It’s hard to be efficient.
Sometimes it feels like the world doesn’t make any sense. Sometimes youdon’t make any sense. And sometimes it feels like it’s all a conspiracy.
As we’ll see shortly, these are all, in a way, true.
Dan Ariely is the king of irrational behavior. Not that he’s more irrational than you or I, but he’s studied an impressive amount of it.
Dan is a behavioral economist at Duke University and the New York Times bestselling author of three wonderful books:
Most recently he’s turned his attention to the irrationality of how we use our time and has helped create a new smart-calendar app, Timeful.
What’s great is the data from Timeful is helping us learn things about what works and what doesn’t as it relates to productivity.
I gave Dan a call to hear what he had to say about how we can improve time management, how to be efficient and how to get more done.
1) The World Is Working Against You
This isn’t a conspiracy theory and a tinfoil hat isn’t required, but we are spending more of our time in environments that have their own agendas.
Billboards and TV ads want you to buy. The links on the internet encourage you to click. Notifications on your smartphone beckon you.
Our default is now a constant, aggressive chain of siren songs from our environment.
Here’s Dan:
If you followed every directive from your surroundings these days you’d quickly be broke, obese, and constantly distracted.
It’s like we’re surrounded by scheming thieves: thieves of our time, thieves of our attention, thieves of our productivity.
And how do pickpockets steal your stuff? Distraction.
Here’s Dan:
(Short on time? Skip to 5:35 to see how easily distracted you can be.)
Not having a plan, goals or a system in today’s world is dangerous because the default isn’t neutral.
(For more on what the most productive people do to reduce distractions, click here.)
So what does this mean is the first big step to productivity?
2) Control Your Environment Or It Will Control You
We can’t control our environment everywhere we go, of course, but we have more control than we usually choose to exercise.
If you banish distractions and control your calendar you can make sure your environment is ripe for productivity.
Here’s Dan:
What does research show the most productive computer programmers have in common?
It’s not experience, salary, or hours spent on a project.
They had employers who created an environment free from distraction.
Via Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking:
Research shows distractions make us stupid.
Your surroundings should make the things you need to do easy and the things you shouldn’t do hard.
What happened when Google put M&M’s in containers instead of out in the open? People ate 3 million less of them in one month.
Here’s Dan:
(For more on how the most organized people stay on track, click here.)
Okay, so you need to manage your environment. How do you manage your calendar?
3) Write Everything Down
We all know how fallible our brains can be yet we routinely trust ourselves to remember and follow through on things. Bad.
What did research from the Timeful app tell Dan?
If it’s important, write it down. Reminders, post-its, and calendars are all good tools.
Stanford professor Jennifer Aaker points to research showing that your calendar can make you happier:
Take the things that make you happy and energized and schedule them more often.
Sound stupidly simple? Research says we don’t do it enough. Here’s Jennifer:
(For more on how to schedule to-do’s like a pro, click here.)
So you’ve written down everything that needs to get done. Should you just run down the list in order? Absolutely not.
4) When You Do What You Do Is Key
All hours are not created equal. What did Dan’s Timeful research show about our most productive hours?
You have a window of 2-2.5 hours of peak productivity per day, starting a couple hours after waking.
Here’s Dan:
Those are the hours when you should be working on your most cognitively demanding tasks. The big projects. The stuff that really moves the needle.
But what did Dan find that most people did with those hours?
Email and Facebook.
You need to guard those hours for important tasks. Designate that part of your day as “protected time.”
And Dan’s findings line up with other research. I’ve posted before that 2.5 to 4 hours after waking is when your brain is sharpest:
When I interviewed willpower expert Roy Baumeister he said that early morning is also when you’re most disciplined:
In studies of geniuses, most did their best work early in the day.
(For more on the schedule very successful people follow, click here.)
So you need to shape your environment and protect your peak hours. What should you avoid doing?
5) The Four Horsemen of the Productivity Apocalypse
Dan’s research found 4 things that were the biggest time wasters:
1) Meetings
We all know how meetings waste time and multiply like rabbits. The solution?
Schedule your work time on your calendar. Have a presentation to work on? Block out hours for it.
If people try to put a meeting there, you can say you have a conflict. You do. Your work matters.
A calendar should be a record of anything that needs to get done — not merely of interruptions like meetings and calls.
2) Email
Most people simply spend too much time in their inboxes to accomplish anything of substance.
Here’s how to stop email from taking over your life.
3) Multitasking
Put aside the distractions and do one thing at a time. Across the board, multitasking lowers productivity.
4) “Structured Procrastination”
What’s structured procrastination? It’s doing little things that give us thefeeling of progress instead of deep work that really makes progress.
Here’s Dan:
Avoid these four and you’ll see an 80/20 style jump in your productivity.
(For more on work-life balance, click here.)
So you are making progress. You’re more productive during the day. But we all get tired or bored. What’s the best thing to do then?
6) No, You Don’t Need An Email Break
You tell yourself you need an email break, and that you’ll be rejuvenated and work better afterward. Problem is, that’s just not true.
Getting your head into and out of your work takes time. Switching tasks has cognitive costs that reduce efficiency.
Here’s Dan:
In fact, research shows that frequent email checks can temporarily lower your intelligence more than being stoned.
Constant emailing reduces mental ability by an average of about 10 IQ points. For men, it’s about three times the effect of smoking marijuana.
Some of you are already saying: “But I have to check email!” Yes, you do. But probably not that often.
As Cal Newport says, “Shallow work is what stops you from getting fired. Deep work is what gets you promoted.”
And email is shallowest of work. We got men on the moon without email. And email can wait while you get the important things done.
(For more on how the most successful people manage their time, click here.)
So Dan has a lot of tips for us. How do we pull all of this together and be more efficient?
Sum Up
Here are Dan’s tips:
You don’t need to account for every minute. You don’t need to agonize over wasted seconds. It’s just about improving.
And none of us are infallible. When I asked Dan about work-life balance, what did he say?
So nobody’s perfect. But with Dan’s tips we can all get better at managing our time.
This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.
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