A Productive Work Day: It’s how you play the game
How often do you have those days where you’ve worked hard but aren’t really sure about whether you’ve been productive? Or you’re not even sure about what it is that you’ve actually accomplished? If you’re like me, then the answer is quite often. Most days look like this — meetings, a bit of work, answering a ton of email and messages, more meetings, a bit more work, some time with family / friends in the evening , a little bit of binge watching or social media post work (rinse-repeat).
I’ve found a ton of useful advice on how to plan a productive day, but I haven’t seen too much on whether you’ve actually had a productive day. The objective of this post is therefore to share my thoughts on what having a productive day means to me — hopefully you’ll find these thoughts useful .
I’d like to define two terms that I use through the discussions:
Outputs are what you achieve in the day. Ex: Finished writing a proposal
Inputs are what you “put in to the day” to be able to achieve those outputs. Ex: Spent three hours uninterrupted on the proposal
I’ve often assessed whether I’ve had a productive day based on achieving one or more the following ‘outputs’:
- Checking off my task lists for the day
- Submitting a key deliverable
- Executing well on a big presentation
However, what I actually achieve as outputs for the day looked more like this:
- I may finish a ton of tasks in the day but I may not have been able to get around to a key piece of work that’s been pending
- I may have submitted a critical piece of work but at the cost of keeping everything else on hold (with that all too familiar feeling at the end of the day that says “I’ve still got to check my emails and messages for the day”)
- I may have accomplished every task I intended to (very rare!), but I know deep down that I’m not happy with the quality of these tasks
It’s been rare that I’ve been able to have that perfect day — where I’ve achieved everything I’ve intended to for the day at a level that I’m satisfied with. In fact, such rare days have only made me ask myself why I can’t have more such “perfect” days everyday. There are many reasons that I’ve discovered that generally come into play;
- We are terrible at estimation — A task that we may have been estimated to be an hour long, should’ve actually been estimated at being three hours long. Also, we may think that we can achieve ten tasks today, but in reality that may be only three of four
- A number of unexpected things may happen in the day — last minute meetings , a co-worker reaching out for support, or an urgent phone call from a client
- We are prone to constant distractions— messages on our phone, social media, an impromptu catch up with a friend or a colleague
With the number of things that can derail our day, trying to look at whether a day has been productive only based on what one has achieved (“the outputs”) is really difficult. Of course, we can all work on better estimating our days by building in buffers, but it’s very difficult to account for things you don’t know will happen!
I’d like to introduce the power of focusing on “inputs” in addition to outputs. Before I talk about this, I’d like to state that despite all the challenges I’ve mentioned, I do set goals (or outputs) that I would like to achieve in a day-the goals helps give me direction during the day. I also do look at whether I’ve achieved these outputs, but I also look at how well I’ve managed my inputs.
“Inputs” are what you “put into the day”, which I believe has three aspects: Focus, Awareness and Effort.
- Focus: whether you’ve been able to maintain your focus through the day to the extent possible or whether you’ve spread your attention too thin
- Awareness: whether you’ve been able to appropriately react to triggers / events in the day and re-prioritize your tasks appropriately during the day
- Effort: whether you’ve actually put in the time — have you worked the number of hours that you’d like
How to assess and reflect on each of these inputs
- Focus: Ask yourself if you’ve been able to keep your attention on the things that you had intended to achieve for the day, or whether you’d gotten distracted. What were those things that distracted you? What could you have done to avoid these distractions?
- Awareness: There may have been multiple distractions in the day that could’ve taken you off course. Did you respond to these triggers effectively? Were you able to come back on course? What could you have done to come back on track?
- Effort: This is the clearest to measure and assess of the three factors. Did you spend enough time working? How much time did you spend in meetings vs desk work? Which meetings could you have done without? Which items needed lesser or more attention than you were able to give them?
If for example you haven’t been able to Focus, it might be useful to consider the underlying reason— excessive digital distractions, last minute meetings, etc . If you feel you haven’t had a good sense of Awareness, you can take note of how to better respond to similar situations in the future (you may for example have prioritized a shiny new piece of work that arrived during the day instead of a planned task, when the former could have waited). Lastly, if you haven’t put in the Effort required it could be due to too many meetings or having to deal with a large number of client requests or emails.
Assessing your inputs in powerful and helps you understand what it is that you need to change and reflect on how you can change it ! Assessing Outputs, while important, may not alone be helpful in bringing about that kind of change
Knowing that you’ve been able to manage your inputs well will give you the reassurance that you’ve been able to run the day rather than let the day run you, even if you haven’t been able to achieve the things that you had set out to do! In the end, it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game!
