Recently, as I was about to leave for work, my son pulled me aside and gave me some very serious productivity advice. It got me thinking that really, this isn’t that hard. My 6 year old son gave me some pretty good advice off the top of his head when people like me and plenty of others have spilled gallons of digital ink trying to help us all figure out how to actually get things done. So I thought I would share with you some productivity advice from a 6 year old.
Now, I suspect that my son has heard me talk about quite a few different things over the last couple but I cannot remember ever specifically talking to him about things he mentioned to me. The context was, as I said, I was about to leave for work. His first piece of advice, you will see, was all about trying to get me home quicker. I told him that I thought that was really good advice. Having rushed off to tell his siblings proudly that I had told him his advice was good, he then came back to share a few more gems. So, in the words of 6 year old, followed by some of my own reflections:
1. Don’t spend lots of time talking to people and just do your work so you can come home and spend more time with your family.
This is a question of focus and priority. No one is thinking about being rude to anyone and building relationships with the people we work with is actually a really important thing to do in the workplace. It builds trust and in turn a sense of security and stability. All of this is essential for everyone to be able to thrive in their jobs. But, this did cause me to reflect on the things I do in a work day that take me away from getting the important things done. Beyond that, the less work we are able to get done, then it can lead to situations where we have to give extra time and thus taking that away from the things that are actually more important than our work or job.
I think the distinction is the difference between the words ‘any’ and ‘lots’. Don’t spend ANY time, means something very different than don’t spend LOTS of time.
One of the keys to being more effective, I am convinced, is to guard our use of time well. We do this by focussing on what we need to, when we need to, and by protecting the time we have, intentionally, for the important things. One way to do this is to avoid frittering time away without really thinking about it. This could be extended breaks chatting with colleagues, it could be allowing meetings to drift off topic. More modern examples would be things like social media. We might even expend and sacrifice a significant amount of our focus and focussed time, by playing email tennis for an hour when a 2 minute phone call would do.
2. Do the longest thing first and then all that will be left will be the quick things to do.
After my son told me this one, I explained to him about a man called Mark Twain and the whole idea of eating frogs. He didn’t get it. That said, the point here is a really good one. There are three ways that this is often applied. If you do the hardest task to be done, the one you least want to do, first thing in the day, then everything that comes after will be better than that. Extending the thought a bit, you are far less likely to be able to muster up the courage to do the difficult things at the end of the day than the start. So, this thing is much less likely to get done. Next, if you do the biggest impact thing first, then your day has been a worthwhile one, no matter what else does or doesn’t happen. Lastly, it’s often said that for most of us, first thing in the day is when our energy and focus levels are at their highest.
Therefore, to do the difficult, time consuming and biggest impact task then, gives us the best chance of doing quality work. If something is difficult and time consuming and we don’t want to do and we leave it until we are tired, we will either find an excuse or rush through it and do poor work. If something really matters and is a high value task, then attacking it when we are at our best, just makes good sense.
3. Do one thing and don’t go back and forth between lots of other things.
Having the ability to multi-task is a myth. We cannot do it. It is psychologically impossible for the human mind to focus on more than one thing at a time. What we call ‘multi-tasking’ is actually ‘task switching’. Your mind is not focussing on multiple things at once, but switching back and forth between them. Some people are better able to do this. Others are much better at focussing intently on something to the exclusion of all else. Just ask my dad when he is watching football – but don’t expect a response.
What is known, is that how ever able our mind is to switch back and forth between different contexts and different things, the mental drain and loss of focus that comes from doing so is immense. I read one suggestion that a 2 minute distraction will actually cost you 20 minutes of time all in. This is because it takes the mind that time to recover itself from the distraction, refocus on what you were doing before, remind itself where it was and get back up to speed.
Task switching is a killer, yet most of us allow this by default. We have notifications and pop ups that rob us of focus. Every email we see and check and respond to whilst in the middle of something else, may only take two minutes its true. But, suppose you do this with 10 emails every hour. That is a third of your time gone. And, if it is true that a 2 minute distraction can cost 20 minutes of focus, then effectively you have no time for concentrating on whatever it is you have decided to do.
So, focus on one thing until it’s finished or until you decide to stop. Then and only then (barring an actual emergency) should you move onto something else or go into your communication tools. Slowing down, can actually make us more effective.
Being productive is actually so simple a 6 year old gets it
This productivity advice from a 6 year old is, I am convinced, wisdom. I am convinced that if we employ these three basic, core approaches to our work and life, it will make us more effective. Getting the core right is better than any app, system or Notion template ever will be. For all the ink spilled, for all the videos made, for all the apps developed and templates sold, actually the secret to being more productive and effective isn’t really that secret. We all know it already. We just think for some reason these things don’t apply to us. OR (even worse!), we think for some reason that these rules don’t apply to the people that work FOR us and they should be effective in their roles despite the fact that we never leave them alone to get on with their work.
In short, the key to all of this, and the principles behind my son’s advice to me could be written as follows.
Decide what it important and give time to it. Ensure that the important and necessary things get done, giving them your best time. And then, once you have decided all this, guard your time and guard your focus against distraction.
So, that’s productivity advice from a 6 year old. Stay tuned…I’ve been told that there is more to come tomorrow.
