part0028

Now that we have a good understanding of how our brain works and the conditions it needs in order to be highly productive, we can be far more effective. In addition to working with our brain, there are a number of productivity hacks that will help us work more efficiently.

I don’t use all of the tools I’ll share with you in this chapter on a consistent basis. I suggest you don’t try to use them all either or you’ll be stressing yourself out all over again. Like every strategy I’ve shared so far, choose the ones that will work for you and leave the rest.

Sometimes, I naturally use some of these tools; other times, I naturally do things that destroy my productivity. Usually, there’s a correlation with how stressed out I am. The more stressed I feel, the less productive I am because I end up doing the opposite of many of the strategies that help us be more productive. Take a break? I can’t take a break! I have so much work to get done and not enough time!

Remember that reducing your stress, taking care of yourself, and being happy are all excellent tools for productivity. Just doing those things alone will significantly increase your output.

When we add in using productivity tools and start working smarter, not harder, we can create more time for ourselves and our lives. Then we arrive at work recharged and happy, and we get even more accomplished with ease. It becomes a wonderful cycle of productivity and feeling relaxed. That’s when we are truly Working Well .

If a task is going to take you fewer than five minutes and you have the time available, do it immediately. That way, you aren’t straining your brain trying to keep track of everything you need to do and you’re not adding one more thing to your to-do list. In a lifetime before computers, the suggestion was that we only touch a piece of paper once. This meant that the minute we opened a letter or a bill, we dealt with the contents immediately rather than adding the paper to a pile and dealing with it later. While we can’t apply this rule to every task on our to-do list, we can take the spirit of it and apply it to much of our work.

When you open an e-mail, you can sometimes deal with the contents right away and then delete the e-mail. When I’m running from one meeting to the next and I remember that I need to send a client an e-mail, I pull out my phone and send the e-mail in the moment rather than using up valuable brain power trying to remember to send the e-mail after my next meeting.

What are the little things that you carry around in your brain that you could do when you have a few free minutes? We can reduce our feelings of overwhelm by not carrying all those details around in our brains and we can get more done if we act immediately .

A few years ago, I spent months coaching an executive team that shared with me their motto: 80 percent is good enough. Their goal is to get their work done and delivered to their workforce as quickly as possible without working towards perfection. Then, they adapt and evolve as they go. Done is better than perfect. This was mind-blowing for my little perfectionist brain. Their approach made me realize all the ideas that I wasn’t developing and all the writing I wasn’t doing because I was trying to make everything perfect before I put it out into the world. I decided to give this concept a try—and I tripled my productivity within the first month.

This executive team has over five hundred people working for them and huge financial pressures. There is a lot at stake if they mess up. Frankly, it is way more important for them to get it right than it is for me. If they can produce at 80 percent, surely, I can too.

Yes, it would be ideal to have all the time and resources need. But I don’t. And neither do you. We have to work within the circumstances and limitations that we have. Otherwise, we’ll be waiting for the right conditions, which may never come. If we don’t follow through on meeting our goals and following our passions, we’ll miss sharing something valuable that will add to our lives and the lives of others—all for the sake of the elusive perfection, which in itself is impossible to achieve.

Perfect doesn’t exist. When we don’t share our work because it’s not perfect, it’s often a way of protecting ourselves. By seeking perfection, we avoid being vulnerable and putting ourselves out there. That’s understandable because vulnerability can feel terrifying. But doing the work you’re meant to do and sharing your gifts and talents with the world is worth it. It won’t be perfect (because nothing is) but it will be in the world and it will be good enough.

Before becoming aware of the 80 percent is good enough concept, I was far too focused on perfection—half of my projects never got completed—or worse yet, never got started. After seeing how the team worked and the amazing quantity and quality of work they produced, I took a completely different approach. I started aiming for production over perfection. Everything that I produce these days is my commitment to delivering my work at 80 percent, because 80 percent is better than not at all. In most classes, that’s an A.

In working on this book, I reminded myself to aim for 80 percent. I’d like to think I made it to 90 percent. If my goal had been 100 percent, I’d never get the book done. It would take another year or two or even three. I’d get so frustrated with the pressure I’d put on myself and the challenge of getting the book perfect that I’d throw the manuscript out. I know this would happen because I’ve done it to a few other manuscripts. But with this one, I’m stepping into vulnerability and choosing completion over the elusive and unattainable perfection.

I’d rather get it to you in this imperfect, but good-enough form, so you can start using the strategies today , rather than waiting another year or two to have the book be just a little bit better.

With every cell in my body, I’m fighting a long-ingrained habit of perfectionism in writing and editing this book. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve decided to put the manuscript on a shelf and walk away because it’s not perfect. Then I talk myself back into working on it, so I can put it out into the world and fulfill a goal I’ve had for many years. Good enough is my new goal. Perfection is the enemy of completion, and these days, I’m aiming for completion.

Stephen Covey made the Eisenhower Quadrant well known in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People . It’s designed to help you become a more effective self-manager. Many of us have heard of this tool, often called the Urgent-Important Matrix, but how often are we using it?

When we use this matrix, we want to evaluate our tasks based on their level of urgency and importance. Urgent tasks require your immediate attention: a phone ringing, a meeting you’re scheduled to attend, a deadline you need to meet. But we want to evaluate those tasks to see how many of them are important. Maybe you don’t need to be at that meeting after all, maybe you could ignore the ringing phone to focus on meeting the deadline because the deadline is the only important task in all of those urgent ones.

In a perfect world, we’d focus on our important tasks, and we’d proactively plan time to work on them, which would minimize the urgent tasks that often cause us so much stress and distract us from our most important work. It sounds simple enough, but the problem is that we’re far more likely to deal with urgent activities, regardless of importance, because they’re right in front of our faces, screaming for attention.

I’ve decided to make my important tasks feel more urgent because that pushes me to accomplish them. Writing this book is an example of an important but non-urgent task. I managed to get it done by creating circumstances that made it feel more urgent. I contacted publishers and identified my targeted publication date, which pushed me to get the writing of various drafts done by specific deadlines .

If you take even five minutes at the beginning of your day and put your to-do list through the Urgent-Important Matrix, that will help you prioritize your work and ensure that you are putting your limited time, focus, and attention on the work that is most important.

I also evaluate my personal commitments through the Urgent-Important Matrix. It helps me prioritize what is really important to me and ensures that family time is scheduled into my calendar.

Take some time and think through the elements of your life that feel really important to you. Slide those suckers to the urgent and important side of the quadrant. Schedule time into your calendar to pursue your passions and spend time with your favorite people.

We generally follow through with tasks we schedule. When we start scheduling the very important but less urgent tasks of taking care of ourselves and connecting with the people that we care about, our stress goes down and our productivity increases.

Turn off your phone and your computer notifications, so you can accomplish your most important work .

Productivity experts have identified that many successful people choose their top three tasks to accomplish each day. I’ve used this principle to identify what my three most important tasks are to accomplish every month, then I use those as the guide for what my top three tasks each day should be.

Those three tasks are the first things that I tackle, knowing that I have limited mental energy. They are not the most urgent, but they are important. I try to schedule fifteen minutes to write every day, and I prioritize spending time with my kids in the mornings and evenings. It doesn’t always happen, but just having an awareness of these important tasks makes me far more likely to do them. Because as Covey says, “If the important is left at the mercy of the urgent, it never gets done.” 1

Do I do identify and work on my top three tasks every day? Not every day—sometimes I get busy or I forget, but on the days that I identify my top three most important tasks, even just mentally, I am far more productive. I also spend at least a few hours each month planning and scheduling my priorities, so my calendar is doing the work for me.

Recently my business coach gave me an assignment to track my time for a week, so I could see where I was spending my time and how much time I was dedicating to my identified priorities. Just knowing that I had to track the time and report back on how I was using my time made me better at devoting time to working on my top three priorities.

Maybe you want to spend some time every morning choosing tasks you will prioritize each day. Or maybe you’d prefer to spend your Friday afternoons planning your next week, or maybe the monthly approach works better for you. Whatever approach you take, if you spend a bit of time thinking about what your top three daily priorities are and schedule the time to work on them each day, you’re going to get much more done.

Most of us have heard of setting goals that are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Sensitive. I’m going to encourage you to set SMARTER goals which are:

Based on what we now know from the research, adding Engaging and Rewarding will motivate us further. When I set goals for myself or with clients, we make those goals SMARTER. We frame goals in ways that feel Engaging. A client of mine had a goal of “complete safety policy review,” and we turned it into “create the best possible policy to keep all our staff safe.” When we frame our goals so that we can see the benefits to ourselves or others, we feel much more engaged in completing them.

Then once a goal is accomplished, no matter how small it is, I encourage clients to reward themselves and celebrate that win. We discuss what would feel like a meaningful reward to each person—some of the ideas have included buying themselves chocolate, sharing their accomplishment with a group of supportive friends, planning a night out, or booking a massage to treat themselves. Remember, when we reward ourselves and celebrate our small wins, we build momentum and set ourselves up for bigger wins .

SMART goals have the word Realistic built right into them. SMART goals are meant to be obtainable. This idea is counter to what research has found—that when our goals require us to stretch, they are far more inspiring and motivating than easily achievable goals. On his podcast, Lead to Win , Michael Hyatt shares research has found that “when goals are set too low people often achieve them, but subsequent motivation and energy levels typically flag, and the goals are usually not exceeded by very much . . . difficult goals are far more likely to generate sustained enthusiasm and higher levels of performance.” 2

Often called stretch goals, challenging goals can be really inspiring and motivating, as long as we don’t put too much pressure on ourselves. A stretch goal is motivating because it’s fun to work towards meeting a significant and difficult-to-achieve goal. One caveat with setting stretch goals is that if you’re setting them at work, you need to be very aware of the past performance of the company as well as the resources that are available to you to achieve your stretch goals. 3

I suggest to my clients that they make the Realistic part of their SMARTER goal a very challenging Realistic target—that way they are clear on the goal and motivated to achieve it by stretching themselves.

Whatever our goals are—stretch, SMARTER, or some combination of the two—it’s good to break them into small, achievable steps. We often don’t even start working towards our goals because we are overwhelmed by the magnitude of completing them. But when we break things down into achievable bites, we are much more likely to start working on them—and to feel the reward of accomplishing these more attainable tasks.

I break down my big goals into daily tasks. Writing a book is a big goal. Writing two pages today is manageable. Creating a twelve-week leadership course is daunting. Building week one is doable. Making my kids feel loved and connected is an enormous and lifelong goal. Giving them a cuddle or making time to read three stories to them is an achievable daily task.

When we see one big task, our minds want to run. We see pain. When we see five achievable tasks, we see possibility and pleasure in their accomplishment. We see the reward. Our minds will run towards that. When we check off one of those tasks at the end of the day, we get a rush of satisfaction, and our reward response is strong. We feel energized about tackling the next achievable task the next day.

While writing this book, I did not have “Write Working Well ” on my to-do list. That would have been way too daunting. Instead, I had “Research for chapter one” on Monday’s to-do list and “Write chapter one draft” on Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s to-do list.

I also worked with my coach to ensure that I could have a positive, energized mindset while writing the book and focus on the engaging vision of having the book published. This approach helped me enjoy the process rather than stress about the tight deadlines I’d set for myself. Working with my coach also helped me manage my fear that I’d be exhausted and drained and kept me focused on how to stay energized and motivated. As you know, I’ve had some stress while writing the book. It’s been hard work. But, overall, this has been a positive experience that I’ve enjoyed because I’ve been working with my brain and using the strategies that I’m sharing with you.

I learned the concept of “go slow to go fast” while doing group work for my master’s degree. I hated it. I like to go fast. Really fast. But, for two years, my master’s program forced me to go slow to go fast, and I came to see the value in it. Now it’s one of my best strategies for being productive. When I slow down and take the time to plan and prioritize all my work at the beginning of a project, I move through the project far more quickly than if I rush in and start work without a plan. Even though it seems counterproductive, going slow at the beginning of a project or task is actually one of the best ways we can increase our productivity and build positive relationships .

When we take time to think through every step of a project and plan it out at the beginning it goes far more smoothly than if we race ahead with no planning at all. The same goes for the people that you are working with. Remember the research that found that we treat all strangers as a threat? Our biology reminds us that it’s extra important to take the time to get to know any new people we are working with.

When we take time to get to know one another and clarify roles and expectations for each person on the team, we can move forward with clarity and achieve far more than if we didn’t have those discussions. This approach can feel painfully slow, but I promise it will save you time later on.

I see so many teams start working on a big project without discussing roles and responsibilities, how they will work together, deal with disagreements, and manage deadlines. Two weeks down the road, everyone is incredibly frustrated, people are behind on their tasks, and no one has any idea of how to solve the problems that are arising. They started out fast but ended up going very slowly because they didn’t take the time to lay the groundwork for a smooth, planned way forward.

As a result, more often than not, these teams have to call in a consultant to help them untangle all of the frustrations, failures, and relationship damage that’s occurred. When I go to work with teams in this situation, we have to back up and clarify the roles, the tasks and responsibilities, and the processes. While I’m grateful for the work, I’d be even more grateful to be able to do that same work at the beginning of the project when people are energized and hopeful, and we could set everyone up for success.

In different presentations and courses that I deliver, I do a few fun team-building exercises to illustrate how teams work. I give the group a problem to solve in a fifteen-minute time frame. Each group always has one participant who’s an observer. The observer pays attention to how much time the team spends planning versus doing, how often the team tries to include everyone, gets input from one another, and keeps the working relationships strong.

The reason that I ask the observer to watch for these things is that these are the elements that fall apart in teamwork the most often. In most of those groups, teams get right into doing. They spend no time planning. They rush into work, and they don’t think about how they’re including the people on the team. And this lands them in trouble time and time again.

If you put the time in to go slow at the beginning of whatever work you’re doing, either in a team or on your own, you will be one thousand times more efficient as you work through the project. That’s scientifically verified research, affirmed by my years of watching people go fast and then have to do all the work over again. Just imagine, going one thousand times faster.

How often do you spend your days running from one meeting to the next, not having had any time to prepare, let alone determine whether you should even be there?

Make some time to look at your workload, priorities, and goals. Then slow down enough to do some planning. It might just make you way more energized and productive (possibly one thousand times more).

You know yourself better than any productivity expert out there. Think about times when you’ve been highly productive in the past. What conditions were in place? What time of day was your best time? Many people suggest getting up early so we can work while our brains are freshest. For me, this is a recipe for disaster. I’m a night person; I’m barely coherent in the mornings. I tried getting up an hour earlier to write. And I wrote five pages every morning. Five pages of utter crap. So now, I just wake up at my regular time and write before dealing with e-mail. Do you do your best thinking work early in the day or right after lunch or towards the end of the day? Think about what has worked really well for you in the past and how you can incorporate it into your routine.

Are you one of those morning people who can get up at five and leap right into work? If so, I’m jealous. Or do you need three cups of coffee before you can put a thought together? I feel your pain. Do you need total silence to work, or do you thrive in a busy, noise-filled environment? Do you like to plan out your work and then get into it, or is it easier for you to start on your work and then do the planning once you can see the pieces come together?

When you get clear on creating the right conditions for yourself, the work flows far more easily. You can get so much more work done in half an hour of optimal conditions (for me, that’s late morning/early afternoon and complete silence) than you can get done in three hours of terrible conditions (for me, that’s early or late in the day and any noise at all). Think about what conditions help you be the most productive, and find a way to build in at least half an hour a day of working in your perfect conditions.

I can schedule three hours to design a course in my day. And that’s it. Because that takes up all my thinking power. I can’t schedule teaching in the morning and writing in the afternoon. It doesn’t work. I’ve tried it. By the time I hit the afternoon, I’ve got nothing left. I can write for about three hours in a day, then my mind goes a little soft. But I can easily schedule a coaching session after writing because it requires a totally different type of energy.

Now that I understand how to manage my tasks by energy, focus, and attention required, I schedule my days differently. On the days that I’m designing a course in the morning, the rest of the afternoon is spent on scheduling, invoicing, or responding to e-mails—or, if I’m really Working Well , going for a swim or to a yoga class.

When we plan our workdays around focusing on our most important work, creating optimal working conditions for ourselves, and scheduling our tasks to manage our energy and attention, we dramatically increase our productivity.

We’ve talked a lot about how distracting technology can be, but, if we use it wisely, it can help us be way more productive. I know many people who use technology to great advantage. I am not one of these people (yet).

These are just a few examples. Many people who are more technologically adept than I am will have plenty suggestions for you—go and ask them. I have one client who has set a reminder on her calendar every day at three p.m. that tells her to go find someone to provide positive feedback to .

We need to start using technology for what it was designed for: to make us more efficient. Let’s stop watching cat videos (unless they make you deeply happy) and start using a project-management app to help us complete the activities that will make us more productive. Remember that those activities include taking a break, walking with a friend, or enjoying a few moments to sit quietly and breathe.

It seems like our culture has put busy people on a pedestal. We view people who have high demands and plenty of responsibilities as the picture of success. The more I force myself to slow down, the more I’m able to question this equation of “busy equals successful.”

Feeling busy increases our sense of status. After all, if we’re busy, we must be important, right? Or maybe not. Being insanely busy is not what success looks like. The most successful people in the world are not running around like chickens with their heads cut off. They own their calendars, not the other way around. They are in control of their time, and they use their time wisely.

When we can stop thinking of being busy as a badge of honor and see it instead as a symptom of insanity that’s infected our whole culture, we can step away from it.

Imagine if when someone asked you how you’re doing, you could answer, I’m great. I have lots on the go, and I’m accomplishing everything I need to. I’ve got lots of time and energy left for my life and I’m really enjoying myself. How about you?

I love the Pomodoro Technique because it can make work into a game. It was invented by developer, entrepreneur, and author Francesco Cirillo in the early nineties. He named it after the tomato-shaped timer that he used to track his work as a university student. It’s a very simple approach to getting work done by concentrating for short periods of time.

I find the Pomodoro Technique incredibly useful for creative work. I used it when writing this book. It’s easier for me to commit to a twenty-five-minute sprint than a two-hour writing session, but once I’m into it, I’ll often do the full set of pomodoros and complete two hours of writing. I also love this method because it has breaks built right into it—remember to give yourself a true break rather than checking your phone. Grab a glass of water, do a few stretches, or go for a quick walk, then go on to your next pomodoro. If you can create some time in your day to do even just one twenty-five-minute sprint, you’ll get so much more done than you would expect.

Baroque music is a form of classical music (think Bach and Handel) that has been touted as an excellent tool to enhance students’ learning and focus. The theory behind this is because baroque music is around 60 beats per minute, the same as our resting heart rate, the music puts us in a deeply relaxed state. Research has found that “baroque music creates an atmosphere of focus that leads students into deep concentration in the alpha brain wave state.” 5 Couldn’t we all use a bit more deep concentration and focus? I’ve listened to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons about three hundred times while writing this book. I’ve also played classical music on headphones in the past when I’ve worked in cubicles or open office spaces to cut out the distraction of coworkers talking.

We need other people to help us stay accountable. A manager or coworker can sometimes do that for us. The need for accountability is the reason that I work with a business coach and the reason that so many of my clients work with me: they want not only insights and growth, but also accountability, to themselves and to their work. Our coaching allows them to bring the best of themselves to work and to their lives every day.

Who helps you stay accountable, not just to your work goals but to your priorities and life goals? If you don’t have someone, find someone. Ask a coworker, hire a coach, partner up with a friend. When we have accountability built into our lives and our work, we’re much more likely to succeed. I recommend setting very clear SMARTER goals and having weekly or biweekly check-ins to see how you’re progressing. If you’re on track, take a moment to celebrate. If you’re not on track, it’s a great opportunity to explore the reasons why not and find ways to get back on track or to adapt your goals as needed.

If you can’t think of anyone who would be a good accountability partner for you, you can check out my Working Well online course, where you’ll be paired with accountability partners who will keep you on track. The course helps you create a positive mindset, take personal responsibility, and take daily action to reduce your stress and increase your focus and productivity.

You probably work with some highly productive people. Go and ask them what they do and how they manage to be so highly productive. Remember to adapt their methods to ones that work for you. If they say that they always do their best work after midnight and you know you’re an early bird, take the intent of what they are doing—creating a focused time for working at their highest productivity point—and apply it to your own situation by creating that time for yourself in the morning.

An MIT study conducted by Robert Pozen found that the most productive people had three habits. Pozen shared these habits and their associated behavior in an article in the Harvard Business Review , which can be found in the resources section. Here’s what his research found:

How can you learn from the research on what the most productive people do? Which of these habits could you adopt? Think of one or two that you could use over the next week or two and see how taking this action impacts your productivity.

We talked about taking breaks in Chapter Five as an important tool for self-care, but taking breaks is also an amazing productivity tool. Our brains aren’t capable of working endlessly, and when we give them true breaks, we’re way more productive.

Tony Schwartz, CEO of the Energy Project and author of The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working , has led studies that indicate our energy rhythm cycles every ninety minutes; those people who take a break every ninety minutes are the most productive. His entire life’s work is dedicated to helping people manage their work by energy rather than by time because energy is a renewable resource. He says, “Like time, energy is finite; but unlike time, it is renewable. . . . A new and growing body of multidisciplinary research shows that strategic renewal—including daytime workouts, short afternoon naps, longer sleep hours, more time away from the office and longer, more frequent vacations—boosts productivity, job performance and, of course, health.” 7

Taking breaks is the one productivity tool I can proudly say that I’ve started using frequently and effectively since learning about it. I never used to take breaks. I’d always work through lunch, and the idea of taking a break during the workday seemed insane—how could I take a break when I had so much to do?

Since experiencing how much more productive I can be by taking a break, the days of “powering through” are over. Mainly because it doesn’t work as well as taking a break .

Let’s get out of the habit of pushing ourselves to work even when we are past capacity. When we recognize that taking time to recharge and replenish our energy will make us more effective, we can make different choices about how we spend our time and energy. We could take some of our less productive working time to build good working relationships, read a book, exercise, or go for a walking meeting. This approach will make you so much more productive than sitting at your desk and trying to push past your brain’s capacity for productivity.

I’ve worked with a lot of clients who have been very skeptical about the value of taking breaks but after just a few days of scheduling regular breaks, they are complete converts. Commit to scheduling at least two to three breaks a day for the next three days and watch your productivity skyrocket. Remember that a true break requires you to get away from screens and stop thinking about work—try to get outside for a bit of fresh air or do some stretches. If you work in an archaic workplace, you might want to take in some of Tony Schwartz’s research to help management understand just how effective taking a break can make you.

When we take breaks, we are working smarter—not just for our bodies and our energy, but for our brains. I took many breaks while working on this book when I normally would have just powered through. Those breaks allowed my subconscious to work on the problems I was having with the writing, and, more often than not, when I returned from yoga or my swim, I had the solution I needed.

David Rock shares in his book Your Brain at Work that Mark Beeman, one of the world’s experts on the neuroscience of insights, found that “about 40% of the time people solve problems logically, trying one idea after another until something clicks. The other 60% of the time an insight experience occurs. In insight, the solution comes to you suddenly and is surprising, and yet when it comes, you have a great deal of confidence in it. The answer seems obvious once you see it.” 8

We’ve all experienced this. On your morning drive to work, the perfect solution to the problem you’ve been working on all week pops into your mind. Or, when you’re in the shower, you suddenly know exactly how to solve the issue you’ve been struggling with for weeks.

I know so many people who won’t stop working, even to go to the bathroom. I used to be one of them. Go take a pee, for crying out loud! It just might generate the best insight ever—and if it doesn’t, at least you won’t pee your pants.

Hopefully, these productivity hacks have given you some insight into how to work smarter, not harder.

When we’re going slow to go fast and taking plenty of breaks, we’re going to be far more productive than if we consistently push ourselves past our mental and physical capacity to get work done. By setting SMARTER goals, identifying and working on our top three priorities, knowing how we work best, and focusing on our most important work, we can accomplish more with ease.

When we’re intentional about creating a life that fulfills us, we’ll be more satisfied than if we fall into the overachiever’s trap of doing, doing, doing. Let’s not fall into the trap of getting so busy with the urgent but unimportant tasks in life that we miss out on what really matters.

Take a few minutes to think about what is most important to you and how you can be more productive, so you’re able to make time for the people and activities you care about. We can use productivity tools to help us live fulfilling lives that allow us both the time and energy for every aspect of our lives.