When I was 17 years old, I used to work and study for about 20 hours a day. I went to school, did my homework during breaks and managed a not-for-profit organization at night. At that time, working long hours landed me countless national campaigns, opportunities to work with A-list organizations and a successful career. As I got older, I started to think differently. I realized that working more is not always the right, or only, path to success.
Sometimes, working less can actually produce better results.
Consider a small business owner who works nonstop. Working hard won’t help him compete with his corporate competitors. That’s because time is a limited commodity. An entrepreneur could work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but his or her competitor can always spend more money, assemble a team and spend a lot more collective man hours on the same project. Then why have small startups accomplished things that some larger corporations couldn’t? Facebook bought Instagram, a company with 13 employees at the time, for one billion dollars. Snapchat, a startup with 30 employees, was turning down offers from Facebook and Google. Part of each of their successes was based on luck, and some on efficiency.
The key to success is not working hard. It’s working smart.
There’s a notable distinction between being busy and being productive. Being busy doesn’t always necessarily mean you’re being productive. Despite what some might believe, being productive is less about time management and more on managing your energy. It’s the business of life. It’s learning how to spend the least amount of energy to get the most benefits. I personally learned how to reduce my work week from 80 hours to 40 hours, and get a lot more work done in the process. For me, less is more.
Here are seven things I stopped doing to become more productive.
1. Stop working overtime and increase your productivity instead.
Have you ever wondered where the five-day, 40-hour work week came from? In 1926, Henry Ford, American industrialist and founder of Ford Motor Company, conducted an experiment with his own staff:
He decreased their daily hours from 10 to 8, and shortened the work week from 6 days to 5. As a result, he saw his workers’ productivity increase.
The more you work, the less effective and productive you become over both the short and long term, states a 1980 report from The Business Roundtable titled “Scheduled Overtime Effect on Construction Projects.”
“Where a work schedule of 60 or more hours per week is continued longer than about two months, the cumulative effect of decreased productivity will cause a delay in the completion date beyond that which could have been realized with the same crew size on a 40-hour week.”
Source: Calculating Loss of Productivity Due to Overtime Using Published Charts — Fact or Fiction
In an article for AlterNet, editor Sara Robinson referenced research conducted by the US military which revealed that “losing just one hour of sleep per night for a week will cause a level of cognitive degradation equivalent to a .10 blood alcohol level.” You can get fired for coming to work drunk, but it’s acceptable to pull an all-nighter.
Irrespective of how well you were able to get on with your day after that most recent night without sleep, it is unlikely that you felt especially upbeat and joyous about the world. Your more-negative-than-usual perspective will have resulted from a generalized low mood, which is a normal consequence of being overtired. More important than just the mood, this mind-set is often accompanied by decreases in willingness to think and act proactively, control impulses, feel positive about yourself, empathize with others, and generally use emotional intelligence.
Source: The Secret World of Sleep: The Surprising Science of the Mind at Rest
It’s important for us not to overwork ourselves and get enough sleep to maintain a high level of productivity. Next time you’re wondering why you may not be working productively, the reason may be simple as you being deprived of adequate sleep. (James Maas, a sleep researcher and expert, revealed that at least seven out of every 10 Americans don’t get enough sleep.)
Did you know?
Leonardo da Vinci took multiple naps a day and slept less at night.The French emperor Napoleon was not shy about taking naps. He indulged daily.Though Thomas Edison was embarrassed about his napping habit, he also practiced this ritual on a daily basis.Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, used to boost her energy before speaking engagements by napping.Gene Autry, “the Singing Cowboy,” routinely took naps in his dressing room between performances.President John F. Kennedy ate his lunch in bed and then settled in for a nap—every day!Oil industrialist and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller napped every afternoon in his office.Winston Churchill’s afternoon nap was a non-negotiable. He believed it helped him get twice as much done each day.President Lyndon B. Johnson took a nap every afternoon at 3:30 p.m. in order to break his day up into “two shifts.”Though he was criticized for it, President Ronald Reagan famously took naps as well.
Source: 5 Reasons Why You Should Take a Nap Every Day — Michael Hyatt
On a personal note, since I started getting at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night, I’ve noticed a change: I became a lot more productive and got a lot more work done in comparison to when I worked 16 hours a day. Who knew sleeping was such a great tool for marketers?
2. Don’t say “yes” too often
According to the Pareto principle, 20 percent of the effort produces 80 percent of the results; however, 20 percent of the results consumes 80 percent of the effort.Instead of working harder, we should focus primarily on the efforts that produce the majority of the results and forgo the rest. That way, we have more time to focus on the most important tasks. Stop saying “yes” to tasks that yield little or no result.
“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say “no” to almost everything.”
— Warren Buffett
So what should you say “yes” to? And when should you say “no”? If you can’t figure out if something is going to be worth your time, consider running a simple split test. Consider tracking everything you do, and the time it takes to complete each task, and the results. Then go back, assess your list to see what did (or didn’t) prove fruitful, and take your findings into consideration to optimize for future tasks.
Most of us say yes more often than we should, for a variety of reasons, including guilt and overstretching ourselves, but also because it is so much easier than saying no. Nobody wants to be the bad guy.
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