The Biggest Myth About Productivity

The biggest myth about productivity is that if we work constantly, ALL the TIME, then we are being productive.

That is not true. It is entirely common to be busy, to have your calendar fully scheduled and still not able to make progress or achieve anything.

Been there? I have.

Most of us respond to rising demands in the workplace by putting in longer hours. We lengthening our to-do lists with the belief that we can power through it.

And we indeed do, sometimes.

But the quality of the output may not be actually good. Additionally, some of us make this a habit, leading to chronic symptoms of anxiety & burnout.

It reminds me of a famous line in the movie Top Gun said by the captain after Maverick did a brave stunt instead of landing the plane safely.

Productivity is the function of FOCUS, not the amount of time you spend working.

Focus is nothing but the ability to guide your attention. And this ability becomes better by practice.

Essential starting points for this is by removing digital distractions and being mindful, and you may already be doing some of this.

Below are some additional ways to guide your attention better.

7 Ways to 'GUIDE' your attention better

1.Focus on Deep Work

The definitive, science-backed book on focus is Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. A great summary of the book is by Ali Abdaal, a ‘Productivity YouTuber’ who shares how it helped him to work only 4 hours a day.

2.Filter for Mentally Expensive tasks

Many people talk about 1 goal a day or limiting their to-do list to 3 things.

Have tried that.

The problem I face is that there are rarely days when I just have 3 things to do. As a functioning adult, working professional and a parent I have way more things than that and it seems impossible to cut it down.

Recently, in a conversation with a colleague this concept of mentally expensive tasks came up. Basically, things that require you to use a lot of brainpower (& attention). For example, me writing this newsletter is a mentally expensive task. Running a workshop at work which I have run twice before, is not.

The suggestion is to only keep 1 mentally expensive thing on your to-do list. Until you finish that one, you don’t start the next mentally expensive task.

3.Calculate the dollar value of your time. (James Clear)

By dividing the amount you earn with the number of hours you spend on earning that, you can arrive at the monetary value of your time. Then you can decide if a task is worth it or not.

For example: If your time value is 500/ hour, does it make sense to spend an hour driving to the store or pay 100 shipping for it?

Only keep the tasks that are ‘worth it’ on your schedule.

4.Filter for ‘When’ to do it

Creativity often correlates with energy and attention. If you have awareness of your creative blocks of time (For e.g I find it easier to do mentally expensive tasks in the night, rather than mornings) schedule that time for the mentally expensive tasks.

You can take the chronotype test here to explore more on what you are biologically wired for, w.r.t times of the day. This is based on research by Michael Breus, for the book ‘The Power of When’.

Of course, if you know Parkinson’s Law, you know that your focus becomes automatically easier as deadlines approach :D I leave it to your judgement how you want to use this law!

5. Speed up your processing: Reader/ Listener?

I whiled away most of my schooling years just sitting and not really learning in my classes. Listening to long lectures just was not my cup of tea. However, if I were to read the textbook on my own after going back home, I would understand things with 100% clarity.

A simple question to ask yourself is: Are you a Reader or a Listener?

Few listeners can be made or can make themselves, into competent readers—and vice versa. To try will likely result in being unable to perform or achieve – Peter Drucker

A reader is someone who learns easily from reading from things like articles, (text) books, or even PowerPoint slides. A listener learns from hearing things like lectures, audio CDs, or presentations. Scientifically, both reading and listening evoke the same brain activity.

Once you identify this, you can tweak your environment to suit your style, hence increasing the speed of uptake and improving productivity. For example, I read & process information faster than I listen & understand. So, I always ask for a pre-read before a meeting. If there has not been a pre-read, I ask teams to ‘Just give me 30 seconds to read through the slide’ and then ask them follow up questions. It’s easier, faster for everyone.

In case you are a listener, am sure lectures must have been a breeze for you, and now you are spoilt for choices with audiobooks & podcasts.

In case you are wondering if you are a reader or a listener, this article can help.

6.Batching

A classic tip - club similar tasks together. These especially work for administrative housekeeping tasks. For e.g. rather than checking emails 10 times a day, check 3 times but for longer. Saves up time by reducing switching costs and saves brainpower for the more mentally expensive tasks.

7.Finally, the seduction of multitasking…

Lingchi is a gory Chinese concept that loosely means ‘death by thousand cuts’. It was a form of punishment for the most severe crimes.

Multitasking is a bit like that. Research also shows that over a period of time it actually decreases the amount of ‘grey matter’ in your brain.

A temporary shift in attention from one task to another—stopping to answer an e-mail or take a phone call, for instance—increases the amount of time necessary to finish the primary task by as much as 25%, a phenomenon known as “switching time.” It’s far more efficient to fully focus for 90 to 120 minutes, take a true break, and then fully focus on the next activity.

Scheduling as explained in the previous issue works because it by design reduces the possibility of multitasking. An examples below on how executives can tweak their environment to reduce multitasking from HBR:

“Dan Cluna, VP at Wachovia Bank, designed two rituals to better focus his attention.

The first one is to leave his desk and go into a conference room, away from phones and e-mail, whenever he has a task that requires concentration. He now finishes reports in a third of the time they used to require.

Cluna built his second ritual around meetings. Previously, he would answer his phone whenever it rang during these meetings. As a consequence, the meetings he scheduled for an hour often stretched to two, and he rarely gave anyone his full attention. Now Cluna lets his phone go to voice mail, so that he can focus completely on the person in front of him. He now answers the accumulated voice-mail messages when he has downtime between meetings.”

Tools, Reflection & Homework

• What are the most mentally expensive tasks for you today/ this week?

• Pick one to focus on.

• Pick when will you do it, w.r.t time of the day?

• How will you make the one small change in your environment you can make to remove distractions while you do it?

• Getting Things Done is a classic book that is built on the tenet that the mind is not meant for ideas and not storing your to-do list. Getting it on paper helps free up our minds to focus better. As an action, capture every single thing in your mind right now w.r.t your tasks and see if it feels liberating. Here is a helpful summary and an infographic that captures its 5 step framework.

• As an added support, try this playlist for focus and attention, while you are trying to stay attentive on your next task!

Attention like Time is LIMITED. But like sunlight, if attention can be guided it can be powerful enough to burn up to-do list!

See you next time, until then Keep Thriving!

Rashmi