Corrections or additions?
This article by Kathleen McGinn Spring was prepared for the May 8,
2002 edition of
U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Drain Your Brain, and Other Tips For Office Efficiency
d>Deb Cullerton spent seven years following UPS
guys and gals around. No, she wasn’t a Big Brown groupie. An
industrial
engineer, it was her job to make sure that UPS’s field workers were
completing their rounds with the maximum efficiency that breeds
profitability.
“UPS has delivery methods down to a T,” she says. “For
example, drivers have to keep their keys around their little fingers
at all times.” It may seem like a small thing, but “think
about it,” she says. “If every driver is fishing around for
keys, it eats up time. In an environment as fast-paced as UPS, you
have to have all your ducks in a row.”
So Cullerton walked around behind drivers, stop watch in hand,
watching
for time-wasting behavior, and devising methods to eliminate
nanosecond
delays. Then, she went back to her office. And it was there —
in the executive suites — that she found a much bigger efficiency
problem.
“At the front end, people were wasting seconds,” she says.
“Back at the office people were wasting hours. There are much
bigger problems in white collar productivity. I thought maybe I was
working the wrong end.”
Now northeast regional manager with PargasVenuto, an HR training and
development firm based in Mt. Laurel, Cullerton specializes in helping
desk jockeys cut stress, save time, and achieve work/life balance
through better organization. She speaks on “Organize or
Agonize”
on Thursday, May 9, at 6 p.m. at Mercer NJAWBO’s dinner meeting at
the Metro Grill in Ewing. Cost: $33. Call 609-924-7975.
Cullerton studied industrial engineering at the University of Rhode
Island, where she discovered she “wasn’t nerdy enough to be an
engineer,” and shifted to management. Passionate about the
benefits
of getting organized, she says “no more than 20 percent” of
office workers are optimally organized.
“Some may look organized,” she says, “but they’re not.
They’re just neat. There’s a difference between putting things away,
and finding them when you need them.” The effects of this
difference
not only hurt productivity at work, but also keep the disorganized
from enjoying time away from the office. “It lands on people’s
ability to achieve work/life balance,” says Cullerton.
There are studies, she says, that indicate the average office worker
wastes 72 minutes a day. It is not uncommon for executives to spend
three hours a week just looking for papers. Getting those papers in
order is important, but it is only one-third of the solution.
Cullerton
says, “we look at organization from three sides.”
Drain the brain. “People keep too much in theirheads,”says Cullerton. “Things start slipping through the cracks.”What’s more, a brain stuffed with phone numbers, E-mail addresses,project deadlines, and appointments is a brain that is not free towork on more important tasks. “How can you use it for creativethinking, for strategizing?” asks Cullerton.Empty the brain of all the minutia, and — obviously wise to allthe tricks office workers employ — she adds, “don’t emptyit onto stickies.” Putting phone messages, meeting reminders,and business lunch dates on Post-It notes does little to create anorganized work life. Scribbling on the back of reports doesn’t doit either.Instead, get a personal organizer, a Palm Pilot, Pocket PC or similardevice. Let it be your auxiliary brain. People worry, Cullertonadmits,that this brain annex could be lost. At her seminars, this concernalways surfaces. “I ask how many people in the audience have losttheir Palm Pilots,” she says. Rarely does a hand go up. And evenwhen the devices go missing, she says there is an excellent chancethat someone will find and return them.”I found one on the sidewalk,” she recounts. “I thought`Oh my God! This person must be having a heart attack.’” She foundthe owner by pressing the automatic dial phone number labeled”mom.”Dialing, she said, “one of your kids has lost his Palm Pilot,”and got contact information. Another defense against loss is backingup the pocket organizer on the office PC or laptop. This is easy todo now. “I keep mine in a cradle right next to my laptop,”says Cullerton. Backing up the data is now a nearly-unconscious partof her day.Map the day. When people think of organization, saysCullerton,most think only of getting paper under control. Far more important,in her view, is getting each day under control. For all white collarworkers, and especially for entrepreneurs, this is the biggestchallenge.”They let details consume them,” she says. “They losesight of priorities.”Before leaving the office at night — every single night —she suggests spending 10 minutes writing down (in an electronicorganizer— not on the back of an envelope) the schedule for the next day.”People,” she says, “are very unrealistic about how muchtime they will spend on their to do lists.” A business day isfull of interruptions that eat up time earmarked for writing a reportor planning a campaign.But at the end of each day, “suddenly everyone becomes anoptimist,”Cullerton finds. In planning the next day, there is a tendency tothink “tomorrow I’ll have four hours to work on the project.”Chances are, says Cullerton, it won’t happen. “The computer goesdown. All those pesky customers are calling again,” she givesas examples of why this is so. “You have to be realistic,”she says. “Maybe you’ll only have two hours.”Armed with this knowledge, top priority projects becomemore urgent. Maybe it isn’t such a good idea to put them off untilFriday after all. With a realistic idea of how much time really willbe available tomorrow, it is also easier to say no to extra work.You don’t have eight hours at your disposal tomorrow — not ifyou factor in necessary interruptions. You really have only six, orfour, or two. If a high-priority task is going to take up that muchtime, there is nothing left for the additional work.Planning a work day means there is some control over family life,too. If Cullerton needs to be home at 5:30 p.m., she says, “Idraw a big black line under 5 p.m.”Purge the desk. At UPS there was a rule that desks hadto be clean before employees left for the day. That’s a good start,but Cullerton goes much further. “There are three `Ds’ for thedesk,” she says. “The first is `dump,’ and that is the mostpreferable.” Delete junk E-mail and toss all non-essential papers.Having trouble deciding what is non-essential? Cullerton has a test.”Ask a question,” she suggests, “If I keep this, willI even know I have it? If not, throw it away now.”The second two “Ds” are the twins, “delegate” and”deliver.” If you are not going to do anything with the paper,but someone should, get it into that person’s hands pronto.The last paper “D” is “decide when.” Here are thecriteria. “If it is going to take less than three minutes,”says Cullerton, “do it.” Immediately. She puts filing intothat category, and urges anyone without a good filing system to wasteno time in setting one up. If the task represented by the piece ofpaper is going to take more than three minutes, decide when it willbe done, enter the task and the time allotted to complete it intothe electronic organizer, and toss the paper.Cullerton swears that she is “not a weenie.””I’m not naturally organized,” she says. “I fight thegood fight on a daily basis.” Things pile up on her too. Thedifference?”I can get rid of them faster than almost anyone.”This efficiency spills over to her home life as well. “I drivemy family nuts,” she admits. Among the habits that tend to annoyis one she picked up at UPS. “I search until I find a parkingspot I can back into,” she says. “That way I’m always pullingaway. It’s a safety issue.” At vacation time, her trainingsurfacesagain. “I’m a monster packing for vacation,” she laughs.”Ican pack the car as tight as a UPS truck.”Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
