Productivity hacks that don’t actually work

Working from home has brought light to a host of issues surrounding productivity. You may find yourself procrastinating work, a lot.

And since we are a ‘microwave’ generation, who want to find quick fixes to all sorts of problems, productivity hacks are a thriving trend.

Well, we are letting you in on the little fact that these five, are not fixes.

1. Multitasking

It may stand to reason that listening to a podcast while responding to an email and working on your business proposal while also clipping your nails can help you accomplish many tasks efficiently at once, but the reality is that it doesn’t.

Multitasking is not doing many tasks at once, but quickly switching from one task to another. It’s estimated that only two per cent of the population is actually proficient at multitasking, and ironically, these people are the least likely to actually multitask. Problem is we all think we are the two per cent. Furthermore, recent research indicates that people who multitask the most often are likely the worst at it, yes that refers to you.

Our productivity can decrease by as much as 40 per cent from multitasking, as we switch tasks and actually lose time by interrupting ourselves between tasks.

 Reducing your amount of multitasking can lead to greater progress on projects that you have deemed challenging as well as decrease the stress you may feel by working often, but not actually accomplishing anything. Instead of texting while working, give yourself a deadline for the task at hand and use your electronics as an incentive for the work that you accomplish by that deadline.

2.   Eating the frog

You’ve likely heard that doing your hardest task first is the best way to ensure a productive day. Mark Twain famously said that if the first thing you do in the morning is eat a live frog, you can go through the rest of the day knowing the worst is behind you. Your frog is your worst task, and you should do it first thing in the morning.

However, Solomon Thimothy, president of OneIMS, points out that the hardest task is not always the most important one.

“By focusing on something that drains your resources and doesn’t help you move further with your goal, you only get less productive,” says Thimothy.

Some people need to start small and build momentum, then dive into my hardest task when at peak creativity and energy. That means deep work like content creation happens either mid-afternoon, or around midnight. You don’t have to always eat the frog first.

3.   Waking up at the crack of dawn

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, rises a little before 4am every day. President Trump wrote in his 2004 book that he only needs four hours of sleep a night. David Cush, the former Virgin America CEO, has said that he wakes up at 4:15am.

It is hyped so much there is a viral video of Steve Harvey declaring: “Rich people don’t sleep eight hours a day.”

So what could be bad about something recommended by every famous person out there? Simple, it is a performance killer.

In a 2003 study, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Medical School found that reaction times and performance on cognitive tasks plummet for those getting four hours of sleep and those getting six hours of sleep. Regularly getting four hours of sleep is the equivalent of the mental impairment of being up for 24 hours.

Even if you sleep for eight hours and wake up at 4am, it is unlikely you will be productive. If you’re not wired for rising at the hour of the wolf, and most of us aren’t, according to many sleep specialists, messing with that normal rhythm is still detrimental. That’s why jetlag is so hard to adjust to.

To be productive set up and stick to a fixed sleep schedule. Have a regular sleeping time, exercise daily and cut heavy foods or alcohol before bed.

4. Organisation fixation

How many apps to organise, to-do lists, take notes etc do you have on your phone? We are a generation obsessed with organisation. Google “productivity course” and you’ll get 114 million results. Udemy alone has over 100 productivity courses. Some of these are 100 hour- long courses. More than 1.6 million copies of David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, have been sold and inspired a cultic following.

But planning to be productive is often a time-wasting distraction. The apps, books, and courses address methodology, such as getting organised, while overlooking the more important problem of motivation.

This is why Parkinson’s Law is often true: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” And the reverse is true. You never have time to clean the dishes, until your wife calls to say they’re on their way, in which case you get it done in 15 minutes flat.

So when you’re motivated or the pressure is on, you do get stuff done. This is put more succinctly in a viral TED Talk titled “Inside the mind of a master Procrastinator”. Stop organising yourself and just do stuff.

5.   Writing to-do lists

Listen to entrepreneurs and mentors in all fields, and you will never hear them mention to-do lists. Interestingly, most prolific and productive workers don’t depend on to-do lists, they depend on a calendar.

Think of it this way, life is almost entirely dictated by units of time. When a client orders something you give them a time estimate. Students writing a paper have a set deadline. Recommended sleep time is 8 hours.

Instead of a list of 10 tiny tasks, bunch them into a time period. This prevents them from constantly interrupting your workflow, while still making sure everything gets done. You then have time for deeper work.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, pulls 80- to 90-hour work weeks though effective time blocking.

In their best-seller The One Thing, authors Gary Keller and Jay Papasan note that making dedicated time on your calendar to accomplish your important work is the key to being productive:

“Most people think there’s never enough time to be successful, but there is when you block it. Time blocking is a very results-oriented way of viewing and using time. It’s a way of making sure what has to be done gets done.”