If you were to compare the peak performance days of people that are at the top of their game productivity wise, with those that are struggling to get anything done, what would the data show?
Flow & The Big Rocks
Here is my hypothesis.
Previously, I shared a unique time tracking method that uses a couple of distinctive questions to assess the nature of how you are spending your time. Analysing the answers, we can get some interesting insights into your working day.
The questions are based on opposite poles, let’s discuss them:
Reactive versus Planned
What ever you are doing right now, is either by planned intention, or it is reactive. And by reactive I mean, that is arose from inbound information, automatic habits or unconscious responses. For illustration, consider the two states played out at their most extreme:
With a purely reactive life and work style, the way you spend your time is dictated by information coming in and/or your habits. Emails, phone calls, twitter and facebook updates, news, people, events. Essentially, what you are doing is determined from your response to what happens to catch your attention. People that are continually putting out fires, or procrastinating, or running around other people, or acting without little structure or plan tend to live in the reactive spectrum of time management. They aren’t so much managing their time, outside circumstances are managing it. While some jobs are simply reactive by nature, in other cases, being too reactive is what is in your way from your goals.
A planned type of work behavior is the opposite. Actions and activities are determined by deliberate design. That design being an intention to reach a particular goal or state of being. Most of the valuable work gets done when we set out to do it in a planned fashion. When we deliberately create a space to focus on a particular goal or activity in the exclusion of others. When we choose to dedicate our time toward something. When we are directly building toward the realization of a vision we have.
Of course, no one lives completely at either of these opposites. Common sense would say to have a balance. The productive people I have met though, tend to incorporate more planned action than those that aren’t as productive. My belief is that if you have specific goals, that putting an emphasis on deliberate, planned activities is the faster route to achieving them. Also, people that have better time management skills and self control, discipline and determination tend to work more deliberately and are less reactive.
To get an idea of how much of our time is spent in ‘reactive’ or ‘planned’ mode I added these as checkboxes in a specialised time sheet. If you are willing enough to audit your own time management for a day, a few days or a week, you can get a clear picture of how the balance is working for you and the correlation between reactive vs planned and your results.
Discharge versus Recharge
Imagine having 100 units of fuel or energy available to us at the start of the day. We know that certain activities consume fuel and others might give us renewed energy. Logic and practical life experience dictates that if we spend outputting more energy than is coming in, we will get tired, be less productive and burn out. That is why peak performers are obsessed with resting and renewal. Whether that is by eating the right things at the right times, napping, meditating, relaxing, stretching or exercising, they are very serious about recharging. They know that they can only perform as well as their fuel gauges allow them. So it is important to keep those fuel gauges, or energy levels working at peak capacity. Most people aren’t that deliberate about renewing their energy during the day. If you regularly feel tired for long periods of time, finding new ways to renew your energy might be just what to look for.
But the fact of the matter is, an activity either is consuming energy or it is refueling energy. Energy levels fluctuate on a number of levels. There is the emotional level, intellectual level, physical level and spiritual level. When we are not so productive or when we are overworking, chances are we are not maintaining these energy levels well.
Knowing how you are spending your time from an energy levels standpoint, can be very enlightening. Charge activities, are those that give a net gain in energy resources. Discharge activities are those activities that cost fuel.
Investing versus Spending
There is nothing more equitable in the world than the fact that everybody gets the same amount of hours in the day. Imagine receiving 1440 credits (1credit/minute) every day that you can spend. You can either ‘buy’ things that have no future value or you can invest in things that bring future returns. The same goes with how we choose to spend our time.
There are activities that are inert in terms of their future value. Our time, once spent, can never be retrieved, it is lost forever. We can never get it back. Spending it wisely is key. The more we invest, the richer our future becomes. I’m not just talking about investing in stocks and bonds. Invest in your health, your relationships, your passions, your skills, you personal development, the exploration of your potential. When we are participating in those areas, we are investing our time. When we are ‘passing’ time, we are spending it. It is just wasting away, it’s value only being in the moment.
That is what happens when we watch tv, read the news, gossip, idle too long, ruminate, worry, obsess over minor details and argue with other people. That is time wasted, in most cases.
To boost our productivity we don’t need to work twice as hard, or even twice as efficient. If we just start investing more time than we are spending it, you will get gains. Those that are at peak productivity, unequivocally invest their time more than their inefficient counterparts.
Flow
Flow is a particular state of being and doing that has a number of qualities. If we pick the Csikszenthmihalyi definition, it is defined as a state of experience where we feel in control, alert, super focused, timeless, immersed and we have great feedback over how well we are doing and it feels good because we feel like we’re doing well in a fairly challenging activity. People can experience flow while viling their nails, driving their car, while playing a sport, while writing or while problemsolving. Those are just a few examples.
Another way of defining the flow experience is a quality of perception we have when we experience the world as feeling connected, where things seem to be happening for a reason and events happen serendipitously. When we feel part of a bigger, unifying reality that is working both mysteriously and wisely.
I think both experiences – neither being mutually exclusive – are some of the most satisfying experiences we have in life. Productive, happier people seem to have more flow experiences than average. I feel we should try to organize as many opportunities for flow as we can.
Core Activities
Core activities are those activities that express our unique talents and strengths. They are those activities that contribute the most to our fulfillment, our business, our quality of life or our relationships. From a professional standpoint, core activities comprise of those activities that produce the results that explain why you are in business in the first place. For authors, it is to write. For marketers, it is to sell and build relationships. For speakers, it is to speak. For comedians, it is to write jokes, practise sets and perform live. For music artists it is to play their instruments and play in front of an audience. For coaches it is when they are inspiring their clients and holding them accountability.
Sometimes life seems to get in the way of the core activities. That is when we are most likely to move off track. To get back on track, get back to those core activities and do them more often. Protect those activities, structure your day around them. Don’t let the small stuff and distractions get in the way.
Putting it together
By evaluating our activities based on the above qualities, we can quickly identify where our productivity issues are. We can get an idea how balanced we are. While neither quality is necessarrily good or bad, there are combinations that you want to minimize and combinations that we should seek to increase.
A Rough Guide To Rating The Value Of Activities:
No stars:
Reactive + Discharge + Spent
Reactive + Charge + Spent
1 star rating:
Planned + Discharge + Spent
Planned + Charge + Spent
2 star rating:
Reactive+Charge + Invest
Reactive+Discharge + Invest
3 star rating:
Planned + Charge + Invest
Planned + Discharge + Invest
4 star rating:
Reactive + Charge + Invest + Flow
Reactive + Charge + Invest + Flow + Core activity
Reactive + Charge + Invest + Core activity
Reactive + Discharge + Invest + Flow
Reactive+ Discharge + Invest + Flow + Core activity
Reactive+ Discharge + Invest + Core activity
5 star rating:
Planned + Charge + Invest + Flow
Planned + Charge + Invest + Flow + Core activity
Planned + Charge + Invest + Core activity
Planned + Discharge + Invest + Flow
Planned + Discharge + Invest + Flow + Core activity
Planned + Discharge + Invest + Core activity
Would love to hear your thoughts/questions!
Ooh, so much food for thought! So many ways to look at time!
I’m far too reactive, even when I set out a plan for the day. There’s no way I do enough restorative things either.
** I’m back. Did you miss me? I went away to make notes for myself on this post, focusing on the best way to spend time. I likely won’t spend all my time in 5 star mode, but I can have that as a clear goal!
Thank you so much. I believe I’ll make a file card and compare it to my daily to-do list until I create this new way of being productive as a habit.
Hey Karen, thank you for contributing and let me know how you get on. I’m trying to up the amount of time in the 3-5 star range. That should automatically help decrease the low value areas. The time sheet I created helps take the occasional measurement to see what the balance is like.
This might sound a little weird – or maybe arrogant – or delusional
– but I recall one particular job as a manager where according to your productivity criteria, I would say I was operating at pretty much 100% productivity all the time. Not coincidentally, I was happier than a clam going to work every day too. Oddly, the job wasn’t heavily email based as most people would just stop by and talk through issues face to face and we’d resolve them on the spot rather than play email tag, something, as an ENFP on Meyers Briggs, I felt energized by (which goes against traditional time management b.s. that says you are to minimize interruptions).
I think that looking at productivity in the way that you are here Peter, can provide even greater insights beyond how productive you are – it can provide a lot of feedback into what kind of work and environment you find fulfilling and makes you happy. Because I believe that being in a state of effortless productivity because you’re drawn into the activities you’re undertaking (not necessarily ticking stuff off a list) means you’re doing what you’re meant to be doing. And how cool is that?
I also meant to add – re. being reactive – before I ever became a manager of a department, I was at my sister’s place and my brother-in-law, a business owner was complaining about how his staff was constantly interrupting him to ask questions. I think it was one of two issues: a) his core job WAS the interruptions and/or b) he hadn’t empowered his staff enough to answer their own questions without his input. I always felt with my staff that one of my core activities was to be a mentor and sounding board for them, but to also invest the time in training them how to think through things on their own. That doesn’t happen on a schedule, unfortunately.
Also, investment in systems can pay off so much that I personally feel it’s worth putting in the OT to make things work better in the future. Having said that, having lots of time off to just sit (preferably while camping)
and think about how to do things better when taking time off on a weekend morning was probably some of the best investments of time that I ever made. Highly recommend the book “Slack” by Tom DeMarco for how to implement this for managers / business owners.