Read an Excerpt
Be More Productive Slow Down
Design the Life and Work You Want
By Bud Roth
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 Bud Roth
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-1872-7
Chapter One
The Fast-Changing World: Living Without Purpose
The times we live in are moving at a faster rate every year, and we can get caught up in these busy times. It is crucial for us to respond to the fastchanging environment by planning our life, knowing that these conditions will continue.
Picture the Goals
What does it take to meet your goals? We will briefly look at the professional side of setting meeting a goal and then the personal side. A leader needs to keep people in the company focused on the outcomes of the annual strategy or mission. First, it's important for you to know why you are doing certain work. Leaders must then help you stay focused; not only on why and where you are going, but also on how you execute the work. Usually you are left on your own to do the work. Good leaders continuously remind others of the purpose and direction. It's your role to figure out how to fulfill the mission with the help of others through cooperation and collaboration. Leaders must create pictures of the outcomes or goals of the organization. You may have seen such pictures on the office walls. Some corporations have spent over one million dollars to print and post illustrations of the journey of the mission on the interior walls of the buildings. They want the mission understood in simple terms, pictured in your mind. It works.
Why shouldn't you do this for your personal life? Pictures of your future plans and desires help you navigate the journey. Pictures keep you on track and help you maintain momentum as you move toward your goals. Integrating your personal and professional purposes is important to creating appropriate balance and control in your life. It's easy to let business or work control your personal life. It's easy to lose perspective of what is right for you or even what may be right for the business. Fooling yourself into thinking that your work life is the more important because it facilitates survival can warp your perspective. This misconception can also take you in a direction that throws you off of where you really want to go. You can become a workaholic, working yourself so hard that it impacts family life.
Busyness, Multitasking, and Overcommitting
Work is where we usually relate to productivity and speed, since we are measured by these elements. Let's look at the work environment to understand the importance of purpose, planning, and slowing down. Speed and simply accomplishing tasks may be busyness that satisfies the desire to check things off our "To Do" list. However, priorities must drive activities in the work environment. If you aren't working on meaningful activities, you may be wasting your time. Working too fast may also affect the quality of work you do. The quality of the work will definitely impact the desired outcomes.
Busyness, multitasking, and overcommitting are habits that reduce effectiveness and decrease genuine productivity. Busyness is when we are busy doing tasks that are not significant and are not focused on our mission or purpose. For example: I can be busy checking my e-mail frequently throughout the day, researching information on the Internet and making phone calls to follow up on volunteer activities. "It was important for me today to call prospective clients and follow up on referrals, but I just couldn't get to it." This is how I rationalize wasting time.
Interruptions frequently add to busyness and disrupt concentration and focus. These uncontrollable events can affect our productivity and the quality of the outcomes. A New York Times article pointed to a research project at the Institute for the Future of the Mind at Oxford University. It suggests that the popular perception of multitasking is open to question. A group of eighteen- to twenty-one-year-olds and a group of thirty-five- to thirty-nine-year-olds were both given ninety seconds to translate images into numbers, using a simple code. The younger group did 10 percent better when not interrupted. But when both groups were interrupted by a phone call, a cell phone short-text message, or an instant message, the older group matched the younger group in speed and accuracy. "The older people think more slowly, but they have a faster fluid intelligence, so they are better able to block out interruptions and choose what to focus on," said Martin Westwell, thirty-six, deputy director of the institute. Westwell has changed his work habits since completing the research project.
Completely focusing on the task at hand, without interruptions, generates speedy conclusions, as well as good results. By the same token, focusing on speed, trying to think about too many things at a time, and allowing interruptions can slow down the process and negatively affect results. Multitasking can be harmful to an individual or group of workers. It is usually stressful to think about so many things at one time. Leave the multitasking to the computers, machines, and robots. We humans were not made for multitasking. We can only think about one thing at a time.
Interruptions frequently come in the form of switching tasks. In choosing to multitask, you may be choosing your own level of interruptions, less productive work, and mediocre quality.
In 1984, Tom DeMarco, author of Slack, and his colleague at the Atlantic Systems Guild began a three-year study of software developers titled "Programmer Performance and the Effects of the Workplace."
"We collected information about the environment and recorded each and every task switch. To no one's surprise, people who were interrupted less often performed better. We modeled performance against task-switching frequency and came to the conclusion that the best way to understand task switching was to assume that each switch imposes a direct penalty of a bit more than twenty minutes of lost concentration. We also noted an average of nearly 0.4 switches per hour. This result is a direct loss of productive effort of more than one hour per day," reported DeMarco. "Fragmented knowledge workers may look busy, but a lot of their busyness is just thrashing, switching continually from one activity to another."
Perhaps pressures surround you, forcing you in many directions and constantly changing the priorities in your life and work. The pace of change alone can increase pressure. If pressure gets out of control, you are not going to accomplish what you really want to achieve. This means that you will be less productive in accomplishing the top priorities. You can become overcommitted under pressure to do more and may find yourself multitasking to keep up. "Do more!" "Just get it done!" On and on it goes, until you are out of control, along with others working with you.
An example of being overcommitted and out of control in the work environment is when workers are let go for whatever reason and you must then do two jobs or part of another person's work. Now you have fifteen top-priority tasks or projects versus the ten you previously performed. Expectations increase, along with more interactions, meetings, deadlines, research, communicating, changes, reordering priorities, etc. You are expected to adapt and get the work done. Shifting from task to task or project to project demands greater organization, discipline, and just hard work at a faster pace. This frequent shifting creates additional stress and generates multitasking, potential errors, and usually poorer outcomes than you'd like.
An example of overcommitment on a personal front may be when the mother of three children under seven years old, one in school full-time, one in school half days, one in diapers at two years old, has overloaded her days. This typical scenario may be familiar.
• Volunteers to organize a book sale festival
• Volunteers for Wednesday's church activities
• Plays tennis once a week
• Works out four times a week
• Cleans her own house
• Goes to T-ball games with the five-year-old on Thursdays
• Attends soccer practice for the seven-year-old plus a game on Saturdays
• Plans the menu and prepares the meals
• Helps the seven-year-old with studies
• Makes sure the two-year-old meets with other kids each week
• Plans a camping trip for the next weekend with friends
• Goes to the doctor for bad colds, ear aches, etc.
• Maintains the car, including oil changes and repairs
• Plans for guests visiting in three weeks
• Plans and holds birthday parties and attends those of friends
• Sometimes talks to her husband
You can probably think of more events and activities to add to your list.
We may say that this is just "life." But this mother must multitask to get through the day and week. She lives with a high level of stress. She is also concerned about the quality time she has for each child and her husband, not to mention time for herself. She is exhausted each night by 7:00, preparing for the next day as she folds the laundry. This mom is overcommitted and may be out of control.
I can only think of one or two justifiable situations for multitasking. My daughter has three boys under the age of six. She says that the family can't survive unless she multitasks. I worry about the pressure on moms like her. I understand they do the things they need to do. I know that the millennial generation is proud of the way they can multitask, but I believe it impacts quality of life, inhibits clear thinking, and disrupts the focus on the highest priorities.
The "Why Home School" blog refers to a Time.com article called "The Multitasking Generation" that focuses on how children of this generation do a lot of multitasking and some of the problems resulting from constant multitasking. "Decades of research indicate that the quality of one's output and depth of thought deteriorated as one attends to ever more tasks. Research shows that our brains don't do true multitasking. We can not give full attention to a conversation while typing an e-mail to another friend about a different topic, while focusing on something else in the background. Habitual multitasking may condition their brain to an overexcited state, making it difficult to focus even when they want to. People lose the skill and the will to maintain concentration ..."
Paul Pearsall, PhD, wrote in Toxic Success, "Anyone who brags of being a multitasker is confessing to being a sufferer of toxic success syndrome. Research indicates that multitasking is another name for attention deficit disorder and lack of productivity and effectiveness."
The article, "Drop that BlackBerry! Multitasking may be harmful," on CNNhealth.com, described the impact of multitasking based on a study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "A new study suggests that people who often do multiple tasks in a variety of media—texting, instant messaging, online video watching, work processing, web surfing, and more—do worse on tests in which they need to switch attention from one task to another than people who rarely multitask in this way." The article also mentioned that "This study adds to a growing body of literature that says, in general, that multitasking is going to be problematic for people, that it does compromise productivity, and that its consequences can be quite severe in situations like driving." says David W. Goodman, MD, the director of the Adult Attention Deficit Disorder Center of Maryland.
Indeed, we all hear more news coverage these days about auto accidents linked to texting, making phone calls, and reading e-mails on smart phones while driving. Multitasking can literally lead to death. But we are mostly concerned with the stress, pressure, low productivity, interruptions, and lack of focus when multitasking. These conditions negatively impact our quality of life and impede our enjoyment of satisfying work.
Without these stressful conditions, you have better quality time, the tasks are completed faster, and you can move on to another priority. Get tasks off your mind and move on: complete them. Use contiguous thinking to concentrate on the outcomes without straying to other topics and thoughts. Focus on the details as you progress toward completion. Concentration allows you to think about the impact and other important elements within the task. You don't risk losing the thoughts that will enhance the project or task.
Disconnected Tasks
"Shotgunning," or distributing your energy over a wide variety of tasks, may dilute your effectiveness the same way as interruptions do. You may have more control over the approach to your work because you can make the choice of "rifle shooting" on one task before you move on to another priority or "shotgunning" on many tasks. By focusing your concentration, you screen out thoughts and tasks that take you away from your mission. Take control over how you work, even within a potentially disruptive work environment. Sometimes you need to just say no, with an appropriate explanation, to some requests. Find a good place to work when completing critical projects with deadlines; change the location where you are working in order to concentrate and maintain focus. Cover your movements with your boss if necessary, but take action.
If your actions are not consistent with the culture or your manager's expectations, something is out of synch and needs to be addressed. Experiment with doing the work a different way to improve your productivity. Have a conversation with your manager to let her know what you are doing and why. This action can be considered healthy "pushback." It is useful in improving how tasks are accomplished to meet the desired outcomes. Share what you've learned with your manager and coworkers.
You experience the satisfaction of doing good work instead of doing many disconnected tasks. The disconnected tasks are busyness. You may try to get the tasks done very quickly in order to check them off. You may allow frequent interruptions, such as reading an incoming e-mail when the digital tone sounds, answering calls, and answering e-mails as they arrive throughout the day. You are stressing yourself out while fooling yourself that you are productive because you are busy.
Focused concentration is powerful and very productive. Don't allow the environment to become disruptive to the point of not being able to control it.
• Turn off the tone sound for incoming e-mail
• Place your phone on "forward to voice mail"
• Silence your mobile phone, Droid, iPhone, Blackberry, or other devices.
Fear Factor
Fear can be one of the reasons we multitask. I'm talking from personal experience. We do many things at once because someone told us to do it. We don't want to lose our job; we don't want a mediocre or poor performance rating; and on and on. Another reason may be because we live with the illusion that we are heroes if we multitask: it's a badge of honor. These heroic misconceptions are not the most productive modes of operation. The "heroics" become habit-forming and even addictive. We are running downhill at breakneck speed and don't know how to slow or stop ourselves. And we don't realize that we are doing this out of fear.
Business is Business
Corporations rarely, if ever, suggest slowing down to be more productive. "Do more with less" is the current mantra of many businesses. For the most part, corporate environments contradict many of the concepts I discuss in these chapters. At times, corporate direction seems to be focused more on quantity and speed than quality. Leaders frequently overcommit to get more work out of the workforce. Then the quality may be impacted because of the expected speed of delivery. Of course, our customers can be very demanding about delivery requests, but pushing for more output, more responsibilities, and more projects forces multitasking. This seems to be the mode of operation for most businesses. And with every leadership change and reorganization, things seem to get worse for the managers and individual workers, not better. Leaders want us to get more done and reduce costs. "Work smarter" really means "bust your buns," "work longer hours," and "just make it happen."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Be More Productive Slow Down by Bud Roth Copyright © 2011 by Bud Roth. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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