Sometimes we sit at our desk or stand in the middle of the room having just completed a task. We feel lost. What should we do? Where is our task list?
There is a phrase I’ve heard many times. It helps me focus when I’m either at a loss of what’s next or when there are so many pressures that I’m overwhelmed.
Do the next right thing.
This combines the command to do something with the moral imperative to do the right thing.
Now, our mind can operate to focus our attention.
I still remember the theme of the first personal development speaker at the first management conference I attended–TRY…EASY.
Try to do a good job. Try to get it done. But don’t kill yourself doing it.
This was probably 10 years before Yoda told Luke Skywalker, “Do or do not. There is no try.” But that’s a different story.
That speaker gave all the attendees a DayTimer planner. I’ve been through so many different systems over the following 40 years, I should have saved them and started a productivity museum. The last thing I used was computer-based called Nozbe, loosely based on David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology. I even have a category on this web site for productivity.
Some people, perhaps many people especially in Silicon Valley of the 90s and aughts, following productivity guru Frederick Taylor thought of productivity as “how much more can I get done in my 70-hour work week”.
Tim Ferriss published The 4-Hour Work Week in 2007. It was sort of an anti-productivity book in the sense above. Cal Newport somewhat later published Deep Work. Both of these talked about getting the important things done while leaving time for hobbies, family, leisure, and the like. That is, until they were co-opted by the “how much more can I get done in my 70-hour work week” crowd.
These days I have a list of things I need to accomplish. I work on these for a set number of hours a day, then set aside other time for other things–reading, guitar, whatever.
We don’t need more. We need enough. Or, as a retired US Navy SEAL taught me, “Slow is easy; easy is fast.”
TRY…EASY
Jon asks, “What do we have time for? For what do we have time?”
Oliver Burkeman leads us through time and the use of time in his latest book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.
Perhaps you went into the rabbit warren of time management and productivity gains like I did. Some ideas were admirable. Choose your goals, and that sort of thing.
Burkeman warns “productivity is a trap.”
David Allen of Getting Things Done fame has us make a list and do the next task.
As Burkeman summarizes his research, he lifts a thought from psychologist Carl Jung, “Do the next best thing.”
What is the best thing you could be doing in the next half-hour?
Slow is smooth; smooth is fast.
Navy SEAL Saying
I heard a story of a guy who got into fitness, bought a bicycle, and began riding a route as fast as he could. One day he was somewhat more tired and rode at a little slower, yet more comfortable pace. His time for that route went from 43 minutes to 45 minutes.
I’ve noticed over the time of my life that I’ve stopped trying to do everything in a great rush. When driving I consciously stop and pause at stop signs (unlike the guy I saw this morning who blew through a stop sign making a right turn in front of oncoming traffic not far away–guess he trusted the other guy to slow down). Yes, I still commonly drive at speed limit + 5, but I no longer tempt more speeding tickets like 30 years ago.
Take a moment several times a day to pause, breathe, relax, refocus, then return to work. And accomplish more.
This season of the year finds me with the pressure of finding referees for soccer matches. This year has been especially hard. Before the season even began, I lost 20% of the officials on my list due to health, retirement, jobs, or moving away. I gained one person. Not a good long-term trend.
I could sit there and stare at my screen that said 90+ games lacking a referee and panic. Or, I could just breathe and tackle them one at a time. Solve this one and move to the next.
Slow is smooth; smooth is fast.
More gets accomplished; my attitude remains calm.
Try it, you’ll like it.
Slow down
You move too fast
You gotta make
The morning last, just
Kickin’ down
The cobble stones
Looking for fun
And feeling groovy.
Paul Simon, 59th Street Bridge Song
Henry Ford imagined a new way to build cars. Productivity per person in manufacturing increased tremendously in the 20th Century and prosperity followed.
By the 1980s continuing until today, much work is done by “knowledge workers” sitting in front of computer screens. No one (or very few) are imagining new ways to do this work. Productivity lags, people are frustrated, work never ends thanks to the always-on mobile phone.
Well, one person is thinking about it. Cal Newport. I am in the midst of his latest book, A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload. His previous best seller changed the way many of us thought about work–Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.
You can sort of summarize the latest book with a quote from a 50s-60s comic strip by Walt Kelly, Pogo. One time, Pogo, the title character–an opossum in the Okefenokee Swamp, said, “The hurrieder I go, the behinder I get.”
In this latest book, I’ve gotten to a section where, after discussing Henry Ford and increasing productivity making Model Ts, brought up the story of a German entrepreneur Lasse Rheingans. He looked at the way people worked in his small company. He then told the employees–you will work 5-hour days. Come in about 8 and leave about 1. When you leave, you’re done. No more work. No more checking emails. No more on-call. You should be able to get all the important work for the company done with 5 5-hour days per week.
How?
No social media during those five hours. Severely restricted meetings. Severely restricted email checking. Two years down the pike, the concept is still working.
He did hire some outside coaches to help the employees through withdrawal. They showed that it was in their best interest to not check all those distracting apps. They also encouraged stress reduction through mindfulness and meditation. And physical health through exercise such as Yoga.
Rheingans’s goal was for everyone to slow down; to approach their work more deliberately and with less frantic action; to realize that they were’ running all the time without getting anywhere.’
Cal Newport
I bet that no matter what we’re up to, this is sound advice.
Pause. Breathe. Ahhhhhh.
Jim was my boss for perhaps almost two years. He was the engineer’s engineer. Pleasant, but dull; methodical; never rushed, but accomplished more than any two people I’ve known; could think more about work that other people should be doing than anyone I’ve met.
Made me think about this thought from Dallas Willard, who once said one of the defining characteristics of Jesus’ life was that he was unhurried.
Similarly, John Wesley said, “Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry; because I never undertake any more work than I can go through with perfect calmness of spirit.”
I have tried to inculcate that lack of hurry into my life. When much younger even as a child, I rushed through everything. Things would not get done to completion. Accidents would happen. I’d wind up spending more time because I’d skipped a crucial step and had to go back.
These days, it’s more like “don’t rush me, I’ll get to it when I get to it, but I will have thought it through before I start and (often) do it correctly.”
You can’t rush wisdom. You have to live through experiences and then learn to slow down in order to accomplish more.
Peter Drucker, the famed management consultant, once noted that effectiveness should be cultivated rather than efficiency.
I am a productivity geek. I follow (mostly) David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology using an app called Nozbe.
But what good is it to check off many items on your todo list if they are not the most important things?
Try Make Time: How To Focus On What Matters Every Day by Knapp and Zeratsky. The authors worked at Google Ventures. One previously worked on gmail development and the other on YouTube development.
They introduce the concept of the daily Highlight. Either the night before or first thing in the morning determine your highlight of the day–the most important task/project of the day. The thing that, upon reflection at the end of the day, will have brought the most joy or satisfaction.
Achieving Laser focus on the highlight becomes the next most important thing. Perhaps you block a period of time on your calendar for working on the highlight. That is one of many tips on achieving Laser.
How we pay attention to our Energy is the third part of the process. Followed by Reflection which completes the feedback loop.
Jake and JZ (as they are called throughout the book) pack tons of tips in the various sections. Some of these you will find useful, others sound strange.
You will find this book a useful resource as you move from merely efficient to becoming effective.
Those who find themselves living the modern life, something that is pretty much global now, most likely are not getting enough sleep.
Sleep is a time when the body and brain repairs and rejuvenates. Depriving yourself of sufficient sleep deprives your body and mind of the nourishment it needs to function well and with health.
When I turn to the ancient spiritual mentors the problem they ascribe to sleep is not getting enough–it is oversleeping. And then upon waking not being in a proper frame of mind and spirit for the day’s first tasks.
John Climacus says that sleep is a natural state, but that sleeping too late or during prayers (he was writing to a monastic audience–readers seeking spiritual enlightenment) is a habit. A bad habit. One to be overcome.
Ancient peoples ascribed things we call emotions or urges to demons–spiritual beings whose task it is to drive us away from the spiritual path.
John talks of the demon that tempts us to stay in bed when the alarm has sounded to get us up. Other demons (in his language) prevent us from focusing on our morning prayers and meditation.
You would find it difficult to find someone who leads a successful life who goes to bed early and rises late. You may be a “morning” person or a “night owl”, but in reality rising early is merely a habit that can be cultivated. What did Benjamin Franklin tell us, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
Your work rhythm may be best earlier or later, but the daily habit of rising early to read, pray, and meditate lays the foundation for success.
Listening to a couple of guys chatting on a podcast about productivity sent me into my library to scan a good book I’ve read a couple of times–Essentialism by Greg McKeown.
The book is sort of an evangelistic message for helping us become more productive, more effective, and less stressed while doing it.
He talks about some classic things like learning to say no, focusing on what’s important, eliminating extraneous tasks and effort, watching your health, and the like.
But McKeown dropped this little gem on me:
Think of it as something you are. It is a different way–a simpler way–of doing everything. It becomes a lifestyle. It becomes an all-encompassing approach to living and leading. It becomes the essence of who we are.
I thought about this for a while.
Isn’t being a follower of Jesus like that?
It is not politics.
It is not singing a few songs with people we know and listening to a preacher once a week–most weeks.
It is not proving I’m better than someone else.
It is not about separating the sheep from the goats before the final judgement.
On the other hand…
It is following Matthew 25–feeding the hungry, healing the sick, visiting the prisoner.
It is like the “Good Samaritan.”
It is living out our spiritual gifts every day.
It is treating everyone we meet with respect and the love of God.
It is going the second mile.
It is becoming one with God just like our teacher was.
It is a way of life.
Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, is back with another book Smarter, Faster, Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business. This is another well researched book full of scientific research but told in compelling stories.
Duhigg is a talented writer, but I’m not 100% sure that he always hits his point. However, we can learn about motivation, decision-making, power of teams, focus, goal setting (something I’ve learned to shun, but that’s another topic for another day), and more.
I’m only half-way through the book, but I’ve gleaned some insights for personal development.
He leads with motivation. We think of motivation as either something people are born with or something an authority figure forces people into.
Motivation is more like a skill, akin to reading or writing, that can be learned and honed. Scientists have found that people can get better at self-motivation if they practice the right way. The trick, researchers say, is realizing that a prerequisite to motivation is believing we have authority over our actions and surroundings. To motivate ourselves, we must feel like we are in control.
Duhigg tells stories as examples such as residents in a “nursing home” who thrive by rebelling against the immense set of rules and restrictions. They rearranged their rooms out of the standard configuration. And when cabinets were fastened to the wall, they found crowbars and tore them loose.
One way to prove to ourselves that we are in control is by making decisions.
Duhigg describes how the Marine Corp. changed its training to force recruits to make decisions. As they made decisions, they gained confidence.
I read this and thought about how in just about my entire life I’ve been just slightly rebellious. I could talk about one of my brothers being more rebellious, but he reads this blog, so I can’t tell stories 😉
But I almost never went over a line into open rebellion. And you could play Freudian psychologist and probe my relationships with my father or mother. Good luck with that. But I have always been determined to go my own way.
I lost motivation at university when I discovered that I’d never be actually designing and building electronic circuits. That is what I did on my own as a high school kid (instead of studying Latin like I should have been). So, I just said I’ll go elsewhere. Eventually I got deeply involved with computers and a whole career opened.
That was mild. I basically formed my own curriculum at the university–philosophy, literature, politics, math, languages, accounting (huh?), writing. And it was all to my later benefit. But my professor who approved all this kept asking my what my major was. “Getting out of school with a degree,” I’d reply
We should applaud a child who shows defiant, self-righteous stubbornness and reward a student who finds a way to get things done by working around the rules.
It served me well. And I was introverted in my rebelliousness. Even today. But something to think about even as an adult. Motivation is a learned skill that we hone by making our own decisions.
Gary Mintchell
Faith Venture 