What if you didn't need to work every day?
I had a great time on Friday with Laurence and Carlos from the Happy Start Up School talking about productivity in a pandemic (if you missed it, you can watch it here and I'll probably release it as a bonus Beyond Busy episode too).
We talked about the stresses and problems that are happening at both ends of the pandemic-working extreme: the "I have so much less work to do and how do I fill my time?" question on one end and the "help, I suddenly have two kids at home, no boundaries, blurred transitions to start and finish work and the overwhelm of having to pivot and react to all this" at the other end.
Weirdly, in both situations, the same things can help. So this week's email is about boundaries and constraints.
Now, I'm someone who doesn't naturally gravitate to boundaries ("don't box me in"), self-discipline ("yuck"), consistent routines ("let me be freeeee") and so on. But I recognise that they have value.
Parkinson's Law states that "work expands to fill the time available". If you're worried that you don't have enough to do, then I'd suggest one option is to think proactively about what you can add to your schedule (new business development, professional development for you, a new hobby, etc) to stop the work you would have previously knocked out in a couple of days stretching to being your whole week (the person who asked me the question about this of Friday was feeling guilty that they were achieving less-per-day than before, so that guilt can be a problem if you can't shift it).
Likewise, if you're struggling because you're overloaded, you can flip Parkinson's Law to say "this thing that should take two hours to make it good? What would a 30 minute and good-enough version look like?". Messing with our expectations and assumptions can be liberating as well as productive (and don't get defensive on me about that one!).
The same is true with boundaries. It's easy to maintain the same boundaries and work sub-optimally (and probably feel guilty for it). But if you've genuinely got less work to do, why not create some harder boundaries for yourself and work fewer hours or fewer days? At my company, Think Productive, we've worked a four day week for the best part of a decade. It never feels like it hampers our progress - in fact in many ways having that extra day of weekend ends up being the fuel that drives us!
But if you're overwhelmed and overloaded, have a think about what you can do to create clearer boundaries:
- is there something that can signify the transition from home to work time (especially if you don't have a dedicated home office space)?
- are there some rules you can apply to your days to maintain the space for the 'deep work'? (As a rule for example, I block my calendar so that I don't have Zoom meetings before midday, and try to keep email to a minimum during the mornings too - this allows me to put my best attention onto the right creative tasks).
- can having set times and being proactively 'open door' with your clients or team members help to create space for some 'closed door so please don't bother me right now unless it's super-urgent' times?
- and of course, getting clearer with your definition for what success* looks like, rather than living with a vague and nagging sense of self-criticism will help.
*"success-all-things-considered-during-a-pandemic" should have a lower standard than you're used to, so be kind to yourself.
Whilst it's easy to see boundaries and constraints as something restricting, limiting or dispiriting, when used correctly they can bring freedom, a change in perspective and an opportunity to challenge ourselves with the possibility that there might be a better way.
If you want to find out more about the four day week and why it's more productive than five days, then check out this podcast episode with Alex Pang, author of the book Shorter. And of course, Think Productive has a whole bunch of resources and workshops that can help.