How to work calmly and stay productive when everything is on fire

1. Learn to be easier to relate to what is impossible to control

There are many factors that can cause stress during the workday. Perhaps the most annoying of them is the feeling that you constantly do not have enough time for everything, or that you are poorly managing it.

We know that we cannot control the number of hours in a day, but for some reason we are constantly trying to do it. Although, for a calm and productive work, on the contrary, you need to accept the fact that there are things that are beyond our control. Just like the time.

The philosophy of stoicism will help you to change your attitude to such things.

It has the idea of indifference. Its essence is that you begin to relate easier to what you mentally mark as "indifferent". For example, if a printer breaks down, you don't get angry, but classify the situation as indifferent. This is not something important and does not deserve a lot of attention.

Darius Foro is the author of books and articles on self-development

Of course, it's one thing when it comes to minor troubles, and another thing when it comes to serious health or work problems. To deal with them more calmly, use another idea of stoicism - focus on what is in your control. This includes your abilities, life priorities, and what you can do right now to make a difference.

2. Review your priority list

The ability to prioritize is the key to being productive. The difficulty is that they can change over time, but it's very difficult to just pick up and stop doing a task from the list of the most important ones. It is a pity for the brain to abandon a business in which it has already invested a lot of effort. This is due to cognitive biases such as the drowned cost trap and the Zeigarnik effect.

Therefore, you need to develop another skill - periodically reevaluate your priorities and exclude those that have ceased to matter. Here's what will help you:

Set time limits for projects and tasks. At certain times of the day, evaluate what you are doing, whether it really matters.
Write a list of what not to do, for a day or longer.
Conduct a priority assessment once a week.
If you feel confused, ask the team or leader for their opinion. They will help you see the picture from the outside.

3. Protect Against Burnout

Build your day around one anchor task

If you constantly think about how much to do, it will be difficult to concentrate. Pick one task and tackle it. When you're done, a sense of your own progress will fuel your motivation and help you move on.

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, calls such a case for the day an anchor.

Although my plans include completing other tasks in a day, I have one priority task that I must do. I call it the anchor task because it keeps me going all day. This priority business guides actions, forcing them to organize life around them.

James Clear

Focus on how you help others

Remind yourself of this when you're stressed or overwhelmed. The feeling that you are helping people increases satisfaction with work and life in general.

If your work does not directly affect people, think about your colleagues and the values you share with them. A sense of community can also help you see your work more optimistically.

Get inspired

How exactly is up to you. The main thing is to find something that brings you pleasure and helps you disconnect from work. For example, you can be outdoors, play games, or watch your favorite movies.

4. Manage your energy, not time

Productivity usually depends on how much energy we have, not time. And fluctuations in energy during the day are regulated by the chronotype - our daily biorhythms. It is the chronotype that determines when we are full of energy and when we need rest. Therefore, it is important to define your own and build a working day based on it.

When in doubt about your chronotype, take a short test. It was compiled by Daniel Pink, author of Timehacking:

Write down what time you go to bed, if the next day you do not need to get up at a certain time.
Establish what time you wake up on such days.
Find the midpoint between these two points. For example, if you go to bed at 1 AM and wake up at 9 AM, your midpoint is 5 AM.

The chronotype is determined by the midpoint:

before 3:30 in the morning - a lark;
after 5:30 am - an owl;
between 3:30 and 5:30 a dove.

5. Find your ideal work habits

Our daily activities are highly dependent on our habits, which is why it is so important to find the ones that work for you. But more often than not, we try to create a good habit by choosing something at random, and soon we give it up. Take a scientific approach instead.

Scientists test ideas differently than we do in everyday life. They conduct the experiment under controlled conditions. This helps them track the results and know exactly what happened and why. This method can also be used to identify the habits that make you most productive.

Proceed like this:

Ask a question. For example, "How can I do more in the time that I have?"
Collect information. Explore articles, books, podcasts for possible solutions.
Formulate a hypothesis. Pick one productivity strategy and guess what happens if you follow it. For example: "If I do X, I get the result Y".
Do an experiment. Determine the time interval and monitor the results.
Analyze the received data. Was your hypothesis correct? If not, why not? What can be changed in the conditions to get the desired result?
Keep experimenting until you find productivity strategies that work for you.