To do more, you have to do less

Things always get done more effectively when you focus on them, but there are just so many things that you have to multi-task, right?

How do you reconcile this paradox? Here’s a recent productivity adventure…

Like you, I have more things to do on my various lists than I can get through in a reasonable amount of time. I can identify many of these as ‘backburner’ tasks, but unfortunately I can also identify many as ‘important’. So even if I blow out the backburner tasks, I still end up with too many important tasks.

Recently, I managed to prioritise my list of really important projects down to 7 projects. I decided that I would identify the next action for each and begin to progress them all.

But then I thought about it and tried to project (no pun intended) what would happen if I I took this approach:

For the sake of simplifying the exercise, we’ll assume that each project was made up of 4 1-day tasks and I was working 7 days per week on them.

Pushing ahead with all projects one day at a time, my productivity would look like this:

So the first important project, project A, would finish in week 4, as would all the projects. i.e. NONE of them finish before week 4.

Now, these are important projects, and my definition of ‘important’ projects means that they may well relate to business or financial outcomes. So what if the completion of Project A was worth $10,000? This means I’ll get that $10,000 in 4 weeks. If all the projects were like this then week 4 would be a GREAT week, wouldn’t it?

But what if I focused instead? What if I took one project at a time and saw it through before moving onto the next? Then my productivity would look like this:

Now, I get at least 1 project payoff EVERY WEEK! This has to be better doesn’t it? Even if it’s not a financial payoff, we’re talking about important projects, so this means we achieve something important every week, rather than having 3 weeks of nothing then a big payoff. Furthermore, every single project finishes before it would have in the multi-tasking approach, except Project G, which finishes at the same time.

So what gives? Why do we get suckered into multi-tasking at all? So far I’ve come up with a couple of thoughts on this:

1. We lack the ability to decide which project the highest priority – we can’t work out which one to start with
2. Some projects don’t lend themselves to this kind of focus e.g. getting fit – you can’t get fit in one week – you have to build fitness over time
3. It feels very difficult to identify something as important and choose to do nothing about it.

The reality is though, that trying to move too many projects forward will mean that none of them get done quickly. When that happens, it’s hard to feel productive. You need to close projects to feel really productive.

I’ve been trying this approach:

1. Try to decide your prioritisation criteria without considering the actual projects you have on. E.g. You might decide that relationships are top priority.
2. Apply these criteria to the important projects on your list. E.g. organising a family holiday might take priority over doing your tax return for example if relationships are top priority.
3. If you still can’t decide, pick one at random and defer the rest.
4. Do it.

The good thing about this approach is that it really doesn’t matter which project you start with. If you realise that you didn’t choose the best one to start with, just finish it anyway, then move on to the one you should have started with. They’ll both be finished faster than if you’d multi-tasked them.

The other payoff that I’ve found is that once I’ve decided to defer a project, I feel much more ‘in the zone’ about the project that I have decided to focus on. It’s all good.

Best productivity book of 2007

The most significant book that I read last year and the one that really turned the lights on for me, was The Slight Edge, by Jeff Olsen.

It explains the difference between those people who seem to have it all, and those who don’t – and it explains it in terms of the small, seemingly insignificant but consistently regular actions that successful people take.

Importantly, it shows that these actions are not particularly difficult in themselves to do, but unfortunately they are easy not to do as well. Sadly, for most people, this simple fact is the reason they don’t do these actions. Success is the resulting accumulation of all these action that have been performed consistently.

Whether it’s a little daily exercise, or telling your spouse you love them every day, or saving a little money from each pay packet, it’s the regularity and consistency that leads to success.

They say “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”. You can’t eat 5000 apples the day you find out you have bowel cancer and think it’s all going to be OK. It’s just too late then.

And of course, it applies to success at everything – relationships, wealth, health, work and wisdom and more.

I think the most interesting idea in the book is the idea that you’re on one of two curves. You’re either on the good curve – where you are doing the regular positive actions that compound so that the benefits start to go exponential – like compound interest. Or you are on the bad curve – where negative actions compound negatively. BTW there is no ‘neither’. Doing nothing is the bad curve.

So clearly, this book is all about how good habits cause success to accelerate over time. One message I took from it is that if I want to be more productive, I need to perform a positive productivity action every day. It needs to be a habit. A Productivity Habit.

My first productivity habit was simply to track the activity in each of the areas of my life that I wanted some movement in.

For example, I ruled up a diary that I update each night like this:

		Health		Wealth		Wisdom	Relationships	Work
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

 

Before I go to sleep, I update it with the positive actions that I took that day in each area. It’s a simple thing, but I can immediately see when I’ve dropped the ball somewhere. Easy to do, easy not to do.

It sounds a bit dorky, doesn’t it? Well too bad. Since I’ve started doing this I’ve noticed how much the areas with the most activity have started to improve.

Most people don’t consciously attend to this kind of activity. Most people end up with average health at best, average relationships at best and average wealth at best. Remember, doing nothing is on the negative curve.

I don’t want to end up like most people, so I’m working myself away from average one daily action at a time.

Recommendation: Buy the book.

The pointy end of multi-tasking – don’t answer the phone!

This post extends on the idea of working towards the pointy end of the bell curve. I.e. If you consciously do things differently to most people you will not end up the same as most people – average.

I’ve been thinking about multi-tasking, and conclude that for computers it’s a good thing. For people, it’s a bad thing. I think the reason is all about processing capacity.

Generally, computers have more processing capacity than they need, so it makes sense to chug away on several things at once.

Even though the human brain has a lot of capacity – we can walk, breath, sweat, digest and age all at the same time – the limiting factor seems to be our attention. Our attention is almost always directed at something – it doesn’t have spare capacity. It is almost always operating at full capacity, which is when multi-tasking fails to be efficient.

So why do we subject ourselves to so much multi-tasking? Why do we set up our work environments to allow so much interruption?

I’ve posted before on email, but what about Instant Messenger, the phone, SMS, Twitter – even people just walking up to you and asking you stuff when you’re trying to get something done?

If most people just let it happen, then in order to move towards the pointy end of the curve, I need to start to NOT let it happen don’t I? Obviously within reason, but maybe introducing a small amount of control of these interruptions will start me on the way to the pointy end…

Try this:

1. Choose what you think is your most productive hour of the day. For this hour:
   1. Shut down messenger
   2. Divert your phone – desk and cellular – to message bank (don’t let it ring – that breaks your concentration)
   3. Hang a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign or some other indicator where people approaching your desk can see it
   4. Block out this time in your calendar – accept no meetings
2. Enjoy the feeling of focused, uninterrupted, productive time
3. If people get miffed that you’re unavailable, put a bit of extra effort outside of this hour into helping them with their enquiry.

Remember to un-divert your phone

Just one hour per day like this is one hour of focused productivity more than most people spend – and that will push you towards the pointy end.

The Pointy End of Email Productivity

If most people struggle with being really productive – and I believe they do, then one way to be more productive is to simply identify what most people do, and avoid doing that. Have I stated a universal truth that was previously invisible to me? I’ve called this line of thought ‘the pointy end’, because it’s all about trying to get myself into the point end of the bell curve (normal distribution curve). If most people are in the middle of the curve (which they are by definition), then if I do what they are not doing, it will put me at one of the ends. Obviously I want to be at the good end J

I thought I would do some experimentation in the workplace.

I observed that most people (including myself):

• leave their email open all day, and enable the pop-up toast alert to pop-up and chime whenever an email arrives. I also observe that they reflexively look at the pop up, and more times than not, flick over to email to read the whole message.
• answer their phone when it rings, even if they are in deep concentration and are annoyed by the call.
• allow themselves to be interrupted by colleagues, and will allow that interruption to continue for a surprisingly long time e.g. 10-15 minutes.

Experiment 1 – Close email.

I decided to close my email for periods of the day. I’ve seen this discussed on various blogs, and seemed like the easiest place to start. I decided to check it first thing in the morning, just before lunch mid afternoon, and just before I go home.

Wow, it’s hard! I realise that I’ve accidentally established the BAD HABIT of checking email every few minutes. At first I didn’t realise what was happening, but I would just notice myself scanning through all the open programs on my PC. I then realised that I was surfing for email!

It has taken a couple of days to get the rhythm of this, but I’m discovering great tracts of productive time appearing in my days. I invite you to try it for yourself. At first it feels like skipping school (that’s a guilt thing for me), but then it feels liberating!

I haven’t experimented with phone and colleague interruptions yet, they will be the subject of future posts.

I realise I need to do 2 habit-related things:

1. Breaking the habit of checking email every few minutes. This will involve getting into the habit of checking email at certain times of the day, processing the email, then closing email (we only get snail mail 5 times a week – so it must be possible!)
2. Breaking the habit of using my phone as the email security device i.e. not ‘cheating’ and checking email on that device

So, since a habit takes 21 days, I’m committing to this regime for the remainder of June.

Any other tips/suggestions/strategies are welcome!