What To Do When There's Too Much To Do (18 page)

Establishing and maintaining an effective workflow routine isn't enough. You have to power it with your personal energy, constantly and reliably, or everything falls apart.

Managing your capacity is central to the entire PWF process. To be productive, you must have the capacity to do so. So focus on the physical factors affecting your energy: sleep, diet, exercise, and your own happiness. Take care of yourself, so your workflow engine stays up and running with a minimum of fuss. You can't prevent every potential “power outage,” but you can prevent most of them if you'll try.

First, take steps to reduce your energy expenditure. Your personal “battery” has only so much capacity, so learn to work within your limits and recharge whenever necessary. Overwork will drain you so far you won't be able to get anything done productively. When possible, take your meal breaks, rest breaks, weekends, and vacations—or you'll pay for it with flagging energy and mental strain.

Be sure to get plenty of sleep, too; it reduces stress, evens out your biochemistry, allows your muscles to restore themselves, and gives your brain time to process and deal with new information. Implement simple actions to keep your sleep schedule steady: control the thermostat, shut out snoring, take power naps when necessary, and keep your bedroom sleep-related.

You also need to watch your diet, focusing on portion control and making sure you eat foods that boost your energy rather than drag you down. Add exercise to your daily routine, whether you maintain a regular workout schedule or sneak in “subversive exercise” like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, parking at the far end of the parking lot so you can walk farther, or watching TV from a treadmill.

Don't leave your mental health out of the equation! Do everything you can think of to make yourself happier. For example:

• Make empowered choices.

• Spend more time with your family.

• Do something nice for someone else.

• Laugh at adversity.

• Surround yourself with happy things.

The PWF will work for you only if you focus on making it work. Step up and make every effort you can to maintain your energetic edge, so your workflow process will keep running without a hitch.

Stress is your body's way of saying you
haven't worked enough unpaid overtime.
Scott Adams, American cartoonist (
Dilbert
)

One of the reasons that Scott Adams's cartoon
Dilbert
is so popular is that it wryly captures precisely what American office workers experience and feel on a daily basis. The above quote, attributed to evil HR Director Catbert, resonates with those who feel overworked, put-upon, and stretched thin—especially during this time of economic downturn.

As I write this in November 2011, we're still mired in the Great Recession, although some government analysts would say otherwise. Productivity is down and the job market is tighter than it's been in decades, which means that most of us are willing to do whatever it takes to keep the jobs we have. Fear is often a great motivator. People work ridiculously long hours in a desperate attempt to maximize productivity, no matter what, because they're afraid of losing their jobs in a down economy without the reassurance of getting another one.

Sadly, this often ends up hurting us more than it helps. Given our temporal constraints, life must be a series of tradeoffs; when you say yes to one thing, you have to say no to another. One of the worst things about working long hours is that it keeps you away from friends and loved ones. Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but only up to a certain point; you have to spend time with those you care for, so you can maintain and develop your relationships. Your children especially need you, at least as a positive role model.

Furthermore, many busy people push taking care of themselves down to the bottom of their to-do lists, where it often
falls off and becomes lost in the daily triage of time management. This is bad enough, but too much work also results in exhaustion, which in the short term causes mistakes and rework, resulting in even lower productivity.

In the long term, excessive overtime can have detrimental effects on your health.
Karoshi
(death from overwork) has been an accepted concept in Japan for decades, though it's difficult to recognize in most other countries, which don't keep statistics for such things. Depression is also common among the overworked, and the suicide rate is higher among the chronically depressed. Feeling that you're forced to put in too many hours, for whatever reason, can make you feel trapped and helpless. These mental stresses, when added to the physical ones, can result, one way or another, in a catastrophic breakdown.

Remember this: You're not a machine, so don't try to be one. A decent work-life balance and plenty of rest are required for any human being to thrive productively. The true bottom line is that it's in your best interest, and your company's, for you to trim the fat out of your schedule and tame the beast of overwork. You can't be successfully productive if you work yourself into the hospital … or an early grave.

As you may recall, one of my promises associated with the PWF is that if you put it into play, you can tweak your productivity enough to clear an extra ninety minutes a day from your work schedule. That begs a question: What would you do with that extra time?

In July 2011, I asked my followers on LinkedIn what they would do with an extra hour in their day. Of the five possible choices, the one that attracted the most votes was “Leisure time with family and friends,” a choice I most heartily approve of. It took 40 percent of the 140 votes, nearly twice as many as the runner-up, “Work out, go to the gym” (22 percent), which is also a great choice. “Sleep” and “Other” each pulled down
15 percent of the vote, with only 8 percent of the respondents opting for more work.

Fifteen individuals who selected “Other” expanded on their answers in the Comments. Some preferred to maintain a balance of all the things they were already doing, spreading the extra hour over various categories, while others wanted to read more, write more, increase their volunteer efforts, take dancing and art classes, learn a foreign language, go for walks, meditate, or otherwise unwind.

I was happy to see that most of my voters would elect to take care of themselves more if they had just a little more time in the day. This desire—no, this
need
—to have more time off is consistent across gender, age, and nationality. My poll provided a quick snapshot of what busy office workers are experiencing. From the hundreds of talks and consultations I've done on the past twenty years, I know that most people are, in fact, sick to death of trying to do more with less. What they really need is a system that lets them do less while accomplishing more. That's what I'm offering with the PWF system, if you're willing to take me up on it.

Or would you rather stay shackled to your desk? Sadly, some people would, because they're addicted to the stresses and strains of work. Just as alcohol consumes the alcoholic, work consumes the workaholic. Do you want to be on call, twenty-four hours a day, for the rest of your life? If so, then you need the PWF system more than most.

Speaking of shackles: In his book
Chained to the Desk: A Guidebook for Workaholics, Their Partners and Children, and the Clinicians Who Treat Them
, psychotherapist Bryan Robinson depicts workaholism as “an obsessive-compulsive disorder that manifests itself through self-imposed demands, an inability to regulate work habits, and an over-indulgence in work to the exclusion of most other life activities.” According to Robinson, workaholism is “the best-dressed problem of the twenty-first century.” (It still is, well into the twenty-first.)

As Tony Schwartz, author of
What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America,
points out, “Any culture inevitably pulls people toward its norms. Ours elevates those who work relentlessly and disdains those who are more laid-back…. Those who embrace long hours and devotion to the workplace not only earn a special place in the ranks of the company, but they also frequently earn more money—which translates into even more approval in our culture.”

But nothing comes for free. Workaholism has severe consequences as well as rewards. To name just a few: workaholism is one of the chief causes of divorce, according to a survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers; and research shows that the children of workaholics suffer notably higher rates of anxiety and depression than the children of ordinary workers.
³³
Workaholics are also more self-destructive than most people: they're much more likely to abuse alcohol; they endure more stress-related ailments; and they have more have extramarital affairs (which can't help that divorce rate any).

On top of all that, what happens when you kill yourself for all those years and then get the pink slip? Don't fool your-self—it's happening more and more often these days, as corporate loyalty to employees increasingly goes out the window in the face of economic necessity. So when it does happen, what's left? When you come out of your self-induced eighty-hour workweek, what shape will your relationships be in? Will you have any friends left? What about family? And how will you deal with the health problems resulting from a severe lack of taking care of yourself?

Is this really the kind of future you want to face?

If you're not there yet, there's still time to halt this nightmare scenario right in its tracks. Rather than ruin your health, alienate your family and friends, and lose yourself, take steps to nip workaholism in the bud right now, while you still can. Pull back. Weed out the unnecessary and trivial. It requires self-discipline and a willingness to put yourself and the things that truly matter to you first rather than last. Clearly, you have plenty of self-discipline; otherwise you wouldn't be working
so many hours. Making yourself a priority is probably a bigger problem. But it's worth trying, because implementing the workflow formula that I've described in this book will make life a lot easier for you by freeing up valuable recharge time without forcing you to sacrifice one jot of productivity.

Admit it—deep down, wouldn't you love to have a little more time for yourself and your family, especially if your productivity didn't suffer? If you could keep your boss happy without driving yourself into the ground, wouldn't you? Well, you've got the tools for doing that right here in these pages. You don't have to put them all into practice at once. You can start slowly, and then ratchet up your commitment incrementally as you start to see results. And you will. Eventually, you'll recover that extra hour a day (or more) that my poll respondents spoke of so longingly.

They say hard work is good for the soul, and it can certainly help you get ahead. But as with anything, moderation is the key here. Too much work can keep you away from what really matters to you. It can also cause both physical and mental stress, which can have devastating health effects.

Keep all that from happening. Give the Productivity Workflow Formula a try. You've got absolutely nothing to lose—and a whole new productive lease on life to gain.

To help you assess yourself in the six steps of the PWF and create your individual action plan, I've created a self-assessment to test your strengths and improvement opportunities. This online companion product is available at
www.bkconnection.com/whattodo-sa
. Your results will also include an interpretation of your score and tips. You may print your results, forward them to others, and have others take the test to assess you.

Bulk-order discounts are available for
teams, book clubs, and organizations.

1.
“The Great Prosperity, 1949–1979; The Great Regression, 1980–Now,”
New York Times,
September 4, 2011. Also based on information from Robert B. Reich, University of California, Berkeley; “The State of Working America” by the Economic Policy Institute; Thomas Piketty, Paris School of Economics, and Emmanuel Saez, University of California, Berkeley; the U.S. Census Bureau; the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; and the Federal Reserve.

2.
“Productivity and Costs: Second Quarter 2011, Preliminary,” news release, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, August 9, 2011.

3.
“Second Quarter 2011 Productivity Growth Revised Downward,” The Editor's Desk, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, September 9, 2011.

4.
“The Great Prosperity, 1949–1979; The Great Regression, 1980–Now,”
New York Times,
September 4, 2011. Also based on information from Robert B. Reich, University of California, Berkeley; “The State of Working America” by the Economic Policy Institute; Thomas Piketty, Paris School of Economics, and Emmanuel Saez, University of California, Berkeley; the U.S. Census Bureau; the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; and the Federal Reserve.

5.
Randolph H. Thomas, “Effects of Scheduled Overtime on Labor Productivity,”
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management,
118, no. 1 (March 1992).; Todd Dawson, Anneke Heitmann, and Alex Kerin, “Industry Trends, Costs and Management of Long Working Hours,” extended abstract from the conference Long Working Hours, Safety, and Health: Toward a National Research Agenda, University of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland, April 29–30, 2004, at
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/workschedules/abstracts/dawson.html
; and J. Nevison,
White Collar Project Management Questionnaire Report
(Concord, Mass.: Oak Associates, 1992).