10 Ways to Find Time to Go Green at Work
No time to implement that going green project that you’ve been thinking of?
Great news! There really are relatively simple ways to find time in your workday to focus on that project.
A going green – or environmental sustainability – project doesn’t need to take up a lot of time, and when you have a lot of tasks on your to do list, that is a good thing. When you’re starting out, smaller projects can easily be implemented within a three to five hour per week time frame for a few weeks.
Getting a couple of smaller projects under your belt will help build momentum and enable you to make the business case for spending more time on bigger projects.
Here are ten ways to find a little time in your day to focus on a going green project.
Review your important vs. urgent tasks – You may or may not be familiar with the Eisenhower Principle. In a 1954 speech, President Eisenhower said: “"I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent." You may also recognize this as one of Steven Covey’s 7 habits of Highly Effective People.
Stop task switching - Did you know that on average, 28% of work time is lost to task switching? Focus on one project at a time – you’ll get about a quarter of your work life back. There are many studies that have found multitasking to be ineffective, including one from the American Psychological Association, which has found that when people try to complete two tasks at once, they do worse at both tasks – our brains are just not wired this way. This also applies to the time you spend on your going green project – when you focus on it, you will get it done more quickly.
Put a ‘do not disturb’ sign up – You can do this on your desk, outside your cube or on your door. Often times, we need to work yet feel obliged to respond to a hello from a colleague passing by. The hello then turns into a longer conversation and before you know it, ten minutes have gone by. Add that up, and you can easily lose half an hour a day just with interruptions. Not to mention that the interruption makes it harder to get focused on your task again, which means additional lost time. Your colleagues – and direct manager – will appreciate that you are intentional about setting aside time to do focused work, so don’t feel guilty about it. This will enable you to finish your tasks faster and free up some time for that going green project.
Set a timer for the work you need to do – Parkinson’s law is alive and well for the large majority of us. Work expands to fill up the time we have. If we have a specific task or project that needs to get done, set a timer for 52 minutes, or at most, 75 or 90 minutes, and focus on that one particular task only. Studies show that this is the optimal range that we are able to productively focus before needing to take a break. When taking a break, step away from screens – you can use the break to think about your going green project or chat with colleagues about it.
Cool the water cooler talk – It’s easy to spend ten to fifteen minutes just mindlessly chatting with your coworkers. While it’s definitely important to take a break between periods of focused work, studies show that most people spend only about four of their eight hours workday actually working. How much of the rest of the time are you spending chatting about the latest politics, Instagram pic, or random news item? Add it up – it will likely be a significant amount of your workweek that – you guessed it – you can dedicate to your going green project.
Shorten your meetings – If you are able to dictate the agenda of some of your meetings, think about shortening them. See how much you can get done in a half hour instead of an hour. Send the agenda out ahead of time, and have everyone come prepared to contribute. And start on time – especially if you are in an organization where being late is tolerated, change the culture – it’s a waste of your time and others’ to sit around when you could use that additional time to identify ways to reduce recycling, figure out innovative green products to add to your organization’s offerings, or get alternatives for those coffee stirrers or… [insert your ideal green project here. ]
Reduce social media time – Depending on which study you look at, individuals spend between thirty minutes and an hour at work on non-work related social media. There’s your three hours a week right there! Turn it off – it can wait until after work.
Turn off background noise – This includes the little pop-up notifications on your laptop or desktop as well as on your phone that lets you know you received an email or someone send you a message on LInkedIn or Facebook. Checking your email on an ongoing basis means significantly cutting down your productivity and focus (see ‘stop task switching’ above). On average, we check email 15 times a day and according a Forbes article, 144 out of the average 200 emails we receive a day are irrelevant to you. Check email only a couple of times a day – and add a message to your signature if you are concerned that people expect an immediate response.
Take a shorter lunch – If you have an hour lunch, taking half of that time and focusing on going green can quickly add up. You can also choose to have a working lunch three times a week and focus solely on your going green project. As I mentioned above, if you dedicate three to five hours per week to your project, you will find that you can complete a starter going green project in a relatively short amount of time – even in one to two months.
Come in early/stay later – If you have flexibility in your schedule, consider coming in fifteen to thirty minutes early or staying late. The benefit of coming in early – at least earlier than your colleagues – is that it is a quieter time when you can work uninterrupted. Use it to plan and execute your going green project, or to get that important task out of the way so you can concentrate on going green later on in the day.
By now, you should have identified at least two to three ways to find three to five hours a week to focus on your going green project. Time to get started!
If you’re wondering what project to focus on, be sure to download our free Beginner’s Guide to Going Green, which lists 50+ going green starter projects.