Category: Best of site

We all want to increase productivity and get more done with our working hours.

There’s just one problem: Most people’s view of productivity comes from the industrial age. This leads to some fundamental misconceptions about work, including these:

• If you work more hours, you get more work done.
• Adding more people to a project means you can finish sooner.
• Productivity is more or less constant and can be reliably predicted and scheduled.

For knowledge workers, i.e. anyone who works with information rather than physically producing stuff, these beliefs are not only wrong, they’re actively harmful.

So here is my suggestion for 5 new rules of productivity for knowledge workers.

1: Productivity varies wildly from day to day. This is normal.

In an industrial setting, production and output can be planned in advance barring accidents or equipment failure. Basically you know that if the plant operates for X hours tomorrow you’ll produce Y widgets.

For knowledge workers you can’t possibly know in advance whether tomorrow will be a day where you:

• Reach a brilliant insight that saves you and your team weeks of work.
• Work tirelessly and productively for 12 hours.

Or the day where you:

• Spend 8 hours gazing dejectedly into your screen.
• Introduce a mistake that will take days to find and fix.

This variation is normal – if a little frustrating. It also means that you shouldn’t judge your productivity by the output on any given day but rather by your average productivity over many days.

I have never seen this more clearly than when I was writing my first book. Some days I’d sit myself down in front of my laptop and find myself unable to string two words together. Some mornings I banged out most of a chapter in a few hours. Writing is a creative process. I can do it when I’m in the mood. Trying to write when I’m not, is a frustrating exercise in futility. On the days where I couldn’t write, I’d go do something else. Probably wakeboarding :)

The result: I wrote the book in record time (a couple of months all told), the book turned out really well AND I enjoyed the writing process immensely.

Three things you can do about this:

1. Don’t make project plans based only on your maximum productivity days. Not every day will be like that. Base your schedules on your average productivity.
2. Don’t beat yourself up on the low-productivity days. It’s normal, it’s part of the flow and these days have value too. I like to think that on these days, my subconscious mind is working on some really hairy complicated problem for which the solution will suddenly appear fully formed in my mind.
3. If you do have a day where you get very little done, why not go home early and relax or get some private chores done?

2: Working more hours means getting less done

Whenever we fall behind, it’s tempting to start working overtime to catch up. Don’t! Instead, commit this graph to memory:

It comes from this excellent presentation on productivity. Read it!

Here’s another data point:

In 1991, a client asked me to conduct a study on the effects of work hours on productivity and errors…

My findings were quite simply that mistakes and errors rose by about 10% after an eight-hour day and 28% after a 10-hour day…

I also found that productivity decreased by half after the eighth hour of work. In other words, half of all overtime costs were wasted since it was taking twice as long to complete projects. After the study was done, a concerted effort was made to increase staffing.

(Source)

This may be counter-intuitive but it’s important to grasp: For knowledge workers there is no simple relationship between hours worked and output!

Three things you can do about this:

1. Don’t work permanent overtime. In fact, some studies indicate that knowledge workers are the most productive when they work 35 hours a week.
2. Take breaks during the work day and make sure to take vacations.
3. Experiment to find out what schedule works best for you. Five eight-hour days? Four longer days and a long weekend?

3: Working harder means getting less done

In an industrial environment, you can most often work harder and get more done. An increase in effort means an increase in productivity.

For knowledge workers, the opposite is true. You can’t force creativity, eloquence, good writing, clear thinking or fast learning – in fact, working harder tends to create the opposite effect and you achieve much less.

Three things you can do about this:

1. Take the pressure off yourself and your team. Even if you make a mistake or miss a deadline the world probably isn’t going to end. Less pressure means higher productivity.
2. Schedule a work load equivalent to only 80% of your work week. Trust me, you won’t be wasting your remaining 20% – but you will be more relaxed and more creative.
3. In the words of Fred Gratzon: “If it feels like work, you’re doing it wrong”. If you find that most of what you do is a struggle, this is a sure sign that you are not at your most creative and productive.

4: Procrastination can be good for you

In an industrial setting, any time away from the production line is unproductive time – therefore all procrastination is bad. Search for procrastination on google and you’ll find a massive number of articles on how to stop procrastinating and get stuff done.

They will tell you that there is only one reliable way to get stuff done:

1. Check todo-list for next item
2. Complete item no matter what it is
3. Go to step 1

They’ll tell you that if only you had enough willpower, backbone, self-control and discipline, this is how you would work too.

Well guess what: Knowledge workers don’t work that way. Sometimes you’re in the mood for task X and doing X is ridiculously easy and a lot of fun. Sometimes doing X feels worse than walking barefoot over burning-hot, acid-covered, broken glass and forcing yourself to do it anyway is a frustrating exercise in futility.

Sometimes procrastinating is exactly the right thing to do at a particular moment. This is largely ignored by the procrastination-is-a-sign-of-weakness, the-devil-finds-work-for-idle-hands crowd.

Three things you can do about this:

1. Procrastinate without guilt. Do not beat yourself up for procrastinating. Everybody does it once in a while. It doesn’t make you a lazy bastard or a bad person. If you leave a task for later, but spend all your time obsessing about the task you’re not doing, it does nothing good for you.
2. Take responsibility, so that when you choose to procrastinate, you make sure to update your deadlines and commitments. Let people know, that your project will not be finished on time and give them a new deadline.
3. Remember that “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted” (according to John Lennon).

5: Happiness is the ultimate productivity enhancer

The single most efficient way to increase your productivity is to be happy at work. No system, tool or methodology in the world can beat the productivity boost you get from really, really enjoying your work.

I’m not knocking all the traditional productivity advice out there – it’s not that it’s bad or deficient. It’s just that when you apply it in a job that basically doesn’t make you happy, you’re trying to fix something at a surface level when the problem goes much deeper.

Three things you can do about this:

1. Get happy in the job you have. There are many things you can do to improve your work situation – provided you choose to do something, rather than wait for someone else to come along and do it for you.
2. Remember to appreciate what is already good about your job. Often we forget, and overfocus on all the annoyances, problems and jerks. This is a natural tendency called negativity bias, but it also tends to keep us unhappy because we forget what works.
3. If all else fails, find a new job where you can be happy. If your current job is not fixable, don’t wait – move on now!

The upshot

The industrial age view of productivity has serious limitations when applied to knowledge workers – but it remains the dominant view and still informs much of our thinking and many of our choices at work. Let’s change this!

This is not without it’s challenges. The old view of productivity may no longer apply, but it does give managers an illusion of control and predictability. The new rules are… messy. Less predictable. They rely less on charts and graphs – and more on how people feel on any given day.

It ultimately comes down to this: Do we want to stick with a model that is comforting and predictable but wrong or are we ready to face what REALLY works?

Your take

What about you? When are you the most productive? What is your optimal number of working hours per week? What stimulates or destroys your productivity? Please write a comment, I’d love to know your take.

Related posts

• How to procrastinate effectively.
• Don’t let The Cult of Overwork ruin your work life.

If there’s one problem that plagues most business meetings it’s that a few participants are doing most of the talking. If you’re one of those people who tend to talk a lot, here are 5 tips to help you shut up and listen when you need to.

1: Put your hand over your mouth

You can put one hand over the lower part of your face and your mouth. To an outside observer you will look thoughtful and observant. In reality your holding your mouth forcibly shut. It’s a simple physical reminder to yourself to not speak right now.

2: Ask some great questions

People find you very intelligent and persuasive when you let them talk. For instance, the most successful sales meetings are the ones where the customer does almost all the talking. A great way to get them talking, and still feel that you’re contributing, is to ask great questions.

3: Keep track

Have a piece of paper in front of you and make a mark on it every time you speak. Notice how many marks you get up to during a meeting.

4: Notice how you feel when you’re quiet

In my case, I get real antsy when there’s something I’m itching to say. My body tenses up, I tend to hold my breath and I feel generally very uncomfortable. This pressure eventually forces me to speak up.

How about you – how do you feel when there’s something you really want to say?

5: Ask yourself a simple question

Before you speak, ask yourself this: “Is what I’m about to say something I need to say or something the other participants need to hear?” Those are often not the same.

The upshot

Remember: good meetings are not characterized by the amount of talking but by the amount of listening going on.

If you’re a habitual talker like me, I’m sure that you will find that learning to say less and listen more will be a huge boon. People will find you more sympathetic, they will respect you more and even though you may end up saying less, what you do say will be received more appreciatively and have much more of an impact.

Related posts

• Top 10 reasons why being happy at work is the ultimate productivity booster.
• Five weeeeeird tip for great meetings.
• Meet Semco – the company where all meetings are optional.

If you’re unhappy at work, I’m sure that the thought “Man, I really should quit!” crosses your mind occasionally.

So why don’t you?

Even if you long desperately to quit, to get away from your horrible workplace, annoying co-workers or abusive managers, you may hesitate to actually do anything about it, because right on the heels of that impulse come a lot of other thoughts that hold you back from quitting.

Each of these excuses may sound to you like the voice of sanity, offering perfectly good reasons why it is in fact better to stay and endure that bad job just a little longer, but look a little closer, and they don’t really hold up. What they do instead is keep you trapped in a job that is slowly but surely wearing you down.

Here are 10 of the most common bad excuses for staying in a bad job.

#1 “Things might get better”

That jerk manager might be promoted out of there. That annoying co-worker could quit.That mound of overwork could suddenly disappear.

On the other hand, things might also get worse. Or they might not change at all. If you’ve already done your best to improve your job situations and nothing’s happened, just waiting around for things to improve by themselves make little sense.

#2 “My boss is such a jerk but if I quit now, he wins.”

Who cares. This is not about winning or losing, this is your life. Move on, already.

#3 “I’m not a quitter.”

Well guess what these somewhat successful people have in common: Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Tiger Woods, Reese Witherspoon, John McEnroe and John Steinbeck?

Yep, they all dropped out of Stanford.

The old saying that “Winners never quit and quitters never win” is just plain wrong and leaving a bad job is just common sense.

#4 “I’ll never get another job”

Well not if you stay in your current job while it slowly grinds you down, you won’t! Move on now while you still have some self-confidence, motivation and energy left.

#5 “If I quit I’ll lose my salary, status, company car, the recognition of my peers, etc.”

Yes, quitting a job carries a price and that makes it scary. We all know this intimately.

But few of us ask this question: What is the price of staying in a job that makes you unhappy?

That price can be very high. It can ruin your work life but also your marriage, your family life, your health, your self-esteem and your sanity. Not all at once, but a little bit every day.

#6 “Everywhere else is just as bad”

That’s just nonsense. There are plenty of great workplaces in every industry.

#7 “I’ve invested so much in this job already”

You may have sacrificed a lot of time, energy and dignity already in attempts to make things better. This will make it more difficult for you to call it quits.

I’m reminded of how Nigerian email scammers sucker in people. At first it’s a small investment, but then the amounts grow and grow. At each step the victim is reluctant to stop because that would mean losing all the money he’s spent so far.

Quit anyway. Staying on is just throwing good time after bad.

#8 “I’ll lose my health insurance.”

I have a lot of sympathy for this argument. Where I live (Denmark), everybody gets free health care regardless of their employment situation so I can’t imagine the leverage this must give employers.

One answer: Start looking for another job with similar health benefits.

Also: Ask yourself what good job related health insurance is if your job is actually making your sick – which bad jobs can absolutely do.

#9 “My job pays very well”

I have zero sympathy for this argument. I don’t care how well your job pays; if it makes you unhappy it’s not worth it.

Quite the contrary, if you make a lot of money now, use that financial security to quit and find a job that’ll make you happy.

#10 “Quitting will look bad on my CV”

Whereas staying for years in a job that grinds you down and goes nowhere will look excellent.

The upshot

Many of us would be much happier at work if we quit bad jobs sooner. I’ve talked to many people who have finally managed to quit a bad job and only wished they’d done it sooner. I have yet to meet a single person who quit a crappy job only to wish they’d stayed on longer.

You may have perfectly good reasons to stay in your crappy job – all I’m saying is that it pays to examine those reasons very closely to make sure that they hold up.

‘Cause it may just be the fear talking.

Your take

What do you think? Have you ever been stuck in a lousy workplace? What kept you from leaving? What finally made you quit? Please write a comment, I’d love to hear your take.

Related posts

• Find your quitting point
• Never stay in a bad job. Fix it or leave.
• How to find a job you’ll love
• Top 10 signs you’re unhappy at work

Here’s an interesting question that I got yesterday:

My husband and I are currently sitting on the sofa, enjoying our day off and writing down our goals for 2008. While doing so, my husband has brought up the topic of work. Here is his statement in a nutshell: I think you are very angry about work in general and need professional help.

In searching for “help,” I came across your website.

Here’s my question: after being laid off in September and being forced to change careers from the mortgage industry to a more secure industry is there “help” out there for dealing with the anger I now have because I was forced to change careers at 39 years old and what can I do in the meantime so that my “anger” doesn’t spill into my new career?

Thank You,
Yvonne

This question is interesting for many reasons, most notably because this is obviously making Yvonne unhappy at work in her new job. If it’s come to the point where her husband believes she needs professional help, it’s probably also affecting her at home.

Also, Yvonne is far from alone. A lot of people face major changes at work. When they are laid off, when their company is bought by a competitor or when major reorganizations fundamentally change their working conditions. Large scale change has become a fact of corporate life and many of us react to it by getting mad.

Below you’ll find my top 5 tips for dealing with anger when when you’re going through major change at work.

I apologize in advance for venturing maybe a little too close to therapy-land in this post. I honestly don’t want to go all Dr. Phil on you guys, but dealing with anger is not possible without taking a look at what goes on inside your head. OK? OK!

5 steps for dealing with anger at work

Step 1: Accept that being angry is perfectly natural
When we’re faced with large changes in life and at work, we all have to go through the grief cycle, which has the following stages:

1. Denial: The initial stage: “It can’t be happening.”
2. Anger: “Why me? It’s not fair.”
3. Bargaining: “Just let me live to see my children graduate.”
4. Depression: “I’m so sad, why bother with anything?”
5. Acceptance: “It’s going to be OK.”

I’m honestly not sure how scientifically established this model is, but I certainly find it very useful in the work I do with organizations that are going through major change.

Last year, I did some work with a branch of the Danish Tax Authority – an organization that has gone through enormous change and reorganization in the last year.

When I presented a simplified version of this model to them, I could see people breathing sighs of relief. One participant even exclaimed “NOW you tell us!” Many of them had been angry or depressed about these changes, but nobody had told them that this is normal. Consequently, many of them felt bad about what they were feeling – which of course only made them more angry or depressed.

It’s important to accept your own anger as perfectly OK. Being angry is hard enough. Being angry while telling yourself “I really mustn’t be angry” is infinitely worse :o)

This does not give you blanket permission to throw tantrums right and left – it just means that being angry is OK, not that every display of anger is allowed.

Step 2: Find out what your anger does for you – good or bad
What does being angry do for you? Think back to previous situations where you have been angry at work and ask yourself how it affects eg.:

1. You
2. Your relationships with co-workers
3. The quality of your work
4. Your energy
5. Your well-being and health
6. How you feel outside of work
7. Your relationships with friends and family

For each of these, include both the good and the bad. Maybe being angry gives you a lot of clout and influence on the job… but it also means that co-workers tend to avoid you. Maybe being angry feels stressful… but it also saves you from being taken advantage of at work.

And here is a crucial question: What other emotions, questions and doubts are you free from dealing with because you’re angry? When your anger consumes you, which other painful or difficult considerations are you free from thinking about? What would you have to feel/think about/deal with/do something about if you were not angry?

Step 3: Find out what makes you angrier and less angry
What makes you angrier? Which thoughts, situations, people, conversations set you off?

Conversely, what makes you less angry? I’m sure you’re not angry every second of every day :o) What gives you peace – or at least distracts you from the anger?

Find out – then start doing less of what makes you angry and more of the things that calm you down.

Step 4: Focus on gratitude
What are you grateful for? As I mentioned above, anger is part of the grief cycle which is associated with loss. Gratitude is the polar opposite of loss, because it obviously comes from the good things you have in your life.

It’s simple. Every evening, sit down with a piece of paper (and maybe a glass of wine) and make two gratitude lists:

1. 3 things I was grateful for at work today
2. 3 things I was grateful for in life today

It can be big things or small things – obvious stuff or weird stuff. Whatever makes you feel happy and grateful.

If you need some inspiration, check out Scott Nutter who has been doing daily gratitude posts on his blog for 334 days running now.

Step 5: Shift your focus from “What was done to me” to “What I can do”
I know, I know – this is the basic staple of all self-help advice.

As in “When life gives you lemons make lemonade.”

As in “Life is 10% about what happens to you and 90% about how you deal with it.”

As in “You must take responsibility for your own situation, rather than be a victim of.”

That kind of advice can get pretty nauseating. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

3 things NOT to do

There are also some things you should avoid doing.

1: Don’t vent
Common knowledge holds that when you’re angry, you should vent to get it off your chest. Interestingly, studies indicate that venting just makes us even angrier.

2: Don’t try to justify your anger
When you’re feeling angry don’t waste time and energy justifying it – either to yourself or others.

Well that guy was a jerk at the staff meeting and the way I was treated in the last reorg was totally unfair and my manager still hasn’t apologized and some guy cut me off in traffic on the way home and…

You’re angry, that’s enough. You don’t have to list all the reasons why you’re angry. Again, that just makes you even angrier.

3: Don’t stay trapped in your job
There is an amazing amount of peace and calm to be found in the simple fact that “I’m free to leave and find another job.” Conversely, knowing that you’re trapped in your current job makes everything much worse.

Read my previous posts on How to lose your fear of being fired and the Top 10 advantages of low-rent living for more on this.

Your take

What about you? Have you tried being really angry because of major changes in your work life? How did it affect you? How did you handle it? Please write a comment, I’d really like to know!

Related posts

1. The Feel Factor – Why no workplace can afford to ignore what people feel
2. How not to let annoying people annoy you
3. How to turn around a bad day at work

How do you know that you’re unhappy at work? That something is not right and that it’s time to either make some changes at work or move on to a new job?

In my work, I talk to a lot of people who are not happy with their jobs. Here are the top ten symptoms of unhappiness at work that I’ve observed. How many apply to you?

1: You procrastinate
You really, honestly try to get some work done. But somehow you never really get around to it. Or you only do it at the last possible moment and then only do a half-baked effort.

Many people view procrastination as a personal weakness. To me, it’s one of the strongest warning signs of unhappiness at work.

2: You spend Sunday night worrying about Monday morning
“I never sleep on Sunday night very well because I’m worried about going to work on Monday morning. My job is very stressful and you kind of have to gear up for Monday and getting back into that.” (source)

One of the worst things about being unhappy at work is that the unhappiness bleeds over into your free time. If you’ve had a lousy day at work, it’s difficult to go home and have a great evening. If your week sucked, it’s hard to have a fun, relaxed, carefree weekend.

3: You’re really competitive about salary and titles
You don’t like the job itself, so you focus much more on salary and perks. Knowing that someone in a similar position is paid more than you, or is promoted when you’re not, really eats at you.

When we’re unhappy at work we get a lot more competitive, for one simple reason: When work doesn’t give us happiness and enjoyment we want to get something else out of it. And what else is there but compensation and promotions.

4: You don’t feel like helping co-workers
Your colleagues may be struggling. But you don’t really feel like lending a hand. Why should you?

One very interesting psychological study started by putting subjects in either a good mood or a bad mood. They were then asked to go down the hall to another room where the experiment would continue. In the hallway the real experiment took place – the subjects passed a man holding a big box struggling to open a door. Would the subject help that person? The experiment showed, that when we’re in a bad mood, we’re much less likely to help others.

5: Work days feel looooong
The first thing you do in the morning, is calculate the number of hours until you can go home.

Ironically, this makes the work day feel even longer.

6: You have no friends at work
Friends at work? They’re mostly all jerks anyway.

Gallup have found in their studies of workplace engagement, that one of the strongest factors that predict happiness at work is having at least one close friend at work.

7: You don’t care. About anything.
Things can go well or they can go badly for your workplace. Either way, you don’t really give a damn.

When you’re unhappy, you care mostly about yourself and not so much about the workplace.

8: Small things bug you
Small annoyances bug you out of all proportion. Like someone taking up too much space in the parking lot, someone taking the last coffee without brewing a new pot or someone talking too loudly in the next cubicle.

When you’re unhappy you have much thinner skin and a shorter fuse. It takes a lot less to annoy you.

9: You’re suspicious of other people’s motives
No matter what people do, your fist thought is “what are they up to?” Good or bad, big or small, all decisions and actions made by your co-workers and managers are seen in this light.

Studies show that we’re also more suspicious of others when we’re unhappy.

10: Physical symptoms
You suffer from insomnia, headaches, low energy, muscle tension and/or other physical symptoms.

Studies show that when you’re unhappy at work you’re more prone to experience these physical stress symptoms.

Your take

How many of these apply to you in your current job? Did I leave any important symptoms of workplace unhappiness out? Please write a comment. I’d really like to know your take!

Related posts:

• Never stay in a bad job. Fix it or leave.
• Find your quitting point
• How to find a job you’ll love