's attention. They just skim over it or they don't give it the full attention that it deserves. Maybe they don't think that you're very serious if you write an email with so few words in it.
• Question Count: Of course, this is a big one. I don't have a single question in my email, so it shouldn't be surprising that the chances of me getting a response are so low.
• Reading Level: I think this is really interesting. While the first three we could probably count ourselves if we wanted to, might as well let the AI do that for us. But reading level, you know, I don't have an English background. I don't know how they're calculating reading level, but in this case, they're suggesting that my reading level might be slightly too complex. Maybe I'm using some words that could be simplified or some words that are too long, and that will increase my chances of getting a response.

They have a nice little help icon beside all of their criteria, so if you want to find out more about reading level, I can click on it. Here, the recommendation is to consider using simpler words and sentences. It goes into even more detail in a short paragraph below. But these little help windows are available for all of the criteria.

• Subject Length Recommendation: Consider a longer subject line. They say that around two to six words is the sweet spot—that's the ideal length.

Now, there are some additional pieces of criteria that they will add if you subscribe to their Pro or Premium subscription. These are the advanced features. They will also look at positivity, politeness, and subjectivity.

I am not currently a Pro or Premium subscriber, so I can't really comment on these pieces of criteria, but some additional things to help you craft an even better email.

So, we only have a two-bar ranking right now. Let's see what we can do to increase our chances of getting a response to this email.

Let's start with the subject line. "Meeting" is pretty bland and boring. How about "Can you attend the meeting?" With a question mark. So the question mark is probably very helpful. You'll notice that Boomerang actually doesn't look at the question count in the subject heading; they're only looking at the question count in the body itself. But from a subject length perspective, we are in good territory. "Can you attend the meeting?" That's much more attention-grabbing. The chances of someone clicking on this and opening this email are that much greater.

I'm going to reduce some of the complex words I've got in here. "Collaboration opportunities" sounds a little too technical. I'm going to assume that this person is a colleague—someone I know quite well. This sounds a little too formal for my case. Let me review some of the things in here.

"I'm going to attend the vendor meeting in the Smart Room on Thursday." As you can see, as I'm writing, it's checking this dynamically. My reading level has just reduced. Remember, it was about 7.2 because I've gotten rid of some of those more complex words. Now my reading level is 2.5, and it's saying that that's a good thing. Already my chances of getting a response have increased a little bit.

So it's actually doing this as you write, which I think is fantastic—giving you that feedback immediately.

"John will be attending as well." And I've got to have a call to action, right? I don't have a question count here. "Can you actually, you know what, let's talk a bit more details about what is happening in this meeting." You can see that my word count is a little low.

"Why should this person reply to this meeting if they don't know exactly what we're going to be talking about? We will be talking about the upcoming conference and how we can serve them better."

So now I'm a little more specific as to what the meeting is going to be about. My word count is a bit higher. They know exactly which meeting and what the meeting is about.

Let's end with a call to action because we still don't have a question count. You can see my response level is still very low.

"Can you please let me know if you will attend?" Question mark.

Wow, just with that last piece of information, you can see I've got greens and really all of these areas of criteria. But it was that last one, the question count, that really put me over the edge. I've got full bars down below and at the top it says it is very likely for me to receive a response with the email that I have crafted right here.

Now, of course, Boomerang Respond—this feature—is not going to be necessary for all of your emails. In fact, it's probably just the minority of your emails. But think of the four or five really important emails that you are going to be writing today. Think about those individuals that perhaps you're reaching out for the very first time. Think about a project that has an upcoming deadline, and you need an answer by the end of today. That's where Boomerang Respond can come in really handy to make sure that you're crafting a message to ensure that you get a response.

From an efficiency or productivity point of view, think of how much more efficient you are by crafting one really well-written email where you will get a response versus crafting or writing three or four messages just to get that one response a few days later or several messages later.

So, check out Boomerang and try out the Boomerang Respond feature. It's very.

Perhaps the most important meeting that you'll have all week is the one that you have with yourself.

I highly recommend that everyone set aside time for a weekly review.

What's a weekly review?

A weekly review is a time set aside just for you so you can take a look back at the previous week, see if there is anything that you need to follow up on.

Take a look at your core projects and your key commitments, see if you're going to be able to meet those pre-negotiated deadlines.

Also, it's a great opportunity to take a look at the week ahead, see what's coming up, and make sure that you're prepared.

Now, a difficult thing can be to find a time, the ideal time for you to have a weekly review.

You may need to do some trial and error to find the best time for you.

Initially, I started doing my weekly reviews on Friday afternoon.

It still gave me enough time if there was something that came up during that review, that I could reach out to someone or follow up with someone.

However, I realized that my energy levels started to drain at that part of the day, that part of the week.

As a result, I was much more prone to defer or just skip the weekly review altogether.

Therefore, I decided to change it, and now I do it first thing Friday morning.

I'm fresh, and the chances of another meeting or something else conflicting with that time are very, very low.

So find a time that's ideal for you.

It can be as little as 30 minutes, but don't skip out on your weekly review.

It's very simple.