LEAN Productivity: a Positive Approach to Get Things Done

We have all been there – especially in home office times: periods of low productivity, lacking motivation, or distraction.

What can you do to get back in the productivity zone – for good? Are there mechanisms that lead you to consistently high output and great results? Yes, there are.

In this post, I will share four principles with you that boost your productivity and allow you to get more (important) things done. 

The post will help you overcome your own inaction or task inertia. It will show you how you can eliminate your knowing-doing gap. This gap refers to situations when you know what you ought to do – but are not doing it. The LEAN principles described below solve this problem and help you start, continue, and finish what matters most to you.

The LEAN principles will help you start, continue, and finish what matters most to you.

Give us less than 10 minutes for this mini-anti-procrastination program, and you’ll have a clear idea of how to kickstart yourself into productivity mode – and stay there.

Tackling the Productivity Challenge at its Core

There are many videos, books, seminars, or posts out there on personal productivity, from Allen’s seminal ‘Getting Things Done’ methodology to whimsical work hacks. The productivity literature is rich and varied and contains well-intended advice, such as “set daily goals”, “write down all your tasks”, “break down large tasks into smaller ones”, or “begin the working day with your most important (or least liked) task”.

These (often quite elaborate) approaches do not always address the root causes of the productivity challenge pragmatically, namely your fluctuating motivation and self-discipline as well as your wandering mind. Many of them do not take into account that a productivity approach should work in the long run, and not just for sprints before a pending deadline.

Our realistic and concise approach to productivity addresses these issues head on. It consolidates existing productivity research and offers a strategic perspective on personal productivity.

It does so through just four simple principles that can be summarized in the (aptly named) LEAN acronym. This abbreviation stands for four things that you need to do – right now – to unleash your productivity potential:

L et go:       focus on what is really worth your time and eliminate most of the rest.

E nergize:    align tasks to your motives and work preferences and use motivation boosters.

A utomate:   program duties, to dos, and routines for easier and consistent execution.

N udge:        design an execution environment that gently pushes you in the right direction.

What is the rationale behind these four principles? Here’s what they mean in a nutshell. We’ll give you simple examples, tools, and a LEAN cheat sheet a bit further on in the post.

What We Mean by LEAN

LEAN productivity consists of four distinct actions that you need to take to move into the productivity zone. Here they are:

I. To be more productive, why not consciously stop doing things that do not bring you or other people value or that affect you negatively? Let go of them. As elimination candidates, think of mindlessly scrolling social media, checking the news, e-mail, or group chats too often, or spending too much time polishing that PowerPoint presentation.

II. Try to do things in a way that energizes you. Try to make pending tasks as enjoyable and fruitful as possible for you, for example by doing them at the right time of the day (and getting enough sleep). Energize yourself by starting with the most rewarding part of a task to get into it, by enlisting the help of others who give you good vibes, or by creating task rewards that energize you (as a Swiss, I must recommend chocolate here).

III. Think about a simple system to get mundane tasks done almost automatically. To focus on things that energize you and are worth your while, you need to routinize many others so that they require minimal effort from you. Automate those tasks and decisions as far as possible through clear criteria, algorithms, fixed time slots, or colleagues or assistants.

IV. You need to plant little reminders, notifiers, and ‘get-goers’ in your surrounding to get you back on track. Place work items strategically, so that they do not distract you, but help you focus on key tasks. In this way you can nudge yourself to be more productive.

Let’s have a look at each one of these LEAN principles in more detail (and in doing so pay tribute to a few legendary 80s pop songs in the section titles). You’ll find solutions that you can implement right away in every section.

I.                "You better stop"

Focus and simplicity, once you get there you can move mountains. Steve Jobs

In a recent study published in the journal ‘Nature’, Adams et al. (2021) find that our natural tendency for solving problems or innovating is to add elements, instead of subtracting them. We need to fight this bias and continuously look for tasks that we should stop or dramatically reduce.

To become more productive, you need to declutter your work, let go of bad habits, and focus on what’s key. Think 80/20 (the famous Pareto principle): How can you achieve 80 percent of what you want with just 20 percent of all your activities? To get there, ask yourself these four questions regularly:

1. What has stopped to provide value and should be discontinued?
2. What’s hurting my performance, slows me down or distracts me unnecessarily that I can get rid of?
3. What are goals, tasks, projects and the like that are unrealistic, have no perspective or otherwise a low probability of a successful outcome? Could it be time to stop them and focus on more fruitful endeavors instead?
4. What has grown out of proportion? Where am I overspending time on a task that – in the larger scheme of things – doesn’t really matter that much? Can I minimize it or simplify it? Or differently put: Where should I not be such a perfectionist?

Answering these four questions will give you more clarity on what you need to let go. Here is a list of likely “letting go” candidates (from organizational to very personal ones):

• Strategic initiatives that are no longer aligned to the new emerging market situation
• Projects that serve no real need
• Pointless meetings
• Reports that no one actually reads
• Social media consumption, such as Instagram reels, Facebook notifications, (too many) LinkedIn Posts (except this one of course ;-)
• Bad (home office) habits, such as vacuuming your flat or cleaning your fridge instead of revising that report.
• People who leave you drained of energy.

This last point brings us to our next key mechanism: energizing your tasks.

II.              "High Energy"

Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you. Oprah Winfrey

Energy is the magic enabler for getting things done. When you feel on fire, ignited, or enthusiastic, you can achieve so much in so little time. A manager I know calls those flow moments her “Kalashnikov days” where she rapid fires results of high quality. How can we make every day a Kalashnikov day?

There are three keys to energizing your work and boost your productivity that way:

1)    Align your activities to your personal energy curve (do things at the right time, energy wise).

2)    Front-load your difficult tasks and to-dos with their most motivating aspects (start with energizers).

3)    Use three kinds of energy boosters (food/drinks, activities, other people) to keep going.

For number 1) it is crucial that you know yourself and when during the day you can tackle difficult tasks best and when to work on administrative or mundane tasks. Plan your tasks according to your high time and low time. For example: If you are a morning person get up early and get the most crucial tasks out of the way when you feel at your best. If you are an evening person, then make sure you have time at night to work on your top priorities (here's a test to identify your so-called chronotype: https://thepowerofwhenquiz.com/).

For number 2) it’s best if you begin your most challenging task (and you should begin with that task) tackling elements that you like, that give you energy and motivation, and then ease into the more difficult bits when you’re already fully immersed in the task.

Third (3) make conscious use of energy boosters: There are at least three different kinds of energy boosters: The ones that you can consume include coffee, tea, energy bars and drinks or dark chocolate. Use these strategically: Don’t overuse them and time them well, for example by drinking a cup of coffee 15 minutes before a very demanding task (but not more than four a day). Then there are activity-based energy boosters, such as taking a 5 minute walk outside, breathing consciously, doing a yoga exercise or stretching. Short conversations with colleagues and friends can also boost your energy, especially during home office periods. They can reignite your passion, remotivate you, or help you focus.

In the same vein, make sure you also energize others to achieve better results, by acknowledging great work, giving encouragement and constructive feedback and by offering support and enthusiasm.

So here’s your inspiration list of work-related energizers:

• Coffee or tea
• (Swiss) Chocolate
• Short exercises and an upright posture
• Celebrating small wins and small rewards
• Short topic-focused dialogues
• Alpha time (when you feel most alert)
• Cultivating curiosity
• A diagram or sketch to crystallize a problem
• A key question, slogan or quote (“One Day or Day One?")
• A poem (here’s a great one for energy and grit: https://faculty.wiu.edu/M-Cole/Paige+Poems.pdf)
• A compliment (well done for reading this far, by the way)

III.             "Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto"

The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. Stephen Covey

Have you ever heard of decision fatigue? The more decisions you need to take in a day, the more you are drained and the harder those decisions will eventually become. This affects your productivity negatively, so pre-decide or automate decisions wherever possible. You can decide more easily with pre-established, clear decision criteria.

This is one of the mechanisms that we call “Automating”. The other are pre-scheduling and standardizing your tasks and using information technology to boost your productivity.

To automate decisions, set clear criteria for tasks or duties that you will accept as mandates and those where you should (if you can) decline. Examples of such criteria are: will it help me build future-relevant knowledge? Does it align with my core competencies? Is it furthering a cause or objective that I really believe in?

To pre-schedule and standardize, block time slots in your agenda to work on key tasks. Develop certain optimal routines that work for you to do certain things during those time slots, for example how you prepare a presentation, write a report, or follow-up a meeting. Find one best way to get things done and stick to it. A personal example: To be more effective in writing e-mails, I follow the SPIN approach: Situation, Problem, Implications, Next steps. This way, I don't have to think about how to structure my message every time I write an e-mail.

To use IT for your productivity, try one of the following ideas: Set rigid e-mail spam filters. Define auto-replies or standard responses for recurring inquiries. Set automatic just-in-time reminders for preparatory tasks (Outlook or Gmail let you do that). You could also use auto summarizer software (like resoomer.com or autosummarizer.com) or word cloud generators (like wordle.net) to get an overview of long documents swiftly, instead of wasting time reading irrelevant information.

Here’s a list of automation candidates:

• Standard reply e-mails to frequent inquiries.
• Automatic bill payments through e-banking
• Schedule fixed slots in your calendar to make consistent progress in your top priorities.
• Standardize routine tasks wherever possible (find a best way to do them and replicate that procedure every time).
• Pre-decide on key decisions with clear criteria (i.e., on which mandates to accept and which to decline if possible).
• Invest time to accurately delegate non-essential tasks once and for all.
• Recurring tasks on your phone or computer that can be automized with https://ifttt.com/ (if this then that).
• Setup reminder e-mails to prepare tasks just-in-time.

The last automation tip is also an (IT-based) example of our final productivity mechanism: nudging. Here’s how to use this award-winning, pushy approach for your productivity.

IV.            "Push it!"

Small changes can produce big results – but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious. Peter Senge

Small changes in your environment can lead to a major difference in your productivity. That is the premise behind the last mechanism in our LEAN approach. A nudge is a small push that steers you in the right behavioral direction, much like a small domino stone that can push the next (bigger) one and so on. Nudges give you a push to start, continue or finish an important task, and they protect you from detrimental distraction. The key for seamless productivity is to design your work environment so that you have many helpful nudges in place that let you work in a more sustained and focused manner and block out distractors and deviations.

The key for seamless productivity is an environment that fosters sustained attention and blocks out distractions.

This could mean that you change the start screen of your mobile phone by putting learning and productivity apps first, and social media apps on the very last screen. It could mean de-activating your e-mail notification or even your wifi for certain periods of the day (say, your high energy times). In a work context, it could mean putting on bulky headphones to signal to your colleagues that you want to work without interruption.

Here’s a list of possible nudges that you could use to boost your productivity:

• Changing the default times of your meetings (from an hour to 40 minutes)
• Setting a 40 minutes timer for single tasking and taking real, regular breaks.
• Putting a full glass of water on top of your mobile phone so that you only check it when you have emptied the glass (= stay hydrated).
• Placing your key tasks or documents directly on your desktop (as a constant reminder).
• Putting a sticky note of the Eisenhower matrix on your computer screen (to remind you to focus on the essential and not just the urgent).

Conclusion: "Nothing’s gonna stop us now"

In spite of all the organizational constraints, demands of others, and an intruding environment, we are often our own worst enemy when it comes to productivity. So, let’s not stop ourselves or self-sabotage our way to productivity. Start with four simple things and build on these:

1. Let go of one recurring task that wastes your time but no longer adds value, such as checking your e-mail every hour or working on a time-consuming pet project that will never come to fruition.
2. Integrate one energy tactic into your daily routine (i.e., a short dialogue with a constructive colleague, 5 minute walk breaks, or protecting your high energy time slots more strictly).
3. Schedule one fixed time slot for your key project and stick to it and adopt one standard routine for a recurring task.
4. Design one nudge to overcome one of your productivity weaknesses, for example setting a timer to stick with one single task and then taking a short break.

Good luck on your journey to lean productivity. Please let us know which idea you like most from this post or your favorite productivity enabler in the comment section.

More on nudging for productivity, on letting go, and on decision fatigue:

Eppler, M.J., Kernbach, S. (2020) Meet up! Better Meetings through Nudging. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/ch/academic/subjects/psychology/social-psychology/meet-better-meetings-through-nudging?format=PB

Adam, G.S., Converse, B.A., Hales, A.H., Klotz, L.E. (2021) People systematically overlook subtractive changes, in: Nature, 592, 258-261. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03380-y

On a recent study regarding decision fatigue (in finance): https://www.economist.com/business/2021/05/29/the-dangers-of-decision-fatigue

P.S.: For the 80s aficionados among you, here are the songs on which the section titles are based:

You better stop:                            Sam Brown, 1988

High Energy:                                Evelyn Thomas, 1983

Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto:          Styx, 1983

Push it:                                          Salt’n Pepper, 1987

Nothing’s gonna stop us now        Starship, 1987