Thoughts: On Productivity

I wanted to talk about productivity. It’s been a topic that has been on my mind a lot in the last few months. I have always rather considered myself to be quite productive. As an individual I’m very delivery-focused, I get a lot done and colleagues/friends compliment me on how I can drive to a goal or fly through a task.

I was wrong.

A few years ago I was hit by a revelation. What I and those around me considered to be productivity was really just ruthless efficiency. To understand what is meant by that, we have to look at the definition of the word ’efficient'.

“(of a person) working in a well-organized and competent way.” - Oxford Dictionary

Efficiency is the ability to get things done in a well organised and competent way. If we think about the term being used for machinery we think about minimum wastage of energy. Putting it simply, efficiency is doing things the right way without wasted effort. This really resonated with me. I find that one quality is that I create methodologies and processes for working that help me compact things together and work efficiently, usually getting things done correctly but also much much faster than doing so in, what feels to me like, chaos.

Being efficient is definitely no small quality. It is great actually, but it is far from productive. To be productive we need to look at the other ’e’ word. Effectiveness.

“Successful in producing a desired or intended result.” - Oxford Dictionary

Effectiveness is about getting things done that lead us to the results that we desire. When we say something was effective it means that we got exactly what we wanted out of it. We could say then that effectiveness is getting the right things done.

Where are we going with this? We’re defining what productivity is. One could say it is getting the right things done in the right way. No simple task. Which leads me into my next section.

Productivity

This definition of productivity really struck me and made me re-evaluate my outlook and the way I drove myself forward. I was good at getting things done, but I certainly was not always devoting my time and energy into the right things.

It was not all bad, my efficiency often led to me getting the right things done when they were obvious or when they were fresh on my plate but it also meant that a lot of the time I was reacting instead of planning ahead. My focus could end up on tasks that had crept up but perhaps weren’t of the highest priority.

This thought-provoking revelation came during a training session at work called ‘Deep Productivity’ by Nicholas Bate. In this training, Bate introduces the Eisenhower decision matrix which helps us to consider the delicate balancing act that we all face between devoting time to things that are urgent as opposed to things that are important.

“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Most people find themselves working on tasks that are urgent but not important. Or worse, on tasks that are neither important nor urgent. Being efficient meant that sometimes I was lucky and would blast through those and get onto the actually important stuff, but nonetheless, I found that I too was a victim of being in the wrong area of the matrix.

In the interest of self-correction. I made some changes to my behaviours. I will share them and I would really love to learn what others recommend too.

This is a journey that I still feel I am in the early stages of. I have made these changes over the past few years. I have tried things that people recommended for improving productivity. Not everything worked, but that is ok, it’s important to note that everyone is different and that tools will not always produce the same results for everyone. These changes have helped massively and really changed my work, my focus and pushed me to another level.

Productivity tweaks

These are the changes that I have made to help boost my productivity, improving my focus and zeroing in on the important things.

Sleep

The ultimate productivity secret. Get some sleep. You’ll feel great. There is a multitude of research out there to suggest that sleep is vital to being productive. Coffee will get you somewhere, but eventually, you will burn out.

I often have some trouble reading articles on productivity where someone suggests waking up at 5 am, having a cup of coffee and forming a solid morning routine. Sure this will probably work but these articles always miss stating that they are either early sleepers (hello 8/9 pm) or one of the rare few that can function on 5 hours sleep.

I will not go too much into sleep as there is a vast amount of resources out there. This one is my favourite. It breaks down some of the research and provides some tips on how to act on the information.

One thing I will call out for improving sleep. Sleep stories. These have been transformational in improving my ability to fall asleep easily and get my much needed hours. My personal favourite is this podcast.

Shut your phone up

I would not say I was ever really addicted to my phone but it definitely had developed the ability to demand and hold on my attention. Funny how a device can pull you out of your zone with a pointless notification. Suddenly your train of thought is lost and you end up picking up the phone then and you’ve lost the battle.

I wanted to reduce these interruptions and started by turning off notifications for apps where they provided no value. (In some cases actually just deleting the app itself). Then one day I stumbled across this article.

After reading through, I tried out some of the suggestions (not all of them were things I believed I needed) but I found that improving the sorting of apps, limiting notifications that were allowed on the lock screen and putting my phone always on silent except for calls gave huge benefits to focus. Suddenly my phone would sit at my desk quietly and those interruptions disappeared. My phone wouldn’t grab my attention when I was busy or focused, I would grab it when I had time to check messages or emails.

Slowly my phone became less and less obtrusive, and nowadays when I arrive home most of the time it gets set down and remains mostly untouched for the entire evening. I still allow myself to browse Reddit and Instagram on occasion but the switch up in control and mindful usage is completely different.

What do you want?

The big question. It is really difficult to answer and it is not something that you need to do right at this moment. You need to plant the seed of the question in your mind, some desires may come immediately others may pop into your head one day on the bus, train, tube or in your car and it is important that you keep hold of the answer when it comes. Write it down maybe, so you can reflect on it.

An exercise that helps is to try and imagine yourself in 1 year. What’s different? Keep shifting time frame, think about 5, 10, 20, 30, 50 years. You may not know for each range of time where you would like to be, but for sure there will be some answers that come up. Those are now your long term goals.

For over a year now I’ve been trialling using a Nicholas Bate concept called a master list. It is what he preaches as the solution to the stack of 20 or so to-do lists. Something that I definitely was guilty of (though Wunderlist is a great app).

The master list is one list for everything that you want to do, it is a mix of work and home and short-term and long-term. Everything gets written down on the list. You are in the pub having a chat with a friend and they recommend a book, add it to the list. The answer to one of those “where do you want to be” questions pops into your head one day, write it on the list.

Once you have begun your list, you need to go through a refinement process every so often. Firstly, because things will end up on the list that you later realise that you do not want to do them anymore. Secondly, things that will end up on the list are not always the best incarnation of a goal, big items will seem impossible to achieve unless you break them down into smaller achievable goals.

An example from myself is that I let myself get into a bit of a pickle in 2017 which led to me gaining around 14kg. In 2018 one of my goals was to drop 12kg (Whilst this is not particularly ambitious — why not 14kg — there are other factors at play in this decision). I first broke this down into milestones things like “Reach Xkg by the end of March”. Breaking the big goal down into smaller goals helped make it more achievable. There is considerably less work involved in losing 14kg vs losing 1kg. That is just the first stage of breaking down the goal. We then break it down again into something actionable. In my case, it was to get real serious about bouldering and getting in some gym hours around sessions. Examples of small grain goals that I set were things like “move to monthly climbing membership” or “create weights routine to support bouldering”. These can then shift into goals such as “Go to the gym 3x a week for at least 3 weeks in Feb”. Achievable.

Regardless of whether you are interested in a tool like the master list, it is important for getting the right things done that you know what the right things are. After that, it becomes about breaking down those big ambitious goals into something achievable that you can measure against and track your progress. Say hello S.M.A.R.T

Planning(ish) your week

I do not want to be too rigid in my plans for a week. I like to have things come up, or see how I feel at a particular moment and decide what I want to do.

I want to say this because I am going to talk about how I ‘plan my week’. I don’t mean scheduling everything that I am going to do in advance. This works for some people but I do not like to feel constrained. I found that having an idea of what I wanted to do in that week (trying to be realistic) and just being able to pick up things and get them done when suits me was much better for me.

Since I am not just tailoring my approach here for work. I am talking about managing my life too. I need flexibility. I do not want to live my life with the rigidity that is sometimes needed in a working environment. In the past when I have tried to be rigid, sticking to a schedule, I have often felt disappointed when something unexpected (but that I wanted to do) came along and did not fit into the schedule I had defined.

Some of these things do end up being scheduled. i.e Date night or the Social. Others are just picked up based on what I feel like doing at a particular moment when I have a ‘free’ time slot.

I have previously done this by adding things to my calendar (over-scheduling) or having smaller todo lists that are focussed on the week. Recently I have been having success using Trello. Being a software engineer, this flow feels very natural to me, although I have read that plenty of people find benefit in the Kanban approach.

Inbox-zero

Emails are evil. Seriously. I needed to tame my inbox. Part of the problem was resolved by making email notifications on my phone not wake the screen. They still appeared on the lock screen so that when I decided I wanted to check I would see them there. But no longer would they grab my attention and drag me into my phone.

The next step was cleaning the clutter, both in my personal inbox and my professional one. I found through colleagues the concept of inbox-zero. (https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/inbox-zero)

What does it mean?

At set times in the day, I will go through my inbox, starting with older items. Quickly deciding whether the email needs in-depth consideration or action is taken. If the answer is no. Archive. Then move onto the next. For emails that need action, take that action immediately. This could be to reply to the email immediately if it can be done in a couple of minutes, others it could mean flagging it for replying once you have scanned through and can devote a good solid chunk of time to doing so. In emails that require an action aside from replying it could mean that they are converted into actions. For some this is moving to a folder, translating into your todo list or basically however you keep track of pending actions.

What is the benefit?

There is a feeling of reward when seeing less clutter in my inbox. Like my phone, email no longer screams for attention when it should not and processing things in chunks instead of sporadically means increased focus time to get things done.

The conclusion

Productivity is getting the right things done in the right way. It is about working on important things and not just reacting to the urgent ones. Productivity requires work to get right and continuous small tweaks to really nail it. It is also incredibly personal. The things that work for me or other people may not necessarily work for you. I recommend that you try various different techniques and keep experimenting and chopping and changing as you go along.

I hope that this article helps you in some form. Take it with a pinch of salt. Take everything with a pinch of salt. We are all different and need different solutions.