Before reaching out for that sixth cup of coffee to recharge your batteries and declaring that you are ‘crazy busy’, pause for a moment and ask yourself, are you really CRAZY busy?

An ER doctor, Darria Long, vehemently contends that associating a busy day to ‘craziness’ works against us. In a state of craziness how does one feel? We feel out of control, chaotic and disoriented. Our body will be flooded by stress hormones, anxiety will be activated, and our judgement will deteriorate. Is that how you want to respond to the tasks waiting for your attention?

Here is what I learnt from this eloquent Ted Talk by Darria Long: When faced with overwhelming number of things to attend to, act like an Emergency Room doctor. The ER doctors are always in “Ready Mode”. In other words, train your mind to recognize what to expect and be prepared. Then ‘Relentlessly Triage’.

Triaging means prioritizing activities by degree of urgency. Don’t react to everything as a threat. Know to differentiate between what is a threat and what is not. Categorize your tasks into red, yellow, green, and black. Attend to the red – urgent tasks promptly. Then the yellow – important tasks. Green is your typical routine tasks that can be attended to next. However, you should be able recognize the ‘black’, these are the ones that we can do nothing about. If something is not within your control, take it off your list and move on. These tasks can be either delegated to others or simply step down from the role where you are responsible for that activity and let someone else take over that task.

Digitization can help you respond to overwhelm like an ER doctor by designing a strategy that will make your work easier. Here is how:

1. Decision-making

Avoid decision fatigue by reducing the need to make numerous decisions. Eliminate unnecessary decisions by having a predictable routine and follow it consistently. Insufficient information can also make it difficult to make choices. Having all the information readily available will definitely help make the decision making process simpler. By using a sophisticated software such as IFS Cloud will enable you to have features such as the lobbies. This feature can present data and provide visibility across your business. Having all the information in one interface will reduce the time you need to retrieve vital information and help you make crucial decisions fast.

2. Plan

IFS Cloud provides financial forecasting and planning. You can also use technology to share your SMART goals with your business, so everyone is onboard. Thus, easy access to essential data through reporting tools also make planning easy.

3. Automate

ERP automation enables the integration of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and other smart features like the internet of things (IoT). IFS Cloud can automate business functions and processes across all your departments. Automation liberates employees from mundane tasks and reduces administrative burden. Furthermore, it allows for errors to be detected and attended to in real-time and reduces risk of human error. In short, automating will increase accuracy and productivity.

4. Collocate

Enterprise asset management (EAM) solutions provide visibility across all your assets. EAM presents you with information about asset location, availability and the ability to monitor the health of your assets which in turn drives predictive maintenance reducing the day-to-day impact on business operations.

5. Create a well-Designed platform

IFS Cloud can be designed to provide a specific solution relevant for your organization. Having a single platform improves the business flows, streamlines business operations and productivity and reduces operational costs.

6. Help your team

Last but not least, don’t forget “it is through people, technology is put to work”. Always proactively look out for ways to help others. Research shows when you prime your brain with compassion, we disrupt tunnel vision and catastrophizing. This will help us widen our perceptions and the brain can then take in broader information and see possibilities and opportunities. Researcher Adrian Sorin Mihalache points out that being compassionate can stimulate the parts of the brain that can enhance cognitive networks and attention.

As you can see ERP can reduce time and effort in daily activities. Let’s use technology to our advantage and become more capable of handling ‘the busy’ and as Darria Long says, “own the busy but stop calling it crazy”.

Reference

TedTalk by ER Doctor Darria Long on “Triaging your crazy-busy life”