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Productivity

What Happens When You Don’t Email?

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We’ve got these social expectations that are wrapped up in email. If an email comes, you’re expected to respond to it fast. We feel compelled to reply.

Gloria Mark, LA Times, Email Stress Test: Experiment unplugs workers for 5 days

Professor Mark did a study to find out what would happen if you did away with work email. She found that people were less stressed, simply communicated face-to-face more (what, human interaction!?), were more productive, and able to focus longer.

While there are great benefits to stepping away from email, it’s hard to escape the compulsion to be chained to work email. How do we shift social expectation and work culture on the instant timing of email? 

Acknowledging Workplace Emotions for Better Productivity

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In the workplace, we rarely share what’s going on beneath the surface. At most companies, the unspoken expectation is that you park your emotional life at the door, put on your game face, and keep things light and professional. In short, you bring a part of yourself to work and try to suppress the rest.

But at what cost — including to productivity?

Tony Schwartz, in an HBR blog post, Seeing Through Your Blind Spots, talks about how acknowledging and understanding our emotions in the workplace are important to how well we work.

Paying attention to feelings, of others and of ourselves, and improving our communication regarding these emotions helps us know how to work better. (We recommend maintaining a work diary to bring the rest of yourself to work!)

Neil Gaiman on Making Mistakes

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Cheers to mistakes! Here’s the full quote about making mistakes from the excellent Neil Gaiman’s blog, totally worth reading before you get back to doing: Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, … Read more

Maira Kalman and the Creative Process

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You also have to have perseverance – and maybe that’s the hardest thing, to persevere and to believe that what you’re doing is worth doing – and to do it, rather than talking about doing it.

Maira Kalman talks to 99u about work and overcoming the challenges of the creative process. Her daily routine expressly involves avoiding work: “Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind.” Kalman’s wisdom is endless.