When I was a boy, I was a dreamer. Starting this blog with that sentence makes it sound like I’m not a dreamer anymore. Nothing could be further from the truth, so allow me to write that first sentence more to my point:
When I was a boy, my mother worried that I was too much of a dreamer.
On many a perfect summer day, my mother noticed me sitting in a rocking chair. My eyes were closed, and I was (you guessed it) rocking—and for great lengths of time. While my memory is far from perfect, I do believe she used the word “lazy” with some regularity in her expressions of worry about me.
What my mom didn’t understand is that I was very busy in that rocker. I was dreaming. I was scheming. I was planning. And I was getting ready. In due course—granted, my boyhood “due-course” could be a solid two hours of rocking—I’d light out of that chair and go pull off a feat or two. Then, I’d step-back, plop down, lay back, and otherwise chill; needing to regroup, appreciate, think and wonder, and start the cycle all over again.
Today, if my mother would watch my day, she’d worry that I’m a workaholic. “Lazy” wouldn’t be part of the conversation. And, I must admit, any concern she might hold for the way I engage the world would likely be closer to the truth today than the concern she held when I was a boy.
I do love to work, and I do work a lot. But it isn’t that I love to work for work’s sake. It’s the completion of things that I love—the creating, building, writing, making, serving, and moving chains that brings me such fulfillment. It isn’t the “do”-ing per se, that I love so much as it’s the “done”-ing. I love to see an idea—a dream, a plan—brought to realization. For me, work is simply an extension of the dream.
Over the years, I’ve been asked with some regularity how I get so much done. I know what works for me, so the following suggestions need to be taken with a grain of salt. Work might happen differently for you, but here are 5 rules I try to follow to help me get stuff done:
- Master Single-Tasking—Dr. Henry Cloud points out that brain science is clear on the subject of multi-tasking, which, in short, we can’t do. Our brain functions optimally by processing one thing at a time. As we focus on a particular task, our brain is contributing great amounts of background data, all of which is outside our conscious awareness. This background data enables us to focus more clearly and creatively. Every time we flit from project to project—single-tasking in rapid succession and calling it multi-tasking—our brain’s background work gets scrapped. With every skip! Single-tasking allows our brain to bring forward its larger contribution and add it to our task at hand. This vastly improves our productivity and quality of work. Pretending to multi-task is akin to hitting the delete button on great amounts of this “value added work.” It’s a terrible stewardship of time and talent.
- Break Big Goals Down—When, in the summer of 1999, I turned my attention to the writing phase of my dissertation, I was working very full time at Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation. I took the immense volume of requirements that my dissertation committee gave me and made a colossal spreadsheet out of it, breaking the entire project down into very small bites. Then, I got to work on the small bites. I did them, one step at a time. A great deal of time is squandered staring at an impossible job. I turn big jobs into small jobs, and then I do small jobs.
- Finish Something, Then Check it Off—I mentioned earlier that I like the word, “done.” Completing a task is energizing to me. I heard a retired military officer tell a graduating class that the reason the soldier always makes his or her bed, first thing, is that it provides an immediate “mission accomplished” for the day. One job done more readily leads to another.
- Work in Focused Bursts—Here, I am least confident that my way of getting stuff done can be universalized. It works for me to jump full in, take a task to some benchmark of progress, and then step away. I think there may be people who prefer the long, steady pull, so accept this rule for what it’s worth. Yet, I recently had my 120-year-old slate roof replaced. I had already babied it a quarter century past its decrepitude, and could coax nothing else out of it. My contractor hired an extraordinary crew of skilled roofers who removed the old slate, meticulously cleaned my yard, and put on the new roof in just three days! How did they do it? The 14 men worked in 45-minute bursts—45-minutes of full engagement, full attention, full watchfulness for safety, full care for quality. And then they all sat or laid down in my yard for 15 minutes. 45 on, 15 off. And the sustained productivity, safety, and quality were nothing short of stunning!
- Stop, Step Back, Look Around, Appreciate, Re-Engage—As a boy, I did this in a rocking chair. I find it necessary to step away very regularly, stand up, look out the window, take a breath, and review what I’ve done. A walk, nap, cup of coffee, or break—whatever works. Winston Churchill recommended painting. Yes, the indefatigable Prime Minister of Great Britain picked up his paintbrush, right in the middle of his endless day, and worked on a flower petal. He said it was as worthwhile to his refreshment as a proper nap, which he also took religiously, every single day (Churchill made it clear that a nap was worthless unless you took your clothes off and crawled into bed). What a slacker, Churchill!
What are your productivity hacks? What have you found works for you? When we take a step back and stay true to ourselves before getting down to work, we can bring personal insight (and even a few learned tricks) to help us get stuff done better and faster.