Prepare For a Day Full of Productivity!
Do not leave any second of the day unaccounted for on June 20th, which is World Productivity Day! Your planner needs to be full, so make up things to do (especially satisfying if they’re meaningless and you can check them off at the end of the day.) Make sure you have every productivity software app installed so you can open them and be ready to go on the 20th.
Block calls from family and friends – you don’t want THOSE unproductive goobers ruining your day. Cancel your personal training sessions and nutritionist appointments because you have stuff to do and your health can wait. Set your alarm for 3:30 am, because we all know that no matter what type of person you are (lion, wolf, bear, dolphin) only losers and the lazy get up at normal hours of the day.
And the number one tip for improving productivity in the workplace: move your desk next to your toilet. Attach a hiking bladder full of water and now you don’t even have to get up from your desk. Now you have absolutely no excuse not to get the 337 things on your to-do list done today, so get a move on!
If you’ve been reading my stuff, hopefully somewhere around the first or second paragraph you recognized that the above is a list of things not to do when you’re trying to have a productive day! And if not, I really, really hope the toilet desk made you go “hmmm”. (If not, your brain needs some serious rewiring.)
Cultural rules and doing lots of “stuff” do not make a productive workplace
Someone, I can’t remember who, discussed the rise of what she called the “productivity bros”. They’re the ones selling advice to get up at 4 am, schedule your day in 15-minute increments, offload every single task you don’t want to do on someone else (who is probably underpaid) so you can have a four-hour workweek, categorize all activities in terms of dollars made or lost, and so on. The productivity bros are not the entire reason that culture around productivity is messed up, but they’re not helping either.
Insisting that because employees can check emails at all hours of the day or night means that they should is a problem. Wages haven’t kept pace with inflation for decades, and yet employees are supposed to spend more and more of their waking hours dedicated to the company.
On top of all that, I know so many business owners who feel guilty when they take time for themselves, or when they have a free hour. They feel bad if they actually leave work in the evening and do something that is not work or profit-related. Because busy-ness is a badge of honor in our culture, and having down-time is frowned upon.
According to American culture, if you’re not bowing down to and scrambling for the almighty dollar – and lots of them – then what are you even doing? How meaningful is your life if you take breaks from work every once in a while?
This attitude is morally wrong. I mean, I want to make a buck too (hey, let’s discuss my services) but life is not all about profit. Even if you’re an entrepreneur. Working all hours burns you out, whether or not you enjoy the work. And for those of us that are bootstrapping, you’re probably still doing some things that you don’t enjoy because they have to get done. Which makes burnout even more likely, at least if you’re working in accordance with accepted corporate culture.
And here’s the counter-intuitive thing that so many people don’t get. You want to make money? Have an impact? Have a meaningful and profitable business? You’ll be more productive and accomplish more when you DON’T work all hours of the day – when you take breaks, attend to your health, play games, move your butt, etc.
When you do all those supposedly nonproductive things, what you’re actually doing is filling up your productivity tank so you don’t drain it so fast. When you work with your brain in the ways that a) it prefers to work and b) conserve energy, then you actually accomplish more.
You can be busy and have a cultural badge of honor, or you can be productive, but you can’t have both.
Focusing only on profit means less productivity in the workplace
I went on a trip to visit my family, staying a couple of days with a cousin and a couple of days with each aunt (my mom’s sisters). It was nice to see family, but there were a few situations that really made me head-tilt like Scooby-Doo!
We were playing Settlers of Catan, which I’d heard of but never played before. My cousin’s college-age son got to a point where he just couldn’t win, and he quit because “There’s no value to me playing this.” Honestly, I was shocked.
Bad sportsmanship for one thing. But seriously, leaving a game because there’s no benefit to playing the game? It’s a game with your family, there’s no cost-benefit or SWOT analysis to it.
Because there is a benefit to playing games, even when you’re losing. I wasn’t in quite as bad a position as he was, but I could see I wasn’t going to win either. Yet I was hanging out with family, and while we played we discussed other things too. Social benefit!
Also, as a newbie to the game, I could watch the other players and pick up some strategies. In a way that’s game specific, but in the big picture it applies to all different games. Exercising the little gray cells (as Agatha Christie’s Hercules Poirot would have it) brings cognitive benefits too.
Pretty much everything I’m saying here runs counter to what we’ve all been taught. (I previously wrote about how you have to be brave to be productive). Most of the culture is indifferent to how the human brain works.
If you don’t know how it actually works, then the productivity bros might make sense. In reality, however, some of their advice doesn’t work, and some of it works only for some people and not for others.
Take, for example, the insistence on getting up early. (And take it somewhere else, please.) That trick will work if you are a lion sleep chronotype and naturally wake up early and are able to do your cognitively demanding work earlier in the morning.
But if you’re one of the other three chronotypes, not only are you going to be constantly tired, you’re not going to actually be more productive. Your thinky work time is still going to be later in the day. What exactly are you going to do for all that time when you’re barely half-awake?
Scheduling your day into 15 minute increments is likewise unhelpful. There is potentially a teeny weeny bit of truth here, because batching similar tasks together does boost your productivity.
Instead of answering each email as it comes in, for example, read and respond to a bunch of them all at once. Blocking out your thinky work time during the time of day best suited for you is also a great idea that will supercharge your productvity.
But scheduling in 15 minute increments? Hell to the no. For one thing, you’re spending more time in the performance of productivity than you are in doing work. Secondly, most people (including yours truly) seriously underestimate the amount of time something will take. So you allot 15 minutes for one task and it takes 43 minutes instead, and now your whole schedule for the day is shot.
Thirdly, most people who try to schedule in that way leave out brain breaks. Your noggin needs some downtime (10-15 minutes) after 45 minutes to an hour of intense focus on thinky work. That’s often getting left out of the schedule. Not to mention that scheduling in such short time increments encourages switching between tasks, which is tiring for your brain.
Instead, batch in big blocks of time, like an hour. Schedule thinky work for the right time of the day (we all get about 4- 4 ½ hours of focus on cognitively demanding time a day). Block out your four hours and take breaks when you feel fatigue. Big blocks are better for your time management skills, because they encompass those tasks that take longer without throwing everything else off.
What your brain needs for a productive day
You get the biggest boost of productivity from making sure that your productivity tank is filled. Your brain is not a machine, much less a computer, but like machines your brain needs good quality inputs and regular maintenance.
Looking for optimum performance? Here’s what a human brain needs to run at its best (which means the productivity in the workplace you’ve been looking for.)
Time to flush waste out of the cells, encode learning from the day, strengthen certain neural pathways and prune back others, support the immune system, repair tissue, etc. How do you get all this? 7-8 hours of sleep.
Oxygen-rich blood to fuel performance, which comes from moving your *ss.
Nutritious fuel for energy all day – I think I gave that away with the word “nutritious”. And yes, your brain needs healthy food.
Time for creativity, and that comes from NOT scheduling every hour of every day. Instead, periodically doing nothing and even - dare I say it - being bored.
Rest after hard work, which means small brain breaks throughout the day.
Time with others. Humans are social animals and that is how we survived, so spending time with other people is necessary for the brain to function. No, so-called “social” media doesn’t count (there’s nothing social about it). You need to be in person, call, or video conference if you’re not located close to each other.
Time to play, which is not just for little kids and kittens and puppies! Human brains thrive on games, activities that you enjoy, and things that are not related to work.
If it’s good for the brain, it’s good for productivity.
Recap (tl; dr):
Do not move your desk next to your toilet to be more productive! Instead, learn how to work with your brain (which needs you to get up and move around periodically during the day) to get the productivity boost you’re looking for.
Think your business could use some productivity improvement but you’re not sure where (or how)? Set up your free consultation here.