10 lessons I've learned from experimenting with time and productivity

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

If you are wondering what conclusions a person came to after having tested various methods of increasing productivity on himself for a whole year, then this article is about that.

For a whole year, Chris Bailey, a management theorist and journalist, researched the issue of personal productivity, read academic papers, talked to authority figures, and experimented with himself. As a result, he made 10 main conclusions on how to become the master of your time, which you will learn about from this article.

10. Focus on the things that matter most first

In every area of human life (health, family, work, entertainment, finance, and so on) there are only one or two tasks that really matter. For example, at work, you can probably identify one or two priority areas, on which 80-90% of the success of the whole business depends.

The surest way to get more done in less time is to find these core goals and do your best to move them forward. As a result, you will get the maximum return per unit of spent energy, time and money.

9. The three most important secrets of efficiency (and at the same time the most boring)

These tips are so commonplace and famous that they have become clichés. Although, maybe this is what speaks about their loyalty and universality, after all, will not all these smart people repeat a false statement for hundreds of years in a row?

You can experiment endlessly with the latest personal effectiveness techniques (and I have done so), but they will ultimately boil down to this:

• good food;
• getting enough sleep;
• exercises.

These tips are repeated so often that people stop believing in them. But as someone who has experimented with dozens of different methods of increasing productivity, I can conclude that nothing will be more beneficial for you than proper nutrition, good sleep and exercise.

8. There are no universal techniques

Every few years, a new theory and a new productivity guru appears, who claims to have discovered the most important secret of all times and peoples. Every day, thousands of pages of tips on the right work organization are published that promise to make you a successful, happy and effective person. The truth is that there is no single methodology suitable for absolutely everyone.

You can start following the advice to do everything early in the morning and experience tremendous discomfort from it; you can start working on an interval method, but you are surprised to see that you have become much less successful. Therefore, first of all, listen to your feelings and quantitatively measure the completed tasks. What's perfect for one person may not work for you at all, so no performance advice will work perfectly for 100% of people, 100% of the time.

7. Forming good habits automatically makes you more efficient

I'm sure the best way to change our lives is to change our habits. Approximately 40–45% of our daily activities take place automatically. For example, you can spend several months learning to get up an hour earlier in the morning, but when you do, this skill will work for you, giving you extra time each day for self-development and training. Yes, acquiring good habits can be difficult, but then it will pay off handsomely.

6. There are only three parts to productivity: time, energy, and attention

With all the variety of methods for increasing productivity, they all in one way or another try to solve three questions: how best to manage time, how to use your energy correctly, and how to maintain attention.

I think all three ingredients are absolutely essential and equal if you want to be productive every day and every minute. Some people have a tremendous amount of energy, but they cannot concentrate and all their efforts are diffused. Other people value time, but they don't do enough to achieve a good result. Productive people need to keep these three pillars of productivity in mind and give them an equal amount of attention.

5. There is no one winning strategy, but there are many tactics

If there is any main secret of performance, then I will say right away that during the year of my experiments I never discovered it. But I did find hundreds of tactical tricks that help me better manage my time, energy and attention. You will find their description in.

Productivity is the result of dozens, maybe hundreds, of little things you do every day. There is no one secret to knowing which will make you successful, but there are many things you can do to help you manage your resources.

4. Working too hard or for long periods of time ruins your productivity

During my year-long experiment, I tried different options for organizing work. I worked 90 hours a week for several weeks, and then arranged myself a 20-hour unloading week. Much to my surprise, the number of completed tasks during these weeks was not very different. The point is that when you are in a hurry, you strive to work harder. If you have a lot of time ahead of you, then procrastination begins, and work goes on without undue stress. As a result, the well-known rule is triggered that the task takes just as much time as allotted for it.

However, if you work with the highest degree of dedication, then after a short time you will burn out and feel a deep breakdown. Thus, neither too long nor too hard work will ultimately lead to increased productivity, as it misuses your main resources - time and energy.

3. The best way to increase motivation is to know exactly why you are working

The most motivated (and productive) people are distinguished by the fact that they always know the answer to the question of why and what they are working for. When you engage in activities that matter to you, align with your values and what you believe in, you can be productive without too much effort.

If you are constantly busy and cannot afford even a minute of rest, then this does not mean at all that you are a productive person - rather, on the contrary. Effectiveness lies not in how much you work at work, but in what results you have achieved in the most important issues for you. When you always know why you are doing something, you will automatically become more motivated and productive.

2. Striving for productivity doesn't make sense if you suffer as a result

No matter what great goals you have in front of you, no matter what important tasks you have outlined, you should not try to jump over yourself in the course of their implementation. You can do your best, you can achieve great efficiency, but it doesn't make any sense if you feel unhappy about it. After all, the highest goal of all is you and your positive emotions, not high performance.

1. Productivity is not how much you have done, but what you have achieved

At the very beginning, when I first started my experiments, I thought that productivity is very easy to measure. I began to keep track of the number of pages written, books read, letters sent, and so on. However, over time, I realized that this is not entirely correct. Sometimes there are days when all the quantitative indicators go off scale, but in reality I have not advanced a single step. In quantitative terms, on days like this, I showed miracles of productivity, but in fact I never did anything useful.

Therefore, always remember that one important letter can be more weighty than an hour of poking around in the mail, and one well-written page is worth an entire chapter. Do not get carried away with quantitative indicators, so as not to fall into the trap of false productivity, when you spin like a squirrel in a wheel all day, and in the evening you cannot tell what you really did.