Do You Know Your Productivity Style? Do Your Best Work with More Ease
Twenty-five years ago, David Allen’s bestseller Getting Things Done launched the concept of personal productivity. He led the way to a new industry dedicated to “managing our minds not our time” and taking control of what’s on our plates, our commitments, and our personal organization and workflow.
The personal productivity movement is not that different from the diet industry which exploded in the 1960s as fast food and sedentary lifestyles crept into the American post-War lifestyle. Like the diet industry, the personal productivity movement was partly a response to the new “junk” in our work lives, including a barrage of distractions, unstructured work, and the introduction of personal devices. Not everyone loves diets, and not everyone loves personal productivity either, but they serve a purpose.
Love or Hate It – Personal Productivity Is Like Dieting
Here are some of the criticisms of the naysayers (and maybe you):
There’s too much conflicting advice – The “experts” in the space are not unanimous, much like the diet industry. (Should I embrace “deep work” or collaboration apps? Is social media the answer or the problem?)
There are too many gimmicks and people looking to make money – There is a slew of experts—real and not-so-real—with “silver bullet” advice that turns people off. (It turns me off, too.)
It makes you unfun – People on a diet are not much fun at a party. Personal productivity junkies (with their rigid schedules, apps, and to-do lists) are not much fun either.
I have never stuck to a diet for very long, but I have gained tips and tricks that have helped me from some, while others I’ve dismissed. (Keto, are you kidding me?) Think of using personal productivity the same way: Educate yourself and select the best approaches for the Current YOU (not the fantasy Future YOU) to combat the junk (and overwhelm) you are wrestling with.
Get Off the Yoyo Diet and Find Your Productivity Style for Long-Term Results
What makes one person productive doesn’t make the other person productive. In my 18 years of consulting, I have worked with incredible entrepreneurs, business owners, and leaders and I can tell you they don’t all groove to the same productivity beat. Some are constantly on their phones and jumping task to task. Others enjoy working in deep states of focus.
Let’s explore the pros and cons of 4 key productivity styles that shape our ways of working.
1. Schedule-Driven, Calendar-Lover
Brian Tracy is credited with one of the first comprehensive programs for applying time management to life management in “Master Your Time, Master Your Life.” Need I say more? The first style of personal productivity is about taking rigorous control of your schedule and calendar. This is a common theme that has pervaded the personal productivity world. Many experts talk about the need to schedule EVERYTHING — coffee breaks, dinner with your spouse, and exercise.
Productivity and habits expert Nir Eyal and author of Indistractable, preaches the power of timeboxing, which is committing your work to specific time intervals to get it done.
Admittedly, the schedule-driven, timeboxing style of productivity, while perhaps the most popular, is actually the hardest for me to follow. (Ironically, as I write this article, I was hoping to be done writing 45 minutes ago, but I kept writing to go with the flow of ideas!)
When I sit down to work on something, whether it’s a report, review of someone’s work, a presentation, or an article, I have a tough time knowing how much time it will take me to get done or to get to “good enough.” I struggle with scheduling exactly what I will be working on in time slots for each day. (This is a mix of my creative spirit and some laziness on my part too — but I am working on it, I promise!)
Some people are die-hard Pomodoro Technique fans (named after the tomato-shaped kitchen time), which proposes working in stretches of 25-minutes on and 5-minute breaks with longer breaks systematically built in. But this method is way too rigid for me.
If you struggle with rigorous calendars but want to explore options, there are some experts with great “middle ground” advice like Charlie Gilkey. He talks about organizing your week according to different “blocks” for creative work, collaborative connection, admin, and recovery time.
If this style IS you…
Where can you have more flexibility in your schedule to allow for creative ideas?
Where is your schedule hurting your ability to connect or be in sync with others?
Where can you “go with the flow” a bit more to allow for connection and curiosity ?
If this style is NOT you….
How can you reflect on your schedule for a better planned week?
Where can you try timeboxing certain routine tasks to get more done?
How can you better schedule your focused work, workouts, administration, and breaks?
2. Information Junkie (Information FLOWer), Knowledge Manager
Maybe it's my many years of being a consultant where I am paid to listen and process information or a carryover from my school days, but my “personal” personal productivity style is more aligned with the information that flows through my life.
In my book The 24-Hour Rule, I show how we can harness the power of information and opportunity that comes into our day and not squander it before our short-term memory lets it go. (If you haven’t read the book, the “24-Hour Rule” means that you need to rethink, reprocess, or rewrite information within 24 hours of hearing it — or just do something with that information.) After so many years of preaching this message, it has become ingrained in my psyche.
I am also a huge fan of Tiago Forte’s book Building a Second Brain and the practice of Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) that he advocates. This is also an information-driven style of productivity where you capture the information strategically and systematically so that you can leverage it over the long-term.
I also love Ryder Carroll book, The Bullet Journal Method, which is about reflecting on the information, events, thoughts, and feelings that come into your day. He ties daily reflection, information, and capturing as part of making yourself more productive.
If this IS you..
When are you like an absent-minded professor stuck in some book or chasing an idea?
When can you miss schedules and deadlines on projects and how can you overcome this?
How can you make managing information your superpower and leverage techniques like the 24-Hour Rule, PKM, and Bullet Journaling to embrace personal productivity in your own style?
If this is NOT you…
How do you develop a better consciousness and system for capturing the information, opportunity, and ideas that come into your day?
Which technique - The 24-Hour Rule, PKM, or Bullet Journaling - can you try out this week for better capturing of information?
How can you take better notes, capture critical information, and organize your files for better results?
3. Project Doer, Personal Project Manager, Taskmaster
For those of you who get excited by projects and to-do lists, your style is the Project Doer, Project Manager, or Taskmaster.
Project Management has existed in the work world for centuries. But it was David Allen who got us to transcend this structure, thinking, and discipline to “projects” in our personal world. In Getting Things Done, David Allen defines a project as “as a desired result that requires more than one action step.” Anything that requires more than one step is a project — so that means we have a lot of projects in our lives!
David Allen encourages us to maintain a master “Next Action” to-do list and a master project list and then review them regularly. The trick is that we need to remind ourselves and encourage ourselves to take multiple steps to achieve what we are looking for.
David Allen and many others in the productivity space talk about the importance of projects to give attention to the things that matter most. Often, we deal with our projects at work pretty well, but fall down with the projects in our personal space
If this IS you..
What projects are you successful at? Are you able to apply what you learned in your work life to your personal life and vice versa?
What projects are you working on and are the most excited to do?
What goals or areas in your life can you turn more into a project?
Where can you shift your focus on projects and focus more on information, people, or going with the flow?
If this is NOT you…
What are the projects on your plate at work?
What are the projects on your plate personally – can you define 3 personal projects that you want to focus on this month?
For these 3 projects, what are the top 3 tasks for each?
4. Community Goer, Social Butterfly
There is a last productivity style that is almost never talked about by productivity experts — who are largely professional writers, speakers, and academics (and are almost all male, BTW).
There are many people who operate the most productively when they are in sync with others around them. We all do to a certain extent. But there is a certain type of person who you might see in sales, community organizing and coordination roles, as managers and project managers, or in business development, social media, and event coordination whose entire productivity depends on collaboration and the energy with others.
If this is you, you might not be productive unless you are working with or at least in sync with others. These are the people where WFH was torture and a productivity disaster for them. If this is you — or partially you (it is partially all of us) — it’s so important to recognize this style and not feel ashamed of it (despite so much opposing productivity advice) and learn to get the right career path and way of working, including having a buddy system.
There is science to back that we are more productive when working in sync with others. Fitness experts claim that we work harder in a group fitness class environment and achieve mental and emotional benefits that we don’t get from working out alone. Researchers at Kansas State University found that people who exercised with someone they thought was better than them increased their workout results by 200%! The Romans knew that armies marching together could go longer distances too.
If your style of productivity is more aligned to being in the rhythm of those around you, you will gain advantages that your solo friends won’t get. You’ll get more ideas, opportunities, and answers to problems through osmosis.
This is a risk in today’s work world, as we become more desynchronized in our work. This change to our structured work schedule is, in my opinion, a real problem and one of the key reasons researchers are claiming we are at a 75-year low in worker productivity.
As a business owner, I can tell you that if I follow a rigid schedule, I can be more productive personally but I can also become a bottleneck for my business. If I’m more responsive and collaborative, I can make my team overall more productive, energetic, and happier. Of course, it’s a balancing act, but worth the effort.
If this IS you…
How can you find focus time where you put your own work first? When can you do Focus Blocks and collaboration time that energizes the team?
How can you use your calendar better to avoid having it taken over by the demands of others?
How can you maintain your helpful nature while not being overly responsive?
If this is NOT you…
What can you do differently to better align with your team (coffee meeting, team weekly meetings, having “office hours”) ?
What is one thing you can do to get more in sync with your family or friends?
What is one group activity you can do this year — group fitness, group lunch, sport, course with others, group cooking class?
