(This article is third in a series of five addressing how to spend less time at work – and still be a good employee)
There is nothing that spurs productivity like deadlines. Imagine that you’ve had a trip to Hawai’i planned for three months. It’s 10:00 AM on Monday and you’re scheduled to leave Wednesday. Your wife or girlfriend has never been so excited in her life.
That’s when it hits: you get assigned a huge project and you must deliver it by Friday morning. Shit. Your wife will leave you if you don’t go on this trip. Your heart is racing and you start working on the project. Before you know it, you’ve worked through lunch and it’s now 6:00 PM on Monday. You work like a mad man all day Tuesday, leaving the office at midnight, WHEN YOU FINISH THE PROJECT. A huge rush of relief floods over your body. You leave the next day for Hawai’i.
A lesson from Business School – When I was in graduate school, my friends and I would barricade ourselves in the library 72 hours before a 50 page paper was due. Starting from a dead stop, we’d complete research, writing, and proof reading in three days or less. And, of course, we’d get A’s – we produced high quality deliverables.
How did we do it? We got in the ZONE. For those 72 hours we would eat, drink, and breathe (but not sleep!) the project we were working on. Absolutely nothing would get in our way.
We would do the same thing, on a small scale, for smaller assignments – sometimes only getting in the “zone” for 30 minutes to get a short assignment completed.
Daily deadlines will help you replicate the graduate school scenario. You must hold yourself to these deadlines, no matter what.
Break up projects into tasks
Every time you get a new project break it down into smaller tasks. Each task should be short enough to complete in half of a work day. Prioritize these tasks and complete them in order of priority using the following guidelines. Be sure to write down your daily tasks!
Take lunch, every day
There is no excuse; take a full lunch every day. Use this time to read a book, catch up with friends, or work on your website. Do not work through lunch. Choose a task every day that can be completed before lunch and use lunch as a deadline. Make yourself complete your predetermined tasks prior to leaving for lunch.
Show up on time, never early
Get to work on time. Don’t plan on showing up at 6AM to finish a project – this will just give you extra time to screw off. From the second you arrive, truly focus on the task at hand and blast out some high quality work. If you are worried about getting a project done, convert your worry to productive energy and apply this energy to completing your tasks. Worrying has never accomplished anything – hard work has.
Leave at 5, every day
Use the 5:00pm deadline as the cutoff time for your work. Think of it like the professor who locks his door at 5:00pm and you can no longer submit your paper. If it’s not in by 5:00, you fail, and all of the work you have done will not even be read by the professor. It’s better to submit a good paper on time than a great paper that is late. I’m not telling you to let your work quality suffer, just to focus on being productive and getting tasks completed. (One of your tasks for the next day could be to review the previous day’s work.)
Be rigid but flexible
Stand by these rules, but be realistic. If you absolutely must get a project done, or you are truly in an ultra-creative “zone,” by all means, stay and finish a project. Sometimes you just need to take the grad school approach and get a massive project done in a 72 hour marathon. Don’t make a habit of it though, because every time you stay late, you will condition yourself to not keep your daily deadlines.
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Great article! It always seems like the busier you are the more you are able to do… so these ideas make sense! I used to like to get to work early though.. it’s so nice and quiet there with no interruptions that I found I could get 3 hours of work done in one and then “LEAVE EARLY!” beat that rush hour traffic.
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