Understanding Productivity

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Summary

How to change your weeks into more focused, productive time through goals and must do’s for the week.  Understand a little bit about why you are or are not productive.  Being focused and productive has been researched for years and years and the same results keep emerging. Many people have not made the commitment to changing their habits and therefore they find that their production has not increased. Unfortunately they can actually take a step backwards as more and more obligations and distractions enter their world.

The good news is these are not changes that work for a handful of people.  They will work for everyone on the planet, but they will take mental strength and discipline.  The good news is like any habit or addiction, after a few weeks of doing this it will feel weird if you don’t do it.  Once your mind does that reset with new focus, you will begin to feel that something is missing or off if you stray from your new habits, once they have become part of you.  You may feel like you are out of control and try to revert back to be reactive vs proactive.  If you find this happening, revisit what you had changed that was working and reimplement that process.

Full Transcript

Welcome to Focus Forward Business Design.  I am Leigh Wilson, the founder of Focus Forward and your High Performance coach.

If you listened or read last week, you may remember that I gave you some ideas on how to change your weeks into more focused, productive time through goals and must do’s for the week.  We are going to take this a step deeper and try to understand a little bit about why we are or are not productive.  This has been researched for years and years and the same results keep emerging, yet so many people have not made the commitment to changing their habits and therefore they find that their production has not increased and can actually take a step backwards as more and more obligations and distractions enter their world.

These are not changes that work for a handful of people.  They will work for everyone on the planet, but it takes mental strength and discipline.  The good news is like any habit or addiction, after a few weeks of doing this it will feel weird if you don’t do it.  Once your mind does that reset with new focus, you will begin to feel that something is missing or off if you stray from your new habits once they have become part of you.  You may feel like you are out of control or revert back to be reactive vs proactive.  If you find this happening, revisit what you have changed that was working and reimplement.

If you have ever taken a golf lesson you will get this analogy.  The instructor has you begin with a very small swing with a short iron while you perfect your grip, arm position etc.  He does this because there is less room for error with a shorter club and a smaller swing. This may go on for what seems like months.  Now of course what we all do when we are not in the lesson is we go to the driving range and immediately pull out the big driver and take a full swing and make a miserable mockery of ourselves and learn very quickly that going back to the shorter club and the smaller swing until we become more capable may not have been an altogether bad idea.

This is no different than when you are setting yourself up for high performance in the way you practice your daily sport of productivity.  We know there are certain things that are guaranteed to make you more productive if you consistently put them into place.  But what can happen is that we get distracted or unfocused and we try to take out the big driver and multi-tasking and do all the things that led us to a hot mess in the first place.   This is when we need to take a step back and really become intentional about doing what we know works.

Let’s face it, the way that we all tend to work just isn’t cutting it anymore.  Having our email attached to us when we open our eyes in the morning and have it be the last thing we see at the end of an already crazy day is compromising our quality of life, our time with friends and family and quite honestly our overall well being.

I am sure that you like many have experienced or may be experiencing the days that start with reading emails during long commutes, then once you land at the office you are jumping right into a day with little planning or thought as you are putting out fires or being pulled in a multitude of different directions based on others agenda’s or emergencies that have occurred from their lack of planning.  The simple fact is that this is not the way that we were designed to work.  It is all about rhythm.  A book that I highly recommend is called “Flow” and it goes into deep detail about how the body and the brain work.  For example, like your sleep patterns, which we know you shift all night long into different levels of sleep from deep sleep to lighter dream sleep, your day should be in cycles as well and naturally happens.  The trouble is that we don’t acknowledge or allow our activities to work with the natural rhythms that our bodies need, therefore we are actually fighting what our body knows we need.  Throughout the day we go through what are referred to as ultradian rhythms…like lighter and deeper sleep these are more or less focused times in our day.   Our minds and bodies are not meant to go full out for 10 hours a day…yet we do it…all the time.

Last week, one of the productivity tips that we talked about was focused work on one predetermined project or task for a specific period of time.  This is a fantastic way to increase your productivity, as well as the quality of work that you put out, without totally burning you out.  Taking a short break between these sessions allows you to re energize and mentally reset.  This is not the time to check email…this is truly a few minute break to stretch, walk around, grab a bite or even close your eyes and do some breathing.

By doing this you have a plan, a purpose, and an end goal for each time blocked activity.  If you can put 3-4 of these in your schedule a day you will quickly experience a level of success that is very satisfying at the end of the day.  What you may likely find is that your most important needle moving activities are accomplished by early afternoon and the ideal of “Done by 1” that we have talked about in previous sessions can become a reality. 

Each of these specific blocked segments allows you to have a challenge, with a defined goal that offers immediate feedback, very much like a game.  This makes our days more interesting, fun and rewarding.

I challenge you to try this for a week.  Each night, plan out the following day.  Start with what your goals are to be completed for the week and decide which of those you are going to accomplish the next day.  Take out your calendar and block out time for each of those projects….no more than 60 minutes.  Now, you may not complete the full project and that is ok.  You can always block out another section of time to continue work on it.  The key here is that when that timer goes off you are done, and you must give yourself permission to take that break.  You will be amazed how much fresher, quicker and creative you are when you have this simple reset in your day.

Here is the caveat.  To be successful in this you MUST remove all distractions from your workspace.  This is the only way to get yourself in the moment.  I again refer to the book flow as he compares it to an athlete who is so deep into the game that they are barely aware of anything going on around them.  This is the state of mind that you want to attempt to get to.  You may be able to relate to this feeling when you are reading a really good book and you literally feel that you are in the story and where you are or the people around you don’t exist in that moment.  Again, this is where you want to go to reach amazing levels of productivity.

I know that I jumped around a bit and this was not my typical. Here are 5 things to improve your life.  But I need you to understand why the way we are working today does not get us the results that we desire.  It is not that we are not capable of working 8,10 or 12 hour days non-stop, it’s the fact that our minds and bodies are not built to operate at the highest level that way.   Think about how many times you have heard the saying when doing a project around the house…”well, that certainly shows how easy something is if you have the right tool”.   Or more likely if it is me doing a household project you will find me saying ”this would certainly be easier with the right tool”.  We have been given the right tools; we just need to operate them as they were engineered.

Next week I will be back on track with some quick wins to increase productivity, but until then try this major biggie and plan your day and your projects based on blocks of assigned times with breaks in between and see how your level of accomplishment changes.

I hope that you found this helpful. Please share this with like-minded high achievers that want more out of life.  Please like this post and as always if you want to have these concepts personalized for you please sign up for your FREE 1:1 Consultation with a high performance coach by clicking HERE.

Make it a fabulous week and remember that it is always your choice to Focus Forward.