Power Up Your Productivity
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year!
With the roses you’re smelling
And everyone telling you be of good cheer
It’s the most wonderful time of the year.”
Yes, friends, World Productivity Day is on June 20th! How can you prepare for the happiest holiday of all?
You could:
Make up things to do to fill your planner chock-full of stuff, whether it’s important or not
Download every productivity app you can find, because isn’t it GREAT to make your life more complex than it already is?
Ignore your loved ones all day, because you definitely don't want those lazy goobers ruining everything
Cancel your personal training sessions and nutritionist appointments because you have stuff to do and your health can wait
Set your alarm for 3:30 am, because we all know that only losers and the lazy get up at normal hours of the day
And the number one tip for improving productivity in the workplace: move your desk next to your toilet. Attach a hiking bladder full of water and now you don’t even have to get up from your desk! Win-win!
Please tell me you recognized the sarcasm. And if not, I really, really hope the toilet desk idea made you go “hmmm”.
Doing lots of “stuff” does not make a workplace productive
I know so many business owners who feel guilty when they take time for themselves, or when they have a free hour. They feel bad if they actually leave work in the evening and do something that is not work or profit-related.
Because busy-ness is a badge of honor in our culture, and having downtime is frowned upon. Insisting that because you can check emails at all hours of the day or night means that you should is a problem.
According to American culture, if you’re not bowing down to and scrambling for the almighty dollar – and lots of them – then what are you even doing? How meaningful is your life if you take breaks from work every once in a while?
This attitude is morally wrong. I mean, I want to make a buck too (hey, let’s discuss my services) but life is not all about profit. Even if you’re an entrepreneur.
Working all hours burns you out, whether or not you enjoy the work. And for those of us who are bootstrapping, you’re probably still doing some things that you don’t enjoy because they have to get done. Which can make burnout even more likely.
And here’s the counter-intuitive thing that is hiding in plain sight. You want to make money? Have an impact? Have a meaningful and profitable business? You’ll be more productive and accomplish more when you DON’T work all hours of the day – when you take breaks, attend to your health, play games, move your butt, etc.
When you do all those supposedly nonproductive things, what you’re actually doing is filling up your productivity tank so you don’t drain it so fast. When you work with your brain in the ways that a) it prefers to work and b) conserves energy, then you actually accomplish more.
You can be busy and have a cultural badge of honor, or you can be productive, but you can’t have both.
Focusing only on profit means less productivity in the workplace
Last year around this time, I went on a trip to visit my mom’s family, staying a couple of days with a cousin and a couple of days with each aunt. It was nice to see family, and I even met some I hadn’t met before or had only seen when I was very little.
One night, we were playing Settlers of Catan. My cousin’s college-age son got to a point where he just couldn’t win, and he quit because “There’s no value to me playing this.” Honestly, I was shocked.
Bad sportsmanship for one thing. But seriously, leaving a game because there’s no benefit to playing the game? It’s a game with your family, there’s no cost-benefit or SWOT analysis to it.
Because there is a benefit to playing games, even when you’re losing. I wasn’t in quite as bad a position as he was, but I could see I wasn’t going to win either. Yet I was hanging out with family, and while we played we talked and laughed and caught up with each other.
I was a newbie to the game, so I could pick up some strategies from the other players. The specifics were particular to that game, but in the big picture it applies to all different games. Exercising the little gray cells (as Agatha Christie’s Hercules Poirot would have it) outside work brings cognitive benefits too.
Pretty much everything I’m saying here runs counter to what we’ve all been taught. Most of the culture is indifferent to how the human brain works as long as money is being made somewhere.
If you don’t know how the brain actually works, then bad productivity advice might make sense. Take, for example, the insistence on getting up early. (And take it somewhere else, please.) That trick will work if you are a lion sleep chronotype and naturally wake up early so you’re able to do your cognitively demanding work earlier in the morning.
But if you’re one of the other three chronotypes, not only are you going to be constantly tired, you’re not going to be more productive. Your thinky work time is still going to be later in the day. What exactly are you going to do for all that time when you’re barely half-awake?
What your brain needs for a productive day
You get the biggest boost of productivity from making sure that your productivity tank is filled. Your brain is not a machine, much less a computer, but like machines, your brain needs good quality inputs and regular maintenance.
Looking for optimum performance? Here’s what a human brain needs to run at its best (which means the productivity in the workplace you’ve been looking for.)
Time to flush waste out of the cells, encode learning from the day, strengthen certain neural pathways and prune back others, support the immune system, repair tissue, etc. How do you get all this? 7-8 hours of sleep a night.
Oxygen-rich blood to fuel performance, which comes from moving your *ss.
Nutritious fuel for energy all day – I think I gave that away with the word “nutritious”. And yes, your brain needs healthy food.
Time for creativity, and that comes from NOT scheduling every hour of every day. Instead, periodically doing nothing and even -- dare I say it -- being bored.
Rest after hard work, which means small brain breaks throughout the day.
Time with others. Humans are social animals and that is how we survived, so spending time with other people is necessary for the brain to function. No, so-called “social” media doesn’t count (there’s nothing social about it). You need to be in person, call, or video conference if you’re not located close to each other.
Time to play, which is not just for little kids and kittens and puppies! Human brains thrive on games, activities that you enjoy, and things that are not related to work.
If it’s good for the brain, it’s good for productivity.
Recap (tl; dr):
Do not move your desk next to your toilet to be more productive! Instead, learn how to work with your brain to get the productivity boost you’re looking for.
Feel like there’s not enough time in the day? Set up your free consultation here to see how I can help you reclaim your time and work with your brain instead of against it.