Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R) discusses the importance of getting things done at work so your family time is not compromised.
(C) 2011 Laura Stack, All Rights Reserved http://www.TheProductivityPro.com
“Stress is your body’s way of saying you haven’t worked enough unpaid overtime.” — Scott Adams, American cartoonist (Dilbert)
“More men are killed by overwork than the importance of this world justifies.” — Rudyard Kipling, British author
“By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.” — Robert Frost, American poet.
As I write this, we’re mired in the Great Recession of the early 2000s. The job market is tighter than it’s been in decades, which means that most of us are willing to do what it takes to keep the jobs we have. This often means putting in overtime, increasingly of the unpaid variety. The reasons that individual workers are willing to do so vary, but two factors are repeatedly cited: the need to prove themselves to management, and the perception that they they’ll lose their jobs otherwise. Sometimes the latter isn’t even a perception.
Salaried, with Benefits
Unpaid overtime is especially prevalent among salaried professionals, who are expected to modify the workweek as necessary to get the job done. But the job itself just seems to keep getting bigger, with workers required to take on more responsibilities as rising costs, attrition, competition, and other factors strike at profitability. It’s not that productivity is dropping; quite the opposite. We’re more productive than ever.
The notion of fairness has long since gone out the window in favor of need and expediency, so I won’t address that topic here. The bottom line is this: to many of us, being a workaholic is no longer a choice. It’s a job requirement. But is all this unpaid overtime productive, or harmful?
Like so many things in life, the answer isn’t cut and dried. It all depends on the circumstances.
The Pros
The way some jobs are structured, overtime is a necessity; you simply can’t get all your work done without putting in more than the traditional 40 hours. Management or HR should outline this for you during the recruitment phase, but usually they won’t (because they want you to take the job). Workers often discover from the very beginning that they have to do more than they expected; and even when that’s not the case, the workload may increase gradually as business conditions change. It’s up to you to decide whether your job is worth all the unpaid overtime, but if it is, said overtime becomes automatically worthwhile if you want to keep working. That’s a sour reality, but there it is; and some employers do take advantage of it.
Putting in unpaid overtime can also be beneficial if you’re trying to prove yourself to management, because in the long term it can result in greater promotion prospects and higher pay. This isn’t a universal result, but studies indicate that those who work plenty of unpaid overtime typically do better than their co-workers who don’t. In addition, willingness to work unpaid overtime increases your chances of keeping your job when it’s time to tighten the corporate belt.
In this sense, then, working unpaid overtime can be an investment toward future profits and employment. But the effect is contingent on staying with the same company, and maintaining the practice consistently. Management’s memory may not be particularly long, so remember: all that overtime last year might not matter if you haven’t put in any lately.
The Cons
It’s a fact of life that when you say “yes” to one thing, you have to say “no” to others. One of the worst things about overtime is that it keeps you away from friends and loved ones. Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but only up to a certain point; you have to spend time with those you care for, so you can maintain and develop your relationships. Your children especially need you, as a positive role model at least.
Furthermore, many busy people push taking care of themselves down to the bottom of their to-do lists, where it often falls off and becomes lost in the daily triage of time management. This is bad enough, but too much work also results in exhaustion, which in the short term means that you make more mistakes and end up having to redo work, which means you become less productive.
In the long term, excessive overtime can have detrimental effects on your health. Karoshi (death from overwork) has been a recognized concept in Japan for decades, though it’s difficult to recognize in most other countries, which don’t keep statistics for such things. Depression is common among the overworked, and the suicide rate is higher among the chronically depressed. Feeling that you’re forced to put in unpaid overtime, for whatever reason, can make you feel trapped and helpless. These mental stresses, when added to the physical ones, can result in a catastrophic breakdown, one way or another.
On Balance
We all know that it’s a good idea to maintain a reasonable work/life balance, but the blunt truth is that under some circumstances, it’s just not possible. Something has to give, and in an economy like this one, it’s usually the rest of your life.
To answer the question posed in this blog’s title, unpaid overtime can be worthwhile, assuming you treat it as an investment and stick with it. On the whole, those people willing to work unpaid overtime have better chances of getting promotions and raises, and are more likely to avoid layoffs. It’s also worthwhile in a broader sense, if it’s necessary to keep your job.
They say hard work is good for the soul, and it can certainly help you get ahead, whether you’re getting paid for it or not. But as with anything, moderation is the key here. Too much work can keep you away from what really matters to you. It can also cause both physical and mental stress, which can have devastating health effects. If you do work overtime, know when you’ve reached your limit, and be willing to cut back as necessary so you don’t work yourself to death…literally.
“There is nothing that the busy man is less busy with than living; there is nothing harder to learn.” — Seneca, Roman philosopher
“I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.” — Bertrand Russell, British philosopher
“The commonsense rules of the ‘real world’ are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions.” — Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek.
In 2007, Timothy Ferriss created a sensation in the business world with his provocatively titled book, The 4-Hour Workweek. In it, he outlined his philosophy that once you’ve worked hard to build your business, it’s possible to maintain that business at a profitable level by working for just a few hours per week.
Ferriss believes that the rules that bind us to the 9-to-5 grind are a pointless legacy of a time that’s long past, because in the modern knowledge economy, what matters isn’t how many hours you work—it’s how well you perform. Furthermore, he asserts, it doesn’t matter how much money you make if you don’t have the time to enjoy it.
How Does It Work?
Using his personal example, Ferriss outlines a method of ruthless time management using (among other things) the 80/20 principle, extreme outsourcing, and what he calls “cultivating selective ignorance”—that is, not trying to constantly keep up with every little thing at all times. Instead, he suggests, you should just catch up whenever it’s necessary to do so. This allows you to narrow your focus to the critical few items that really matter, so you can cut your workweek to a length that seems ridiculously short to many of us.
All this seems to work for Tim Ferriss— but can it work for you? Is a 4-Hour Workweek really possible? The answer is…well, kinda.
Working the Plan
I’m with Ferriss on the basics. My entire business is based on teaching people how to develop their time management skills so they can boost productivity, and I agree wholeheartedly that it’s an excellent idea to delegate/outsource everything except the few tasks that are the most profitable and valuable to you. As for selective ignorance, that’s basically the process of eliminating distractions and interruptions—which I’m all for as well.
Certainly, all these things can help you decrease your work load, especially when you apply them as rigorously as Ferriss apparently does. But does he really have a 4-Hour Workweek? I doubt that. First of all, the title of his book is clearly a catchy exaggeration, intended to drive sales. And Ferriss appears, in fact, to work much more than four hours a week, not just in promoting his book (and a recent sequel) but in maintaining his business interests and an informative blog.
Love It or Leave It
But here’s the thing: Ferriss’s construct works for him, and for many of his disciples, because he’s redefined the concept of work. In the context of the 4-Hour Workweek, work is anything you don’t like doing. That means that anything productive and profitable that you enjoy doesn’t count as work—no matter how long or hard you work at it. Some observers consider this specious reasoning; to them, work is work, even when it’s fun—because no matter what, it takes time, effort, and focus.
I can see their point, but I can see Ferriss’s as well. In fact, one lesson that I think you should take away from The 4-Hour Workweek is that if you truly want to maximize your productivity, you have to enjoy what you do. So yes, go ahead and use his methods (and others) to pare your work life down to its essentials, the critical few things that all of us time management gurus tell you to focus on. Then look at them critically; and if you don’t love them already, learn to love them—or change careers.
As you’ve probably learned by now, there’s nothing as soul-crushing as grinding your way through a job you just don’t like.
The Bottom Line
The concept of the 4-Hour Workweek is a valuable one, but like so many other business concepts, it only works under specific conditions. Remember, Ferriss had already built his existing business to steady profitability before he was able to arrange life so that he could abandon his 80-hour workweeks for 4-hour ones. So this is a maintenance concept only; if you’re still building your business, don’t expect it to work for you.
Moreover, this method can’t possibly work for every business, no matter how well-established. The concept of “fun work isn’t really work” aside, a business that requires your constant presence—especially service businesses where you are the product—can only be pared down so far. If, for instance, you’re a musician and you have to be present at your gigs every night, there’s only so much that you can delegate. The turning point of a business like this, of course, comes when you’re so much in demand that you can charge what you like for your services. Then you can scale back to the number of hours that suit you.
Ultimately, the concept of the 4-Hour Workweek is somewhat misleading, but the basic concepts underlying the Ferriss method are sound. You may never cut your workweek back to just four hours by following it, but you can certainly trim a lot of unnecessary fat from your schedule.
Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R), travels extensively. She shares tips on packing for maximum efficiency. (C) 2011 Laura Stack, All Rights Reserved http://www.TheProductivityPro.com
Why do distractions and interruptions tend to disrupt our focus so easily?
The answer is at least partly biological. Despite modern myth, the brain isn’t a marvel of infinite capacity; we are, after all, only human, with all the limitations that implies. One limitation lies in our capacity to process what’s happening in the world around us. We’re flooded with so much sensory data at any one time that our brains have to filter out most of it to avoid overload, working with what’s left to create a structured reality that we can function within.
One result, as Winifred Gallagher points out in her intriguing book Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, is that “when you focus, you’re spending cognitive currency that should be wisely invested, because the stakes are high.” That is, you have to make a significant mental effort to truly focus on something; hence, you’re literally “paying attention,” with attention being a limited resource in the hustle and flow of your consciousness.
This selectivity allows you to draw order out of chaos, but to do so, you have to home in on a few things at the expense of all else—which is why any interruption or distraction can be so damaging. You’re already dealing with an immense quantity of information rushing in on you, everything from the room temperature to the quality of the lighting, and your brain’s already processing that, like it or not. Adding anything more detracts from your limited ability to pay attention to other phenomena. It pulls you out of your trance focus, forcing you to lose track of what you were doing, at least temporarily. This inevitably slows you down, so you take a hit productivity-wise.
Now, it’s true that some of us can handle more distractions than others without completely losing focus, because some of us just naturally have more cognitive cash to pay attention with—just as some of us are better singers or dancers. Furthermore, with enough self-discipline, you can also build your cognitive fortune beyond its normal limitations. But no matter how much capacity for receiving and processing information you may have, you still need to focus tightly, in order to get the maximum return from anything you do—whether it’s learning, working, or dancing the tarantella.
Therefore, you must deliberately choose what you spend your attention on, and do everything possible to trim out the excess fat of distractions and interruptions—no matter how minor they may seem. Whether it’s the phone ringing or someone talking across the hall, any distraction is vying for and stealing from your limited store of attention.
Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R) talks about doing too much. You can’t be productive if you’re overloaded. (C) 2011 Laura Stack, All Rights Reserved http://www.TheProductivityPro.com
Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R) talks about productivity. How do you know when you are being productive and not just busy? (C) 2011 Laura Stack, All Rights Reserved http://www.TheProductivityPro.com
In sales, there will always be more things to do than time to do them. Working longer isn’t going to save you. (I’d bet you’ve never gone to sleep at the end of a long day with everything on your to-do list completed.) To counter this never-ending battle, you’ll need to learn to be more efficient and get your work done in less time.
Always keep in mind that it doesn’t matter if you worked a 12-hour day if 10 of those hours didn’t involve tasks that translate into revenue. To free up more time for client acquisition (asking for referrals, calling prospects, networking, etc.), you must decrease time spent on administrivia and increase time spent on the selling function. If you can figure out how to be more productive during the day and achieve greater results in less time, you can leave the office earlier and get a life.
Learn how to use your software. One of the many ways sales people waste time during the day is with Microsoft Outlook (or whatever email software you use). I estimate people waste 30 minutes to 2 hours a day with incorrect or inefficient information management systems. Sometimes it’s a simple matter of not understanding what Outlook is capable of doing (Journaling, Notes, Customized Contact Forms, Task Tracking, etc.). As a Microsoft Certified Application Specialist (MCAS) in Outlook, I estimate most people only understand and use 10-20% of Outlook’s capabilities.
The Inbox is not a to-do list. Pull the action from the email and move it to the correct location. Do NOT simply flag the email, which simply leaves it in the inbox.
1. Right-click on the email.
2. Select “Move to Folder” from the short cut menu.
3. Select Tasks from the list if it’s a “to-do” item or Calendar if it has a specific time.
4. Click OK.
5. This will activate a task properties window.
6. Update all of the information accordingly. Use the “Start Date” to indicate when you want the task to appear on your To-Do Bar.
7. Click the “Save and Close” button.
8. Make sure your TaskPad (2003) or To-Do Bar (2007/2010) sorts by Start Date, not Due Date.
File email in your existing folder system. You already have a folder system on your hard drive or a shared drive. Rather than keeping a different list of personal folders in your Outlook, save emails in your existing folders to keep reference items together. Just as you would save a Word document or PowerPoint show, you can save email as a file. While viewing the email:
1. Under the File menu, select Save As.
2. Navigate to the correct folder on your hard or shared drive.
3. Change the file name, if desired.
4. In the Save as Type dropdown menu, select Outlook Message Format (*.msg).
5. Click Save.
6. When you double-click the Outlook icon, the email will open within your Outlook software, just as if it were in the inbox.
Automate manual actions. Use Outlook’s Rules; they help you manage your e-mail messages by performing actions on messages that match a specific set of conditions. After you create a rule, Outlook applies it when a message arrives in your Inbox or when you send a message. Spend some time playing with the Rules Wizard to explore all the cool things you can do, such as forwarding to a list, automatically deleting mail from certain people, printing, moving messages where you’re cc’d into a specified folder, or moving messages with certain words in the subject field to a folder.
1. On the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts.
2. Click New Rule.
3. Make sure the “Start creating a rule from a template” button is selected.
4. Follow the Wizard.
Keep your notes in your CRM up to date. Keep relationship manager notes for every client contact in your company’s proprietary system, ACT, Salesforce.com, or Outlook. If you have Outlook, this feature is called the Journal, which is a little-known, powerful feature rarely used by immensely helpful for salespeople to document client history: conversations, phone calls, and meetings. Create a New Journal Entry, tag it to the Contact, type out the contents of the meeting. You can now view a Contact’s Journal entries from years ago. If you share your Journal and Contacts, anyone on your time can see your notes and client activity if you’re out.
Create a travel plan. When you do have to fly for business, you’ll usually have a pretty good idea of how much downtime you’ll have during your trip, so set some goals for your travel time before you leave. How long is the flight each way? How long will you be alone in your hotel room in the evening? Know what you want to accomplish during various parts of your trip. It isn’t set in stone—it’s just a guide. When you sit down in your airplane seat, you should know exactly what to do next. Maybe there’s a report you want to read or a proposal you want to write. Be ready to dive right in. Until I can turn on my computer, I generally do light reading as I catch my breath and get settled. I might even do a Sudoku puzzle. Then I get right to it. I never turn on the television in my hotel, since a quiet hotel room is a great place to bang out work.
Embrace the Smartphone. You don’t need to become a full-fledged Crackberry addict to enjoy the benefits of a smartphone. It shouldn’t hijack your life, but it can be a useful tool while you’re riding in a taxi or sitting at the gate. Use your downtime to keep up with email; it’s comforting to know it isn’t piling up while you’re away. A smart phone can also help you stay on top of things back at the office without playing phone tag and leaving voicemails all over the place.
Simplify with a docking station. Do you find yourself transferring files between a desktop computer and your laptop when you need to travel or bring work home? This was one of my biggest frustrations and time-wasters for many years. Unless your work requires some serious computer resources, you can probably stop using the desktop machine altogether. A docking station will allow you to keep your nice big monitor and full-size keyboard, but still be able to pop your computer out of the dock, slip it into your laptop bag, and have all your files in one place. It’s the best of both worlds.
Be determined to complete a task in less time. Sometimes we’re so busy looking for an extra thirty minutes to complete a task we don’t realize it could be done in ten. Make sure you aren’t over-researching, over-analyzing, or just plain over-thinking what you’re trying to do. Some fish will grow to fit the size of their tank, and tasks will do the same thing. If Step One of writing a report is always an hour of banging your head against the blank computer screen, it becomes the norm. Don’t fall into this trap. Evaluate your tasks and challenge yourself to get them done more quickly. If you had to have the report written by the end of the day instead of the end of the week, you would find a way to get it done. Tight deadlines don’t leave much time for banging your head on the computer. When a crisis pops up, rise to the challenge. Apply the same “never say die” attitude to your more routine tasks, and you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish. Focus, focus, focus. Give yourself ten minutes to concentrate on the task at hand. Once you commit your full energy to getting it done, you’ll be amazed at how things start zipping along.
Hold an efficiency meeting. We all know we can be more productive. When I ask, “What would you need to change about yourself in order to be more productive and increase sales?” everyone knows the answer. When I ask, “What would need to change in the office in order for you to be more productive?” everyone knows the answer. However, most wholesalers and their teams rarely take the time to discuss these issues and formulate solutions. If you haven’t had an “efficiency meeting” in a while, get it on your schedule. Vent your frustrations. Try different methods. Blow up a process. Get help when you need it. All of this effort will pay off handsomely in the way of increased client acquisition.
** To purchase online video tutorials on the above Outlook functions, please visit http://www.theproductivitypro.com/s_outlook-virtual-training-products.htm.
