I juggle a lot of priorities. Or at least I feel that is true. I work for a fast growing company, I am a pastor of a fast growing ministry, and I have a side project…or 5. Conversatio Morum is one of those projects, and I must admit, it’s probably the least cared for. With so many priorities I find that they are constantly shifting, in terms of need for attention, depending on the time of day and what is occurring during that day.Now some of you at this point are saying, “Hold on, I thought this post was about productivity.” Well it is, but most of us have a misconception about what is productive. Notice, I didn’t say I do a lot of things. Also notice, I didn’t say that I multitask. (I do a lot of things and I have a lot of things to do, but the goal isn’t to do all of them. The goal is to do them all at the right time.) I juggle priorities based on the current need.
How does this affect productivity? you ask. Well, here’s how. I find I’m more productive when I’m well rested and when I can concentrate one thing fully. I can engage with that thing better and come up with solutions faster. This is different from multitasking, because I’m doing one thing at a time excellently, rather than a lot of things at once poorly. This is, contrary to popular belief, more productive and efficient.
So one of the things I do is drill down deep into a problem for about an hour at a time and then take a quick 1-5 minute break before starting back up. You’d be surprised at how much more work I get done this way than continually trying to keep going without a break. In fact, I have configured my workstation to interrupt me about an hour into a problem with a pop-up asking me to check my email and take a break. This really helps and I’ll post a tutorial for how to create a pop up like this a bit later so that you can set it up also if you’d like to try it.
The other thing (this is one I’m learning) is that rest helps. I hate this. I’d really rather not sleep. It seems so useless, but I find that if I get at least 6 hours a night and then get a 15 minute nap after lunch, then I’m really productive. My tendency would be to go for less sleep in the hope that I could do more things with that time, but I find that the tired slump is a productivity drain in a major way.
The point of this is that your productivity, the amount of work you get done and the time that you get it done in, is highly important to your mission. the smarter the work, the more you get done. The more you get done and the more effective you’ll be. You have a great mission, product, solution. Your productivity is important to seeing it move forward, gain ground, and succeed. You can do it.