In my latest book, “Listen: How To Be You In A World Where You Can Be Anything”, one thing I talk about is the machine that historically keeps moving faster and faster. This machine is not a car engine or a manufacturing facility producing parts. It’s the machine that shows up in the form of the knowledge economy, accelerating forward faster and faster as we improve how we work, where we work, and with whom we work. As long as this knowledge machine is moving forward we have jobs, innovation spikes, products get created and money flows.

We are productive so it’s all good, right?

Wrong…

It’s no secret that in a world where we must produce, produce, produce, the margins of our lives become chronically misaligned, stretched thin, and left in exhaustive shambles. The price we pay for increased “productivity” shows up in poor health, a negative posture toward life and complete burnout.

We recently saw this take the form of “quiet quitting” and “the great resignation” during the pandemic. While these trends were birthed from a chaotic period of time, they are not necessarily new and they don’t solve the greater issue that pulls the strings below the surface. The need for productivity.

However, as thought leaders come together and as we share ideas, we can begin creating a new narrative. One that supports true productivity, without the need to compromise your well-being.

Enter stage left: Cal Newport’s latest book, “Slow Productivity”, a book that is dismantling harmful, deeply intrenched forms of pseudo-productivity which have; despite some great efforts, taken hold around the world.

Newport assets that our current definition and understanding of productivity is both not accurate and not ideal. For example, why are knowledge workers working hours based on outdated factory working models (9–5) when many of us only have 3–4 hours of solid mental work capacity available per day? Why are we asking folks working in the knowledge sharing world to produce more papers, more knowledge products, and attend more meetings, with little regard for the time and space required to actually produce prolific work?

These questions, among others, are important to think about and as we rethink productivity, it’s time to change the narrative.

As we look to re-align how we work to produce higher-quality work that also doesn’t compromise our well-being along the way, here are 8 ways you can actually improve your productivity and your well-being at work.

(Note: Many of these concepts are adapted from Newport’s book, married with my own creative touch done through deep work).

Focus On 1–3 Big Projects At A Time

When you narrow in on 1–3 big projects and achieving big outputs with those projects, you can begin to narrow in on success in more targeted ways rather than just trying to hold and mobilize a half dozen projects at the same time. This sounds like common sense, but I would argue that we have lost this in many parts of the knowledge sector. We must narrow to eventually widen. We need a tight scope to eventually see the entire coastline.

Focus on no more than 3 projects and you will be truly productive.

Change Your Time Horizon

In my latest book, I talk about the pace of innovation ramping up in our digital age, but as we look back in history, we see tons of examples of great thought leaders who let ideas and creativity percolate into something great. For example, John Milton, the author of Paradise Lost, took years to publish his masterpiece of a book due to his blindness. As Newport writes in his latest book, even the James Bond character was born out of slowness and years of percolation far away from England.

When you zoom out and look at longer time horizons, you start to see not only what you are currently achieving, you also begin to rethink what is possible for the future and are less overwhelmed knowing you can ‘slow boil’ with the next big project or product. You set the rules and you can set your own time horizons in creating a masterpiece.

Embrace Seasonality

Just as fields go through fallow seasons, Newport writes that we should adopt our own seasonality with our knowledge work. I couldn’t agree more. There is a certain ebb and flow that should be welcomed with each season and your work should be no different. It should have high seasons and low seasons and both should be embraced as equally productive. Today, many companies and entrepreneurs have lost this. The thought of low or slower seasons somehow has translated into a lack of productivity and useless time spent when in reality, it’s the opposite. Slow seasons can be great for clearing administrative overhead, getting more organized, and sparking new ideas to complex problems you didn’t have the space or time to address during high seasons. Simply put, seasonality is actually a driver of real productivity.

Pull, Don’t Push

When you begin to push back on being overloaded and create a system for when to pull in a new project to work on, you become less overwhelmed which leads to less burnout over time. This method is hard to action, but I would encourage you to dive into this more deeply in Cal’s book for application within your own work.

Force Task Clarity As A Non-Negotiable

To increase real productivity, it’s imperative that you seek task and/or project clarity in knowledge work. For example, think back to when you were given a large task or project and expected to complete it in an unrealistic timeline. Rather than letting this happen to you time and time again, creating a system that forces the person giving you the task or project to be clear with how much time it will take, along with other contextual information and files that could be helpful to know as you dive in will save you so much time and energy while also enhancing your productivity. The other thing this does is force the one sending you work to truly understand the amount of time that this work will actually take vs playing a guessing game in an already tired, overloaded knowledge worker.

Double Your Time

Whatever the project or task you are working on, consider doubling the time it takes to actually complete it in your calendar. Why?? Because you aren’t meant to be working like a team of sled dogs running the Iditarod for 25 years straight. You simply cannot sustain the pace despite your best efforts. When you double your time dedicated to completing tasks, it allows you to work from a more relaxed state and to achieve a healthy state of flow with the work in front of you. It can also give you the space to explore deliberate play within your work which actually produces joy in the task or work you are doing. Who knew that adding more time do to your work could actually drive joy, enhance productivity and preserve your well-being? Amazing!

Set Clear Boundaries

As mentioned, during the pandemic quiet quitting was all the rage. The ethos of this movement was simply that knowledge workers (along with others) were finally attempting to set more healthy boundaries with their work and stepping away from the laptop at 5pm to take a paddle on the lake they kept putting off. While the narratives ranged from “this is a terrible concept” to “it’s a way to change our system for the better, power to the people”, it was clear that knowledge workers were looking for a new true north and ok to shed the thought that their work is their identity.

As you look ahead, setting clear boundaries is not only healthy but it’s critical to living well and being balanced with your work.

Set 1:1 Ratio’s

This may feel like a novel concept but something Newport and I both agree on is the idea of a 1:1 ratio of meetings to uninterupted time. For example, for every 1 hour of meeting time you have, schedule a 1 hour block of uninterupted working time. This gives you the additional space to process the prior or upcoming meeting and space to organize your thinking and related work around the project you are meeting about. This method will also ensure that your meetings will NEVER exceed 50% of your weekly schedule. This may not feel tangible for you but I would challenge your thinking here. If you truly want to be productive, you cannot be in meetings 60–70% of your week. Give yourself the permission to take back your time, it’s ok.

At the end of the day, the economy needs your creativity and your knowledge but not at the expense of your personal sanity and well-being. It’s imperative that you create the space you need to actually be productive, creative, and to live well while managing the professional expectations floating around you. This is not easy to do, but by implementing some or all of these strategies above, you will see a marked improvement on your life and the quality of work you produce.

Until next time.