Entrepreneur Who Wants More Out of Life? Inconvenience Yourself

If you spend a lot of time looking at ads, articles, and other media published here in the US, you’d come away with the belief that faster is better and more is better. 

Especially when it comes to work: the faster you work, the more successful you’ll be. The more hours you work, the more rewarded you’ll be.

However! Contrary to popular belief, you don’t become more effective at work by grinding away for 10 or more hours each day, going without exercise or physical activity, or by cramming in fast or fast casual food while you’re sitting at your desk.

But it also goes for other aspects of life. Eat fast food, in the car or at your desk, so you don’t have to spend all that time in your day preparing or eating. Park as close to the gym as you can because ??? (I’ve never understood that one.) 

Worse: Keep your phone close at hand and check it regularly, even when you’re having a night out with friends or your partner. Buy a device that spies on you so it will automatically dim the lights when you tell it to.

At the same time, more and more Americans are obese. Millions die of preventable diseases like type 2 diabetes. There’s a loneliness epidemic, which is probably also one of the causes of the opioid epidemic that we’re still experiencing.

Burnout, especially at high levels, is so common that businesses offer burnout prevention programs.

Now, there are some other structural issues that cause problems in our society. (Not having decent universal healthcare is one.) But I think you can see that a lot of the conveniences in modern American life that we take for granted are actually harming us in general, as well as hampering effectiveness at work.

February 28th is Inconvenience Yourself Day, and it might be a good time for you to try out some slow productivity and see how that works for you.

Good nutrition is key to being more productive

I think all my readers know what nutritious food is. No one thinks an all-fast food diet is good for you! Fast food is fine occasionally, but not as a mainstay of the diet. 

A couple of nights ago I volunteered at the Long Beach Symphony (that’s me in the photo) for the night doing some ticket auditing. I had a snack around 5, but call time was at 6 and I’m a half-hour walk away. The show wasn’t until 8 and it didn’t get out until after 10.

Not gonna lie, I hit Mickey D’s as it was open and I was starving! (Should have brought something with me, but it didn’t occur to me beforehand.)

The fast casual chains aren’t much better. They have a higher price point and sometimes you can see what they’re doing in the kitchen, but it’s still mass-produced food pretty devoid of nutrients.

Everyone knows this, but we don’t tend to take time out of the day to prep real food. (I cheat a bit with things like precut celery and carrot sticks at the supermarket to cut down on prep time.) 

If you spend a lot of time scrolling through your phone and checking emails, then an easy way to free up time for cooking is to put the phone down. There are a lot of meal planning ideas to help give you time for slow food without devoting all evening to it.

If you have kids, preparing food with them can be quality time spent together. And if they’re old enough, they can cook.

Making actual food is not as convenient as picking up something on the way home (which will happen once in a while). But you control the ingredients and can give everyone in your family the nutrition they need.

Physical movement keeps you healthy (and boosts productivity in the workplace)

There are a lot of things that make life physically more convenient, from washing machines and dishwashers to cars, texting or calling in the office instead of walking down the hall to chat with your colleagues, and so on.

Now I am not going to suggest that anyone give up their laundry machines! I certainly use my washing machine and I’m not going to give that up. Newer dishwashers are also a lot more efficient than handwashing dishes.

Nor am I out here saying you should walk to the store that’s 10 miles away, or try to bike over to your mom’s house when she lives an hour’s drive away.

But your body needs you to move it regularly. Exercise is not just for losing weight or keeping weight off. It’s necessary to keep all your organs, including your heart and brain, in good shape. 

Want to accomplish things at work? Your brain needs oxygenated blood flow, which is best when you’re moving.

People often think that going to the gym for a half hour several days a week combats sitting for eight or more hours a day. It doesn’t, but even a brief workout is better than no activity at all. There are easy ways to get more movement in, like parking farther away (during daylight hours), taking the stairs in office buildings, and so on.

Personally, I walk to anything that’s less than two and a half miles away. Dance class, the grocery store with my backpack, the yoga studio, a number of my local favorite restaurants. (Not to mention that parking in downtown is a big pain as well!)

If you work in an office, it’s a lot more convenient to pick up the phone and call your colleague. But you’re better off from a health standpoint getting up from your desk and going to talk to them, as long as they’re not in “do not disturb” mode. Your brain periodically needs breaks from tasks that are hard on it, plus you get a social boost from seeing and talking to your colleagues.

All this activity will take you more time. I drove to dance class the other day because it was raining and I took two classes in a row. The walk takes forty-five to fifty minutes, depending how fast I’m hustling, and I drove it in about ten. 

In other places, the parking situation is so miserable that there’s not a lot of difference between driving and walking! If you like to cycle, then you could bike places faster and extend your range as to how far you go without driving.

But yes, generally doing things physically takes longer than letting a machine do the work. You might think that makes you less productive… but it doesn’t.

Your brain is not a machine, so forcing it to work more hours does not mean you get more output. 

In fact, too many work hours means less output and worse quality. Taking the time to move yourself physically also gives you more opportunity to be more present, and to be more creative.

Go talk to people (and get more productive)

Humans need connections with others - how much and how often you need this connection varies from person to person and whether you’re energized by alone time (introvert) or by hanging out in crowds with others (extrovert). Either way, connection is necessary for health.

Scrolling through a feed doesn’t say “connection” to your brain. Typing a supportive comment beneath a friend’s post does not read as a connection. Texting someone on their phone is not connecting as far as your brain is concerned. Your brain thinks you’re typing, not being social.

Remember, so-called “social” media doesn’t make money from you connecting with friends. It makes money by shoving ads in front of your eyeballs for as long as you’re on the platform. Don’t be fooled by the name.

What counts as social connection to your brain (and therefore you) is seeing them in person, or hearing them on the phone. Probably through a Zoom call, though I don’t think I’ve seen any data one way or the other.

I read a post by someone I’m connected to on LinkedIn that was pooh-poohing the idea of not checking emails first thing. And to be sure, if your best time for cognitive work is later in the day, checking emails before you get to that type of work really does make sense. 

But this person said that they check emails first thing because that’s the best way to check in with the team.

And I thought, really? Emails are the best way to find out what’s going on in your company? I’d argue the best way to find out what’s going in your business is to talk to your people. 

If your team is all in one place, then relying on emails doesn’t make any sense. Have a 10-minute standup meeting in the office instead.

Of course, not everyone is colocated with their team. But if everyone’s in the same time zone, or at least in the same country, then you could either have a Zoom meeting that's time-limited, or you could - wait for it - talk to your people over the phone. 

If you’re in completely different time zones, that’s when it gets trickier and emails might help. But for most teams, not everyone will be in a time zone that’s twelve or thirteen hours different from yours. You could still actually talk to the people that are closer to you.

Talking to your people (instead of scrolling emails) does a couple of things. One, it fosters the human connection that everyone wants. People leave jobs not because of their salary but how they’re treated. When you actually talk to your people, they get the message that you care about them and are less likely to leave.

This is where some of you are going to tell me that you have younger generations who don’t like the phone, etc. The more you talk to them, the more they will realize that talking is not a bad thing and doesn’t mean that you’re upset with them or going to fire them. It’s when you never talk to them and then call out of the blue that’s the problem.

Two, you really find out what’s going on. It’s hard to read tone in emails. I had my wrist slapped several times when I worked in corporate because someone mistook my tone. Talking to people and seeing their body language gives you more insight into what’s actually happening.

Time management doesn’t mean cramming as many tasks into the day as possible

I mean, for some people it does, and you can find lots of advice on the interwebz on how to try to do eleven things at once. Spoiler alert: it’s not going to end well. 

But for the rest of us, who want profitable companies and a life outside of work as well as the avoidance of burnout, time management is about making time for those non-work things. Accomplishing what needs to be done in the office so you can go home at a reasonable hour and enjoy your relationships and your hobbies.

If you want to optimize your time management, you have to build in how your brain works. Not switching from one type of task like reading emails to another, like creating designs in Canva, every fifteen minutes.

Instead, block off large chunks of time for cognitively demanding work like number-crunching, spreadsheets, strategizing, planning, and writing. 

Enough time in the middle of the day for a decent lunch, which you can share with colleagues or prospects or your friends or whoever. Digesting your food will make you feel better in the afternoon anyway. 

Give yourself ten or fifteen minutes after every bout of intense concentration so your brain can take a break. Emails and scrolling are not breaks - more like getting a drink of water, stretching, playing with kids or pets if you’re at home, etc. Convenient? Not really. But more helpful.

Recap (tl;dr)

Convenience is killing a lot of Americans. It also stresses your body and brain, which makes you less productive. Avoiding convenience for nutritious food, moving your body, and socializing will help you be more effective at work, help prevent burnout, and give you more time for relationships. Just because you can do things faster doesn’t automatically improve your time management.

How do you get the important stuff accomplished in your business so you can inconvenience yourself and still make plenty of money? I can help you. Schedule your free consultation here to see if we’re a good fit to work together.