Feel Good and Be More Productive?

Play

Ali talked about how he was addicted to WoW (World of Warcraft). At first, you might think, what do video games have to do with work? If you think about the concept of play though, you will find that when you are in the state of play, you seem to immediately get into a flow state. It’s easy. It’s effortless. It’s fun even.

Contrast that with boring, repetitive tasks at work. They feel a slog to get through. You wonder when you are going to complete the task. Time slows to a halt.

How do you make things fun? Ali asks himself a question “What would this look like if it were fun?” and found that it unlocks his creativity and activates his playfulness.

Power

Power isn’t what you might think it is. Power is about empowering others to do more.

You might find yourself in a work situation where everything is depending on you. You feel good about it because you are the hero. You are needed. If you aren’t there, things fall apart. While it certainly feels good to be needed, maybe even invaluable, you are, unfortunately, also the constraint in the system. Work doesn’t flow unless you review it, make a decision, or do something.

Perhaps there was a time when leaders knew everything. They worked their way up the organisation, building expertise in every area before moving up and so became the de facto leader due to their knowledge and expertise. But these days, if you work with a team, there is so much complexity and knowledge that not one person can know it all.

When you empower people to do more things, you are pushing decisions down to the levels where people have the most information. As the CEO of an organisation, you wouldn’t make decisions about what kind of printers to buy.

Funny enough, when you empower others to do more, you can focus on the activities that are high value and that you want to do and that means you are more productive.

People

There’s a quote I love when I think about people and work.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Recently, I have been reading about XP and the idea of pair programming. The idea is to have two programmers working on a piece of code at the same computer: one person typing, while the other person is observing. It seems counter-intuitive, but pair programmers code faster than people programming by themselves.

Why?

• They keep each other on track (you can’t be opening up emails or browsing cat videos if someone is beside you watching)
• Two people are better able to solve problems (because what is programming if not problem solving) by discussing ideas and approaches
• If one person misses an error, the other person can catch it

We might not all be able to do pair programming in our work - but I can guarantee you when you find a lull in your project or you can’t seem to get through a problem, there is someone you can talk to that will give you energy, give you ideas or give you that necessary nudge to do something difficult (and sometimes all three).

Seek Clarity

Whenever I face a massive project, I get overwhelmed by all the things I have to do. One simple way to break through this feeling is to break down the project into smaller tasks. Focus on a small task you can do right now. This will do several things:

1. You will build momentum. Do a lot of small tasks over a long period of time and you will get a lot done.
2. You will learn. Specifically whether the step you are taking is the right one or not.
3. You will clarify. Sometimes you don't know what is involved until you start doing the work.

Find Courage

One of the exercises I like from Tim Ferriss is his fear setting exercise.

When you identify your fears, define strategies for how you would prevent or repair them, you will realize your fears aren't as bad as you thought.

For example, many people have a fear of starting a business. They might go bankrupt. Their friends might laugh at them. They might alienate friends and family. But when they examine that fear, there are a lot of things they can do to both prevent and repair the damage. They can make sure they have buying customers. They can go back to their old job. They can move to a new city and make new friends.

Get Started

I'm looking at my desk as I'm writing this and I see: empty coffee cups, chargers, portable hard drives, books, multiple notebooks, moisturizer, a spare laptop and more.

That's why at the start of the work week, I clear my desk, even if it's just to move the mess to another part of the room. I like the idea of having a clean desk to start my work day - it represents my state of mind: a clean slate to start and then I fill it with notes and knowledge that I need to unpack and organize later.

Conserve

Hell yeah or no. Not only a great book by Derek Sivers but also a wonderful decision razor. When someone asks you whether you want to do something, if it's not a hell yeah, it's a no. Having this mindset will mean you only add 'hell yeah' activities to your life and avoiding cluttering your time with activities you only feel mediocre about.

Another good way to focus on what's important and avoid commitment is to think about commitments as if it was going to happen tomorrow. It's easy to say yes to something several months later or a year down the road. You can't even imagine what is going to come up then and you feel you have plenty of time to do it later. And then what ends up happening is the day arrives and you regret having said yes in the first place.

If someone asks you whether you want to do something several months later, ask yourself if you would do it tomorrow.

Recharge

I like doing things. I get restless when I'm not doing something 'productive'. If I'm for example running on the treadmill, I want to be listening to a podcast or audiobook at the same time. Or if I'm doing chores, I want to have YouTube up so I can watch food documentaries.

But there are also times where I need to disconnect. I'm still practicing guilt-free downtime but I tell myself it is okay I don't have my phone with me, or that I'm not listening to something and learning all the time.

One activity I have seen more and more 'successful' people do: walking outside. Whether it's walking before the sun rises, walking during lunch, walking during meetings or walking after a long work day, walking does several great things:

1. It helps you to be active
2. It helps you disconnect (as long as you don't bring your phone with you)
3. Nature has a healing and calming effect on you
4. It forces you to slow down

Align

Here is a wonderful exercise I learned from Gartner:

• Survey people around you and ask them to say the first three adjectives that come to mind if they were to describe you. For example, it could be creative, hard working, passionate, problem solver, etc.
• Use a word cloud or similar tool to find out the three most common words people use to describe you.
• Reflect, by yourself, what adjectives you want people to use when they think of you. These may or may not be the same as what people have said.
• For the adjectives you want people to use, identify specific experiences, projects, jobs, etc. you can do to get people to use the adjectives you want. For example, if you want to be more innovative, maybe it's about taking an old process and completely redesigning it, or it's about taking a team with you to implement new software or technology.

The point of the exercise is to identify values you want to align with. These of course might be different for work and your personal life and you might have more than three things you want people to identify you with but what I like about the exercise is the fact that you are taking a proactive approach to changing people's perspective of you.

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