Cool Down by Steve Prentice Read Free Book Online Page B

important emails to specific time blocks in the day, rather than answering each the moment it arrives. She knows all about the value and power of focus. Unfortunately, her customers don’t. If they do not receive a response back within five minutes, they pick up the phone and call, and if Mary doesn’t answer, they go straight to her manager. And that’s Mary’s fear. “If you don’t stay inside the loop,” she says, “the problem merely escalates to another level.” Hence, the fear factor. Mary’s fear of stepping out of the loop creates a silo, in which she feels obliged to respond, not just because of a hard-wired biological reflex, but because of the dangerous implications inherent in not answering. Who needs the hassle of annoyed clients, colleagues, or managers?
How to Manage the Loop
    What is the solution? Well, what if Mary were to take a different tack? To use an outdoorsy metaphor, instead of spending 100 percent of her time fending off mosquitoes, would it not make more sense to buy a tent? Would it not be better if she reduced the pace of her busy week (at select times, anyway) and invested some of her time in sitting down with her manager (the one to whom the calls get escalated), to explain the reasons for her time allotments, the value of the work she prefers to focus on, her strategies for returning the customers’ calls, and her plans for satisfying their needs, even if it’s a few minutes or half an hour after their call? Could she not seek to get her manager on side, or perhaps collaborate towards a joint strategy? Could she not also spend a little time touching base with her mentors, either inside or outside the organization, to compare notes and to learn how others keep both their job and their sanity in the face of relentless expectations? This solution would be eminently possible, for Mary, as well as for the vacationers, and all other prisoners of the loop if they were to cool down and use the power of slow to maximize their use of human-to-human communication as a practical antidote to the speed of expectation.
    Tips on Managing the Call of the Loop
    â€¢ Recognize that few things are important enough to need all of your time, all the time.
    â€¢ Appoint and train a “deputy” who can take and manage your calls for you in your absence.
    â€¢ Leave suitable instructions at your key clients as to when you are and are not available—help them construct their days and projects around you rather than simply reacting.
    â€¢ If escalation is a problem, educate your manager—get her on side.
    â€¢ Always face every project by identifying the worries and concerns that your customer might have and seek to address them in advance.
    â€¢ Recognize that no matter how valuable you are, the company will survive until you return.
    â€¢ Remember the old phrase, “nobody ever laid on their deathbed wishing they’d spent more time at the office.”
    â€¢ Recognize that rest and refreshment will make you a more competent and valuable professional.

PRESENTEEISM
    The ripple effect of Information Overload, combined with the fear of being out of the loop, has led to a productivity loss phenomenon known as presenteeism , in which people come to work even though they are fatigued, ill, or overstressed—partly out of the fear of losing their job, and partly, once again, of not being in touch with the expected momentum of their work. Presenteeism is a term coined by Manchester University psychologist Cary Cooper. He describes it as like absenteeism in all respects except for the fact that the employee in question is physically at the workplace instead of home in bed.
    Employees do not have to be actually ill or paralyzed with stress to experience presenteeism. Consider:
    â€¢ Secretly tending to email on your wireless PDA while in a meeting
    â€¢ Attempting to focus on having a conversation with someone while your cellphone rings