This is my 10th anniversary article, and we thought it would be fun to recap some of what I’ve learned about productivity in the ten years I’ve been hosting The Get-it-Done Guy’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Work Less and Do More.
My day job when all this started was executive coaching and public speaking. Productivity was a personal interest, and something clients needed in order to make time to follow up on the coaching work we would do together. The podcast was just a fun, creative outlet. As it grew, I actually had to stop, reflect, and understand productivity in more depth. Here are some of my reflections from ten years of productivity.
Get-It-Done Guy's 8 Principles of Productivity
- Technology is a seductive siren, not a solution.
- It isn’t always personal.
- Downtime is valuable.
- Productivity isn’t visible.
- Why matters.
- Optimizing the wrong thing doesn’t matter.
- Tools are toys.
- Tech tools make your work more fragile.
1. Technology is a seductive siren, not a solution.
I believe for many of us, the biggest obstacle to personal productivity is now technology. This wasn’t always true. But Silicon Valley has discovered that addicting users is a far better business than serving users. They’re making toys, not tools.
The new iPhone X can unlock my phone with my face. Great. Typing a six-digit passcode was really the #1 source of productivity loss in my life. Plus, it can take beautiful selfies more easily. But I’m not a narcissist, I don’t care. I just want to delete my completed reminders. Or search for a street name and have it find that street in the city my GPS says I’m in, rather than in Bangladesh. They aren’t even pretending to develop anything useful any more.
And we pay the cost. Our conversation is dumbed down. Our creativity time is replaced with interruptions and cat pictures...Cat pictures! I just love cat pictures! (Especially tabby cats.) Oh, where was I. Distraction. Right. And the very nature of multitasking tools is that they provide a single context for very different activities, muddying those together in our brains, and making it hard to focus on any one thing for long enough to get into flow.
2. It isn’t always personal.
While we talk about productivity, it isn’t always personal. Personal productivity is all about the things you can do better, stronger, and faster on your own. How you can be your own personal Superman, Superwoman, Supertransman, Supertranswoman, Superintersex, or Superperson when you step out of your Clark-or-Clarissa Kent secret identity.
But remember, the Clark-or-Clarissa Kents of the world have a day job, working with other people. That’s organizational productivity. You need things, you need to coordinate handing off those things, and you give things to others. Smoothing those handoffs, and redistributing work to flow gracefully, is all about organizational productivity.
When things aren’t getting done, don’t assume it’s always you. Look at how work is spread around and handed off. Sometimes everyone’s doing the best they can, and it’s the organization causing the problems. You may be an individual pearl, but if you’re on a necklace being worn by a swine, you’ll still get muddy.
3. Downtime is valuable.
There is a natural ebb and flow to work. If there are no natural pauses in your work, it means you’re probably doing redundant work or you’re doing multiple jobs. It also means you’re getting no time to think, reflect, learn, or get better. When you have downtime, rather than filling it with activity, grab a piece of paper and pencil—stay off your computer or smartphone—and doodle while daydreaming. Yes, daydreaming. That’s when your brain is most creative. Set it free! That will also make it much more tender when it’s requisitioned by the Generals during the zombie apocalypse.
4. Productivity isn’t visible
When you see someone at their desk, feet up, binge-reading the entire series of Wonder Woman comics (I’m still trying to get on her calendar), you think, “What a lazy bum. We’re clearly not giving them enough work! Triple their workload. They’re underutilized.”
What you don’t think is, “How productive! They’re so productive that they got their work done in two hours. They should get to go home early.”
That’s because productivity and laziness look exactly the same from the outside. In one case, because the work is done. In the other case, because the work hasn’t been started. If you’re going to become productive, do the social engineering necessary so you’re perceived that way. Which, of course, is more work to fill up some of your Wonder Woman reading time.
5. The 'Why' matters.
Humans are weird. We decide we want to reach a goal. So we start working towards that goal. We optimize everything we do to go faster and faster...and then we often forget the goal, and end up spinning off in a different direction. Efficiently.
Every now and then, stop and ask, “Why am I doing this?” Make sure you’re headed for a “why” that matters. Why are you reading email? Why are you writing that report? Why are you taking inventory? We assume all these tasks are valuable. But maybe they aren’t. Make sure you know. It’s far better to do the right thing inefficiently than the wrong thing very productively.
6. Optimizing the wrong thing doesn’t matter.
When you do decide to optimize something, think hard about what. We optimize what we’re most aware of, whether on not it’s the problem. Dealing with email overload? An artificial-intelligence autofolder category label sorting system that’s Siri-compatible might be the wrong answer, even though it was just included in your latest laptop. Maybe the real problem is that your role and boundaries need to be clearer to people who want to contact you.
Silicon Valley is now making toys, not tools.
If you have a desk job that involves a lot of computer work, probably the two biggest optimizations you can do is learn to speed read a screen and touch type. Those activities make up 90% of most screen time. A ten percent boost in typing speed will carry over into everything.
And stop text messaging. Learn to make a 30-second phone call. You’ll quintuple your efficiency.
7. Tools are toys.
Many productivity tools aren’t developed by people who understand you or your workflow, but by engineers who have a hypothetical reason why their cool tool will help you do better. I used to be one of those engineers. A smartphone-controlled turnip twaddler? Life was heaven working on such awesome-sounding, world-changing, disruptive technologies! In retrospect, I had no clue what real-life turnip twaddlers actually needed. But building the tool was surely great fun!
When you find a tool that works for you, great, use it. But make sure it’s providing value by measuring. Just the cost of switching systems can eat up any productivity gains of the new, better tool.
8. Tech tools make your work more fragile.
Every tool you incorporate into your workflow makes you dependent on that tool. Imagine you have a business that depends on a careful interlinking of nineteen different websites, all managed from a cell phone app. If any one of those websites goes out of business, or has a server crash, your entire business might get screwed.
My cell phone is the center of my digital life. It broke. I could get nothing done for two days until I got it replaced. My zombie army generals were going crazy without the ability to send me text messages (they’re not that great at decision-making on their own). I couldn’t even log into web sites because I couldn’t receive the login-verification text messages.
When a tool works, it’s great, but consider the time and effort it takes to keep the tool working, as well as the costs if the tool breaks.
Productivity is a double-edged sword. If you do it right, you’ll personally be more productive and have time left over to read Wonder Woman. Just be thoughtful. Make sure it’s getting you where you’re going, and make sure that your tools themselves really deliver on their promise. If you can also tackle the organizational productivity problems that get in your way, you’ll be able to turbocharge the results you get in your life. When the zombie apocalypse comes, you’ll surely be spared, because you’ll be much too valuable to be lunch.
I’m Stever Robbins. Follow GetItDoneGuy on Twitter and Facebook. Want great keynote speeches on productivity, Living an Extraordinary Life, or entrepreneurship? Hire me! Find me at http://ift.tt/1l2uWN6.
Image of productive, skyrocketing man © Shutterstock
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