Habits make up 40% of what we do every day. We regularly go through certain processes, actions, even thoughts and phrases without thinking about it. Part of being a ‘productive’ person is developing productive habits–the more productive your habits are, the more naturally productive a person you can be.
But sometimes we think we have a productive habit that’s actually hurting us. Here are 5 of the most common deceptive habits that are holding you back.
1. Email
The Trap
We tend to think we’re ‘getting work done’ when we’re responding to emails. We’re communicating with team members, responding to important requests, adding new things we need to do, it’s a vital part of work life. But productive? No way.
The Reality
Email requires you, usually, to put someone else’s priorities above your own. Send them a document, respond to a request, think about some new info, and it turns into quicksand very quickly. You get sucked into it, responding at length to everything, and if you’re lucky enough to get through it all, you may have lost an hour of time. And did you produce anything? Probably not, and something’s hardly ‘productive’ if it doesn’t lead to any production.
How to Fix It
There are a few very easy ways to avoid death by email. The first is one you’ve probably heard a hundred times now: only check email a few times a day. I generally only check it 3 times, rarely before noon, and the world has never ended. In addition, it’s useful to use an offline client (like Gmail offline) to check it. This way if you reply to someone and they respond immediately it doesn’t turn into a long chain of emails–it does require though that you are complete enough in your responses to not necessitate a long exchange. Finally, keep your emails below 5 sentences. Anything longer than that warrants a phone call.
2. Notifications
The Trap
Technology is really cool. We can communicate with anyone instantly, and anyone can communicate with us. In order to use that to its greatest advantage, we need to know as soon as someone contacts us. That means notifications for texts, emails, facebook, twitter, and anything else you’re a part of… right?
The Reality
Notifications are destroying your productivity. They demand your immediate attention, which means whatever important work you were doing before is now interrupted. A state of ‘flow’ where you’re at your utmost productivity requires at least 15 minutes of uninterrupted focus to get into, and if you’re being interrupted by pings every 2 minutes you never get there. It leaves you stuck in an endless string of task-switching and you never really get anything done, even though you feel exceptionally “busy.” Also, responding to every notification tells everyone else that you’re always available to be bothered by them–not something you want when you need to focus on more important things.
How to Fix It
Turn them all off. Seriously, every single one. The world won’t end, I promise. The only sound your phone should make is to ring when someone calls you, because that’s the only communication that truly demands immediate attention. As we’ve developed all of this communications tech, we’ve forgotten something important: tech is for your convenience, not for everyone else. So don’t let other people use it to ruin your productivity
3. Soda/Coffee/Caffeine in General
The Trap
Caffeine gives you energy clearly, since you’re hyped up after taking it. More energy equals more productivity, so if I imbibe coffee on a daily basis I’m bound to be the next Bill Gates.
The Reality
There are no free lunches. Milton Friedman applied it to economics, but really it applies to everything, including your mind. Anything you do that results in a sudden surge of energy comes with a cost later, and that cost usually has interest. This is why there’s a strong correlation between the effects of a drug and the side effects, it can only give you so much by taking other things away. In the case of caffeine, you’re taking an energy surge now for a deficit later, and that deficit will come with sluggish productivity and significantly decreased willpower.
How to Fix It
This isn’t hard to figure out–just quit the caffeine. I used to drink 6-8 cups of coffee a day and quit cold turkey and everything was fine. Sure I had a headache for a day but it was worth it. Instead you might try decaf coffee, tea, or even just water… It’s actually quite good.
4. The News
The Trap
Someone probably told you at one point “you should read the news.” It’s what any good informed citizen does, right? When you imagine a “business-person,” they’re someone who sits at home in the morning, has a cup of coffee and reads the news, so if you want to be successful like them, you should read it too.
The Reality
It’s pretty much a huge waste of your time; only slightly better than television or video games. Taking the time to sit and read through a full news story is akin to reading an entire book instead of the summary on Wikipedia–you’re doing it for the experience. And that’s fine! If you enjoy reading the news, by all means go for it, but if you’re doing it as a means to the end of being informed, being conversational, having some idea what’s going on, there are better ways that take up much less of your time.
The Solution
You have a couple of options here. If you want to keep doing the curation yourself, you can use a news aggregator and summarizer to help you. This would be an online source that provides you with daily snippets of what’s going on to give you just enough to be conversational (a very easy solution is the top ~20 stories in ‘World News’ on reddit, or the headers and excerpts on Feedly.) You can also just ask people. Others will feel smart when they tell you about what’s going on in the world, and you’re getting a quick digest instead of having to do the research yourself.
5. Eating at Your Desk
The Trap
Being seen is really important. The boss won’t promote you if they can’t tell that you’re dedicated to your work, and what better way to show that than to be in your office all of the time. Taking a lunch break is a sign of weakness–you’d do better to take bites between email responses.
The Reality
We all suck at multitasking, but we all rock at lying to ourselves about it. The fact of the matter is that no one can multitask, they can only task-switch, and the same problem with notifications applies to eating and working. Trying to get work done while eating slows down the amount of time the lunch ends up taking, and only results in getting a minimal amount of work done. The only reason we think it helps is because it makes us feel busy.
The Solution
Simply take the break. As it turns out, breaks are really important, and if we don’t take them on at least a semi-regular basis we burn out much quicker and start being a lot less efficient. If you take the 20-30 minutes to go outside the office to eat (even if it’s just in a lounge) you’ll come back much more refreshed and ready to get back to business.
