Ask Nancy: How to Work Smarter Not Longer

It finally happened. I wrote the same blog post twice.


Occasionally I will post about "working smarter not longer" and sometimes I get questions about what that means. Then I do things like write an entire blog post answering that question before I remember that I already wrote this one in 2014, the inadvertent rehashing of which was not an optimal use of my time. (Bonus time management tip, make sure you haven't already done something before you go to do it.) I'm posting this new version because a) it's already written and b) it contains some new insights gained over the last four years. Enjoy!


1) Plan ahead. Everyone knows that campaigns require planning but not everyone is clear on what planning means. A plan is not “the event is on September 6th and there will be a canvass afterward.” Planning involves specific goals, “we want to turn out 100 people” and specific steps to get to those goals “to get 100 people there we need about 150 RSVPs. So for the next two weeks every night we need to make about 500 phone calls. I will need two interns to do this with me. These are the lists I will call. Here is where I will track the RSVPs. Here is the script for confirmation calls which will begin the Friday before…” You get the picture. Think through every aspect of your project and envision what it will look like. Cut it down into small pieces and start as early as possible. Most late nights in an office are spent there because someone didn’t plan ahead and winds up scrambling to complete a greater amount of work than they’d accounted for. The sooner you start working on a project the more time you have to contemplate little details that might have escaped you if you leave things to the last minute...and then you have stay up all night taking care of them. So plan your work and then work your plan.

2) Take care of your body. Exercising, eating right, drinking water and getting sleep are essentially for your overall productivity. But I’m also talking about in the moment. If you are completely exhausted at 10pm and you’ve been staring at a blank screen because you need to complete a walk script or a press release, go the heck to bed and wake up early to take care of it. If it’s 3pm and you haven’t eaten all day because you’ve been planning a rally with a big surrogate, take half an hour to get a sandwich and come back. I’m not saying to drop everything to take a nap every time you yawn or get a sandwich every time you have a craving but the truth is you don’t do your best work running on empty. It’s better to take a little time to take of yourself rather than taking an hour to complete a task that should take 15 minutes because you’re working depleted.

3) Delegate. We tell organizers to organize their way out of the job but as managers we sometimes neglect to heed our own advice. I’m not suggesting you foist the less desirable aspects of your job on your underlings but I do believe you should empower them to take on more responsibility. Often times the 13 things you “have” to get done don’t have to get done by you. However, if you don’t train and empower your staff early then you wind up being the only one on the campaign who knows how to cut turf, pull a list, or work the email program come crunch time. Or you as the Campaign Manager wind up being the one who activists and volunteers call with questions election day because you never bothered to hand off those relationships. Just like you have to spend money to make money, you have to spend time to save time. Not to mention of course that you are helping your staff become more invested and teaching them skills they will go on to use on future campaigns. Train and empower your staff, or risk some very late nights.

4) Keep a to do list. I keep two kinds of to-do lists on my desk. One is a whiteboard with ongoing projects, emails, ideas and things that need to get followed up on. The other is a daily paper list with three professional and three personal things I need to accomplish before the end of the day. Personal might say something like “Pick up dry-cleaning, pay car loan, call Grandma to thank her for birthday gift.” Professional might be, “Write press release, secure locations for photo shoot, send e-blast.” (I now also keep an ongoing to-do list on a Google doc for each person who works under me so I know what needs checking in on.) When something comes up that's not a priority for the day, rather than get sidetracked, I add it to the whiteboard and carry on with the project at hand. My day doesn’t end until I’ve accomplished all three professional (and usually personal) items on my list and I don’t start in on other projects until I’ve accomplished those three. Sometimes they take all day, sometimes I knock them all out before lunchtime but the lists help me feel productive and ensure that nothing slips through the cracks.

5) Prioritize. Do what is important, not what is most fun. It’s a very human impulse to spend more energy on what we feel like doing than on that which is not enjoyable but needs to get done. Let’s say your boss has asked you to call through county chairs and introduce yourself and you are anxious about this because you’ve heard a couple of the people you are calling are not fans of the campaign. You also have to decorate your office and spend some zen-like time cutting turf on VAN. If you put off calling the county chairs while you complete the other tasks on your plate you’re going to be grumpy all day because you will be dreading the unpleasant task. You are saving the activity that takes the most emotional energy for the point in the day when you will have the least. (By the way Campaign Managers totally know when and why you are procrastinating on the thing you don’t want to do, and we don’t love it.) On the other hand, if you start with making your phone calls and knock that task out before noon, you’ll spend the rest of your day feeling accomplished and get to do what you love about your job emotionally unfettered. If you eat dessert first, you’ll never finish your dinner.

6) Focus. I heard this amazing quote from motivational author Jen Sincero, “Urgency is the opposite of hurrying.” Urgency means you are honed in at the task at hand and you are calm and laser-focused on getting done what needs to get done because you have planned ahead (see #1). Hurrying means you are stressed out and running around like a chicken with your head cut off because you didn’t account for this situation. Work expands to fit the time in which you have to do it. So if you have a task you know will require a lot of time or energy, close the other tabs on your computer and set aside a chunk of time to do that task and that task only. Yes, phones ring and things come up but 90% of interruptions are items you can make a note of and respond to in a couple of hours. If something truly requires your immediate attention, take care of it, and then get right back to the task at hand. Nothing drives me crazy like someone complaining that they’ll be in office until midnight after having spent all day dicking around on Facebook. Do what needs to get done, calmly, completely and well.

Ask An Election Nerd: Organization for Time Management

I’ve been an FO/RFD working on three very different campaigns three years in a row to unseat three straight Republicans. The campaign I’m on now is the most thorough I’ve worked on and the most important I’ve worked on, and CampaignSick makes sense of every single thing I am doing on this race and why.

Here’s a question I hope everyone can help me out with: when going about day to day tasks, how do you manage your time in the most efficient way? What time management skills do you incorporate?
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When we talk about time management, we're really talking about self management. For me that means managing my stress so that I can put all of myself into the task at hand. With that in mind, these are some organizational tips that have worked for me.

1) Turn off your cell phone.You can get to a point where everything feels like a emergency, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Once in a while, when it comes to a key strategy meeting, or sitting down to finally write a budget, commit to turning off phones, maybe even going off site, and being fully present. When you take a step back, way fewer things need an immediate response than seem to in the moment.

2) Prioritize being on time and keeping appointments. When you do things like constantly reschedule one on ones with your staff, or push back less than urgent meetings with your candidate, it creates a culture of chaos and makes people feel like like you don't value their time. Nothing unimportant should be on your calendar in the first place, and if you put it off now it will still be looming later. Things come up, and sometimes a shift is unavoidable, but the best way to make sure that your tasks are getting done is to meet them head on rather than consistently delay them for other priorities.

3) Keep a white board to do list. Paper to do lists get messy quickly and eventually you have to flip back 15 pages to make sure you got everything. A white board can sit on your desk as a visual reminder of what's on your plate both short and long term. At the beginning of the day (or better yet, the day before) look at what tasks absolutely must get done before you leave. When a new task arises in the middle of an old one, write it down and keep working. This can keep a task from distracting you while finish what you were doing without letting things fall off your plate. When you finish one task, scan your list for the next priority.

4) Create a daily checklist. Different from a fluctuating to do list, these are the things you need to do daily when you first come in or before you walk out the door. For a Campaign Manager on a small campaign this might include: Do you have the candidate's schedule set for the next day? Do you know who is staffing her? Is her car stocked with supplies? Have you gotten numbers from your field director? I also have a similar checklist for events so that in the rush to prepare for a big surrogate, little details don't get ignored.

5) Use a Google Calendar. (Or Outlook). Unlike a physical calendar it can't get lost, you can invite others to meetings, and you almost always have access to it.

6) Delegate. Tasks fall into three categories: those that must be done by you, those that you need to approve but that could be executed by someone else, and those that could be completed by someone else entirely. The things that fall into the first category should be your first priority.

You should consider empowering people you manage to do activities that fall into the second category. It may be difficult to part with these tasks, but remember that in delegating you're training the managers of tomorrow. You're also making smart use of your time by not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Sometimes its more important to get a press release out there than to have it worded exactly as you would have worded it.

There is no reason you should be doing things that fall into the third category. If an organizer spends two hours every day doing data entry, it makes sense to spend an hour a week recruiting data entry volunteers instead. Campaign volunteers are invaluable in this capacity because they multiply your person power exponentially so take advantage of that and organize your way out of the job!

7) Do the most difficult tasks first. This is really about personal management, so if you're the type like me to let a stressful project loom over your day, why not get it out of the way?

8) Acknowledge requests as they come through. Make people feel valued by letting them know that you hear what they need and will get back to them by ____ day. Then set yourself a calendar appointment or put it on your white board.

9) Have a go-to activity for your downtime. Okay, "downtime" might be a little bit of a misnomer. I'm talking about those 10 minute segments between meetings when there's not enough time to start a new project but you don't want to just sit on your hands. I'm also talking about an activity for when you're so overwhelmed with to dos that you don't know where to start. For an organizer or finance assistant this might be just picking up the phone and making some calls. The activity should be something that's always needed and is a great (and kind of mindless) way to instantly feel productive. For a more senior position this might be working on part of your GOTV training, crafting a fundraising email, or checking in on key stakeholders who fall off the radar but occasionally need a little love.

10) Work smarter, not longer. Nothing sucks your motivation like sitting behind a computer staring ahead because you are "supposed" to be in the office. The same task that you're doing at midnight could likely be accomplished more efficiently at 10 am. Get some sleep! Get some exercise! Self-care is not selfish care. It is crucial to time management because it allows you to be fully present and your best self when you are working.

I hope that helps!

Campaign Love and Mine,

Nancy