Police Time Management

Effective Memo Management

You’d be amazed how badly people deal with incoming mail. Not e-mail – that’s an essay in and of itself, but paperwork, including documentation received through electronic case management systems as well as internal memoranda and general mail. The main problem is a reluctance to deal with it, and that reluctance comes from the fact that you just know that opening it will lead to more work, and you have enough of that already.

This paralysing reluctance to dealing with mail is easily cured. You just need to create and apply a systematic process for dealing with this incoming ‘stuff’. Here are a few hints.

If the memo/letter can be answered in a sentence, write that sentence on the original and send it back. But be polite. I once had a loooonnnngggg memo from a file vettor. I answered each point at the end of each point with comments like ‘attached’, ‘yes’, ‘no,’, and ‘not necessary’. He went ballistic.
If it can be answered with a short e-mail, do that. Better still, if the circumstances permit, use the phone.
If there are multiple tasks associated with the document, treat it as a To Do List of many separate items. This may seem odd, but that approach takes a huge mass of undoability and turns it into a list of completable tasks. The huge ‘build a car’ level memo turns into a ‘buy a tyre’ level of required effort.
If it is a big list, get a manila folder, put the master document into it, and then do the work while inserting the completed work in the same folder, if appropriate. Keep it all together and watch your completion take place before your very eyes.
If any item on the list is itself a big task, break that down into its own To Do List and start working through that.

Above all, do NOT fall into the trap of doing nothing, or managing what you ARE doing so badly that the resultant pile of paper becomes even more psychologically problematical that the original memo justified. Don’t let it fester while more memoranda come in to add to your stress. That, more than anything else, is the biggest time management trap into which so many of my colleagues fell. They thought that putting it off lessened the stress, but that method always creates more stress because our work is always replaced by new work, so incomplete work just builds up unless and until some action is taken.

In my book Police Time Management I go into copious detail about the creation, management and execution of To Do Lists, much more detail than I have put into this article. In fact, 16 pages on lists alone. That sounds complicated, but it really isn’t. What that chapter provides is enough information for you to develop your own approach to managing your workload and your productivity.

In fact, it becomes so easy if you apply it that you’ll wonder why you ever felt stressed about memos. Apart from the sheer stupidity of some of the requests from the CPS that you can’t believe came out of the mind of a qualified lawyer. Sorry, I can’t do anything about those.

Except suggest trying the ‘not doing that’ response I put on that vettor’s memo. Probably why he went bananas…..

Cheaper than a Jack Reacher novel, and a lot more useful to YOU.

I believe there are a couple of challenges when it comes to convincing people they need ‘time management’ training. First of all, front line officers and staff see the word ‘management’ and think it isn’t for them because it has ‘management’ in the title. They don’t see themselves as managers and think it is a management task, therefore not for them. Secondly, the whole world is now focused on the buzzword ‘leadership’, which implies a hierarchical focus and one that is executed ‘from above’. Neither statement is true.

Tied in with both these misunderstandings is the fact that, as a rule and in my own experience, time management training is usually provided ONLY to higher level supervisors – who can delegate all their tasks (if not their decisions) down the proverbial pecking order. In other words, to the people who AREN’T provided with time management input. Who therefore assume that time management isn’t for them because only bosses get told how it’s done.

Let me change all that.

First of all, you are all leaders, because leadership is a choice, not a position. (S Covey) You can self-lead as much as you can be led by others of higher rank. You can influence, should you take the time to learn how. That is the main purpose of leadership, and many great initiatives have come from the shop floor.

And just as you can lead yourself and decide where you are going, you have to – have to – manage yourself in order to get there.

Which leads me to a third challenge with the term ‘time management’, and that is that you aren’t ‘managing time’, because you can’t. it’s impossible. You can’t take 3pm – 4pm and execute it at 7pm. It’s too late, it’s already happened three hours ago.

So don’t think ‘time management’. Instead, as Charles R. Hobbs and Hyrum W. Smith opined, use the expression ‘Event Control’. And in using that replacement terminology, recognise that it is all about taking what happens to you and choosing how and when you will deal with it.

Of course, some of the ‘event control’ will be dictated by the event itself, and some more will be dictated by systems and protocols and resource availability.

But how you deal with it in terms of your attitude, and where you can mould the way you deal with the current event in terms of all your other priorities, are found in the study of (back to the old term) time management.

My book, Police Time Management, is a 300+, A4 sized, compendium of mindsets, skill sets and toolsets about how to prioritise and execute your massive workload in such a way as to reduce stress, but it also covers self-leadership – about deciding where you want to go and how to go about getting there. It covers your working and personal lives. It’s cheaper than a (non-discounted) Jack Reacher novel and the benefits last much, much longer.

When I was in the job, ‘time management’ made a HUGE difference to my stress levels and to my productivity. I took on projects that weren’t strictly ‘mine’ because I found that I could learn, manage and execute better, all because I had developed a system for doing what had to be done, in the way it had to be done, at the best time for it to be done, without ‘it’ taking control of my ability to do it. (And later made money as a result. 😊 )

And at the same time, I watched other people take ‘emergency leave’ because their heads were about to explode, all because they hadn’t discovered or been taught the benefits of event control training. Which is why I took it upon myself to provide time/event management/control input to my former colleagues by putting all that I had learned into the policing context, and into print.

Because your organisations won’t. But I’m willing to help them if they change their minds……

DC W.S. Churchill, 2005. How Auto-University Solved a Murder.

I’m not sure if it’s my age, my musical taste or any other issue but it drives me nuts when I am passed by a yoof in a car and all I can discern from the ‘music’ being played inside it is a rhythmic thudding, which is assaulting the occupant’s ears far more aggressively than Napoleon’s Austerlitz cannonades assailed the ears of the Austrian and Russian Armies. These drivers and their passengers WILL suffer poor hearing later, but their inability to actually hear the melody itself is painful now. (Or ‘Right Now’, which is American and Scottish for ‘now’.)

But that isn’t the only sadness that is evident in these circumstances, and the sadness I am about to impart may be one to which you, too, subject yourself, albeit with perhaps a little less gusto.

Music is something to be enjoyed, but there is an alternative sound that I would encourage you to listen to. Words.

I am student of personal development and I have CDs up the wazoo (a word Microsoft Office recognised) about self-improvement (which some may say was wasted money), and productivity. Hence my authoritative tone on those subjects. But when I travel anywhere, they are my go-to source of entertainment, or even infotainment. I regularly drive long distances accompanied by the great thinkers in these fields, where I will listen to whole training programmes. I even possess things called ‘cassette tapes’. Some of you may remember those.

As a result, what I hear through repeated playing gains a secure foothold in my psyche. I can produce some practical quotes, I can summon up speeches on the subjects at the drop of a hat, but above all I am learning.

I once had a DS who used Auto-University as a means to study material for his promotion exams. I anticipate you can get audio training for those exams, but you can always supplement anything purchased by creating your own audio using a book and a smartphone. (And if you can sing the definition of Theft to a well-known ditty, you can “Sing your way to Superintendent.” © )

And why stop at ‘organised’ education through your car’s audio-system? With the way mobile telephones are funded these days most of us can afford to access podcasts on any subject under the sun, and I listen to subjects and opinions that just aren’t getting any play through the main media routes. I fancy it makes for a slightly more objective and informed outlook on life.

And who knows – something you hear may well impact your work. Indeed, one such CD gave me a quote that I read to a murder suspect’s wife as she gave him an alibi. No lie. I had listened to her providing the killer’s alibi with some doubts as to its authenticity, when I used Churchill’s own words. I said, “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”

She paused, thought for a moment and said, “Will I get in trouble if I tell the truth?” Following which she said he’d come home on the relevant night and said he’d need an alibi, and his clothes washed. I tried not to dance around the room.

Of course you should listen to music in your car. It reduces stress and, if you’re like me, you love to belt out a ditty with the greats. I also do karaoke and am available for parties.

But might I make a suggestion? Listen to podcasts and audiobooks on a variety of subjects on your ride into work, and music on the way home. The one will get you ready for a serious approach to your work, the other will take your mind off it.

And as for the way police officers are being portrayed in the left-wing press these days? Ignore it, and as Churchill also said, “Keep Buggering On.”

For more on Police Time Management, please read my book, available HERE.

In-car entertainment is good, but in-car education is, too. And it can be surprisingly useful. Ask the Bargoed Park Killer.

Use a personal diary for your policing planning? Then read this – it’s important.

Please note that while the following has been drafted following consultation with the Information Commissioners Office, it is to be taken as the opinion of the author alone.

I have always promoted using one planning system for everyhing – work and personal, and when I was in the job I did exactly that. (Before you panic, my method is explained later and was fine.) Then I was walking my dog one morning, mulling a debate I’d started about time management and peoples’ silly habits and it occurred to me that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) might influence what we are, what we could be, what we can’t be and what we should be, doing – or at least considering – when using a personal diary for both personal and work planning. Turned out to be an interesting question.

When David Allen wrote ‘Getting Things Done’, and when Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill and Barbara Merrill wrote ‘First Things First’, things were different. Hardly anyone had a home PC. Mobile telephony consisted of call, texts and that snake game. Data Protection (in Europe) existed but didn’t apply to paper. And regardless of the legal requirements, 99% of the World wouldn’t have understood the applicable data rules in any case.

This situation had two effects. Firstly, no one thought that keeping work stuff and personal stuff separate was necessary, so the aforementioned authors’ suggestion that you possess ONE system for everything in your life wasn’t a problem. But secondly and in contrast, there was a distinct divide between work and home, so if you worked regular hours and had a separate work diary, it wasn’t that much of an issue. Back in 1999/2000 you walked out of one world and entered the other as directed. The boundaries were clear, and so the distinct activities could safely go into one system or two systems (provided you carried them both).

But it’s 2022, now, and you are routinely available 24/7 to work or family regardless of where you actually are and what you are actually doing. So the argument now must be that the most effective self-planning method IS to have one planning system. That way, double-booking yourself is avoidable, and having one or two To Do Lists covering everything was better than having half a dozen, surely?

But along comes GDPR – never mentioned in time management/productivity tomes – and suddenly one system containing everything has the potential to become a legal problem. If I keep work-related personal data in a personal system, would I breach the law? And if I keep personal stuff on a work computer, would I be laying my employer open to a fine for inappropriate retention of data they should never hold, and which they didn’t even know they were holding?

(Experts on GDPR – I know there are exemptions and defences, but I’m being general, here.)

Before I continue, please note that GDPR only relates to personal data – basically, data from which an individual can be identified. Your own data? Well, you can consent to putting it wherever you like. Data that doesn’t or couldn’t identify someone also can be placed, stored and fiddled with anywhere. But if you put work-related appointments into your diary and name the person with whom you have that appointment (and personal onto work systems) – well, where do you stand?

(The next couple of paragraphs are a bit deep, but stick with it. Or jump straight to the numbered paragraphs for the recommended practice without the legalese.)

I made an enquiry with the Information Commissioner’s Office to find out. I asked:

What, if any, are the rules/guidance regarding use of a personal system (predominantly paper but stretching to personal mobile devices) for work related planning?
I believe there was a time when paper-based systems were exempt from DP rules. I also believe that changed in/after 1998 but wonder if you could confirm the specifics applicable at this time.

Basically, I was concerned that (for example) putting an appointment in a personal planning system (digital or paper) with an ‘identified party’ might be a breach of GDPR. I wasn’t concerned about other documentation – that would already be covered by GDPR and could be added and removed from a paper system as required. (As opposed to me printing a file and keeping it for ever, for example. Not recommended or allowed.)

The ICO responded that “GDPR covers the processing (obtaining, holding, using or dissemination) of personal data in two ways:

Personal data processed wholly or partly by automated means (that is in electronic form); and
personal data processed in a non-automated manner, which forms part of or is intended to form part of a ‘filing system (that is, manual information in a filing system)’ (but see Public authorities, post)

My initial interpretation of this paragraph was that

A digital planning system, is always covered by GDPR. So using a personal digital system e.g. mobile device, for recording personal data that was obtained for work purposes may be inadvisable, even potentially in breach of DP laws – though not automatically. It depends on whether there are suitable controls – see post.If it’s a device provided by your workplace, it’s already covered by your employer’s GDPR responsibilities.
But your personal paper planning system, as it is NOT intended to be part of a filing system, is arguably exempt from GDPR.

However, I still had one concern, so I called the local ICO office and queried whether a personal planning system of the FranklinCovey/Daytimer/Filofax et al type would be a filing systems since it is searchable by dates, indexes, etc. That resulted in a “I’ll need to do further research” and a further telephone conference.

The conversation was very interesting, helpful and informative. The following advice is the result of that call. It pertains, in the main, to a paper-planner user, but is equally applicable for all you young digi-lovers.

The ICO did suggest that if you used your personal planner (paper) for work planning, then it could come under the ‘filing system’ definition under very unspecific, case-by-case circumstances, and it will always come under GDPR if you work for a public authority, whether it’s organised or not. But only in respect of personal data, not everything!

They also stated that one test for establishing whether your paper personal planner should be GDPR compliant is called the Temp Test. The question is: If you disappeared, could a temporary employee easily find personal information in your planner without having to read it all the way through? They stated that a purely chronological diary would probably escape GDPR scrutiny because the information is only organised chronologically. Which meant that…

A planner of the FranklinCovey/Daytimer/Filofax etc type, with the facility to index conversations and effectively create a ‘master retrieval’ system (if you wanted it to) would need to be GDPR compliant if used for planning work, if that planning included the recording of personal data. If you had a training course and planned that, no problem. If you had a meeting with James Bland, tel 01234 56789 in his home at 123 High Street, Sleaford – then you are now recording personal data, for work, in a personal planner.

In essence their advice would be to treat any personal data as though it was covered. (This is the case when any planner is being used for work purposes, regardless of whether it’s covered. If its use is purely domestic, it won’t be in scope of DP laws.)

They also stated that “the UK GDPR does NOT necessarily prohibit using a personal planning system for this (work-related planning) but it is important there are controls and policies in place to govern this.” Those controls include having a policy in the workplace for using a personal planner for work purposes, so that the employee can use their personal planner in accordance with that policy.

(This creates a personal privacy, ‘who owns the planner?’ question that is too big for this article.)

Finally, the Information Commissioner’s Office felt that there was also a common sense approach to the situation, and following that discussion this is my advice, and it is a practice I used when I was policing and using a personal paper planning system (and which therefore should have been subject to a data policy!).

Use a loose-leaf system so relevant paper can be added and removed, so that it can be removed and filed where it is legal and appropriate to file it, once it is finished with. Don’t keep it in your personal system longer than needed. Your possession of it in your capacity as an employee is obviously permitted, but if it’s in your personal planner, remove it once it is no longer necessary to hold onto it.
Refer to individuals by initials or, perhaps better but more fiddly, a code name. That way their data is technically either untraceable, or just plain impossible to compromise.
List appointments in pencil so you know they are coming, but erase them once they’ve taken place, after which what you did is entered into your ‘work’ system anyway. For example, I would make an appointment with a witness ‘FB’ at whatever address and telephone number, and enter it into my planner in pencil. Once I’d taken their statement, I’d erase that entry and the relevant paperwork would go into the GDPR-registered and compliant systems at work. The ICO considered this a sensible and, more importantly, practical approach. I would add that the temporary nature of such an entry is prima facie evidence it was never intended to be a permanent record for filing or retrieval.
Avoid detailing what the appointment is about. It really isn’t necessary to note that in a personal planner.
Don’t use your personal mobile phone for work planning if that planning includes retention of personal data, unless your employer authorises and is aware of the practice.
Paper or digital, make sure your employer knows you’re using your personal system in this fashion so that they can create a policy around it.

Of course, all of this means that you now have to return to the question of whether you need separate planning systems for work planning and for personal planning, but my reading of the rules, following consultation, seems to suggest you won’t need two systems if you go paper and follow the six suggestions, above. But if you work in a public capacity, your paper planning system is always covered by information rights laws.

Of course, Someone else might take a different view – let’s hear it, but with authoritative references, please.

And I would also be very interested in hearing about your thoughts on what, if anything, this means for paper planning in the 21^st century.

The ICO advice on ‘filing systems’ can be found at https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1592/relevant_filing_systems_faq.pdf

Push Their Stuff Away With Your Stuff -When You Can.

One of the key psychological barriers to stress-free living is the internal conflict that arises between what others require us to do and what we want to do. Most of the time and for most people, we choose our professions and we love to do what our professions require of us. Unfortunately, what we perceived our professions would require of us are rose-tinted. That is because while the operational element of our professional expectations usually meet our expectations, the administrative, legal and procedural realities don’t.

For example, as a copper I was fully prepared to catch the bad guys and send them forthwith to ‘Er Majesty’s ‘Otel. I probably realised that there would be some paperwork involved – I’d seen the files on Jack Regan’s desk in The Sweeney. But between 1986 when one piece of paper was occasionally all that was required for a pre-CPS guilty plea to a public order offence, to 2019 when I had to write War and Peace every time I spoke to a member of the public, the non-operational burdens soured my early professional expectations. And fun.

There are numerous reasons why all this happened, but one thing remains certain – a lot of the bars to enjoyment of our work result from new expectations laid upon us that are outside of our control.

And this was something I realised this week when I was feeling miserable. I was writing some journal notes, and found myself asking wondering why I wasn’t getting some of the results I wanted. I found that my thinking processes were jumbled, frantic, messy and disorganised. And that’s when it hit me.

I’m so busy thinking about other people’s stuff that they aren’t being displaced enough by MY stuff.

My focus on problems outside of my control was preventing me giving due consideration to the things I CAN do something about – but the changing of focus from THEM to ME is constantly thwarted by the attention seeking demands placed upon me by others. Even when I am finally giving myself the attention I deserve (and tell me this doesn’t happen to you) someone or something interrupts that train of thought and my brain moves its focus there, instead.

And what about when that interruption is ‘someone’? They come into the room and start explaining their discovery, demand, dilemma or whatever, without even a ‘have you got a minute?’. This is, I find, particularly routine withing familial relationships. Don’t you just feel obliged to grin and move your attention to them, just to be polite?

I guess the answers are to know what is important to you as an individual, and to be willing, when necessary, to state clearly that you’re busy and not willing to be interrupted, thank you. The exact words may be softer depending on the situation or relationship, but a verbal ‘Keep Out’ is the best way to retain a sense of mental control and focus on what you need to be doing now. Assuming that what you are focusing on is something that warrants that attention because it is truly important and (in the moment) requires your attention more than the relationship might.

And if the situation allows, a closed door is the softest way to say Keep Out. It’s funny, but if a door is closed, it rarely gets knocked or opened unless the interruption is truly important.

It’s a minefield, I know.

But if you want to give important things the mental attention they need, you have to prioritise them over other things that are less deserving. You have to put you first, whenever you can.

Getting other people’s stuff done first is nice, but if you never get your own needs met ….. Mental Health Awareness Week (month, year) is your only refuge.

For more on the subject, visit https://policetimemanagement.com .

Help! I need input from those ‘young in service’ officers and staff.

Are you a relatively young-in-service officer, or a fresh member of the civilian support staff? If so, I’d love some feedback.

As a veteran in more than one sense of the word, my own experience of managing my time and productivity is based on a history that started when we had a single breasted, belted and multi-pocketed suit, a stick to defend ourselves and a whistle to decorate our breast pocket. Yes, we had radios. I’m not quite that old. There were some advantages, though.

Owing to the reality that the fastest non-radio communication was a fax machine, we had time. No-one expected an immediate response to anything. They left you to it, and you did it. Statistics required laborious effort to collate figures, and so they were more ‘broadstroke’ than they became.

It ended with smartphones, instant communications and internet access, all the productivity hacks to make life easier – and a world that was busier than ever before. Every taks was measured and sub-divided and assessed through a number of prisms, so that you could tell who was detecting which kind of crime compared to anyone else in the team, the division, the force, cross-border and inter-force. How long it took and what they missed. No hiding place.

And more criticism, less understanding and more (arguably) unnecessary accountability than ever.

Yet still only the ’40-hour week’ in which to do all that was asked, and to maintain records so that other people could hit you over the head either with those figures, or when you hadn’t provided the data they could hit you with.

So my take on time management in the police service may seem a little out of date. But I don’t think so. I don’t think so because my methods are about an approach, not the tools.

For example, on a podcast yesterday I heard it said that people blame e-mail for interrupting, directing and overcomplicating their working lives. And the podcaster made the observation that this was like blaming the hammer because you have one too many cabinets to build this morning. It isn’t the tool – it is the mental approach to the work that makes the difference between happy and sad, productive and slothful, quality and quap. (J. Ross)

My book, Police Time Management, is as much about the mental approach to managing your time and life as it is about specific processes for using (for example) your smartphone to best effect and not just for tweeting. It’s about a method that starts with ‘why’, then ‘how’. Instead of ‘must I?’.

BUT I really want to know what the challenges facing new officers and staff actually are, just to be sure that the approach I propose is as effective as I would wish.

Towards the end of my career, someone in my office expressed wonder about how new officers coped with all the expanding pressures, practices and protocols being heaped upon them. I responded, “This is their normal. This has always been the way it is, for them. In ten years they’ll be asking the same question about their new colleagues.”

So I am asking that question of you, today.

How do you cope with your workload? How well trained are you in terms of Information Technology, for example? I know that MS Windows was introduced in the mid-1990s and I have still to receive police training in its use.

And – this is important – I want to know what methods you are being taught that helps you cope with your workload. If any.

Let me know at ipitrain@aol.com, or through LinkedIn.

Brief Backwards – Put your Team before the Organisation

That’s a title that most managers would consider an anathema to good policing, but it really isn’t a threat to good order and effectiveness. In fact, I would argue it will enhance effectiveness big time. I shall explain.

The traditional operational briefing process starts with what’s new and needs attention, followed by some justified sighing and pleading on the part of the team whose members have just had yesterday’s priorities stamped on by today’s new priorities. This displeasure can be exacerbated if the teams are subject to different leaders every day, as I know some CID teams can be – DS Smith does things that way, but today DS Brown is team leader and she does things another way. It is an unfortunate fact of life that despite all the management training people are (not) given, there is a tendency, an unconscious bias (ooh, buzzword) towards decisions that favour some over others. But that’s not why you came.

I have a suggestion. Instead of leading with the bad news, open with a desire to see what the workload already is. When the team assembles, whether face to face or over Teams (what was wrong with Zoom?), don’t start with what is happening and needs attention – ask the team what they are dealing with and what their needs are. This has two effects.

Perhaps the most important, the team feels that its needs have been taken into consideration whatever happens next. That has a massive psychological benefit. People who are heard, listen. They feel so much better having been heard that they will then actively help to resolve the oncoming storm.

Which is the second benefit. Once people have been able to air their needs they become responsive to the organisation’s needs. Of course, the organisation could have demanded attention – but by identifying and acknowledging the teams needs first, the organisation engenders the use of patience, understanding, initiative and positivity by the team – and they start solving the prioritisation problem that has been presented.

In effect – and you’ll be amazed if you try it – the work on today’s priorities gets done in better humour and more effectively, while the team works its priorities around the organisations and BOTH get the appropriate amount of attention.

Just by swapping the order of attention from us to you, to you then us. Same, even better results, and happier team members.

Or you can just take the short cut, make your demands and then wonder why you spend so much time chasing people up for their failure to do the things your re-prioritisation method prevented them from doing.

I read a lot of LinkedIn posts about putting people first. I notice that a lot of policing professionals are on LinkedIn. I assume that they look at it now and then and read all about how putting your staff first is the Branson Way (Covey did it first) and happy staff create better results. Then, in the interests of efficiency, they make urgent demands that are not necessarily urgent, and could be requests if they just used their language and patience.

I had bosses like that, men and women who were leaders as much as they were managers, who got the organisations’ priorities done while recognising and allowing for the fact that, the very day before, they’d produced demands that their team members were still needing time to work on.

Now, if I can just convince the CPS to think along these lines….

For more on this idea, buy Police Time Management for £12.99 at Amazon. 300 A4 pages for that price…… beats Blackstone’s.

An Irreverent and Relevant Look at Stress

Stress is one of those words, like time. You know what it means but, asked to define it, you flounder. This is partly because it is one word which identifies with many causes, some of which stress all, and some of which stress none. What is stressful to you may not be stressful to me, although reading the news one would be forgiven for thinking that because someone feels stress about something, we all should. And if we don’t feel the same stress, or at least sympathise with the sufferer, we are unfeeling.Heaven knows how mental health week goes on for months. Stress, or stories that relate stress, are now badges of honour. If you go to LinkedIn you will read about people’s challenges and how they overcame them. Not about their work, but how they overcame the same things you did, but for some reason their story will be better. I once had two colleagues who suffered from stress. They actually competed over who had been prescribed the higher dose of Diazepam. How stressed you are, has become a competition.

Don’t worry. I’m not dismissing the illness or consequences of genuine stress. I know it, I have seen it, and I have been there myself. But my response wasn’t chemical. I didn’t think it merited a LinkedIn post. And it wasn’t the motive for my next novel.

I recognise that many suffer from genuine stress – but others are empowered by it. And the triggers are often exactly the same. You see, stress the word is only half of stress, the reality.

The most famous writer on the subject of stress was Hans Selye (1907-1982), a Hungarian-Canadian endocrinologist. Nominated 17 times for a Nobel Prize, he never actually received one. 17 parties, never a raffle prize. Stressful.

To cut a long story short, Selye identified a three-phase response to what he called ‘stressors’. Stressors were the events that cause the response we call stress. That response was essentially the same whether the stressor was positive or negative. The events created alarm, then adaptation, then exhaustion or death. But Selye identified two kinds of responses, positive and negative. The negative we call distress, and the positive eustress. But people only speak of stress in the negative sense.

But in the important difference between distress and eustress was that while the positive stress went through the same three stages, the result was a euphoric, educational stress, rather than an exhaustive, depressive surrender. Eustress serves us while distress does not. After the alarm, the distressed adapted badly and suffered, while the eustressed adapted well, and thrived.

This explains why one person will be excited and strengthened by events which another would find debilitating. One person sees the event as ‘the end’ while another sees the same event as an opportunity. One passenger in my car is terrified, while another is excited and impressed. One social worker happily goes about their day helping people, another sues for stress because their paperwork pile is too high. One speaker dreads standing at the lectern, while another seeks out every opportunity to speak in public.

Years ago, some research was conducted into what occupations caused the greatest amount of measurable stress. The research was broad, taking into consideration as wide a range of occupations as possible. The conclusions were that the least stressed, and longest-living, workers were orchestra conductors. The most stressed were those in the hospitality industry, particularly waiters and waitresses. They identified that the more control a person had over their environment, the less stress they felt. A conductor raises the baton, and 50 odd people do exactly what the baton tells them to do. A waiter waits and does what is required, as quickly as possible, and then changes tack to do the same for another impatient, demanding and rude customer.

They concluded that stress resulted from being in a low control, high demand environment, while those with high control of a low demand environment thrived.

The best response to any stress, therefore, is to take control. Not abandon it on the grounds that you’re feeling harassed. I know my own brief breakdown many years ago was cured in three days flat by a decision to take control. And knowing that, every time control was taken from me, I didn’t react as well as my employers might have liked. They knew this, because my response informed them. I nearly killed a fax machine, once.

The only way to change an outcome borne of stress, is to change our response. The event giving rise to stress is a given and is unchangeable. So the only way to not be stressed is to decide our response, and implement the least stressful, most purposeful idea.

So, given that we humans have the ability to choose our response in any given situation, why not use that knowledge to change even the meaning of the event, and thus even the response? Why not use your intellect to change distress into eustress? See the aforementioned social worker paperwork as a necessary part of a cared-for clients’ solutions. Marvel at my excellent driving as you would on a rollercoaster ride. Stand up at the lectern and speak. And think about it – who, there, has the most control (and probably the least demand)? It’s the speaker, there, at the lectern. Stress FREE!!

By taking charge, you would be using your self-awareness, imagination and independent will to turn that distress into eustress.

Finally, consider the work of psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who suggested that the cure to distress is a life of meaning. He took the distress of the concentration camps into the eustress of scientific discovery, and into the world of logotherapy. People with a sense of meaning don’t stay depressed – they are too busy doing something important.

Ultimately, stress is necessary. Without stress we’d still be in caves. With it, we learned to communicate, to learn, to build, to innovate, to fight, and to seek peace. Stress is an opportunity to create. Don’t knock it.

I repeat – stress is alleviated by taking back control, and by finding a sense of meaning in the event that caused it. No pills can do that. But you can.

Speakers – Stress is only the enemy if you allow it to be. Make it your FRIEND.

And remember – policing has meaning.

For more on police time management, buy my book HERE at Amazon.

I Told You So. But You Do Have Time. Happy New Year.

Well, did it happen? Did you put things off ‘until the New Year’ that are going to bite you this coming week? Or, if you didn’t put things off, are other people now chasing you up to take action on things that they could have asked you to do weeks ago but procrastinated because “You know, it’s Christmas”? Either way, shame. ITYS.

If either of those circumstances have arisen then things that were Important but Not Urgent are now Urgent. Congratulations! Now, your own Important but NOT Urgent projects just got firmly sent to the proverbial back burner while you engage with other peoples’ urgencies because of their unconscious (or occasionally deliberate) adherence to the ‘nothing gets done between the 20^th of December and 4^th of January’ approach to work.

All is not lost. I recognise that this depends on your position in the organisation, and/or your ability to formulate the words and sentences needed to engage with the following suggestion, but here it is, anyway.

“Unfortunately, your self-created urgency does not trump the importance of the tasks I didn’t put off until ‘after Christmas’ (air quotes needed if you’re in a face-to-face) and I will deal with your urgency at the appropriate time.”

You can amend this.

The less sassy version is this: “When do you need that done by?” if your relationship is a good one, and assuming that the request is not being made by a bully, then a deadline will be identified that means that while ‘now’ was implied in the request, ‘when you can manage it but before X’ is the new default. NOW you can manage your work with the new responsibility catered for, and without creating other pressures.

In this job, urgencies area a given. If you’re front-line, emergencies area daily event. If you’re fron office, urgencies are all you get because you can’t plan for the next attendee and their individual problems until they’ve made it to the front of the queue.

That doesn’t mean you surrender. It doesn’t mean you can’t and shouldn’t plan. It means that you have to develop a strategy that means you can provide the appropriate response in the appropriate manner at the appropriate time. One way of doing that is to try, as far as is meaningfully possible, to deal with each event/thing as far as you reasonably can until its ‘next step’ is either out of your control, unreasonable given the next demand, or passed (correctly) into someone else’s care.

(That, dear Ops Room staff, does not mean ‘adding to someone’s list’ (see m’book) if they are busy. It means keeping it on your list until there is someone available. It’s just pixels on a screen; it’s not an incoming Asagai chucked by a closing Zulu.)

Time management is Task Management. Yes, some tasks are drop-everything emergencies. Unfortunately, our work creates an incorrect psychological imperative that makes everything a NOW task when nine times out of then it really isn’t. Just take your time to allocate the appropriate level of attention to things rather than simply thinking if you don’t do it now, all the other stuff coming will get you.

There. Is. Enough. Time.

As you may have noticed when you prepare for a leave period and manage to tidy all your work up before you go home. Funny, that.

M’Book. Available at AMAZON. (Click the link)

Christmas, all year long. Intrigued? Read on….

It’s a dichotomy, is what it is. This is you, during this period.

You have a deadline, the 25^th of December. You have a list of relationships, a list of resources/items to acquire in respect of each. Some will need getting before others due to the need to anticipate delays in delivery. They will be obtainable from different sources. So you list the items, plan their collection – day, distance, transport means, funding as necessary. Then you execute the plan and trust that your operation will be a success. In between, you will be attending various ‘meetings’ of varying social circles and communities. Your kids, family, friends, customers (if any) and colleagues will all get their presents, or your attendance, on time. All this needs organising, and you do a grand job.

Then you go to work, and you emit the plaintive cry, “There’s so much to do and I can’t get a grip on it all!”

Hypocrites.

When you want to do something or feel obliged to put yourself out because the season demands it, you create and execute on plan to ‘get it done’.

When it’s work, it’s ‘all too much’.

I would argue it’s exactly the same.

You implement exactly the methodology for buying Christmas presents and attending social events as you do for your work, if you think about it. But for some reason you don’t let interruptions put you off your pressie-collecting. And drinkies – nothing will get in your way (unless you want it to, wink-wink).

I can’t do much about your mental approach to a workload, but I can tell you that there is a natural inclination to planning that most people can utilise to good effect, and there is a ‘master’ version for planning which is (a) based on the natural model and is therefore (b) easy to learn and implement if you choose to learn it.

If you are flummoxed by ‘stuff’, then it is in part because you either don’t realise that there is a natural planning method, or because you know there is such a method and you simply cannot, in the moment, be bothered to utilise it.

Yes, I’m nagging. And people only nag because the naggee simply isn’t acting on the sage advice they’ve been offered. They like the status quo, even when they don’t like the status quo. Well, whatever you want….. 😊

Use your common sense to make a plan to deal with things, or use your intellect to discover and utilise the ‘higher level’ of organisation that life management training can provide.

And don’t just have a Happy and Organised Christmas – have a content and well-managed LIFE.

Happy Christmas and a Well-Planned, Effective New Year to all My Colleagues, Past and Present.