Adam Grant
PhD, organisational psychologist, author of books.
A few years ago, during a break in a class I was teaching, a puzzled manager named Michael approached me. His boss told him he needed to be more productive, so Michael began to carefully analyse what he was spending his time on. He had already crossed out the not-so-important meetings from his schedule and no longer saw any tasks he could get rid of. And he didn’t see how to perform them more efficiently. “You’ll probably think I’m joking, but it’s true. The only thing I’ve come to is to drink less water so I can go to the toilet less often,” Michael admitted.
We live in a society that is obsessed with personal productivity. We devour books that promise to teach us how to be more efficient and dream of a 4-hour work week. We brag about how busy we are. Well, the main key to productivity, according to everyone around us, is time management. And that means that if we learn to plan our schedule better, we can achieve productive nirvana.
Why time management doesn’t improve productivity
In 20 years of studying productivity, I’ve learned that time management isn’t the solution to all problems. On the contrary, it’s part of the problem.
Throughout my career, I often hear the same question: “How do I have more time?” Sometimes people ask it because they know I’m an organisational psychologist and productivity expert. But mostly it’s because they’ve read in a magazine or my book how much I manage to get done.
In reality, I don’t feel effective. I rarely meet my daily goals, so it’s hard for me to answer that question.
But after talking to Michael, I realised: our productivity doesn’t depend on how we control our time. We’re given a limited number of hours each day, and strict time management only reminds us how many of them we’re wasting. It’s much better to use a different strategy – focus management, or attention management.
What is focus management and how is it better than time management
Focus management is the art of doing things for the right reasons, at the right time and in the right place. And its main goal is to prioritise tasks, no matter how much time they take.
The classic practice of time management suggests setting yourself deadlines for tasks. I tried using such a method when I was writing this article. My goal was 1,200 words, so I sat down at my desk at eight in the morning and gave myself three hours. By my calculations, that allowed me to write six words per minute.
I spent the first six minutes mindlessly staring at the flickering cursor and didn’t write a word. Then I wondered how many words I could type per minute, so I took an online test. I didn’t like the result, so I found another test. And then another.
Eventually I got discouraged and switched to focus management. While doing research for my book, “To Take or Give?” I discovered that productive people don’t question which goal to start pursuing. They naturally lean toward projects that are not only socially relevant, but truly interesting to them.
So instead of focusing on how quickly I wanted to finish the article, I asked myself why I was writing it in the first place. The answers went something like this:
I might learn something new myself by rethinking my research.
I’ll finally have something to say to people who ask about productivity.
This article might help someone.
I started thinking about the specific people who will read these lines. It reminded me of Michael – and boom! – the work got going.
Very often our productivity suffers not from a lack of efficiency, but from a lack of motivation. Productivity in itself is not a virtue, it is only a means to an end. Moreover, productivity is only virtuous when the end goal is worthy.
If your primary goal is productivity itself, you’ll have to constantly rely on willpower and push yourself to produce results. But if you focus on what ignites your interest and makes the project worthwhile for others, you’ll be driven forward by natural motivation.
How to use focus management for productivity
When you put focus management techniques into practice, it’s important to pay attention to the exact environment in which you’re performing tasks. I grew up in the state of Michigan. And when I returned there to finish my master’s degree, I persuaded my West Coast girlfriend to join me. “It’s too cold and grey,” she replied, arriving in Michigan during a snow storm. And she chose Stanford in California. And the following winter in Michigan was the coldest and greyest I can remember. But I was never that productive – there was absolutely nothing to do in that weather except work!
A series of studies have shown that bad weather is good for productivity because we’re much less likely to be distracted by thoughts of going out. Researchers found that bank workers in Japan completed transactions much faster on rainy days, and participants in an experiment in the US were more efficient at correcting spelling mistakes in essays during bad weather. That’s why I chose the day after a snow storm to write this article – the melting mess outside looked completely unappealing for a walk.
