3 Steps To Creating Your Own ‘Mini-Me’ At Work

"Mini-Me, if anything should happen to you, I don't know what I would do...I'd probably move on, get another replica but there would be a 10 minute period there where I would just be inconsolable."

- Dr. Evil 

I remember the first time I watched the Austin Powers movie. It was a hilarious, original film with extremely memorable quotes and characters. If you were to ask me to recite quotes from the movie, I would butcher the phrases, but there was one character that stood out to me above all – Mini-Me.

Mini-Me is supposed to be a smaller replica of the movie’s villain, Dr. Evil. Mini-Me acts, talks and moves like Dr. Evil. He’s supposed to be Dr. Evil’s mini-clone. Do you ever wish you could split yourself in half or that you could clone yourself at work? Perhaps you feel you don’t have as many hours in a day to complete your work. Or you might feel like you have too many projects on your lap. Wouldn’t you want a Mini-You? Here are three steps to guide you on creating your own Mini-Me.

Identify Your Mini-Me

The true reason why we would want to split ourselves in half is because we want someone to do the work exactly as we would do it. We don’t believe there is anyone else out there who could do a better job so we would need another “me” to execute. In order to build your Mini-Me, you need to first identify someone that you can take under your wing who is as good (or better) than you. Are you managing someone who is extremely talented? Is there anyone that you trust or you can depend on? Who can become your Mini-Me? In my opinion, there is one characteristic I would look in a person above any other characteristics: is the person teachable and coachable? You might have the smartest, talented, competent person in your department, but if that person is not coachable, you will struggle.

Learn How To Teach

You might have a person you identified as talented and teachable, but if you don’t know how to coach, train or teach that person properly, you will have difficulty building that person up to your standards. Most people want to create a Mini-Me, but they don’t know how to properly teach their Mini-Me. Telling someone how to do an expense report is not teaching. Telling someone to figure out how to do your job is not teaching. Although you might have those shining stars that could probably figure things out on their own, if you truly want to have things done just the way you would do them, you’ll have to roll up your sleeves. You’ll have to do a better job in training and showing the way so that your Mini-Me understands what you look at, what you see as perfection and what is the bar.

Invest Time In Your Mini-Me

Investing time in others is probably the most difficult part of any manager’s role. It’s difficult because many managers can’t seem to find the time to invest in others. However, the secret to developing a successful Mini-Me, is the prioritization of the time you spend with your Mini-Me. You want to spend more of your time teaching, training, coaching, observing, correcting, giving feedback to your Mini-Me, and less time doing tasks that won’t contribute to the development of your Mini-Me. Eventually, you want your Mini-Me to be able to do those tasks that keep you from spending time with him/her.

Perhaps your Mini-Me won’t walk like you, talk like you or act like you, but at least he/she will do the work exactly as you would. Then, if you’re successful at building your first Mini-Me, you might end up having multiple Mini-Yous.

Don't forget to share this blog so you can encourage others: family, co-workers, friends. Give them something to get motivated! You never know what they might be going through. A few words of encouragement can go a long way. 

5 Time Management Lessons From Julie Morgenstern That Helped My Career

"Pull away even though it feels like career suicide. Go home. Rest, sleep, recharge, have fun with your kids, play with the dog and watch how much more effective you will be."

- Julie Morgenstern

"Wait a minute," my colleagues asked as I was preparing the room for a time management training my boss asked me to do for the team. "You're telling me that you do all this work, managing people and programs and you play in a band, play soccer and you still have time to go out on dates with your girlfriend?"

"That's right," I said as I prepared my introduction on how I became a super-efficient manager, according to my boss. "But you forgot to mention that I also teach music to little kids on certain days."

"What? Really?" My colleague exclaimed. "I don't even have time to sleep! How do you do it?"

"Well," I looked at the time to see if I would be ready to present 30 minutes before my scheduled time, "I listened to Julie Morgenstern."

There are a few books that changed my life completely but there are two main books that I felt helped me get recognized a bit more at work and eventually helped me with my career. The books weren't about leadership or about business. The books were about time management. The books helped me become extremely effective, efficient and productive and pushed me to prioritize my balance between my life and work. 

Julie Morgenstern wrote two important books that helped me in my career; Time Management From the Inside Out and Never Check E-mail In The Morning. The books were actually recommended by a Franklin Covey instructor many years before. I always thought my time management was decent, but those two book changed the way I did things at work and at home. Later, I was the one asked to do time management trainings to teach others what I was doing with my time. Here are five of the lessons I learned from Julie Morgenstern's time management books that helped me with my time management, work-life balance and eventually with my career.

Never check e-mail in the morning

This lesson was not only the title of one of Julie Morgenstern's book but also the hardest lesson for me to master. It was common practice at our company to always check emails in the morning and to answer emails within 24 hours. According to Julie Morgenstern, some people are the most productive in the mornings and if you spend your time doing simple, unproductive tasks you are going to waste all that energy and brain power. I decided to try it and I found myself getting much more work done in my first three to four hours in the office than I did the rest of the day. I began to check emails after lunch. 

Does it go in your calendar or is it a simple task?

Yesterday, I wrote a blog about to-do lists (Read 3 Reasons Why Your To-Do List Is Not Effective). The interesting thing I learned from one of Julie Morgenstern's book is that there is a difference between putting something in your calendar and putting something in your to-do list. Something in your to-do list has no time, but if you write down the time it will take you to complete your tasks right next to that thing, you'll start to notice how much (or little) time  you actually have to complete your entire list. I put a projected time frame of completion on all my items on the list I had and began to add up the time. Most of the time, I realized that I could complete my entire week's work in only a few days. Therefore, instead of putting bigger tasks on my to-do list I put them on my calendar and planned to spend the time I projected working on finishing up those bigger tasks or projects. 

Time everything

I eventually got in the habit of timing everything I did, from checking email, conducting meetings, doing my reports, etc. I got so good at knowing how productive I was that later I developed a strategy to know what will automatically go in my calendar. For those tasks that were quick to complete (less than 10 minutes) I would keep them on my to-do list, but for those items that took me more than 10 minutes, they automatically went to my calendar. I later competed against myself to see if I could complete certain projects faster than the last time I did them and with more accuracy. 

Don't rely on memory

I always believed I had a bad memory so this wasn't much of an issue for me. However, most people that have a great memory always want to have their to-do list in their head and things will start slipping away with more responsibilities and with more complex projects. Julie Morgenstern's books got me in the habit of writing everything down, and I mean everything. If I'm speaking to someone and they ask me to call them, I quickly send an email to myself so I don't forget. This includes the most simple tasks you can imagine such as checking the mail, call the internet company or to tell someone they're doing a good job.

Don't sync your email to your phone

At one point at work, I thought we were all competing to see who would reply to emails quicker. Some people even bragged about their respond time. To me, having my email synced to my phone created a few problems: (1) it slowed down my phone because I was getting to many emails (most of them were just emails I was CC'd on); (2) I was constantly interrupting myself with checking my phone; and (3) it took over my entire days. I decided to keep my calendar synced but to disactivate my email notifications. Now, I only use my phone at work to make phone calls. I haven't checked emails using my phone in about 4 years - never had a problem. 

Now, I conduct time management trainings to other companies as well, teaching them the lessons learned from Julie Morgenstern's book but also helping them put things into perspective a bit more. Time is precious and most of us might feel like we're scrambling for time, but time is always on our side - we just need to learn how to use it. 

Don't forget to share this blog so you can encourage others: family, co-workers, friends. Give them something to get motivated! You never know what they might be going through. A few words of encouragement can go a long way.

3 Reasons Why Your To-Do List Is Not Effective

"If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?"

- John Wooden

I started working for an education company in 2008 and as a new manager I was ready to learn everything that was given to me. The first physical thing I was given was a composition book. One of my colleagues at the time gave it to me and told me that the notebook will help me manage my time. I used that composition book to write down all the tasks and projects I had to complete. That to-do list was a life saver.

As time progressed and I received additional responsibilities, my to-do list got longer and longer. What worked for me my first year was not working for me the following year. When I became a Senior Program Manager, my to-do list was in trouble. It seemed as though every year I had to adapt a new way of doing things because the old was wasn't working. After reading a few books and articles I adjusted the way I managed my time which later helped me balance life and work. However, my notebook with my to-do list became extinct.

Although to-do list are great for chores and a few other simple tasks in our lives, they are not the most effective way to manage our projects, time or even to-do things. Here are three reasons why a to-do list is not effective.

There is no time associated with your list

Your to-do list might consist of 10 different things you have to get done. However, how long will it take you to finish all 10 things? Those 10 things can take you an hour to complete or 3 days depending on what they are. Each line item on your list has a time associated with its completion. This is why to-do lists aren't effective when managing our time - because there is no time on a list, it's just a list of words. Practice timing yourself with each tasks and projecting how long each item will actually take you. There might be some items on your list that might actually belong in your calendar. 

Some items in your list are too broad

When I used my to-do list, I would just write things down so I wouldn't forget. Therefore, I would write down something like 'Finish marketing budget.' Many items in our to-do list are too vague and need to be broken down into smaller tasks. This could also be a reason why are time management is off - the smaller tasks of a bigger task can take up more of our time. Get in the habit of breaking down the projects or tasks into smaller tasks, even if they sound too simple. For example, if you need to complete your marketing budget, you might have to review quarterly expenses, itemize certain expenses, figure out how much certain things will cost, etc. 

You are not prioritizing the things on your list

During the time I used my to-do list, I found out that the biggest problem I had was prioritizing. This is because my to-do list had no system to differentiate between the most important things and the things that could wait. Therefore, when things were more pressing, I always thought I was 'fighting fires' but most of the time this was because I wasn't prioritizing the right things. There are different ways to prioritize the things you need to do. You can add due dates, add a number system where 1 is a high priority and 5 is a lower priority item or highlight the most pressing things.

All-in I would suggest using a different method of managing your projects and tasks that require you to leverage your calendar a bit more. As I later found out in my career, time management is the first step to achieving a stronger work-life balance. 

Don't forget to share this blog so you can encourage others: family, co-workers, friends. Give them something to get motivated! You never know what they might be going through. A few words of encouragement can go a long way.