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Time Management

Avoiding the Vanity Work Trap

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If you’re in the business of dealing with web and social media metrics or are familiar with entrepreneur and The Lean Startup author Eric Ries, you probably know about vanity metrics. Basically, these are numbers that sound impressive but don’t necessarily mean anything of significance because they’re not actionable by themselves. In other words, vanity metrics are “good for feeling awesome, bad for action.”

Many of us fall into an analogous vanity work trap. We do things that sound impressive or important, making us feel productive but essentially don’t propel us to any new heights. Maybe it’s that umpteenth networking event or coffee meeting, or obsessing over social media followers or responding to emails during vacation, or even dutifully doing all the things we think we’re supposed to do. The vanity work trap sucks us in using other people’s ideas of success.

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The Science of Productivity

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Productivity is really about how you and your brain work. Gregory Ciotti‘s collaboration with ASAPScience yields a fascinating video on the science of productivity, giving a quick look at willpower, energy management, and effective work habits like documenting your progress.

Productively intrigued? Check out Greg’s full post, which positively bursts with more information and work strategies, and our post about understanding the science behind to-do lists.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

Time Management and Working Smarter

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[I]n many ways, time is a much more valuable resource than money. You can earn large profits and save them for use years later. However, once time is gone, it will never come back.

Robert C. Pozen, Harvard Business School professor and author of Extreme Productivity, on the importance of time management and working smarter, not harder, because time is an irreplaceable resource.

How You Can Work Harder and Waste More Time

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‘The longer you work, the less efficient you are,’ said Bob Kustka, the founder of Fusion Factor, a productivity and time-management consulting firm in Norwell, Mass. He says workers are like athletes in that they are most efficient in concentrated bursts…. Working energy, like physical energy, ‘is best used in spurts where we work hard on a few focused activities and then take a brief respite,’ he says. And those respites look an awful lot like wasting time.

Lisa Belkin explores how we are both working harder and wasting more time. Whether you consider it wasting time, or productive “jell time”, she concludes that it’s the end result that matters.

The Science Behind Why Better Energy Management is the Key to Peak Productivity

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We live in a culture that seems obsessed with being productive.

While increasing our output and doing more with our time is certainly an admirable goal, according to Tony Schwartz, author of Be Excellent at Anything, that misguided approach is actually liable to hurt your productivity.

How so?

Without real restoration and rejuvenation throughout the day, people (knowingly) hold themselves back because they are worried about “pacing” their energy to make it through the day.

This is incredibly damaging to your potential, because it distributes your efforts at 25% across your whole work day instead of reaching 90% output at the moments that correspond with your body’s naturally productive rhythms of alertness. The result is that you aren’t able to do your best work and you aren’t getting the rest you need to rejuvenate yourself either.

I know I’ve fallen into the trap of conventional thinking that to be productive, I just need to work harder. I spend more and more hours at the desk, but when I look back, I’m not sure where the time went.

To Schwartz, not being able to push yourself to 90% output without worry is the biggest impediment holding you back from being truly productive and producing your best work. True productivity is determined by better energy management rather than simply cranking out more hours at your desk.

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The Peak Time for Everything

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A growing body of research suggests that paying attention to the body clock, and its effects on energy and alertness, can help pinpoint the different times of day when most of us perform our best at specific tasks, from resolving conflicts to thinking creatively.

Sue Shellenbarger explores The Peak Time for Everything for WSJ.

Some takeaways: Nap around 2pm. Tired times make for better open-ended thinking. And retweeting chances increase between 3-6 pm.

Circadian and natural rhythms, and thus peak times for doing stuff, depend on the individual. Read on for some pretty interesting ideas on how to set your activity to your inner clock.