Nobody can work all the time. But how does the productive go-getter balance the need to rest with the need to get stuff done? One of the biggest problems that hits both chronic procrastinators and workaholics is not knowing what cycle you’re in. By organizing a plan and making a few simple decisions you can get more done in less time.
What is a cycle? The kind of cycles I’m referring to here are work cycles. That is, a cycle that goes between working hard and having fun. The problem chronic procrastinators face is that they end up stuck in “rest” without being able to push through to work. Workaholics get stuck in “work” without being able to get some rest.
Work or Play? Make a Decision.
Staying stuck in the cycle is probably the worst thing you can do both from a productivity standpoint and being able to enjoy life. When you’re stuck, you can’t really get much done because you’re low on energy. You also can’t have much fun because you feel the pangs of guilt telling you to get to work.
Getting unstuck requires a bit more planning. Instead of just following your intuition about when to work, make a decision. If your intuition leads you down a middle path of no-work and no-play then planning out your schedule can help speed you up during work hours to give you more guilt-free time off.
What are a few cycles to pay attention to?
1) Daily Cycles
Do you work a bit all day, or do you have clear on and off times? If you find yourself working all-day every day until you burn out, try making a daily to-do list. Setting a specific chunk of activities for work in one day can make it easier to shift all that work into one time slot. That way you’ll get your work done earlier and can get the rest of the day off.
2) Weekly Cycles
Try to mark off one day on the calendar where you won’t spend time on major projects or work. It may initially seem easier to spread things over seven days, but this inevitably leads up to the middle path of no-work/no-play. Squeezing your week into six gives you a day to have fun, sleep in, relax or plan.
3) Lifetime Cycles
On an even bigger scale, months and years can begin to form cycles. After spending a few months or years working towards a big goal you might spend a similar amount of time exploring or trying new things. Applying the concept of cycles to each section of your life can help resolve the slave-until-sixty-five trap many careerists find themselves in.
How to Use Cycles to Nuke Procrastination
Planning out cycles can help both with getting more done directly by getting you to work harder or indirectly by giving you more energy. If you want to speed up your achievement efforts then you can use cycles to help combat laziness. Here are a few steps:
Carve out your weekly/daily goals. Decide what you want to accomplish in the next week. If you’re trying to get more done, then you’ll probably want to aim higher than what you accomplished the week before.
Set aside a guaranteed rest day. Give yourself at least one day per week where you won’t work on this list. Don’t sacrifice your rest day to spread out the work or you’re focus will take a nosedive after a week or two.
Set aside a guaranteed rest hour each day. Give yourself at least one hour per day that you won’t touch with projects (best to place it at the end of the day as a reward).
Any leftover time each week or day is yours. If you finish all your tasks for the day by noon, give yourself a pat on the back and take the rest of the day off. If you get done everything you needed to by Thursday, you now have an extra two days off. (I’m assuming that your work is the only criteria you follow, if you have regular office hours you might need to form a slightly different plan).
The same steps are necessary if you are trying to get more rest time. The only difference is that you need to focus more on saving those rest days/hours. The workaholic who slashes all time off is like the car that avoids refueling. You can run on empty for a few miles, but eventually you’ll be stalled in the middle of nowhere.
“What if I can’t take a day off?”
What if your to-do list is so big that you can’t take a day off? The problem is that this viewpoint defeats itself. The reason you’re so overloaded with work that you can’t set aside rest time is because you’re moving slowly through work.
If you’ve been going on 4-5 hours of sleep for weeks, it often takes more than one full night to recover. Similarly, if you’ve been drained from a project for a month, taking one day off might not be enough. But by introducing a weekly rest day you can slowly shift yourself back into balance.
I talk to a lot of students and workers who complain about having to work all the time, yet when I see them working they are dragging their feet. If they had taken more time to rest, rebuild their motivation and enjoy themselves then they could approach work with a greater focus. Greater focus means you play when you play and work when you work.
Brilliant article! This is just what I needed to read today. Submitted to Digg.
Christian
I’ve been enjoying my work a lot recently. If I don’t take care, I might go all the way to becoming a workaholic.
As you say, that’ll only lead to lower productivity. I’ve mainly lost focus of the daily cycles, so I’m grateful for your post. It’s always good to be kicked back into positive action.
Hi Scott, nice tips! Thanks.
I’m currently working on GTD habits and also is becoming more aware of my own work cycles.
I work a demanding day job and blog in the evenings. I need to be super productive to do all these. When you learn to maximize your own productivity and minimize procrastination, it’s actually possible to do them without stress.
On hindsight, it’s amazing how much time I’d “idled away” in the past.
I think one of the most important that’s missing here is the difference between effectiveness and efficiency. It’s been talked about to death in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The problem with GTD is that it doesn’t differentiate between whether what you’re doing really needs to be done in the first place.
I wrote about it recently: “The best way I’ve found to deal with stress is to manage my time. Like I said in Work in Progress, it’s about taking care of the big things so the little ones take care of themselves and the really little ones don’t bother me at all. To do that, I ask three questions to decide whether or not to do anything. Firstly: Does it have to be done at all? If it’s not really important, I don’t do it! Secondly: Does it have to be done by me? If someone else can do it instead, I let them! Thirdly: Does it have to be done today? If I can put it off until later, I do. (Of course this assumes it won’t be put off forever!) Ultimately, it’s about working on what matters, focusing on one thing at a time, and always remembering that life is not meant to be taken too seriously.”
(Extract from Work in Progress)
People get in trouble when they multitask, mixing work and play time, and not doing a good job at either one. Like you said, it’s better to play when you play and work when you work.
Lovely article….!!..bookmarked
I adopted this cycles approach recently and it boosted both my productivity at work and availability to my family – wife and the kids. I blogged about this recently. The funniest thing is that my wife is constantly asking me “alik, is everything OK at work? You come home earlier.”. “Yes, sweetheart. The work is just fine. My managers are happy since they see clear results”
You call it cycles, I’ve adopted JD’s rituals for results, here http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/2007/12/27/rituals-for-results.aspx and timeboxing http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/2007/10/21/how-to-use-time-boxing-for-getting-results.aspx
Great post ,love it
To your advance success,
Tracy Ho
wisdomgettingloaded
[...] the Brain feed and find the articles quite helpful and insightful. Particularly interesting was today’s article that recommends taking one day a week off to relax and enjoy [...]
Thanks for sharing your tips and insights, and setting priority list is very important in our daily life.
My name is Davis, I’m brasilian and have been receiving your articles for quite a long while. I have to confess that I’m addicted to it already; I mean, I can’t help myself reflecting on it, It’s very enriching, not to mention that my English knowledge has benefited a lot too. You know I live quite a hetic life..the rustle and bustle of my day-to-day routine sometimes put me on the verge of despair… I wonder if you happen to have some audio materials too? Guess It’d be my prefered pastime in the traffic jam…
Looking foward to hearing from you..
Thanks for reading, and I’m glad you have enjoyed the articles. Audio and video materials are something we have been considering, but alas there are none available now.
I will certainly remember your suggestion though, and hopefully we will have some podcasts and videos available before too long!