Did you know that there’s a Flickr group called bed jumpers? It’s for pictures of people who… well, figure it out for yourself :o)
I wish you a very happy weekend.
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Are you a procrastinator or an incubator?
My good buddy Robert Biswas-Diener, AKA the Indiana Jones of Positive Psychology, tells this story in an article on cnn.com, that fits in perfectly with my post from yesterday about the rules of productivity of knowledge workers:Mark had only a handful of days to write applications for internships, turn in final papers and secure letters of recommendation and had fallen into a deep funk. Not only was there no progress, but he had frittered away hours in meaningless pastimes like downloading music and walking in the park.
Mark uttered the all-too-familiar phrase, “I am such a procrastinator!”
My instincts told me that it was not a lifetime of chronic procrastination that led Mark to his current situation. On a hunch, I asked him a crucial question, “When you get around to completing your work — and we both know that you eventually will — how will the quality be?”
My client seemed taken aback by the question. He answered with confidence, a single word: “Superior!”
I realized, in that moment, that there may be a subtle but important difference between the “back burner” mentality I saw in my client and the traditional way a procrastinator works.
What Mark presented was something qualitatively different: a clear sense of deadlines, confidence that the work would be complete on time, certainty that the work would be of superior quality and the ability to subconsciously process important ideas while doing other — often recreational — activities.
I realized I was looking at a strength, one I called “incubator.” When I shared this term with Mark, he felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted off his shoulders.
Robert goes on to explain the key differences between procrastinators and incubators based on a study he did of 184 students. There’s even a test you can take to figure out if you’re an incubator or a regular old procrastinator.
Also, check out Robert’s web site for a lot more great stuff on positive psychology and using your strengths.
Go read the whole article – it rocks!
Related posts:
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The top 5 new rules of productivity
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
- Don’t work permanent overtime. In fact, some studies indicate that knowledge workers are the most productive when they work 35 hours a week.
- Take breaks during the work day and make sure to take vacations.
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
- Check todo-list for next item
- Complete item no matter what it is
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
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A great human
Movie critic Roger Ebert has lost his voice, his ability to eat and drink and most of his jaw to cancer, but as this fantastic interview in Esquire shows, the man still has a lot to say.
Towards the end of the article, he sums up his life philosophy:
I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do.
To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts.
We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.
That’s it – we’re here to be happy and make others happy. That’s the meaning of life.
Also, you can tell from the article that Ebert is still happy at work – indeed that writing is a large part of what keeps him going.
Go read the whole interview – it’s great! It had me in tears by the end.
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Getting to action: My latest Reboot talk
Here’s a video of my presentation at last year’s Reboot conference in Copenhagen:
For a long time, I’d been wanting to do a speech in shorts and flip-flops and since Reboot is a) held in the summer and b) mostly attended by IT geeks, this was the perfect venue to do it :o)
The theme of the presentation is action. My point is simple: A bias for action is good for you because stuff happens when you act. But mostly I talk about how you get to action.
Your take
What about you? What helps you act? When do you get up and do stuff and when do you prefer to think, analyze and plan? What happens when you act?
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A question for ya
I’m currently writing an op-ed piece for a Danish newspaper about how to treat new hires. A lot of companies get this wrong and more or less toss in new recruits at the deep end to let them sink or swim for themselves.Others, like for instance Disneyworld or Zappos.com spend a lot of time and money on their new people to make sure that they “get” the company culture and are given all the tools, instructions and knowledge they need to succeed.
For all of us, starting a new job can be a stressful time. You don’t know anyone there, you don’t know the written and unwritten rules of the workplace and you suddenly have a lot of new things to learn.
What has been your experience in starting a new job? How were you received on your first day? How did it make you feel? What did the workplace get right and where did they fail you in your first few weeks? Please write a comment, I’d love to hear your take.
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Hooray – it’s snowing
Denmark is having the coldest winter in many years and the whole country has been covered in snow for the last several weeks. This, predictably, annoys the Danes. The roads are icy, the trains are late, your feet get wet, etc…
So last night I went on Danish TV to explain why snow makes us happier. Here’s the clip:
Basically, it’s because snow reflects light which means that the days are brighter which counteracts winter depressions (or SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder).
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Quitting time
I got an email from Red in the Philippines, who took a major step towards happiness at work last week:
Red writes:
I have been your follower and i really admire your writing style. In fact, I have adapted your style in my report writing.
I just talked with my boss this morning (after reading your article on fear about being fired – now what vs. so what) and told him that I have reached my quitting point and I am resigning effective March 31, 2010. You know what, I felt a sense of relief deep inside and it was really great.
Though I dont have a job lined up, I believe that it is worth resigning from this suckie job. It has sucked my life out of me. I do not want corporate world anymore after March 31. I am pushing through with my passion: weight training, teaching wellness in High School, and blogging.
That’s fantastic and this is what more people need to do: Leave jobs that are slowly sucking the life out of them instead of making excuses for why quitting is impossible right now.
I’ve talked to many people who have quit bad jobs and almost all say “it was the right thing to do and I only wish I’d done it sooner.”
On the other hand, I’ve never heard a single solitary person say “I quit a bad job last year – I only wish I’d waited 6 more months to do it.”
Of course, the current state of the economy makes this choice more difficult. But no less necessary.
Related posts
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Friday Spoing!
Here’s some major happiness at work at the Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, Oregon.
What you see is their staff doing a Pink Glove Dance for breast cancer awareness.
Thanks, Elaine.
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Srikumar S. Rao at our 2009 conference
One of the highlights of our 2009 conference on happiness at work in Copenhagen was Dr. Srikumar S. Rao’s wonderfully inspiring and funny presentation.
His presentation focused specifically on two traps you must avoid, that keep us from becoming happy. You can watch the entire speech here (18 minutes):
Dr. Rao is the man behind the pioneering course Creativity and Personal Mastery. This is the only business school course that has its own alumni association and it has been extensively covered in the media including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the London Times, the Independent, Time, the Financial Times, Fortune, the Guardian, Business Week and dozens of other publications.
