Burnout Busting Productivity Hacks

Mastering productivity is the secret to keeping the Burnout wolves away. The internet is awash with hackneyed advice such as just prioritise or get up at 5am. These have their place but most don’t follow through with hands-on tips to bring this to life. Today Years Old is different because that’s what we’re going to do now. By the end of this blog, you’ll be armed with a toolbox of actions you can implement to immediately boost productivity of ‘meaningful work’ and track results leaving you feeling more fulfilled, more productive and dare I say it…happier.

Picture the scene: it’s Monday. Maybe you woke up feeling excited about a new week. And then you opened your emails and started your to do list. Is it Friday already?

Now it’s Tuesday. Tuesday=Monday’s leftovers + Tuesday’s list. Now it’s Wednesday. Wednesday=Tuesday’s leftovers + Wednesday’s list. And so on until, by 6pm Friday, there’s still things left over from Monday. Unlike the lottery, the to-do list rollover doesn’t deal such an exciting jackpot. It’s Friday evening, you’ve only done half the to-do list, the dishes have piled up and that run you meant to go for hasn’t happened. That tidal wave is back and you can feel Burnout creeping in again. You throw your hands up in despair: “if only I had more time!”

I was Today Years Old when I learnt I do have time. And you will be Today Years Old when you’re empowered to see you do too.

A lot of what I’m going to share is inspired by Tim Ferris’s book The 4 Hour Work Week (4HWW) and my interpretation of his advice. This isn’t intended to copy or replace his words and I’d recommend you read it for yourself too.  In this book he introduces us to two key concepts that underpin everything to do with productivity in the workplace: work for work’s sake and Parkinson’s Law.

Before I explain those, let’s get one thing straight: being busy isn’t a badge of honour. How often do you hear “busy!” in response to “how’s things?”. Maybe you’re guilty of it too, I know I have been. But Tim challenges this concept by saying “busyness is a form of laziness”. Ouch. That hits hard. When we’re used to working in a culture that encourages, no, requires us to be busy to validate our professional worth, this stings. We’re trained to believe the opposite of busy must be…nothing? Emptiness? Well, if we believe Tim for a moment, then I’d say the opposite of ‘busy’ is ‘productive’. Hear me out.

Tim claims that most of our working day is filled with “work for work’s sake” (W4WS). W4WS is all the ‘stuff’ we do mindlessly that isn’t unimportant enough to completely ignore but not important enough to make us leap out of bed. It certainly doesn’t need much brain power, just enough to avoid embarrassing typos. Your average email is an excellent example of this. We’ll see what to do with W4WS in a moment.

The other important concept is Parkinson’s Law. This is the idea that a task swells to take up the time allotted. Let’s make it simple: if someone says “can you do this report in a week” the report will take you…a week. But let’s say your boss comes and asks for exactly the same report only this time in two hours. The report will take…you guessed it. Two hours.

Now let’s put these two ideas together: the majority of the work we do is work for work’s sake and that work doesn’t have a pressing deadline (because it’s in the no man’s land of importance). It’s easy to see how not just our working days but our whole working lives become an endless drag of unfulfilling busyness. And then we retire. And then we die. Very cheerful. So can we do anything about it? Yes we can. We can do it right now.

Having understood what productivity is not, now let’s break down what it is. You can read Tim’s book for yourself but I like to summarise this as the Productivity Equation:

Productivity = Efficiency + Effectiveness

I’m defining productivity as “the volume of ‘meaningful work’ you complete” (although this term is worthy of a post in itself Tim neatly describes ‘meaningful work’ as “work that excites you”), efficiency as “how quickly you complete it”, and effectiveness as “the value-add of the task”.

Let’s explore this in more detail. I think this productivity definition is self-explanatory but if you disagree feel free to reach out and I’d love to hear from you.

Efficiency is simply the duration of time taken to complete a task. Let’s say a colleague hands over a process to you with steps one to five. On day one those steps might take 30 mins but as you practice it, you can complete them in 10 mins. Congratulations, you’ve become more efficient. Efficiency pays no attention to why you’re doing something or the value added, only how quickly you execute it. We often skip this important step in favour of trying to first become more effective but I don’t look at it this way. It’s only by becoming more efficient that we can provide ourselves with the headspace to look for improving effectiveness. This is particularly true in Consulting or if you’ve just been onboarded to a new job or responsibility: we have to prove we can do the basics quickly and with high quality to give us the credibility to present and implement our effectiveness proposals. 

Effectiveness balances the value add of the work against the effort involved. Kind of like the Six Sigma of life. There are four permutations: you could be doing an effective task in an ineffective way; an ineffective task in an effective way under the circumstances; an ineffective task in an ineffective way (the productivity sin bin); an effective task in an effective way (the productivity holy grail). When we assess the effectiveness of our work, we consider both the task itself and everything involved in executing that task.

If we can nail both efficiency and effectiveness we alight at the Productivity Nirvana: an effective task done quickly. Fortunately, that is the destination of today’s productivity train so all aboard, first stop efficiency.

 Efficiency: home of the same sh*t, faster

The good news is efficiency is a quick win and an easy way to instantly get more time. Here’s how:

·       Write a to-do list: You’d be amazed how few people actually write a to-do list. It doesn’t matter if you use Trello, Apple Notes, Notion or the good old-fashioned piece of paper. If you don’t write down your to-do list, you waste valuable brain power trying to store it all in your head and become distracted from doing the things you’ve got to do by trying to remember all the things you’ve got to do.

·       Reduce interruptions: There’s many studies on this, all with slightly different conclusions, but we know for certain that interruptions are productivity assassins. In fact, 4HWW says that 28% of your day is wasted in interruptions. Think about that for a second: let’s say you spend 12 hours a day working. Now 28% is lost to interruptions. It follows that if I can remove those, I can instantly turn my 12 hour day into approx. 8 hours. How do I do that?

o   Don’t keep emails open when working. Close your emails. It can wait. Even better if you close whatever instant messaging software your company uses too. The non-urgent questions, approval requests, even GIFs will all still be there. If it’s really important they’ll find another way to contact you. We’re plagued by “what if I miss something important?” but that’s just ego. It makes us feel important. In reality, it can wait. The really urgent stuff will naturally surface. People mark their email “important” but can’t be bothered to phone you to let you know they really need your input. Can’t be that important then. 

And if you’re worried that your email to someone will spark a fire requiring all your attention to manage it, then schedule your emails to land in their inbox at a time that’s convenient for you. Be the boss of You PLC.

o   Don’t fall into the trap of multi-tasking. Multi-tasking in the context of meaningful work is a myth. Our brains treat multi-tasking just like interruptions. Don’t be fooled.

·       Practice repetitive tasks. When I first became an Analyst, I had an essential but repetitive project planning activity that was dictated by a Consultant’s favourite starter pack: multiple Excels and PPTs. This was a dull and repetitive manual task. Whilst I’ve subsequently worked to automate and delegate it (more on that in a moment), when I first landed in the role I didn’t have the authority to demand change immediately. Instead, I invested my early days in practicing until I could do it with my eyes closed (I literally dreamt of this spreadsheet). Once I’d become as efficient as possible in this task, I could set about automating it but it’s only by relentlessly practicing that I could reward myself with the time to do so. Likewise, the act of practicing highlighted where all the waste was so as soon as I could start looking at improving effectiveness, I already knew which parts to cut so I could immediately start doing an effective task in an effective way. This is especially true for Analysts just joining Consulting or Banking where a lot of your day will be spent in repetitive grunt work and you’ll have no choice but to just suck it up, at least initially.

·       Learn effective note-taking. I’m not going to teach you how to do that right now as there’s already loads of material out there. However, I will say that learning how to take notes effectively will help you on many levels. If you’re tasked with sending MOM it will halve the time it takes. If you’re an Analyst or just attend lots of meetings you might find this type of activity fills a large part of your day. It’s not a bad thing: used effectively it’ll help you to get up to speed much quicker.

·       Learn to type faster. I use Ten Fast Fingers after watching Ali Abdaal’s video. Might sound silly but the average typing speed is 40 words per minute (WPM). Let’s say you spend 10 mins a week improving that to 70 WPM. You’ll instantly see a significant reduction in the time it takes to translate thoughts to email/PPT/Excel/Teams/Slack or whatever medium you’re using. Might sound small but these time savings all add up.

·       Related to typing faster is learn keyboard shortcuts. There’s nothing more frustrating than watching someone slowly click around the screen, miss-click, click again, double click…argh! It’s not rocket science and there’s LOADS of shortcuts. Stay tuned for a list of my top ten. Keyboard shortcuts are your most direct route of travel, they just require some practice. If you’re struggling to remember them you can even buy mugs with them on!

These are your quickest ways to immediately get more time in your day. Having learnt how to do the same stuff faster, now let’s look at how to do more effective stuff.

Effectiveness: more value add sh*t

The objective is to spend as much of our working day doing as much “meaningful work” as possible so it follows that we may need to do the same things differently or different things altogether. How do you work this out? Tim recommends you look at your to-do list and instantly decrease it by assessing what you can eliminate, automate and delegate.

·       Eliminate – no one will notice if you stop doing it. So stop doing it. Now.

·       Delegate – someone else with more bandwidth or for whom this is “meaningful work” can do it. Give it to them. Now.

·       Automate – repetitive tasks a machine can do.

Remember: “never automate something that can be eliminated and never delegate something that can be automated”. If you remember nothing else from Tim Ferris, remember this. “But Charlie, you still haven’t told me how.” Ok. On your to-do list, write next to each item what would happen if you didn’t do it. Not just today, for ever. Would someone else be unable to do their work? Would it impact your company or project’s revenue or reputation? If the answer to that is no, then move it to the eliminate or delegate pile.

If the answer is yes, then ask yourself “is it repetitive and predictable?” If the answer is yes, then it’s a prime candidate for automation.

Once you’ve found a home for the eliminate, delegate and automate items you’re left with only the mission critical stuff. Ta da, that’s your actual to-do list.

“But there’s still so much stuff on there!” This means you’ve not done the above exercise correctly. Tim’s suggestion has changed my day: take a piece of paper. Fold it 3 times. Now write your to-do list. Reducing the amount of space you have to write on will automatically force you to re-think criticality. If you find yourself writing really tiny writing to fit it all in then you’re still not quite there. Deploy phase three: asking yourself “if I could only work for 2 hours today, which of these items would I do?” Somehow, when we’re taking a half day to go on holiday, attend an appointment, watch our children in the school play, we still manage to have a productive day. How is this possible? We force our brains to really filter out the show-stopper items and only do those. Now we’re not saving that for a special occasion, we’re going to do that every day so every day can be productive. Go on…treat yourself.

Now we know how to only work on effective stuff, how do we then make that stuff effective in itself? Here’s an idea I shamelessly steal from Tim: do the opposite. Not sure how to eliminate the waste in a task? Do the opposite of the steps you normally do. See if that gives you an equal quality output in less time; better quality in the same time; better quality in less time. The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle but at least you now have two perspectives to work from.

Let’s do an example. Every Consultant, Project Manager, PMO, Analyst’s favourite: reporting! Most of the time, reporting goes something like this: process says you should write a report -> report gets written -> sent to stakeholder -> ask stakeholder if any questions. You will probably spend (read ‘waste’) half a day a week on this in some form.

Actually, reporting done effectively is invaluable and saves time. The problem is most people do it so ineffectively and inefficiently it ends up being counterproductive. Now let’s do the opposite: ask stakeholder what they really want to know (and times change, so check in with them regularly) -> extract and collate only that information -> send report. This will take you less time because you’re only focusing on relevant stuff and it will be more useful to the end user. An effective task done efficiently. Congratulations, you have reached the Productivity Nirvana.

But it can’t all be roses and rainbows. There’s some stuff we won’t be able to eliminate, delegate or automate. There’s a solution for that too: batch it. Approvals? Batch it. Emails? Batch it. Group these required but not urgent tasks and schedule time to do them in one go. Repetitive tasks that you really can’t automate go into the batching pile.

We’ve already talked about why emails can wait. With this in mind, schedule times to check your mails. Tim suggests limiting this to once a day but I haven’t been that brave yet. I check mine three times a day: when I first log in, lunch time, and just before I log out. Even that is probably too much. I’m not tempted to look in between: if something is really urgent, someone will ping/text/call/Morse Code. If they need me, they’ll find a way. Most of the interruptions in my day were due to emails popping up. Now I batch it and by carving out time to focus on this task I can do it in a more efficient and effective way. Hello Productivity Nirvana.

How do I know if it’s working?

Aside from how you feel there are ways to measure it. I love a good metric. How can you quantify your progress? Well, I love Wednesdays because that’s measuring day. I block time in my diary to assess “what did I achieve this week?” Don’t overcomplicate it, relate it back to your “meaningful work” i.e. what excites you. For me this might look like: contributed to growing the Firm. Now map all the items from the last week’s to-do lists that achieved that. Take a tally. As you become more efficient and effective, this number should go up. You could even make it into a pretty graph. We love a graph.

Now let’s analyse the tasks left over. Why didn’t they contribute? If it’s a batch task, fine. But once you’ve excluded those too, you’re left with a list of tasks that could potentially be eliminated, delegated or automated. Explore if and how this could have been done. Be strict with yourself: ‘what if I had to find a way?’ Now if a similar task comes up, you know what to do with it. I like to do this on Wednesdays so that I can immediately implement any lessons learnt whilst they’re still fresh in my mind and it helps me have a more productive week which helps me switch off better at weekends. And so you have it: Productivity Nirvana in a continuous growth mindset.  

Conclusion

Now you too are Today Years Old when you learnt how to stop being busy and start being productive. In my opinion if you never grasp your own productivity, you are on a path to Burnout. Productivity can sustainably beat Burnout.