The Productivity Pro® Blog by Laura Stack - Time Management, Getting Things Done, How to Be More Productive

“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.” — Ovid, Roman poet

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” — Will Rogers, American humorist.

“Oh that it were my chief delight/To do the things that I ought!/Then let me try with all my might/To mind what I am taught.” Jane Taylor, English poet

Inevitably, you’ll experience days when time just seems to run away from you, or you hit an invisible wall and can’t get past it, or accomplishing anything is like pulling teeth: laborious, slow, and painful. Maybe you’re distracted, or you feel a bit under the weather, or you’re just mad at the world. Whatever the cause, it adds up to “one of those days” when nothing of value gets done.

You don’t have to accept that. Here are a few things you can do, whether individually or in combination, to turn an unproductive day around.

Take Stock
Often, the best way to recapture productive time is to spend a few minutes figuring out what your problem is, and then dealing with it. What’s gone wrong so far? What’s derailed you from your normal course? What should you have done instead? Even if this exercise doesn’t help you decide what to do next, it may show you what to avoid in the future. Learn from those mistakes, create the appropriate solutions, and use them to polish up your productivity next time.

Once you stop and think about it, you may realize that you’ve been in knee-jerk mode. Instead of calmly reasoning and following your action plan when faced with something, instead you’re responding without thinking. So shut everything down and step back. Think about what you need to accomplish, and what you need to do to get back on track.

If you’re in a foul mood, try to determine why and do what you can to fix it. That may not be possible, if for example you’re coming down with something or you’ve suffered a poor night’s sleep. So accept it and move on; don’t let it color your interactions with others, and don’t let it stop you from doing your work. Push through it, and it may just go away.

The Pause That Refreshes
When you’re on a roll, stopping to take a break (even a brief one) is usually the wrong thing to do, since it takes time to refocus afterward. When you’re banging your head against the wall of unproductivity, though, it’s exactly the right thing to do. Even if you don’t use the time to take stock and try to fix your day, it may help get you off your current path and onto a better one.

So stop and grab a cup of joe, and take a deep breath before you get started on your next task. Or take a quick “five minute vacation” somewhere quiet, where you’re unlikely to be interrupted. Sit down, close your eyes, and relax for half a minute. Focus on your breathing for a few seconds (we tend to breathe faster when stressed) and then start to breathe deeply and slowly. Explore how you’re feeling physically, mentally, and emotionally, and then breathe a bit longer before getting up and going back to work.

If you’re completely stymied, you can try a more active visualization exercise. For example: Close your eyes and pretend that Unproductivity is standing before you like a stone wall, blocking your way. Look at your hands and pretend they’re sledgehammers. One is labeled Competence, because you know you’re good at what you do, and the other is Intelligence, because you’re a smart cookie. Your task is obvious: you’ve got to batter down that wall. So start hitting it with the hammers until it cracks and breaks; then pull it apart until you have a hole big enough to push through, out to where you can bask in the bright sunlight of Productivity. When you open your eyes, feel warm, buoyant and confident—and get right to work.

Pick One Thing to Focus On and Go
Basically, this is the old strategy of putting your head down and just bulldozing forward. It’s a brute approach that often works, especially if you can combine it with the above exercises.

Challenge yourself to be productive. Push your distractions aside: turn off your email and phones, close your door, and select the one thing on your list that you need to get done the most. Block out everything else, and give yourself an hour to push on that task as hard as you can. If you don’t think you can manage that much, bribe yourself into being productive by saying, “I’ll work on this for fifteen minutes,” or “I’ll do just a few items,” and when you’re done, say, “Just a little bit more.” You may find that it’s easy, that you’ve gotten back into a productive groove; but even if you haven’t, do it anyway.

The Upshot
There’s no turning back time, but you can learn from your mistakes. Even if your day has been unproductive so far, refuse to let it overwhelm or dishearten you. Don’t give up, because there are ways that you can take the time you have left and get right back in the saddle. Try these, and see how they work for you.

Whatever you do with your unproductive day, don’t dwell on it. Put it behind you and move forward.

Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R), shares tips on increasing efficiency by creating processes in order to simplify tasks. (C) 2010 Laura Stack, All Rights Reserved

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” — Paul J. Meyer, American businessman

“There are a million ways to lose a work day, but not even a single way to get one back.” — Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, authors of Peopleware.

“Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible.” George Claude Lorimer, American pastor

Are you working at your maximum level of productivity?
That’s a question some people don’t like to hear; they get all prickly if you even suggest that they’re doing less than their best at all times. But as a productivity expert, I know how easy it is to get overwhelmed by minutiae. It happens to the best of us.

I imagine you’ve probably already adopted the big productivity solutions, and that’s great. But there are plenty of less obvious ways to boost your productivity, and they can be easy to miss. So today, let’s take a look at five simple things you should do every day at work.

Keep it Neat
We’ve all heard the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. Well, here’s a twist: they decide to have a cooking contest, Iron Chef-style. Hare rushes through his recipes and doesn’t worry about the mess, while Tortoise is careful and cleans up as he goes. So Hare races ahead, at first…but then his messiness starts hurting him. He runs out of mixing bowls, and has to wash dirty ones as he needs them. He can’t remember where he put the salt; he slips on oil he’s dribbled on the floor; and he’s so busy trying to catch up with the little things that he lets his side dish burn. Ultimately, he can’t finish everything he wanted to prepare…while plodding old Tortoise, who washed his dishes and put his spices away immediately after using them, wins the race again.

The lesson here is obvious: instead of letting a mess pile up and then taking time out to clean and organize all at once, organize as you go. Put your files and tools back where they belong as soon as you use them. If you drop something, pick it up. If you use up something, replace it. It doesn’t take long—and you don’t have to come to a screeching halt later because you can’t find what you need, or because you tripped on your stapler and sprained your ankle.

Stay Hydrated
Dehydration is a sneaky productivity stealer that can make you sick, affect your judgment, and lower your IQ. It’s surprisingly easy to become dehydrated, too, because you may not ever feel thirsty.

The culprit here is usually caffeinated beverages. Caffeine is a diuretic, so even if you drink coffee or sodas constantly, you can still take a hit from dehydration. Plain water is the best preventative. If you’re not proactive about drinking it consistently and often throughout the day, you’re likely to pay for it with decreased productivity.

Stop Being Such a Perfectionist
Some things require a high level of quality—final reports, presentations, and the like—but most tasks simply don’t. If you feel compelled to get everything right from the word go, all you’ll do is get stuck in the paralysis of analysis, and you may never really get started. That’s a colossal waste of time.

For mundane tasks, just do the best you can within a reasonable amount of time. Set practical deadlines for yourself, realizing that you have to stop somewhere so that you can move on to other tasks. And instead of agonizing over every last detail, give yourself permission to be imperfect; you are, after all, only human.

Quit Procrastinating
We all have things we put off, typically because we dislike those tasks, or we’re afraid of failure, or we don’t know where to start, or we’re paralyzed by perfectionism, or…well, there are a hundred excuses, all as valid as the next. But none of them will help you get your work done.

You have to dismiss those concerns entirely and get busy. How do you do that? By letting go of perfectionism, by eliminating distractions and interruptions in your environment, and by strategizing—that is, by figuring out how you can break down that task into discrete, manageable chunks, each with their own milestones and deadlines. Then get to work.

Visualize Success
I’m not a big fan of “The Secret,” which I feel depends a bit too much on happy thoughts. By definition, true productivity—and the success it brings—requires action, not just meditation.

That said, I do believe that there are times when visualization is a valid tool for boosting productivity. For example, it can’t hurt to spend a little time every evening thinking about what you need to get done the next day and how you’ll go about it, and then reiterating that process in the morning before you start working. This can help you burst through any lack of motivation and uncertainty, especially if you can demonstrate to yourself, based on previous performance, that you’re up to the task.

When you’re stuck or can’t seem to stop procrastinating, take a minute to visualize the outcome of accomplishing your task, and how well you’ll feel when you do. Then think about how what will happen if you don’t accomplish that task. I much prefer positive motivation, but negative motivation can spur productivity when nothing else works!

Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R) shares tips on creating extra time by hiring out certain tasks. (C) 2011 Laura Stack. All Rights Reserved http://www.TheProductivityPro.com

“We…can strategically train our attention. When it comes to email and the Internet, it’s critical that we do so to give ourselves more time to think more reflectively, creatively, and deeply in an increasingly complex world.” — Tony Schwartz, president and CEO of The Energy Project

“If left unchecked, ‘info-mania’ will damage a worker’s performance by reducing their mental sharpness. This is a very real and widespread phenomenon.” — Glenn Wilson, British psychologist
“When you log on, you feel like you’re in touch with everything that’s going on in the world. But what you really are is out of touch — literally. There is no touching anymore.” — Judith Regan, Regan Books

Would it surprise you to learn that paying too much attention to your email can lower your IQ by as much as 10 points? That’s the conclusion of a recent British study, which suggests that constant connection to the info-world via your handheld, smartphone, or computer can affect you as badly as missing a night’s sleep—and worse than smoking marijuana.

Electronic technology can be a boon to productivity; that’s indisputable. Nowadays, it’s easy to contact just about anyone at the touch of a button. You can accomplish tasks almost anywhere, during what would otherwise be unusable downtime. With access to the Internet, even doing research is a snap, whether you’re sitting in a Starbucks or in your corner office.

The problem is, it’s easy to forget that email, cell phones, Blackberries, iPads and the like are supposed to be tools. You should be using them to maximize your productivity; they shouldn’t be controlling your behavior. But somehow, many of us have gotten to the point where we’re terrified to be disconnected even for a moment, just in case we miss something. When the incoming message alert chimes, we drop what we’re doing to check it, like Pavlov’s dogs drooling when the bell rings. Worse, we’re like dogs on leashes, pulled this way and that whether we like it or not.

To be truly productive, you need to slip your electronic leash.

You have only so much energy, so you can’t waste it on trivial things like answering emails or cell phone texts the moment they appear. You need to be able to focus like a laser beam on your important tasks, without letting distractions yank you away from what really matters. No matter how minor the interruption, it takes time to refocus and get back into the flow, which can’t help but impact your productivity.

Back in 2009, I introduced the concept of Obsessive-Compulsive Social Media Disorder (OCSMD). As the name suggests, OCSMD is associated primarily with compulsively checking Facebook and obsessively tweeting away on Twitter, but I think it’s applicable for electronic media of any kind, including email and texting. Sure, these media may be important to you, even productive in some ways—but you don’t need to check any of them right this minute. This is especially true when doing so interferes with your work or (ironically) with face-to-face social interaction.

Short of completely eschewing this technology, which is no longer a reasonable option, you have to set real, solid strictures on its use. Look, you’re not a machine. You can’t always be on, and you certainly shouldn’t stay connected when you should be recharging. Truly productive people realize the need to get away from work occasionally, to socialize and be human, to take breaks when they need to—even to disconnect from the workaday world for a while and take a vacation. Given enough rest, completely disconnected from your electronics, you can accomplish more when you are connected.

When you refuse to set boundaries to limit your use of electronic technology, then you’re setting yourself up to fail. You may still be able to function, but you’ll never be able to achieve your full potential.

To recapture your productive techno-edge, start small. Disconnect for a half-hour a day first, then stretch it to an hour. At lunchtime, step away from your desk, turn off your Blackberry, and leave the building. Sit in the park. Go out to eat. Visit with a friend. Get to know a colleague better. In other words, do the directly social things that humans have done for 99.9% of our history.

When you’re working, don’t leave your social media sites open just so you can watch things come in, even if you think they may be business-related. Turn off all your message alerts, whether visual or auditory, because they’ll absolutely derail your train of thought. Even if you don’t answer a message immediately, just knowing it’s waiting will inevitably affect your productivity. All you really need to do is check electronic media once or twice a day. Ditto with returning phone calls. Pick a block of time when you can do both efficiently, and stick to it.

Remember that your electronic tools are intended to help you be more productive. That’s it. Ultimately, they’re your servants: so to maintain your productive edge—and your sanity—never, ever let yourself become theirs.

Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R) gives advice on finishing tasks quickly. (C) 2011 Laura Stack. All Rights Reserved

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Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R) shares tips on completing mundane tasks. (C) 2011 Laura Stack. All Rights Reserved http://www.TheProductivityPro.com