You have your Strategy, your business model in strategy map format and your plan or Balanced Scorecard. You have your execution engine. You have even oiled the gearbox translating the daily work of individuals into relevant effort. Now all you need is fuel for your strategy engine. How do you get each person to do the work? How can you improve your own capacity to deliver a day’s work?

How to have a productive day is a hot topic. Neil Fiore completed a doctorate in procrastination and published his book “The Now Habit” in 1989. This has to be the best work I have read on this topic. If you procrastinate, I encourage you to watch his videos on YouTube and read his book.

The following lessons changed how I work and radically upped my delivery.

First he says procrastination is not about laziness. So you can put down the whip. Procrastination, he says, is about Fear. He has an illustration about walking on a plank a foot wide. We can all do this. But put it between two buildings 20 stories up! Different story! We avoid it until the building behind us is in flames, then we bustle across. Classic last-minute brilliance. Datum procrastination!

So what to do about this?

1.  Set the foundation for a productive day

Well first, we need to set a platform for delivery. The guy for this is Dr Henry Cloud. According to him the executive management function in the brain works best in an environment in which three factors are managed:

  1. The current priority is clear. Note: Priority – singular (multi-tasking is a myth).
  2. Distractions and toxic elements have been removed.
  3. The information relevant to your current focus is fresh in your mind.

 

With these three factors covered, the executive functions of your brain are able to operate at maximum capacity. You are able to bring all of your learning, experience and creativity to bear on your task.

2.  Manage the inner noise

Neil Fiore lists five stories we tell ourselves as obstacles for a productive day. Following his thinking, let’s stop telling ourselves:

  1. We “have to” do something. This is the language of the victim. “I don’t want to, but I have to!” When we say this, a whole bunch of our inner personalities say “We don’t “have to” do nothing!” We set ourselves up for failure. Stress hits new highs. Let’s rather talk about what you ‘choose to do’. In one of his videos he says he is responsible for numerous New York attorneys passing their bar-exams, simply by getting them to change this component of their inner dialogue.
  2. “I must finish this”. This tells of a vague, looming future. This can threaten us to a standstill. Think rather about when you will start. If you have started many times think about when you will start again.
  3. How “big and important” the work is. This is the language of overwhelm. Rather talk of one small step you can take to begin.
  4. How “perfect” our solution has to be. This will only increase your tendency to procrastinate as protection from the pain of failure and criticism.
  5. “We don’t have time to play”. Busyness has become a badge of success. “You know I am so successful, I could not possibly take time to surf with you, I am far too busy”

3.  Create the platform for a productive day

He then talks about setting up the platform for delivery in three steps:

  1. Break down the task into manageable chunks. Work out the milestones from the final deadline back to the present.
  2. Deal with your fear of the activity. I will be writing a posting about this shortly.
  3. Keep starting. Each time you stop the work before it is finished, do not allow yourself to reflect on what you have to finish (point 2 above). Keep asking yourself “when am I going to start again?” Steven Pressfield, who wrote “The War of Art” (another MUST-read) all about how to manage yourself in the creative process says “do not prepare, (preparation is a form of resistance) START the work. Sit down and start writing.”

4.  Sit for 30 minutes

And finally, a small dose of discipline. For a productive day try a small dose of discipline from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Mr Flow). This accounts for the production of more newsletters and training material than I care to admit to (including this one). When I sit down to work, especially if I am feeling distracted, I choose to sit for a minimum of 30 minutes. I set my watch and start. If I look up before thirty minutes is up, I force myself back into my seat and keep going. This is such a mild level of control.

 

The featured image for this article comes from the Russian photographer Dina Belenko.

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Thanks for this Dina.  You can see more of her work here, and her TV interview here.  (love the sound of Russian language)