If you google (conjugate the verb children – ‘I google, you google, she googles, he googles…’) ‘Productivity Tips’ you get over 14 million hits. I estimate each has on average 7 tips, which gives us a grand total of nearly 100 million tips to sink our teeth into. Brilliant. What a veritable feast of material to make us faster, better, and more efficient.
Satire aside for a brief moment, quick tips that give us a little boost are often the most important things we can do. We don’t have the time to change our entire system on a regular basis. A quick skim through the many blogs in our esteemed productivity community will show you a number of common tips that are bread-and-butter to most experts – these are the core things they try and do on a daily basis.
But I have a problem with some of these. I think some of the most popular tips are painfully hard to implement. This fact is hidden behind their outward simplicity, and the tenacity of some of our peers. Below is a list of the top 5 productivity tips that I struggle with the most:
1) All E-mail Inboxes Empty
Every last one of them. Even the Hotmail account you only check every time it expires? Not one item in any of them left to remind you to do something. Or has the thought of wading through and filing 2,500 e-mails meant this tip has made it only as far as your Someday/Maybe list? It isn’t easy – it takes a lot of time upfront, discipline thereafter, and an ability to not feel unloved upon seeing a vacant inbox. I’ll admit being close on this, but certainly no cigar.
2) Eight Hours Sleep a Night
Really? People actually manage this? I have never succeeded in making the math work – up at 6am so I need to be asleep by 10pm. Meaning bed by 9.30pm having gone upstairs at 9pm, so cooking and eating dinner starts at 7.30pm. Bath and put baby to bed from 6.30pm then which means… hang on, I don’t get home until 8pm? Throw in my 10 month old wanting to play with Daddy around 3am, and frequent bouts of insomnia, I really feel I am fighting loosing battle with this one.
3) Cut Down on Caffeine
Have you not read number 2? I like to think of caffeine as a major food group, and feel it is important to get at least five portions every day. Most people’s lives are not predictable – the kids woke up at night, friends came around last night and couldn’t be persuaded to leave until late, you need to be up early to drive to another city, etc. This lack of predictability makes it much harder to keep a consistent body clock. Which is where the triple expresso comes in.
4) Only Check E-mails 3 Times a Day
This is an exceptionally good way of getting to spend more time with your family. Sadly, through unemployment rather than any significant productivity gains. Most businesses I have worked in or with treat e-mail in leu of picking up the phone or a two minute face-to-face (a woeful cultural change in my opinion). As such, employees are expected to respond to these inane messages with the same frequency as they are sent. This is why they give people Blackberrys – so you can use those toilet breaks to full effect. I have honestly tried checking only once an hour on many occasion – and the world always falls apart.
5) Take a Power Nap
And where you you suggest I do this? I know colleagues who have caught up on lost sleep in toilet cubicles, in the CEO’s office, in stationery closets, and in their car outside the office (the latter was surprisingly the most embarrassing as a concerned co-worker raised the alarm thinking they were committing suicide). But non of these are going to get you the rest and relaxation you need to to have any benefit. Power naps are not the realm of office workers.
Conclusion
So what is my point, other than justifying my own inadequacies? Productivity is not an end point – it is a spectrum upon which we slide back-and-forth moment-by-moment. The wealth of quality advice out there is astounding, but we have limited time to digest and implement before the cost exceeds the benefit. When you read productivity material, challenge it with your personal situation, and start with those things that you can get flying quickly. And only then should you tackle that inbox…
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I think you’ve narrowed productivity down a bit too much. To me, it’s about the goals you accomplish by being more efficient. Those goals are either your own, or goals that are dictated by an employer, but that you embrace (because you enjoy your job, want a raise, …)
This means it does not apply to tasks that are forced upon you (customer enquiries that land in your inbox without warning, short notice assignments…)
You suggest that productivity tips should be seen in the light of one’s current situation. My counter suggestion would be that you should apply it to the part of your situation you have control over, or the time you have chosen to dedicate to a goal of your own.
If you have two hours a week to dedicate to that goal, it shouldn’t be too hard to limit email consultations.
At the office, you have to do what you are told, so it doesn’t qualify, unless you can settle arrangements with your boss and/or customers.
Good luck with that.
Thanks for your comment Charles – interesting thoughts! For what it is worth, I think you need to treat what you have to do and what you do through choice together. I would define ‘personal situation’ very broadly as a result. What is important is that you don’t broad-brush apply productivity ideas to your world just because it works in someone elses, but you consider its applicability to the demands and goals you have. For your comment, I think I am right in saying you are able to say “I have no control over x, y, and z as it is driven by superiors/customers” and as a concequence you focus your effort on what you can affect – ie. you are adjusting what you take on board in light of your personal situation!
I enjoyed this post a lot! Very well written and reasoned.
Often, when I read productivity tips, I think to myself “did they actually try any of these?”. I’m glad to say, though, that checking e-mail only a couple of times per day works for me. The only business I’m involved in, that requires instant responses uses phone-calls for this kind of thing (lucky me).
Hi Shane – thanks for he comments, and glad you enjoyed the post. Would be interest to hear whether you get voicemail backing up if you are on the phone a lot. Would this cause the same problem as masses of e-mail? I must admit I have had days when I finish a call to find 3 voicemails, and I get another 2 whilst I am listening to the first 3!
Rich