Get more done doing less

There is a widely accepted notion that more is better. It's pervasive in our culture and something that is most certainly accepted in the modern workplace. We have all seen the heroics of a 3am email flying to our inboxes, triggering smartphones, smart watches and the occasional voice assistant announcement with messages that likely weren't critical for anyone to see at that specific moment. It’s probably a reply all in most cases and is most certainly not as important as a solid night’s sleep, which should and will have its own article at some point. As an efficiency nerd I decided to turn my gaze onto the modern workday about three years ago after coming across an article called “Training Volume Landmarks for Muscle Growth” by Dr. Mike Israetel, Dr. James Hoffmann,and Jared Feather, MS. This article enhanced my perspective on training for outcomes that align for specific goals. Employing its practices allowed me to see results after working out for over a decade and noticing an exponential decrease in my efficacy. If you know me, you know I have the charts to prove it. As fitness to me is a form of physical efficiency, I found this article incredibly fascinating. I also felt that many of the concepts applicable in the way you train your body could be applied to the way you train your mind overall. I decided that it was time to experiment. I’ll share some of the concepts from my trial that began shortly after I read this article in 2017. I hope it assists you in focusing on your results versus perception. As I learned in my Rackspace days “Substance over Flash.”

Volume

Volume is only a single variable in the equation and it's the one thing that anybody can tweak relatively easily. I’ll repeat this, anybody can put in volume. We all appreciate someone with hustle. Surely at the beginning you need to put the time in. I went years without a vacation while being the one sending out those midnight email responses. I won’t pretend that didn’t happen. However, the volume alone is not necessarily the real trait that we are wanting is it? In an exercise analogy, simple repeated volume is like running a mile every day. At the beginning it's incredibly helpful. You might lose some fat and build some new muscle when you start, but eventually the body adapts and the efficacy of the workout itself will fail to produce any noticeable results. The efficacy can only be extended intelligently by adjusting speed, tempo, weight, and duration in the long run. Much like the concept of working all day and night, the volume itself is not what we're after.  In fact, it is shown that overtraining and not managing stress eventually impacts the efficacy of your workout. It reduces efficacy and makes you prone to injury while increasing your fat stores.... Weird right?  What we really want is to be able to come up with unique ideas, execute consistently on time with quality, communicate clearly, ask important questions, experiment well, and teach others along the way. You need to find out how to focus on these skills and practice those efficiently. Once you stop feeling growth in a direction, it’s time to try something new. What is that thing you ask? Let’s get into specifics. 

Specificity

I truly believe that everyone has a superpower waiting to be unleashed in their career. After you spend some time grinding, trying different things, and learning about your work style, I think it's crucial to take some time and introspect on what your superpower is. Are you a connector, helping people extend their network and get answers to important questions when needed? Are you a tech wizard, able to spin up lightweight apps on the fly to make all manual processes disappear? Is marketing your thing, knowing how to capture attention for a moment and make it really drive a key message home? It’s imperative to know what that power is and double down. Now you can be specific and pull yourself out of the volume treadmill and focus on specific training for you! Company offered training can be great, but I highly encourage you to build your own plan that’s specific. The company has to shoot for what works for most, but now we understand specificity and its importance. Go us. Sign up for courses, take on projects that align with your strengths, and speak up in meetings when that special topic comes up. A little bit of uncomfortable friction goes a long way. These are all practices to align your focus and be specific in your career path. Also, be sure to have fun with it as you will likely spend a lot of time doing this. Not to mention, if you’re having fun, you actually tax your nervous system less which brings me to my next point… MRV

Maximum Recoverable Volume

In “Understanding the Stress Response” by Harvard Health Publishing we learn that:

“chronic stress contributes to high blood pressure, promotes the formation of artery-clogging deposits, and causes brain changes that may contribute to anxiety, depression, and addiction. More preliminary research suggests that chronic stress may also contribute to obesity, both through direct mechanisms (causing people to eat more) or indirectly (decreasing sleep and exercise).”

This all sounds bad. Why is this important? Because consistently high volume will contribute to an increase in your stress response. In the fitness world we intentionally design De-Load weeks and at work, it's called taking a vacation or attaining “Work Life Balance” I reviewed my notifications one day at work, thanks to a new feature, and realized I had an average of 400 pings a day, through emails or chat. There is absolutely no way that I was going to be able to be helpful in 400 different interactions. I was necessarily in the red and I was never going to be out. I needed to filter and I have since. I know my own specificity. I’ll save my filtering techniques for another article for brevity and clarity sake. It’s important that you know your own Maximum Recoverable Volume when it comes to work. You can’t burn the candle at both ends 24/7 for decades without some way to clear the cortisol buildup. The activities you select and the amount of time all contribute uniquely to cortisol buildup and a triggering of your stress response. We also all have natural human differences in the volume we can handle for specific tasks that we engage in. Because we don’t want nature to necessarily decide our future, there are known things you can do to affect the buildup of cortisol and your response to stress. This stress response can be mitigated through diet, exercise, hydration levels, and work best practices. The ask I have is that you investigate your responses intentionally. Everyone has a different MRV for different items. Find out what activities you seem to have boundless reserves for are and employ practices to focus in on those. Cultivate your strengths. You might find that you CAN actually do that task for 18 hours a day AND be totally fine, but it's good to be aware of your capabilities. 

Wrapping up

There are many more great concepts to dive into when mapping work life balance, but I wanted to share some of the tips that have helped me considerably accelerate in my career and in my workouts at the same time. My results after 3 years? New products built from scratch, 7+ publications, a stratosphere award at work for a creative idea employed, 20 Lbs of muscle added, 100 lbs added to my deadlift (Yes Tiago I’m still shooting for 500), bags under my eyes reduced, more time spent being present with my significant other and my heart rate is finally back to normal. Those results are what compelled me to share because I was able to do more while stressing less. Overall, I am having a blast. Our friends at Harvard (see “Protect your brain from stress”) already know:

“There is evidence that chronic (persistent) stress may actually rewire your brain, says Dr. Ressler. Scientists have learned that animals that experience prolonged stress have less activity in the parts of their brain that handle higher-order tasks — for example, the prefrontal cortex — and more activity in the primitive parts of their brain that are focused on survival, such as the amygdala.”

While in customer support, I touted this ability to handle any situation as being a superpower. My customers have told me that they felt it. With no stress, I can focus on the problems instead of panicking and reacting with clouded judgement. It’s a scary leap, especially because it seems like an anti pattern in the modern world. I implore you to investigate and see what makes sense for you. This is what worked for me. If this article is particularly helpful, maybe I can expand it into a series on finding the balance in things, addressing my filtering techniques and handling specific scenarios. But for now I will be considerate of your reading time volume :)

Please share any thoughts, comments, or questions on the methods shared.