I Don’t Think You’re Ready For This (Productivity) Jelly

Many Americans want to get more accomplished at work so they have more free time to spend with their families and loved ones. Many would love to get back to the hobby that lit them up when they were younger.

The way to get more done at work is not complicated – which doesn’t make it easy.

It does mean that you have to do things differently from the way you were taught. It’s different from the way (American) society says you should work and consume. You might not be ready for that. You might not really want to be productive, or at least not enough to change. No judgment here, just facts.

For example, if you can’t do something really basic like turn off notifications while you’re doing your focused work, you’re not going to get more accomplished.

The definition of insanity (commonly attributed to Albert Einstein) is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. You can’t continue to do things exactly the way you’ve been doing them and magically be more productive. 

It doesn’t work that way. It’s like saying you want to lose weight but eating the exact same food in the exact same amounts, and then being surprised when you don’t lose weight. To lose weight, you have to change the way you eat. To be more productive, you have to change the way you work.

Assess your goals and priorities to be more productive

This is the “A” in the Laser Brain(TM) Method to accomplish more when you’re at work. When I first started out helping people work smarter instead of harder, I didn’t talk about goals at all. What do goals have to do with productivity?

As it turns out, working smarter is both counterintuitive and counter to the modern American workplace. It’s hard to go against prevailing culture or the way you were taught to do certain things without a good reason for doing so.

The goal is not “being more productive”. Making big changes in how you interact with fundamental tools like email and smartphones requires a much bigger goal than being more productive – because what does that even mean?

A goal might be to scale your business from seven figures in revenue to eight. Or to spend two more hours a day actually being present and connected with loved ones, which means putting your phone down, by the way. A goal might be to get home in time to be at your kids’ afterschool activities, instead of arriving home with only time to put them to bed.

As business owners, we’re told to find our “why” to help us keep motivated when things are tough in the business. Similarly, knowing your “why” for productivity can help you retrain yourself. For example, you’ll finally stop checking your notifications every few seconds, because you have a good reason for getting your sh*t done in a shorter amount of time.

More productivity in the workplace means removing busy-ness

Being busy is a badge of honor in our culture. (In other developed countries, not so much.) If someone asks you how you are, you’re supposed to say either “Fine” or “Busy!”, even if neither is true. Especially as an entrepreneur – if you don’t say you’re busy, does that mean your business is failing? 

You can be busy with a failing business too, just saying. Busy-ness is not a measurement of how well you or your company is doing. Nor is it a measure of your moral character. And it’s the opposite of productivity.

When you’re at a healthy (not toxic) level of productivity, you don’t do all the things. You don’t do unimportant work because it’s “faster” for you to get it done than to train someone. You don’t work on whatever’s in front of you.

When your productivity is healthy, you work only on priorities. You delegate what’s not the highest and best use of your time (or outsource/automate it). Your tasks are only those things that move your business forward. And you take time for things that are not billable but that refill your productivity tank.

Rest and sleep actually help you perform better. Even though I know some people brag about how little sleep they get… at the same time that they mainline coffee and energy drinks all day to stay awake.

But if your identity is wrapped up in being busy or always “on the go”, you might struggle with being more productive. You work smarter and get more accomplished when you work only on one thing at a time, and block out distractions during this time. When you’re productive, you might not be so busy (gasp!)

Being more productive means more communication, not less

The degree to which people don’t communicate on what seem to be fairly reasonable aspects of productivity surprises me. And I’m pretty conflict avoidant myself!

In my flow coaching program, there’s a young man (19) who wants to have a business, play rugby, and finish his degree at UCLA. We were coaching on putting the phone down, and he said he had to have his on all the time (although he doesn’t have it on him for rugby). As an example for why he had to have notifications on constantly, he said that his friends text him to go eat.

I asked him if he couldn’t put the phone away while he was focusing and then go catch up with his friends afterward. He said no because he doesn’t have a car. Now I used to live pretty close to the UCLA campus, and I can assure you that there are a ton of places to eat close enough to campus that you can walk to them. Not to mention UCLA probably has a dining hall or two.

When I was in college pre-smartphone, we’d all just head to the dining hall or wherever for lunch, see who all was there, and have lunch with them. I rarely ate alone, because I almost always saw someone there I knew. And I’m an introvert! 

Even if this young man couldn’t do that, if he absolutely could not eat with anyone unless it was prearranged by text or social media, why couldn’t he just say, Hey, this is my study or focus time and I don’t check texts during this time? He already does that for rugby, after all.

I do understand when people don’t want to cause conflict. Like I said, I can be pretty conflict-avoidant myself. But how is it creating conflict when you let people know the times that you won’t be checking emails or texts or social media?

I also spoke to a woman who was saying she always has her notifications on because she has adult children in different parts of the world. Now I understand wanting to be there if there’s an emergency, even if you wouldn't be able to get there for hours on end. 

But why can't she tell her daughters Hey, I do focus work (or whatever) during these hours of the day, so call/text me outside those hours unless there’s an emergency? There are plenty of online time zone converters so the daughters can figure out what that time is in their area.

I’m GenX so I was a latchkey kid. I never called my mother to randomly chitchat when she was working. I knew the hours she was at work and when she’d be home. My dad, forget it. He worked for the government, and even my mom couldn’t reach him. If there was an emergency, she had a number to call, and then they’d go get my dad so he could return the call. 

In both these cases, there’s no hard conversation. You’re not breaking up with or firing anyone. You’re just saying, here’s the time that I can’t be disturbed unless you’re bleeding or on fire. I’ll catch up with you, just at a different time outside this time block. You’re not telling anyone that you’ll never talk to them, you’re simply carving out a short time window to focus on critical tasks.

If you’re not willing to have a simple conversation about boundaries, then you’re not going to be more productive. Full stop. You have to be able to focus in order to accomplish what you need to accomplish in order to meet your goals. When you’re constantly on your phone or allowing notifications, there’s no way for you to focus.

Recap (tl;dr)

People say they want to be productive, but may not be willing to do what they need to make it happen. Knowing why you want to be more effective at work is key and can help you navigate working smarter when it means doing things differently.

If you are ready to be productive and you’ve got a goal you’re working toward, click here to schedule your free consultation. I’m ready to help if you’re ready to rebel!

Title from a lyric in “Bootylicious” by Destiny’s Child.

Image by EJ Aquino via Unsplash.