Cutting Down the Overload: Ask Yourself What’s Important
April 13th, 2007 (12:00pm) Mike Gunderloy 14 CommentsTweet This
As we head into the weekend, I’m sure I’m not the only web worker planning on working on Saturday and Sunday to catch up on tasks that didn’t get completed during the week. Indeed, it seems that a state of chronic overload is common in web worker circles. I don’t think there’s any great mystery why this is so: we’re all working in such a swirl of electronic distraction, pummeled daily by inputs from many directions, with so many shiny new things to chase, that it would be a wonder if we were not overloaded.
Still, from time to time it’s worth taking a step back to consider your obligations and activities, if only to avoid physical or nervous breakdown. Along those lines, I recently ran across a blog posting from University of Calgary educational technology developer D’Arcy Norman. I urge you to read the whole thing, but I’ll quote the central set of questions that are fueling his own career re-examination:
Is this the most important thing I could be doing? If not, what should I be doing instead? And what do I have to do to get to a point where I could be doing that?
Three little questions, but thinking seriously about them can really help you focus. Are all those RSS feeds an important part of some life strategy, or just accumulated cruft? Are you getting anything out of those social networking sites, or did you just go with the herd? Ultimately, is your work contributing to your life goals, and if not, what do you need to change?
I don’t think every waking moment needs to be devoted to making the world a better place and myself a better person – I personally spend plenty of time being productively unproductive. But if you’ve gotten to the point where your routine is perennially unproductive or unfulfilling, maybe it’s time to cut back on the overload a bit. Asking yourself what’s important is a good way to start.
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
The three questions posed by D’Arcy Norman all relate to the way that workers value their time. Because many of us work in corporate, Monday through Friday, 8am – 5pm environments, there is some amount of unproductive work being done. It’s because people feel the need to “fill” their day with tasks in order to contribute to the company based on the beliefs held about how work should look. But, what if we do away with those beliefs like Best Buy & CultureRxhave done by implementing a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE)? Instead, we value our time and our coworkers time different and focus only on the valuable work. This makes us more productive, the company more productive, and gives us the opportunity to succeed at work and in our personal lives. It seems like an ideal solution!
Seen links to your blog before, and finally subscribed now after reading the productively unproductive post – very meaningful blog. Has to be one of the few I look forward to reading. I can relate to a lot of things you say, and some of the suggestions are really handy in organizing time and the daily workflow.
Thanks!
I like that quote a lot as it can certainly guide you.
The flip side of that is, how do you decide on what’s important? When you have different contexts to represent (worker, father, husband, Lost fan, fantasy football addict, etc.), how you figure out which one is the most important at that very moment? Do I go on that business trip that can help my career if I miss the dance recital? Answers to these are up to the individual, but are just as important as stopping yourself and reevaluating what you should do next.
“blog posting” This link in your article has an additional http, so it goes to the wrong site
Great post. I recently wrote about similar topics:
Do More to Be Less Productive
The Art of Doing Nothing
Keep up the great work, Mike!
Oh, heck. Here’s the corrected link. Sometimes WordPress is not my friend (and I don’t have an easy way to edit articles on a Saturday morning).
Hi Mike,
Great post. I agree with you. Efficiency versus’s busyness. Several years ago, in a time management course, I came away with a piece of information that has enhanced my productivity. Make a decision when you touch something. What I gathered from this bit of adivce, was that if I put my hands on a piece of information, I need to decide what to do with that information the first time I pick it up. Through practicing this strategy, I have been able to file and sort information as I get it, rather than putting it off until a later time. Through following this plan I have reduced my need to catch up.
I found a great book along these lines to help me deal with the massive amounts of distracting “noise” I have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.
Check out “Getting things done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity” by David Allen. Its a godsend to anyone who is way too busy for a simple to-do list approach to managing their professional life. You can find him at http://www.davidco.com (I’ve not been on his site before now, but I thought I better track down a link given this digital environment.
I haven’t mastered the “Art of Stress Free Productivity” by any measure (I’m a tax accountant by trade after all) but his POV is very helpful. Check him out too,
Mike,
good article. one of the things I’m bemused by is that the freedom so many web workers talk about is usually subsumed in 14 or 16 hour days. It seems to me somewhat contradictory to switch to a life and workstyle that give the chance for more freedom and flexibility only to throw that away.
To Nerd’s point and that of your post… you can’t evaluate what you should be doing in the moment if you don’t have an idea of what is important in your life overall. Miss the dance recital or the trip? Well, look at the longer timeframe and bigger picture. Then judge. Ideally, do that before you have the kid whose recital is coming up… if your career is much more important to you, maybe delay the kid… or choose not to have them.
Having thought about the values framework, the in the moment decisions come more easily. And now I’m going to go clean my kitchen… ;)
A great posting, thanks. I too spend plenty of time being unproductive (I don’t believe there’s such a thing as being unproductively productive) and I often have to ask myself, “Is what I’m doing contributing to getting my work done?”. If it isn’t I then have a choice to continue doing it or to get some real stuff done. The empowerment is in recognizing that I have the choice.
It’s hard to say with the RSS feeds. As a writer, almost anything I read could be an inspiration for some thing I’m writing or hadn’t previously thought about writing.
Of course, I have multiple inspirations in my head at any given moment, and have trouble deciding which of those is most important.
Great post! It’s nice to see other web developers pondering what’s important and what’s not, because we get so much thrown at us. Heck, we get so much thrown at us as humans in general.
If anyone is struggling with this personally, I recommend “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey. It’s been around for a long time, and everything he talks about is still completely relevant.
What applies most to Mike’s post? Set a weekly schedule instead of a daily schedule – that way, you can accomplish what you really want in life by repeating the things that need to be repeated, and getting rid of the mundane activities that you don’t enjoy. He said it right when he talks about how your activities are based on your goals, which are based on your principles – what you stand for. Figure out what you stand for in life.
As a side note, I love Web Worker Daily – it’s the one blog I truly enjoy reading every day!
I’ve been tempted to switch to using index cards with tasks taped to the wall in order of priority so that it’s always extremely obvious what i should be working on.
As a web worker for a news organization, every day it’s like starting from scratch. The tasks never stop, the updates never cease. So my colleagues and I have adopted a mantra to A.) keep us sane and B.) force us to unplug:
“Done Enough.”