Three surprisingly common productivity mistakes

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I like writing.? I find laying thoughts down on a screen or on paper a way of making sense of the swirl of ideas and thoughts in my head.

Over a couple of years of writing blogs on productivity, performance and mindset I noticed there are good times to write and not good times to write.

Each of us has our own biological rhythm.?? It used to be as simple as the larks and the owls.? I’ve always been a lark – early to rise and my best work is in the morning.?? Ask me something complex in the early evening and my head’s fading fast.

As a leader I’m guessing you have more to do than there’s time in the day.? Delegation will get you so far, but it’s by no means a free pass.

Many of us live in hope of inbox zero, of going home knowing everything that needs to be done has been done.?? I think those days are gone, even if they ever existed.

Typically, it’s estimated we humans are now attempting to process over 30GB of data in our heads every day.? We weren’t built for this.? It’s exponentially more than our parents ever had to deal with.

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You’ll be most productive when you gain control of distractions.

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The other day I looked at my teenage son’s inbox and there were five emails in there, four of which were junk, one vaguely important – he rarely opens his inbox, sometimes I’m a slave to mine.

Briefly I marvelled at how easy it was to take care of the one solitary email that deserved attention and then a clean inbox.? I’ve not seen that in years.

But from the moment I’m awake, all the digital devices are trying to get my attention.? Outlook, Teams messages, overnight missives on LinkedIn and other socials are all trying to capture my waking moments with a whirlwind of stuff that has no connection or relationship.? It’s like a guy arrives with a truck of manure and just dumps it and says – there’s gold in there somewhere.

Knowing my body clock my best and creative thinking will happen in the first couple of hours of the morning when my mind is fresh.?? But what about all those distractions?

Creativity comes best when your mind is organised.?? Going through your plan the night before and before you shut down your laptop for the evening will help you settle in your mind, the day ahead and how to prepare for it.??

Scheduling your high intensity creative work in the first couple of hours of the day is likely to radically improve the quality of that work.?? You then need to be disciplined and turn off everything that might distract you.? It really has to be everything.? Those apps have a nasty habit of reactivating their notifications.

You see if you’re in creative zone and you’re distracted even by just the toaster email notification, it can take you up to twenty-five minutes to regain the momentum you had.?? And that’s all lost unproductive time.

Try a daily digital detox of a morning – no social media, no emails or messaging for an hour each morning and use this time to focus on a goal, objective or mission that’s mentally taxing.

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You’ll get more done when you align what you do with your goals.

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For many of us that work in corporate life there is the annual ritual of goal setting.? Life is speeding up so maybe you now have this on a quarterly basis or maybe you’re trying to be agile in which case your goals are shifting daily.

But for most of us we are just not that great with goals.?? I meet lots of people who have goals written down, but they don’t know what those goals are unless they go into some complex HR system to find out.

Corporate goal setting generally sucks.? Better examples lie with entrepreneurs.? There’s no getting away from the financial obviousness of not having launched a product on time or achieved enough sales to cover the expenses.?

All goals can be broken down into smaller chunks – the project manager in me wants to call them deliverables.? And then below those deliverables are tasks.?? And there’s no great secret to this – if you don’t do the tasks, you are not likely to hit the goal.? But if you don’t even know the tasks then that goal will never be achieved.

But each day we waste time on stuff that’s not related to our goals.?? We subconsciously sacrifice our goals by instead focussing on the things that feel urgent.

It’s easy, especially if you’ve someone else ruling your diary to feel that because the diary is busy, there’s no time for anything else, your busyness is the same as being productive.? But this of course is nonsense.?? You’re just busy, that’s all.

Parts of your week must be spent ensuring the activities you undertake and those you direct are absolutely related towards your goals.??

Hey, you can even go mad on a Friday and tick back every meeting and what proportion of those were put in your diary to help you meet your goals or those of someone else.

But if you don’t know your goals, you’re not in tune with them, your daily actions are divorced and free floating from them, then best of luck achieving those goals.

Re-evaluate your goals into deliverables and tasks.? Ensure the start of each week as tasks relating to achievement of those deliverables.? Audit your end of week to see what proportion of your diary was spent in pursuit of those goals.?? Helping others is important but often you can help more people by putting your own oxygen mask on first.

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You’ll be less distracted when you learn to say no, not yet.

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Lots of us are people pleasers.? I am.? I was raised to feel good about serving others.? I learned to like feeling good when people thanked me for something I’d done.

But we can spend our whole day working on everyone else’s priorities and then when it’s time for them to all go home, we start working on our own.

It’s time to reclaim back the time that is yours.? Easier said than done you think?

Here are three thoughts:

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1.???? You’ve no chance of saying no if you’re not aware of what’s important to you which means you must know your goals, the deliverables that make up the goal and the tasks that need to be done.?? You can also then make sure you don’t overload your weeks so there is time for you and time for others

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2.???? People ask for things without much of an idea of what you have on and what’s key to you right now.?? Once you know what you have to achieve this week, it’s easier to explain to people why you can’t help right now and to identify time periods when you can, assuming you want to, free time to help

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3.???? Teach a man to fish may feel like it’s going to take more time but not only is it ultimately more time efficient, but people will generally think better of you and be willing to help you out too when you’re in a pinch.?? Resist the urge to just do stuff for people.?? Get used to saying – let’s find time so I can show you how you can do this without me.?? Let’s find time so I can show you how I go about finding that information so that next time you’re not having to wait for me.

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What’ll happen with these tactics?

You’ll still get to help people but not at a cost to the things that you have to achieve during the week.??

People overall will be respectful of your limited time and will often be happy to trade on time and urgency if they only knew you had other things on.??

Some people don’t want to be taught how to fish, they just want people to do the work for them.? And that person doing the work doesn’t have to be you, all the time.

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Maybe you’re brand new to leadership or maybe you’re growing your leadership, we all have more potential inside, ready to unleash.? And you can help others by sharing this article with them.?? You can find all previous articles here www.ianbrowne.com

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