Flexibility in Your Business Framework
Have you ever been to the top of the Empire State Building in New York? (Or any other skyscraper?) When you go out to the observation deck, especially on a windy day, you’ll feel the platform sway a little bit.
That’s a feature, not a bug. The building is built with a steel skeleton hundreds of feet in the air, but the top is designed to give a little bit in the wind… which ensures that it doesn’t shear right off the building, taking tourists with it.
Ever been in southern California when the Santa Ana winds are blasting down from the mountains? Those very tall palm trees stay upright without toppling, while shorter trees across the US come down in lighter winds.
That’s because the palm fronds allow the wind to ripple through. The branches are strong yet flexible.
Accomplishing more during the workday – working smarter instead of harder – gets a boost when you have a flexible framework guiding your priorities. The structure is there, but it can bend in the winds of change so it doesn’t break.
Why blanket productivity improvement advice doesn’t work…
Let’s take a piece of advice that I hate – the claim that you should get up early in the morning, like 4 or 5 am, to get your day started. I can get a ton of work done during the day, and I do not get up that early.
Waking up before dawn works iff (not a typo, that’s math-speak for “if and ONLY if”) you have an early bird/morning lark/lion sleep chronotype. Your best time for “thinky” work – number crunching, strategizing, planning, and other work that demands a lot from your prefrontal cortex – is earlier in the morning. Oh-dark-thirty rising makes sense for you.
But that’s not most of the population. In fact, about half the population is like me: bear or third bird sleep chronotype. Later in the morning is the best time for thinky work for us. Waking up early doesn’t make us more productive.
And that’s definitely true if you’re a wolf/night owl or dolphin sleep chronotype, where afternoon is best for those types of tasks. Waking early means losing sleep because you typically go to bed later, and less sleep makes you much less productive, not more.
Or, take an elaborate morning ritual. Some people swear by it. But if you’re an early bird, you might actually be better off diving right into that thinky work instead of doing other things. Saving your other rituals like yoga, meditation, and exercise for after your thinky work time.
In contrast, the rest of us often need a little time to get into the day before our brains are ready for complex work. Having a morning ritual that puts you into a positive frame of mind for the day, whatever that looks like for you, is great for those of us who don’t wake up early.
As another example, I’ve seen some “gurus” claim that you need noise-canceling headphones in order to do your work. But for those of us who are neurospicy, sometimes music can be the stim you need in order to focus. (If you’re not familiar with the words neurospicy and stim, they most likely don’t apply to you. So feel free to ignore! :-) )
… but some advice really does work for everyone
On the other hand, some things are true for everyone. Buildings have the same basic structure, though some details are different depending on their intended use, height, and location. All trees start from the same basic structure: roots, branches, trunks, etc.
There are many aspects in which human brains are all alike and work the same way. They are not computers, and they all work on both chemical and electrical signaling.
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is possibly the most “human” part of the brain, grafted onto the lizard and mammalian brains that we inherited from nonhuman ancestors. It’s newer, requires more energy, and most importantly for business owners, gets drained over the course of a day.
For a human brain to be at peak performance, no matter whose skull it’s sitting inside and no matter whether the brain is considered neurotypical or neurodivergent, the following are required:
Nightly sleep of 7-8 hours
Short breaks after intense bouts of PFC work (about 45-60 minutes)
Nutritious food
Regular physical activity (½ hour at the gym a few times a week doesn’t cut it)
Play
Social interaction (a bit more for extroverts, a bit less for introverts, but everyone needs some)
If you’re missing any of these factors, you’re not operating at your best, sustainable level. In order to grow your business sustainably, you need to work the way your brain wants to work. You get overwhelmed and burned out by obeying cultural norms that work against your brain, like being busy all the time and working long hours every day.
Creating a flexible structure for your workday gives you control over your time
What do you do daily in your business, or at least on a weekly basis? Why reinvent the wheel every day or every week when you could just have a framework or habit so you don’t have to think about it or make a decision about when to do it?
Decision-making, even tiny inconsequential decisions, drains your brain. Avoiding those as much as you possibly can gives you more firepower to work with.
Business owners need to spend time regularly working ON their business, not IN it. That means dedicating time to it (and not allowing other meetings to push it around your calendar.)
Success needs time to focus on whatever it is that only you can do for your business, which means no interruptions, no distractions, and no notifications. The easiest way is to block off Do Not Disturb time on your calendar - and stick to it. That’s a non-negotiable.
The structure might be clear, but how do you build flexibility into it?
Buildings in non-earthquake country might have flexible tops if they’re tall enough to deal with high winds. But buildings in earthquake country might be situated on a few concrete pads in the foundation that move a little bit to absorb the shock from an earthquake.
In other words, the need for flexibility exists, but how you deal with it depends on your business. I’m suggesting a couple, but you might have additional ideas that work for you too.
Make your calendar blocks big enough
If you’re trying to create a schedule based on 15-minute blocks of time, you’re going to be very unhappy because you won’t be able to complete as many tasks as you want. Some tasks might take longer, or a call runs long, and even in your focus block you’ll need to take breaks. Give yourself some margin for error. Other than half-hour calls, I won’t schedule blocks for less than an hour.
2. Give yourself time to noodle or be creative or whatever
Some of us (OK, it’s me) feel a little rebellious if we see an entire week planned out in strict blocks with every single hour given its appointed task. Instead, you can block off unstructured time and use that to finish something you didn’t get to, stare out the window (great for creativity), calling a friend, journaling, etc.
Recap (tl;dr):
While a solid structure is necessary for peak performance, you also need to build in some flexibility that allows for life and business not going according to plan.
If you want some more details on a streamlined framework for your business, schedule your free call here to see how we can work together.
Photo by Cedric Letsch on Unsplash