Spring reading: Two books to help your career output
Mark Twain stated: “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man that does not read.” Here are two books on productivity whose advice will reduce stress and increase output.
Two Awesome Hours: Science-Based Strategies to Harness Your Best Time and Get Your Most Important Work Done by Josh Davis (HarperOne, $14.99). Davis recognizes that packing more into an already packed day by not taking breaks and working longer hours creates the human version of the economic “law of diminishing returns.” The more one packs in, the more one feels overwhelmed and stressed; both feelings quash productivity and lead to burnout. While his goal of creating at least two awesome hours of productivity each day involves five integrated steps, the first two really make you think about what you’re doing and how you do it.
1. “Recognize your decision points.” and 2. “Manage
Jim Pawlak your mental energy.” All too often we run on autopilot because of pre-programmed workdays (e.g. to-do lists, meetings, phone calls, email, etc.). The “same-old-sameold” becomes a drone-like, “no thought” routine where you move from one task to the next task on the list.
Davis’s advice — Identify decision points and control what you can. When you complete something, think about “what matters” before diving into “what’s next.” Deciding “what matters” depends upon what you’ve just completed. If the task was mentally exhausting, choosing another such task may not be the productive choice — even though it’s “what’s next” on the to-do list.
Analogy: If you ran eight 100-meter dashes backtoback-to-back …, you’d be exhausted — and the time for each dash would be worse. If you ran one each hour, your body would have time to recover and times would be consistent.
The Bottom Line: The brain, like a muscle, needs time to recover. Alternating the types of tasks provides recovery time and boosts overall productivity.
Crunch Time: How to Be at Your Best When it Matters Most by Rick Peterson and Judd Hoekstra (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, $19.95). Peterson, who helped many baseball pitchers achieve stardom, and Hoekstra, a VP handling leadership consulting at the Ken Blanchard Companies, combine their “people” knowledge to show managers and employees how to reframe high-pressure situations into opportunities to shine.
To set the stage, think about listening to the radio on your way to work. You’ve preset stations based upon your likes. You press a preset and it’s playing one of your favorite songs; you sing along and turn up the volume; negative thoughts disappear. The next song isn’t one you like. What do you do? Change stations because the song evoked a negative thought. Changing stations was your positive reaction to the negative thought. You reframed the situation.
At work, you often self-inflict pressure for three negative reasons: 1. You think you have little control over the situation. 2. You don’t think you can handle the assignment. 3. You’re thinking about the consequences of failure. Your woe-is-me approach means you’re trying not to lose. That’s a game you can’t win because the negatives create a reflexive bias on your approach to the situation/task. By dumbing-down your ability, you’ve become “your own worst coach.”
The Conscious Thinker takes a positive approach by identifying what can be controlled — your ability to apply your skills. Doing so creates confidence in your ability to explore and assess options while preparing for/ working on the task. This playing-to-win mindset sees problems as opportunities to showcase and hone your skills and produce results.
To think consciously, slow things down. Before diving in, question assumptions you’re making about the situation and possible outcomes. Filter out the negative ones and remember that you’ve faced similar situations and won. Create a “how will I use my skills” game plan.
Key takeaway: Thoughts drive actions.
At work, you often self-inflict pressure for three negative reasons: 1. You think you have little control over the situation. 2. You don’t think you can handle the assignment. 3. You’re thinking about the consequences of failure. By doing so, you’ve become ‘your own worst coach.’