Productivity expert and author Hayley Watts discusses the reasons people struggle with productivity and why digital correspondence is, despite its advantages, creating a challenging environment for communication.
Watts spoke at the UK and Ireland ENGAGE several months ago, and she offers tips to help leaders and employees to channel productivity into their working lives.
Watts, a co-author of How to Fix Meetings: Meet Less, Focus on Outcomes and Get Stuff Done, explains why technology can sometimes be more of a hindrance than an aid, why less is more when it comes to setting priorities, and shares strategies we can use to “get in the zone” in an era of urgency and distraction.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
- Three common reasons why people struggle to stay productive.
- Why our reliance on digital tools to improve communication can be antithetical.
- How leaders and managers can respond to cultures that are enabling burnout.
- Why flexible working is a challenging balancing act.
- How to get a better understanding of daily goals and priorities.
— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Steph Brown at Stephanie.Brown@aicpa-cima.com.
Transcript
Steph Brown: I’m Steph Brown, a news writer with AICPA & CIMA, together as the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. Today I am joined by productivity coach and author Hayley Watts, who spoke at the UK and Ireland ENGAGE conference this summer about the different tools and mindsets we can tap into to begin to develop a more productive approach and attitude to work.
Hayley joins us today to give us more insight into why it’s in our nature to fall into distractions, how leaders and managers can lead by example to encourage a healthier relationship with work, and why office mandates may not necessarily be the best move for companies.
Welcome, Hayley.
Hayley Watts: Pleasure.
Brown: Why do people struggle to stay productive?
Watts: Because we’re not robots I think is a big part of that. Our energy levels change and fluctuate throughout the day. We have three different levels of energy. There’s that kind of energy where we can really focus and concentrate and get in the zone. Then there’s that time of the day where it’s the opposite. We find it really hard to get into something. Our mind wanders; we go off and do something else, and then the rest of the day is somewhere in between those two things. I think we struggle to stay productive when we’re trying to do something that requires that really good level of energy and attention at a time where we’re just not suited to do that. Most people have around three hours a day where their energy and their focus is really good. We need to start thinking about how do we put those tasks into that slot where our energy is good. I think we struggle to stay productive when we’re not aligning the types of tasks to the kind of energy we have coming in.
I think the other thing is we have all this communication: We have emails, Teams messages, WhatsApp messages, loads of new stuff coming into us all the time. And when something new lands, our brain is wired to want to check out, What is that thing? Is that something that’s going to be good for me? Is that something that’s going to be a threat to me? Our amygdala, our lizard brain if you like, is looking to check out new things and they’re constantly coming towards us, so that can be a big distraction.
I think the third thing is we’re not very good at remembering things. Yes, people can train their brains to remember all kinds of stuff. But for those of us who haven’t invested our time and energy in doing that, we can remember about seven things at once. But we’ve all got more than seven things going on in our work and in our lives. This plays out when you’re working on something, and it pops into your head that you’ve got that email, that other thing you were supposed to do. Whether that’s a really important email from your boss, or you were supposed to go out and buy some toothpaste at lunchtime and you’ve forgotten. We remember things at time where we can’t really do anything about them. And again, that causes a distraction for us, which means it’s difficult to stay productive throughout the day.
Brown: In what ways do we need to change our relationship with digital tools so that they can help us to become more productive rather than becoming a distraction?
Watts: I think the digital tools can often be a distraction, and then I think email is a great example. I run some getting-your-inbox-to-zero workshops. So much stuff comes in through e-mail, through Teams, on our phones. People have things vibrating on their watch every time they receive a new message, and that’s distracting. It doesn’t help us to get into the zone, get into a state of flow, and concentrate on something. I think we really need to look and think about where is technology helping us and where is it hindering us. And where it’s hindering us; thinking about how do I create a different relationship with this technology that makes it feel better, that makes it feel like the technology is there to help and support us, rather than controlling our time and being a constant source of distraction?
Email is a good example. I still go into workplaces and say to people: “Who has tried turning off their notifications?” I did this in an organisation. We were doing a big team day as part of their annual conference. It had about 150 people and I asked people to put their hands up if they’ve tried turning off the notifications on their email and about ten, maybe 12, 13 people put their hands up. I said put your thumb up if you liked it, thumb down if you didn’t, and they all put their thumbs up. That sparked a really interesting conversation because lots of people in that organisation thought that they couldn’t turn off the notifications. They thought that they had to respond straight away because when we send an email it lands with somebody else within a minute or so. But that doesn’t mean they have to respond that quickly.
That conversation starter, if you like, about what are the expected response times. Usually, people think, I’m expected to respond really quickly, within minutes. But when you start asking people how quickly [they] expect people to respond, they usually say within a few hours. Their expectations of themselves are much higher than the expectations that they have of other people. A lot of these communication tools have been designed so we don’t need to talk to each other anymore. As a result, we just don’t talk to each other about how we’re using them. I think in lots of teams, lots of organisations, opening up that conversation, talking about the expectation around these things can really help make it less stressful.
Brown: In what ways do you think leaders and managers and people in higher-up positions in the workplace can help to instill healthier cultures and structures at work that can enable productivity and make teams feel more able to get the work done and be able to reach their own goals?
Watts: That’s a great question. I think the short answer is around leading by example. If we are receiving emails from our boss at 11 o’clock in the evening, then there’s an expectation that people have that I should be in my inbox at 11. That’s probably not the expectation and if it is it’s an unrealistic one.
I think leaders need to think about how they lead by example. We know that people make better decisions when they’re not feeling stressed, when they’re not feeling overwhelmed and burnt out. How do we create a culture where we expect that people are taking lunch breaks, that we expect that people are taking their annual leave and not working while they’re on their holiday? A lot of this is around that leading by example and just being really clear about the expectation. If somebody does notice that a colleague is dealing with their work while they’re on holiday, like touching base with that person saying: “I noticed that this was happening. We really don’t expect that of you. Is everything OK? How are you doing?” Being willing to ask those questions to challenge where there might be some practices and a culture that’s developed not on purpose, just by accident, because this is the way that people work, that might lead people to feeling that sense of burnout.
Everybody makes mistakes from time to time – we’re human beings, we get things wrong. But really thinking about how, within a team, those mistakes are dealt with. Is it that we look for someone to blame, we look to see whose fault it is? Or is it more: “Oh, a mistake has been made. What do we learn from that? What do we do differently next time? What can we do to try and put it right this time?” Thinking of those mistakes as an opportunity to learn, to develop both individuals and teams, so that when things do go wrong people can be quite open and honest about it and say: “Well, I made this mistake over here, and I’m thinking that this is what I might do differently next time. What do other people think? What does that mean for our culture and our behavior as a team?” I think managers and leaders have a really important role to play in that, because if the first place they go to when a mistake is made is “Who is to blame?”, that’s what the rest of the team are going to do. That’s how mistakes can get pushed aside and shoved under the carpet and not really thought about, or if they are thought about, it’s because it’s that person’s fault. We really want to be able to create a team and a culture where we can be open, honest, and learn from some of those experiences.
Brown: With the world of work changing and flexibility being much more of the new normal, in what ways do you think this is boosting productivity versus how it is limiting it?
Watts: This is a really interesting question because people’s experiences are so different. I was with a company a few weeks ago who said: “We’re trying to get our people to come back into the office because we pay a lot of money for our Central London location. We want people to use it.” That felt like it was the wrong way round. We want people to come in because we are paying for the office, rather than we want people to come in because we feel that they’re doing better work. [With] lots of the businesses that I’m going into at the moment, this is a real source of tension. There’s a group of people who want to see people in the office more and then there’s a group of people who are resisting that because it doesn’t work for them.
The working from home experience is very inequitable. It depends on your working space. I’m very lucky, I’ve got an office at the end of my garden. I’ve been working from home for 12, 13 years, or working in a hybrid or flexible way for longer than that. But I’ve not always had that experience. I used to live in a one-bedroom flat when I worked from home, which is fine when there’s nobody else there. But I’ve got clients who have talked about working from home in a small space. Maybe there are small children in that space. Maybe there are other people that they share that space with who work shifts so their working hours are different. That adds all sorts of levels of complexity to whether people would rather work at home or work in the office.
People are using those spaces differently. Some people, like me – I’ve got my office space at the end of the garden – and I’ve got a very clear [designated] workspace. I can work from home and get my head down on the things that I need to focus and concentrate on. Then if I’m going into an office, I can use that time to speak to colleagues, to collaborate, to meet with other people. But if I haven’t got that space at home, if I’m somebody who hasn’t got a designated workspace, or indeed any quiet space that doesn’t have other people in it, then that changes. There’s different types of work that I might do when I’m at home. I might want to come to the office more often, and when I do go into the office, I want to get my head down and do my quiet work. Then having somebody who’s in the office to chat and collaborate, those things just clash, they don’t really work together.
I think this is about people having conversations, maybe having designated spaces in the office where people can work quietly, get their head down, focus on what they need to do. If people are being asked to work from home and working from home maybe doesn’t work for you, then working from home doesn’t have to involve working at home. It might involve working in a library. J.K. Rowling wrote some quite successful books from a coffee shop. Thinking about where we might work helps us to do our best work. If you’re one of those people who is thinking actually I want my people to be coming back into the office, there’s a big question there for me about why. Very often there’s something missing in that conversation around trust. Just because you can see someone doesn’t mean you know what they’re doing. Just because you can see them, and maybe you do know what they’re doing, doesn’t mean the work is necessarily of a better quality than [the work of] the people who are working from home who we can’t see.
I think we need to set teamwork up to be a bit more intentional so that there are opportunities to collaborate, that there are opportunities to socialise for those who want to do that, and there are equally opportunities for everybody to do their own solo working where that works for them. It’s a complicated balance to get right. Think Productive, one of the companies that I work with, have, I think, nailed this. They’ve been doing hybrid or remote working for well over a decade. There’s lots of opportunities to work together on projects. There’s opportunities at least once or twice a week to get together and just chat with colleagues if that’s what people want to do, and it’s equally OK not to join in with those things if that doesn’t work for you today. Trying to get that balance right is quite complex.
[With] a lot of the workplaces that I go into, the decision is made by a small number of people who probably have got more space at home, possibly the impact of commuting doesn’t have such a big difference on their personal finances. I think we need to widen out some of those conversations to really think about what’s going to work for everyone, and recognising that actually not everybody needs the same thing. If I was working in an open-plan office, I would find that so hard. I find any noise distracting. I’m very easily distracted by noise. I’m quite happy working in a space on my own. Other people like that noise, it stimulates them, it helps them to think more creatively. People need different things. I think the trouble is very often when people are making decisions about this, they think about what they need and what they have access to. I think there’s a lot more conversations to be had around that to try and get a balance that works for everyone.
Brown: Sometimes, when we think about productivity, we’re likely to centre it around our professional lives. But in some ways, I suppose it does seep into our personal lives and can be an all-encompassing problem. How can people begin to develop a better understanding of their own priorities and what they want to achieve each day?
Watts: Priorities are tricky because when somebody says “I’ve got ten priorities”, what they are actually saying is “I haven’t really got any clear priorities at all”. What I try to do as a productivity ninja each week is I try and identify the three projects that I want to move forward that week. I try each day to do something to move those projects forward. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve written my top three priorities on the whiteboard, so every time I come and sit down at my desk, I can see what they are and I’m reminded of what they are. I’m really focusing on trying to make sure I get something done to move forward each of those priorities each day.
I’ve literally got them in order as one, two, three. Something happens around one each day, two most days, and three if that fits into what’s happening in the rest of my day. I think just having clarity around “What do I really want to make progress with this week?” Sometimes they might be personal things. My priorities this week have realigned quite a lot because my son is off school, he’s not very well. Then that means my priorities have had to change and then I say: “OK, well, that priority that’s a work thing has had to take a step back this week.” I’ll come back to it next week. I’ll come back to it when he’s feeling better, but I need to spend a bit more time with him to make sure that he’s OK. I think it’s very easy for us to beat ourselves up about that when something personal takes priority to say all that work stuffs falling behind, but we’ll catch up, it will still be there. I think we just need a bit of self-kindness.
I remember hearing Ruby Wax saying at an event: “Nobody is as unpleasant to us as that voice in our head.” I’ve cleaned the language up a bit, but she’s right. We can be really quite unpleasant to ourselves when we don’t achieve the things we think we’re supposed to be achieving. But we just have to take it one step at a time, one day at a time. Priorities change. I think when priorities change we have to just ask ourselves; am I comfortable that this other thing has taken priority over what I thought my priority for the week was going to be on Monday? If not, then maybe you need to have some conversations or change your actions. If they have changed and you’re OK with that, go with the flow, recognise it, and [don’t] give yourself a hard time.
Brown: Perfect. Thanks for that, Hayley. That’s really interesting. I definitely learned a lot. Productivity is not my strong point, so I’ll be taking this on board definitely.
Watts: No worries.
Brown: Thanks so much for this today.
Watts: Of course, it’s no problem at all.
